Before dawn on January 30, 1964, General Nguyễn Khánh ousted the military junta led by General Dương Văn Minh from the leadership of South Vietnam without firing a shot. It came less than three months after Minh's junta had themselves come to power in a bloody coup against then President Ngô Đình Diệm. The coup took less than a few hours. Major Nguyễn Văn Nhung, who was Minh's aide and bodyguard, was arrested and summarily executed after power had been seized.

Distrusted by his colleagues because of his tendency to change sides and his reputation as an intriguer, Khánh was assigned to I Corps in the far north of the country after Diệm's overthrow to keep him away from the capital Saigon. Khánh, who had played a minor role in Diệm's overthrow, joined forces with Generals Trần Thiện Khiêm and Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, who felt they deserved better posts in the junta, and Colonels Nguyễn Chánh Thi and Đỗ Mậu, the latter being the director of military security under Diệm and an effective strategist.

During the three months of his rule, Minh, his civilian Prime Minister Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ, and his leading military colleagues, Generals Trần Văn Đôn and Lê Văn Kim, attempted to defeat the National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) non-militarily. They felt that a battleground victory was impractical or impossible and pursued a strategy of trying to politically integrate the insurgents into the mainstream. This meant an intensification of rural non-military initiatives and a reduction in armed operations. This brought them into conflict with the United States, which had plans to start bombing North Vietnam. At the same time, in January 1964, the French government of President Charles de Gaulle proposed the neutralization of Vietnam and the withdrawal of American forces. Khánh and his fellow plotters exploited this to spread rumors that Minh's junta was about to make a deal with Hanoi and then gained the support of the US, most notably through the chief of military forces in Vietnam, General Paul Harkins, who supported Diệm and opposed Minh's November coup.

Before dawn on January 30, the coup forces caught the junta completely off-guard and seized power without a fight. Khánh grudgingly decided to keep Minh as a figurehead chief of state while maintaining real power in his hands as Minh was popular within the army and the Americans wanted a show of unity to be maintained. Khánh also tried to consolidate his standing in the military by promoting a group of younger officers, and increasing the pay of the enlisted men. In the meantime, the other key generals in the junta, Don, Kim, Đính and Xuân, were put under house arrest, accused by Khánh of attempting to negotiate a peace deal with North Vietnam. However, when they were brought to a military trial presided over by Khánh, the junta leader did not provide any evidence and convicted them of "lax morality". Khánh then allowed them back to meaningless desk jobs, but the show trial brought him much embarrassment. Khánh later admitted that there was no basis to the charges of neutralism against the four generals, and after a tumultuous year in power, Khánh was himself deposed in February 1965 and forced into exile.

Background

Khánh had long been regarded as an ambitious and unscrupulous officer. Following the partition of Vietnam, Khánh, a French-trained officer who served in the French-backed Vietnamese National Army during the First Indochina War, had rallied to support Ngô Đình Diệm, who became the first president of the anti-communist South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam). He rose to become the deputy chief of staff in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), but his record of political loyalty was called into question. In 1960, during an attempted coup by rebel paratroopers, Khánh jumped over the walls of the Independence Palace and joined Diệm during the siege, trying to negotiate an end to the stand-off with the rebels.Moyar, pp. 108–114. Khánh parleyed with the rebels long enough for loyal forces to arrive from the outside the capital to suppress the uprising, but his critics contended that he was waiting to see which side would gain the upper hand and was not committed to Diệm.Karnow, pp. 351–352.Shaplen, p. 229. In any case, Diệm then promoted him to be the commander of II Corps.Kahin, p. 196. In his younger days, Khánh had joined the Việt Minh but then defected to the French colonial army after a year. Khánh claimed that he had left the Viet Minh because of its communist inclinations, but critics claimed that he was simply switching sides because the French-backed State of Vietnam offered him more opportunities for advancement.Karnow, pp. 354–355.Shaplen, p. 228.

Khánh participated in the 1963 South Vietnamese coup that deposed Diệm, playing a minor role, although he claimed to be a key player. Khánh expected a large reward, but the junta instead sidelined him, excluding him from the twelve-man Military Revolutionary Council. In mid-December he was moved from the II Corps in the Central Highlands to the command of the I Corps based around Huế and Da Nang in the far north of the Republic of Vietnam. This, it was speculated, was to keep him far away from Saigon in an attempt to stop him from involving himself in politics.Shaplen, p. 230. This was contrary to Khánh's request for a transfer to the IV Corps in the Mekong Delta close to Saigon, where most of the fighting was taking place. In an interview with journalist Robert Shaplen, Khánh made no attempt to hide his annoyance at not being given a more important job. With respect to the 1963 coup that overthrew and killed Diệm, he cryptically commented "It is too soon yet to tell the whole story, but someday I will tell it to you". The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also reported that Khánh was motivated by a suspicion that Minh's junta knew he was untrustworthy and was going to give him an overseas government post to sideline him completely.

