7
MTG--
Verily, I posted a couple times at EF-JFKA how JFK authorized the anti-Diem coup, despite being told it would likely result in the Diems' assassinations, and the complete lack of Kennedy Administration efforts to extract the Diems. Indeed, CIA inquiries about extracting the Diems were ignored---Lodge appeared to not want a government-in-exile situation, preferring the Diems dead.
There is a recorded conversation between Ambassador Lodge and JFK, in which Lodge lays this out, and many other warnings.
JFK responds, in part, by calling Madame Nhu a "bitch" and a lesbian (she appears to have been heterosexual).
There were different standards at play in 1963, and JFK tried to have Castro assassinated several times, and more-or-less authorized the Diems' assassinations. That is part of the historical record.
People forget that JFK was deeply instrumental to the founding of South Vietnam, and he committed 16,000 military personnel to SV to help it survive against communist terrorism---and JFK himself called it terrorism. Cardinal Spellman was an influential figure as well, and close to the Kennedy family.
JFK may have wanted to modestly reduce US presence in SV in late 1963, but he was not going to abandon SV.
President LBJ wondered out aloud if the Diems or Castro assassinations or attempts led to blowback.