Sure enough, in the early morning hours of 27 January, Saigon time, Khanh and the Armed Forces Council overthrew Tran Van Huong’s government in a bloodless coup. Taylor immediately cabled Washington (where it was still the evening of the twenty-sixth) that an alliance between Khanh and the Quang-led Buddhist Institute had caused the coup, and that most senior generals had supported the action. He noted that the institute’s leadership now appeared to be “in a position of dominant power and influence in the country,”
