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To the Cold War Establishment, Ngo Dinh Diem was becoming disposable. Washinton's Cold War leaders had been divide for some time over the merits of retaining Diem as thier client democratic" head of state for the Vietnam War. However as a result of Diem's disaterous repression of the Buddhists, the factions were moving toward consensus. It was becoming obvious that Diem, an incompetent despot had to go. Kennedy was under mounting pressure from the more liberal side of his government, the State Department, to end Diem's flagrantly authoritarian rule by a coup. In that respect. State's leading coup advocates, Harriman and Hilsman, had put themselve in an lnlikely alliance with the CIA's debuty Director of Plans, Richard Helms.
When Helms was asked by Harriman to approve the August 24 telelgram to Lodge since CIA Director John McCone (a Diem supporter) was out of town, the Deputy Director of Plans did so withot hesitation. It was the CIA's career tactician Helms, not Kennedy's appontee McCone, who was running the Agency's covert oporations-- in this case beyiond McCone's knowledge of control. McCOne was a figurehead out the CIA's covert action loop. Helms felt no need to seek out, or defer to McCone's judgment when it came to the CIA's endorsing (and facilitating) a coup in South Vietnam. "It's about time we bit this bullet," Helms told Harriman, (183) in direct conflict with what McCone would say to Kennedy on his retrn to Washington. But it was Helms who was literally calling the CIA's shots, not McCone. (JFK and the Unspeakable p.168)
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