(2 of 4)
For all the high-level brouhaha, the ladder pales in interest next to other new additions from the Vietnam era to the Ford Library and Museum. Last week more than 40,000 pages of newly declassified materials were released to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the end of the war. Most were National Security staff files, and many were written by Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, who would later become National Security Adviser. Although only tangential to the Ford Administration, one of the provocative documents--found in the files of Graham A. Martin, the last U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam--is a startling 1964 letter from Martin's Johnson-era predecessor, Henry Cabot Lodge, to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Certain to intrigue cold-war historians, the missive reads:
"This is for you, the President, [Secretary of Defense] Bob McNamara and whoever else you think needs to know. It is definitely not a subject which should get into the cable traffic ...General [Nguyen] Khanh told me on May 25 that when [President Ngo Dinh] Diem was shot he had in his hand a briefcase containing 1 million U.S. currency 'in the highest denominations.' He said that General [Duong Van] Minh took possession of the briefcase and has never yet surrendered it. He added that General Minh at the same time had taken possession of 40 kilograms of gold bars ...I advised General Khanh not to make this public lest it shake public confidence here in all generals. He hopes that General Minh will make his exit quietly."
The letter may read cryptically today but one historic image will jog the memory: the bodies of South Vietnamese President Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, chief of the secret police, splayed on the ground in pools of blood in Saigon on Nov. 2, 1963. Until then, Diem's corrupt South Vietnamese regime had been propped up by the U.S. as a bulwark against the communist North. But Diem's "republic" had become an embarrassment to the Kennedy Administration. American public opinion had turned against the regime after Buddhist monks set themselves on fire to protest Diem's autocratic ways. When a cabal of South Vietnamese military men indicated they were about to stage a coup against Diem, Ambassador Lodge said the U.S. would not stand in their way.
But were pecuniary incentives involved? There are numerous ways to analyze this curious letter. It could be that General Khanh--Saigon's military strongman--made up this story to lay the blame for the Diem coup on his archrival, General Minh ("Big Minh" as he was popularly known). Another possibility is that Diem had been paid off by the CIA, and was making a getaway when he was apprehended and killed.
Ambassador Martin's Saigon embassy files, from 1970 to 1975, mostly backchanneling missives to and from Kissinger, offer plenty to think about as well. The most sensitive cables pertain to the diplomatic intrigue that resulted in the Paris cease-fire agreement Kissinger and North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho signed on Jan. 27, 1973. One folder, in fact, contains extensive new documentation on the role French intermediary Jean Sainteny played in keeping Kissinger and Le Duc Tho at the bargaining table.