thieu was our boy. >> but massive power corrupts, and thieu becomes a dictator. >> a catholic presenceg itself on a buddhist majority, and now they're going after the buddhists. >> soldiers and police broke up the demonstrations and killed nine persons. >> a debate broke out in the american government over whether we should continue to support thieu or not. >> by the summer of 1963, there had been discussions in the cia the in the pentagon about toppling the regime. >> mr. president, has our government in any way been tardy in recognizing the nature of the thieu government? >> we are faced with a problem of wanting to protect the area against the communists. on the other hand we have to deal with the governments there. that produces a kind of ambivalence in our efforts, which expose us to some criticism. >> mr. president, in the last 48 hours there have been a great many conflicting reports from there about what the cia was up to. can you give us any enlightenment on that? >> no, i don't think so. >> okay. >> this is an nbc special news report. the government of south vietnam has been

had lead the coup to get rid of thieu, kennedy realized that the united states had finally bitten into bad apple. >> monday, november 4th, 1963, over the weekend, the coup in saigon took place. i feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for it. i should not have given my consent to it without a round table conference. i was shocked by the death of diem. the way he was killed made it particularly abhorrent. >> when that assassination took place, we owned it. it actually started that early in the '60s, in the kennedy administration. >> when kennedy came into office in january of 1961, you had on the order of about 600 u.s. military advisers in south vietnam. by the time he left on that fateful trip to dallas in november 1963, there were more than 16,000. [ applause ] >> john kennedy's death commands what his life conveyed, that america must move forward. >> i think johnson genuinely felt that continuity in the government after this terrible event was essential to retaining the confidence of the american people. >> and now the ideas and the ideals which he so nobly represented