PERSONS/ENTITIES: COLBY DATES: Fall 1963 CATEGORIES: DIEM
NSC
STATE DEPARTMENT
OCCURRENCE: COLBY stated that the public pressure that was brought upon or was felt by the NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL and by the people in the STATE DEPARTMENT was "one of distaste for President DIEM." p. 61
TOP SECRET
SOURCE: Hearings, SSCI, June 20, 1975, Colby STAFF: R. DAWSON DATE: 1 July 1975
FILE:
PERSONS/ENTITIES: COLBY PRESIDENT KENNEDY GENERAL KRULAK MR. MENDELWAY DATES: Fall 1963 CATEGORIES: DIEM
TOP SECRET
OCCURRENCE: COLBY stated that: "The most dramatic way in which this was posed, this has been described publicly a number of times, was that at one time, particularly with the frustrating period the President (Kennedy) faced with these two strong positions, he sent two officers, one a General Krulak, who was an assistant to Secretary McNamara and a Mr. Mendelway, who had formerly been the political counsellor in Saigon, to Saigon for about five days to make an assessment on the spot and they came back to the camera room, and one sat on one end of the room and one sat on the other and General Krulak first said he had been to 20 provinces and talked to 20 provinces and 30 military chiefs and all that sort of thing and the war business (was) going on basically and there were some problems, but the thing was that they seemed to have a strategy and they seemed to be moving along on it, then Mendelway said he went to three cities and talked to lots of civil servants and political people, and all the rest of it and there was a general feeling that the cause hopeless because there was so much distaste for President DIEM and so much opposition, and the general feeling that the war could not be won. And the President, of course, looked at them and
SOURCE: Hearings, SSCI, June 20, 1975, Colby STAFF: R. DAWSON