From August to November 1963, John and Robert Kennedy also presided over a chaotic mélange of American involvement and noninvolvement with various coup plots in Saigon, a slow-motion nightmare that culminated, to JFK’s shock and dismay, in the gangland-style machine-gun rubout of American ally and South Vietnamese head of state Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother. “He’s always said that it was a major mistake on his part,” said RFK in 1964 of JFK’s authorization of support for the coup plots. “The result is we started down a path we never really recovered from.” The final plunge of America into the
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