Cable 243

|alt=A portrait of a middle-aged man, looking to the left in a half-portrait/profile. He has chubby cheeks, parts his hair to the side and wears a suit and tie. DEPTEL 243, also known as Telegram 243, the August 24 cable or most commonly Cable 243, was a high-profile message sent on 24 August 1963, by the United States Department of State in reply to Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the newly appointed US ambassador to South Vietnam who had arrived in the country two days earlier. The cable came in the wake of the midnight raids on 21 August by the regime of Ngô Đình Diệm against Buddhist pagodas across the country, in which hundreds were believed to have been killed. The raids were orchestrated by Diệm's brother Ngô Đình Nhu and precipitated a change in US policy. Lodge, who had arrived in Saigon on 22 August (the day after the raids), sent a cable to the State Department reporting that some generals of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and high civilian officials were telling CIA agents and diplomats at the embassy that the US should support Diệm's removal in the wake of the attacks, but Lodge cautioned that the most pivotal commanders around Saigon were still loyal to the Ngo brothers and the loyalties of other officers were unknown, which would make American support of a coup d'état a "shot in the dark." Lodge's cable reached Washington on Saturday morning, 24 August.…

|alt=A portrait of a middle-aged man, looking to the left in a half-portrait/profile. He has chubby cheeks, parts his hair to the side and wears a suit and tie.]] DEPTEL 243, also known as Telegram 243, the August 24 cable or most commonly Cable 243, was a high-profile message sent on 24 August 1963, by the United States Department of State in reply to Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the newly appointed US ambassador to South Vietnam who had arrived in the country two days earlier. The cable came in the wake of the midnight raids on 21 August by the regime of Ngô Đình Diệm against Buddhist pagodas across the country, in which hundreds were believed to have been killed. The raids were orchestrated by Diệm's brother Ngô Đình Nhu and precipitated a change in US policy. Lodge, who had arrived in Saigon on 22 August (the day after the raids), sent a cable to the State Department reporting that some generals of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and high civilian officials were telling CIA agents and diplomats at the embassy that the US should support Diệm's removal in the wake of the attacks, but Lodge cautioned that the most pivotal commanders around Saigon were still loyal to the Ngo brothers and the loyalties of other officers were unknown, which would make American support of a coup d'état a "shot in the dark." Lodge's cable reached Washington on Saturday morning, 24 August. Later that day, Cable 243 was sent back as a reply to Lodge's report, declaring that Washington would no longer tolerate Nhu remaining in a position of power and ordering Lodge to pressure Diệm to remove his brother. It said that if Diệm refused, the Americans would explore the possibility for alternative leadership in South Vietnam. In effect, the cable authorized Lodge to give the green light to ARVN officers to launch a coup against Diệm if he did not willingly remove Nhu from power. The cable marked a turning point in US-Diem relations and was described in the Pentagon Papers as "controversial". The historian John M. Newman described it as "the single most controversial cable of the Vietnam War". The cable also highlighted an internal split in the Kennedy administration, with anti-Diệm officials in the State Department prevailing over generals and Department of Defense officials who remained optimistic that the Vietnam War was proceeding well under Diệm. That was underlined by the manner in which the cable was prepared before it was transmitted to Lodge. in 1961|alt=Tall Caucasian man standing in profile at left in a white suit and tie shakes hands with a smaller black-haired Asian man in a white shirt, dark suit and tie.]] The cable came in the wake of the midnight raids of 21 August by the Catholic regime of Ngô Đình Diệm against Buddhist pagodas across the country in which hundreds were believed to have been killed and more than a thousand monks and nuns were arrested. The pagodas were also extensively vandalized. Initially, the raids coincided with the declaration of martial law on the day before. A group of generals of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam had asked Diệm to give them extra powers to fight the Viet Cong but secretly wanted to maneuver for a coup. Diệm agreed, so that Nhu's Special Forces could take advantage and attack the Buddhist pagoda while disguised as regular ARVN forces. The raids were instigated by Nhu's Special Forces and Secret Police. At first, there was confusion as to what had occurred. Nhu had ordered the phone lines into the US embassy and the US Information Service to be cut. A curfew was imposed on the streets, and it was initially believed that the regular army had orchestrated the attacks. The Voice of America initially broadcast Nhu's version of the events, which held that the army was responsible. This infuriated the ARVN generals, since many Vietnamese listened to the program as their only source of non-government, non-propaganda news. Through CIA officer Lucien Conein, General Trần Văn Đôn communicated to the Americans that Nhu had created the impression that the ARVN were responsible in order to increase dissent among the lower ranks and to weaken support for and discredit the generals in case they were planning a coup.

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