Harkins and his support for Khánh

Luckily for Khánh, although his colleagues did not like or trust him, the Americans, civilian and military regarded him highly.Blair, p. 107. Most notable among his supporters was the US commander, General Paul Harkins,Kahin, p. 195. who regarded Minh and his colleagues as "political generals" and thought poorly of them, in contrast to Khánh, who he regarded as a serious soldier. Harkins prepared quarters for Khánh next to his own when the Vietnamese officer visited the capital.Blair, p. 108. Harkins also mistakenly believed that Khánh was happy to have been posted to I Corps and content to focus on military matters rather than politics, unaware of Khánh's anger at being sidelined from Saigon.Blair, p. 109. The US commander thought that Khánh had done an effective job in I Corps, restoring it to normality after the upheavals of Diệm's final months in power.

Like Khánh, Harkins was not on good terms with the junta. With respect to the overthrow of Diệm, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and elements in the US State Department were in favor of regime change, while the US military leadership supported Diệm's retention. It was well known to Minh and his close supporters that Harkins had strongly opposed the coup and tried to stop it. As a result, they distrusted him as a "symbol of the old order" and did not "look for advice" from Pentagon officials. Lacking influence on the new government, Harkins fell significantly behind Lodge as the leading American in Saigon. According to Kahin, the two were never close and "if prior to the ouster of Diệm they appeared to be estranged team members, thereafter they hardly seemed to be on the same team."Kahin, p. 194. In a report to US President Lyndon Baines Johnson in December 1963, McNamara claimed that "The Country Team is the second major weakness [after the Minh government]. It lacks leadership and is not working to a common plan...Above all Lodge has virtually no official contact with Harkins. Lodge sends in reports with major military implications without showing them to Harkins."

Harkins resented his decreasing relevance, especially as his term in Vietnam would be over in six months anyway, so he decided to try to regain influence lost to Lodge by altering the shape of the Saigon regime. The split between Harkins and Lodge was also kept unresolved by domestic political imperatives in Washington. The Defense Department would not drop their support for Harkins, so he was not recalled early. Although Johnson said of Lodge "He ain't worth a damn. He can't work with anybody. He won't let anybody else work", the president chose not to try to force any changes due to the upcoming US Presidential election. Lodge was the front-runner for the Republican nomination at the time, and Johnson wanted to keep him in Saigon rather than having the ambassador in the US campaigning against him and the Democratic Party.Moyar, p. 293. Aside from Harkins, General Maxwell Taylor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also known to regard Khánh as the nation's foremost general, while Undersecretary of State George Ball told Lodge that "Our [the State Department's] impression is that Khánh is one of the best of the generals, both courageous and sophisticated." Khánh was known for his pro-American views, and Lodge's aide, Colonel Mike Dunn said that Khánh was not only a fluent speaker of English, but "he spoke American; American Army in fact." On one occasion Khánh had told American officials that South Vietnam "must rely on American support".

At the time, the South Vietnamese government was plagued by infighting. A civilian government and cabinet led by Prime Minister Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ was appointed by the MRC to ease some of the workload on non-military matters. However, the presence of Generals Trần Văn Đôn and Tôn Thất Đính in both the civilian cabinet and the MRC paralyzed the governance process. Đính and Đôn were subordinate to Thơ in the cabinet, but as members of the MRC they were superior to him. Whenever Thơ gave an order in the civilian hierarchy with which they disagreed, they would go into the MRC and give a counter-order.Jones, p. 437. The junta was paralyzed because all twelve generals in the MRC had equal power. Each member of the MRC had the power of veto, enabling them to stonewall policy decisions.Shaplen, p. 221. The press strongly attacked Thơ, accusing his government of being "tools" of the MRC. The media further derided Thơ for the personal benefits that he gained as a landlord from the Diệm administration's token land reform policy.Shaplen, p. 223. On January 1, 1964, a Council of Notables comprising sixty leading citizens met for the first time. Its job was to advise the military and civilian wings of the government with a view towards reforming human rights, the constitution and the legal system. The council, which consisted almost entirely of professionals and academic leaders, soon became engaged in endless debate and never achieved its initial task of drafting a new constitution.Shaplen, p. 225.

Ineffective junta rule