Word: saigon
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...documents had some unexpected defenders. William F. Buckley's conservative National Review supported the Times, partly on the grounds that "overclassification of documents by governments amounts to approximately 3,000%?and no one is going to read all this mass anyway." Frederick Nolting, former ambassador to Saigon, argued that in some cases the truth of what happened is even worse than the Pentagon papers make it appear. "If anything, the published records tend to varnish over these crucial events or make them less offensive and damaging to those actually involved...
...DIEM COUP. The Pentagon papers show that the U.S. first conspired with South Vietnamese military plotters against President Diem, later backed away from an active role and, in the end, stood by and allowed the coup to take place. In the summer of 1963, officials in Saigon and Washington, D.C., debated whether or not to coax Diem into instituting reforms or to support a military coup. Kennedy and his advisers had come to view Diem and his brother, Secret Police Chief Ngo Dinh Nhu, as corrupt mandarins whose brutal oppression of Buddhists and political opponents was an embarrassment...
...pagodas in August, but when reservations over the success of an overthrow deepened, the U.S. withdrew its clandestine support of the generals and the coup was delayed. Concern heightened, however, with reports that Nhu might seek rapprochement with the North, which could have resulted in a neutralist government in Saigon. The plotting continued, and two days before Diem was ousted, McGeorge Bundy cabled Lodge...
...ordered a partial bombing halt along the lines that McNamara had suggested earlier. TET AFTERMATH. In a secret report to President Johnson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Wheeler presented a more pessimistic assessment of the effects of the 1968 Tet offensive than officials in Washington and Saigon had made available to the public. While echoing official statements that the Viet Cong forces were defeated in their attempt to overrun South Viet Nam, Wheeler admitted: "In short, it was a very near thing. To a large extent, the V.C. now controls the countryside. His determination appears to be unshaken...
...Neil Sheehan feels Viet Nam is his story," says a friend of the New York Times reporter. Sheehan's first reporting job was in 1962 as U.P.I.'s Saigon bureau chief; he covered the war for three years. But it was never more his story than last week, when the Times began publishing the Pentagon's secret record of U.S. involvement in Viet...