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No tears for Diem either, wonder if JFK felt that cold
shiver of premonition when he heard the news.

Coup and assassination
When the regime turned on a protest by Buddhist monks in June 1963, the U.S. stopped giving aid. A small number of monks had immolated themselves in public protest, and the U.S. grew intensely annoyed with Diem's unpopular public image. In their defense, Diem and Nhu claimed that the Communists had infiltrated the Buddhist groups, and that their crackdown was in accordance with the agreed-upon anti-Communist policy. Madame Nhu infamously referred to the incident as a 'barbequeing'.

U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge refused to meet with Diem and began to encourage ARVN Generals led by General Duong Van Minh that overthrew the government and ordered Captain Nhung to execute President Diem, his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, on November 1, 1963.

The U.S leadership had publicly expressed shock and disappointment that Diem had been killed, but records show that they made no attempts to dissuade the plotters from such an action, and were not surprised with the coup. It could be said that America's reticence to intervene in the coup gave lie to the idea that the U.S. was wantonly propping up such 'puppet regimes'.

At the time of the coup d'etat Madame Nhu was in Beverly Hills, California with her daughter, Le Thuy, for a trip to the United States and Italy, where she intended to expose a scheming President John F. Kennedy and the CIA to the American public.

When Madame Nhu learned of the coup d'etat she immediately suspected the United States saying, "Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need enemies". Madame Nhu went on to predict a dark future for Vietnam and that, by being involved in the coup, the troubles of the United States in Vietnam were only begining.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy was soon after assassinated as well. The new President Lyndon Johnson would pursue the strategy of creating a "proxy war" in Vietnam with far more gusto than Kennedy had shown, confirming Nhu's predictions.