Paul Kattenburg, a veteran State Department official who was chair of the Interdepartmental Working Group and who was considered a leading department expert on Vietnam, said his recent trip to Saigon had convinced him that Diem was hopeless and had made the people of South Vietnam unwilling allies of the Vietcong. The conclusion that both he and Lodge had reached, he told the group, was that the situation would continue to unravel and that the United States would be booted out of the country within six months to a year. Because Diem would not change and would not get rid of Nhu, there was only
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