The other week, at a used bookstore, I picked up A Death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963 (Ellen Hammer, 1987, E.P. Dutton), and was greatly illuminated about things I had never known before.
The book deals with the coups against Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Vietnam, 1955-1963, the last which of course succeeded.
The writer was a reporter who was on the spot, right there in Vietnam in 1963, and knew many of the personages involved. I have no idea her political leanings, other than that she was (is) no Harrison Salisbury or Seymour Hersch.
Of course, I never had any respect at all for the late Robert Kennedy, who was attorney general at the time, and alas I had to downgrade my respect for Henry Cabot Lodge, who was U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam.
The biggest lesson to be learned from this book is that desk-sitting bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of State should never be allowed to make "policy" (instead, only to implement it); the biggest bad guy apparently was Roger Hilsman, one of those.
The first official act of Lyndon Johnson, once assuming the presidency after the assassination of John Kennedy in November 1963, was to set into motion the firing of Hilsman, which should've been done a long time before. The guy wasn't even good enough to mop hallways, much less determine American policy in Vietnam.
In general, the villains, other than the bureaucrat Hilsman, seem to have been Robert Kennedy and Henry Cabot Lodge. John Kennedy was unsure what to do about South Vietnam, although he tended to be in favor of expanding American involvement there.
It was Robert Kennedy who decided America should run the war, and that Diem as president of South Vietnam was obstacling it. So Diem had to go.
And it was Henry Cabot Lodge who put into play Robert Kennedy's wishes.
And thus the dirty foul deed.