Yet only two days before, Lodge reported that General Don had sought him out at the Saigon airport to get confirmation that the CIA’s Lucien Conein “was authorized to speak for me [and the U.S. government].”[126] The nervous generals needed last-minute reassurance that the United States would not thwart them—as Kennedy was telling Lodge he still might do, in spite of Lodge’s counterarguments that it couldn’t be done.
