Lesson plan
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.…
Article summary
|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.…
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
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