NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET
DATE: April 30, 1955
| TO: | FE – Mr. Robertson. |
| FROM: | PSA – Kenneth T. Young, Jr. |
| SUBJECT: | Report on Collins Visit and Viet-Nam Situation |
1. Collins arrived Thursday, April 21, and left early Friday morning, April 29. He had lunch with the President April 22, saw the Secretary for the first time at a long luncheon meeting April 25. We also met with the Secretary Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We spent all day Friday, April 22, meeting with Collins with Defense and CIA represented. He reiterated even more vigorously and firmly his view, strongly backed by Sturm, that Diem must be replaced and that a plan of action should go into effect immediately. They both favored Quat. None of the questions or alternate considerations expressed by any of us at that or any subsequent meeting changed Collins' view. Monday morning, April 25, we had a working meeting with him at which I proposed basic question, do He or do we not support some political change in Saigon, and (b) a specific plan of change. The reports at that time from Saigon showed Diem was steadily slipping. In the face of the adamant view of Collins and Sturm most of us reluctantly accepted the need for a change, but we all insisted that we stay with Diem at least for the first innings. Collins and particularly Sturm, rejected our proposition in any shape or form. The basic shift in our approach was taken at a long luncheon meeting with the Secretary. Unfortunately neither Bob Hoey nor I were invited to attend. Bill Sebald can fill you in on this. The Secretary took the position we would support Diem until and unless genuinely Vietnamese elements turned up with another acceptable solution. Collins and Sturm later told the working group this was an impossible condition.
2. The rest of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we spent working up two long and complicated telegrams to Paris and Saigon, At a full meeting with the Secretary, Mr. Hoover and Allen Dulles late Tuesday afternoon they were approved. Collins fully endorsed these telegrams after he and Sturm had eliminated our proposal to try again to keep Diem as head of a coalition government. These telegrams envisaged a gradual and rather complicated shift of our position in carefully worked out stages. As we suspected at the time, they were immediately overtaken by events. None of us really believed in them but, we were faced with Collins' strong recommendations and the fact that he had been to the White House the first day after his arrival. In any event, this shift has never been carried out. Although the telegrams were sent to Paris aDd Saigon, we have put out a stop order holding up action on them indefinitely.
3. Wednesday, April 27, Diem changed the police chiefs and Thursday the Binh Xuyen began military action against the government. Ely and the French have been putting the full blame for this situation on Diem, as they tried to do for the March 29-30 incident. Events have moved very
