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Our Man in Saigon: A Note on the Appointment of Cabot Lodge as Ambassador to South Vietnam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Extract

Since this conference is a small and intimate affair, the question I want to raise today is a modest: Why did President Kennedy in July 1963 appoint Henry Cabot Lodge Jr as the American Ambassador to Saigon?

The question is not only modest, Professor Gardner might say that it is redundant. In Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam, Gardner writes about Kennedy's decision to replace Frederick Nolting and nominate Lodge, that the new ambassador could offer him ‘protective coloration’ against Republicans attacking the Administration's Vietnam policy.

Type
The American Experience in Asia
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1998

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References

Notes

1 Gardner, Lloyd, Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (Chicago 1995) 75.Google Scholar

2 Halberstam, David in The Best and the Brightest: Twentieth-Anniversary Ed. (New York 1992)Google Scholar

3 Brinkley, Alan, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge, Mass. 1998) 278.Google Scholar

4 Cooke, Alistair ed., The Vintage Mencken (New York 1955) 82.Google Scholar

5 Lodge quoted in: Crowley, John W., George Cabot Lodge (Boston 1976) 26Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., 27.

7 Adams quoted in Crowley, Lodge, 78.

8 Adams, Henry, The Life of George Cabot Lodge (Boston and New York 1911).Google Scholar

9 Blair, , Lodge in Vietnam, 5, 6.Google Scholar

10 Wilson, Edmund ed., The Shock of Recognition (London 1956) 742.Google Scholar

11 'Donnell, Kenneth and Powers, David, ‘Johnny, We Hardly Knew You’: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (New York 1973) 15, 16.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 16.

13 Blair, , Lodge in Vietnam, 13.Google Scholar See also: S, Gerald. and Strober, Deborah H. eds, ‘Let Us Begin Anew’: An Oral History of the Kennedy Administration (New York 1993)Google Scholar, where Benjamin Bradlee states: ‘I'm not so sure how noble Kennedy's motive was in sending Cabot Lodge to Vietnam as ambassador. I thought that Jack just knew that it was a stroke of genius to get Cabot Lodge out there; he knew Cabot Lodge – who was such a gent that they knew he would do it – would treat him seriously, unlike the others. He knew that there would be no funny business in the political arena – Cabot Lodge wasn't going anywhere’, 427.

14 Guthman, Edwin O. and Shelman, Jeffrey eds, Robert Kennedy in his Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years (New York 1988) 426428Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 427.

16 Mecklin, John, Mission in Torment: An Intimate Account of the U.S. Role in Vietnam (New York 1965) 221.Google Scholar

17 Hilsman, Roger, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (New York 1967) 466.Google Scholar

18 Mecklin, , Mission in Torment, 222.Google Scholar

19 Oral History Interview with ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, 4 August 1965 by Charles Bardett for the John F. Kennedy Library, Roosevelt Study Centre, Middelburg, The Netherlands.

20 The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of the United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, The Senator Gravel Edition II (Boston, n.d.) 738. This was, of course, Lodge's response to the retraction of the famous August 24 telegram he had received from the State Department.

21 Lodge in telegram to State Dept., 30 October 1963, Pentagon Papers II, 790.

22 Beschloss, Michael R. ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (New York 1997) 320, 262.Google Scholar

23 See for example, Miller, William J., Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography (New York 1967) passimGoogle Scholar; Blair, , Lodge in Vietnam, 118140Google Scholar.

24 Kissinger, Henry, Diplomacy (New York 1995) 655;Google ScholarNixon, Richard, No More Vietnams (New York 1985)Google Scholar.

25 Kissinger, , Diplomacy, 655.Google Scholar