Word: coups
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...misunderstanding on both sides. I don't think either group will start anything, but both think the other will." Tough Tennis. In Honolulu, on his flight back to his political job in Saigon, Ambassador Taylor stepped perspiring from a tennis game to comment that Phat's coup "certainly was unannounced and unheralded." In view of developments, said Taylor, he would "get going as fast as we can get a crew together." The news from Saigon was especially depressing to Washington, not only because Lyndon Johnson is in the midst of a presidential campaign, but because...
...coup was at least partly due to the Catholic reaction against the concessions Khanh had been forced to grant the Buddhist majority in his strife-torn nation in the past few weeks. The coup leaders are officers who had either been fired by Khanh or were on the brink of being cashiered. Top man seemed to be Brigadier General Lam Van Phat, a lean, taciturn officer who last week was eased out of his job as Interior Minister in Khanh's Cabinet. Under the murdered Roman Catholic President Diem, Lam Van Phat had been appointed 7th Division commander...
...Duong Van Due, commander of the IV Corps, and Co'onel Ba, chief of the 7th Division's armored section. Soldiers gathered rapidly in front of a large U.S. communications center. Several U.S. advisers were chased away by their colleagues among the Vietnamese officers participating in the coup. As the rebel troops moved into the center of the city, Phat sat calmly in a civilian car. "We'll be holding a press conference in town this afternoon at 4 p.m.," he announced to reporters...
Whether the coup would stick was another question. As the rebels plunged into the heart of Saigon, worshipers who had attended early Mass at the Roman Catholic cathedral fled in panic. The Buddhists who earlier in the week had mounted a parade of 150,000 people for the burial of two "martyrs" in the recent religious riots, were evidently taken by surprise. Strangely, however, Buddhist army detachments were making no resistance to Phat's takeover, and there was no sign of activity from the air force commander, who had pledged two weeks earlier that his planes would swiftly crush...
Since the coup took place shortly after sunrise, and Saigon, at least, does not begin to function as a city until after breakfast, no one could be sure how secure Phat's new government would be. In the confusion, one South