Although Diem was a Catholic in a Buddhist country; although his extended family, the Ngo clan, had a notorious reputation for corruption, criminality, and connections to reactionary military circles; and although he had little popular appeal or legitimacy, he seemed to the Americans the perfect man to build a free and democratic South Vietnam. He was ferociously anticommunist. His Catholicism marked him as Western in American eyes. And he already had close friends in Washington. In fact his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, had been working with the CIA since 1952 and would maintain that link for the
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