Week in Review: In 1963 Vietnam, Whose Coup?

Today’s Week in Review may be short, but it’s sweet. On Saturday JFK Facts posted a deeply sourced and fascinating critique of Jack Cheevers’ “Kennedy’s Coup: A White House Plot, a Saigon Murder, and America’s Descent into Vietnam” (2026) by Bernard Le Grelle. [The book was previously discussed by Chad Nagle here in July.]

Le Grelle is a Belgian-French investigative journalist, political adviser, author, former United Nations expert and public affairs executive. An alumnus of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he is completing two books: “Two Brothers Executed: My Lifetime Quest for the Truth About the Kennedy Assassinations,” on his investigation into the murders of John and Robert Kennedy, and “My Life and My Battles for Peace,” an intimate biography told in Kennedy’s own words, drawing on never-before-published material.

I was captivated by Le Grelle’s personal conversations with many highly connected individuals who had firsthand knowledge of Kennedy’s Vietnam dilemma, including Robert McNamara (the ex-defense secretary and World Bank president), Henry Kissinger, and numerous French officials recalling the overthrow and murder of South Vietnam’s president, Ngô Đình Diệm, three weeks before JFK’s assassination. Le Grelle objects to the very title of Cheevers’ book, saying that it was not “Kennedy’s Coup.”

Diệm was not a good ruler, and this is not a brief for him. It is a brief against a title. Cheevers has written a serious, deeply researched book — but “Kennedy’s Coup” hangs the wrong party with one phrase. The coup was the CIA’s, enabled by an ambassador Kennedy distrusted, and inherited by a successor who reversed everything Kennedy had set in motion. Kennedy’s actual policy — Laos in 1961, nine refusals of ground troops, NSAM-263, the exile he wanted for Diệm, the withdrawal McNamara described to me across a dinner table a quarter-century later — points the other way.

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The National Archives has just released the Sound Recordings Related to Closed Board Meetings, March 6, 1995–September 29, 1998. These are the meetings of the Assassination Records Review Board, where you can hear the board members’ back-and-forth on decisions to release the content of documents concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. You can also hear their votes on releases, redactions, and withholdings of individual documents.

The Archives records states that the release contains 47 Items “with a total of 186 digital objects" — in other words, tapes. You can access the individual tapes here. I am currently working to ascertain whether the release includes all of the closed meetings of the Board. And note: There are no transcripts yet. If you want to know which Board member is speaking, you will need to be an expert or a psychic.

We’ll have more Monday on these tapes, and other stories to follow. Stay tuned.

On Thursdays, JFK Facts subscribers join Larry Schnapf for a discussion of the latest news and information related to America’s greatest cold case, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. This is a genuinely freewheeling and fact-based discussion of all things JFK. Write your questions in the chat thread during the big Zoom call, open to all.

The most recent guest was Mark L. Javitch, a federal litigator in San Mateo, California, and the author of “SCAM: The Zapruder Copyright — How the Sixth Floor Museum Continues the Coverup” (2025).

Javitch represents the Forum on Open Access to Government Records in its suit against the Sixth Floor Museum and the National Archives. He brought the breaking news that a federal judge in Dallas had ruled on Aug. 5 that the Museum's claimed copyright in the Zapruder film is subject to challenge, and that a court can order the Archives to publish the film's frames online. Through the Forum, he maintains the largest free public collection of historical documents obtained from the National Archives on the Zapruder film at ZapruderFilm.com.