“They wanted JFK out because he retracted the move into Viet Nam with one of his first executive orders.”
A ridiculous claim. There were 685 American advisors in RSVN when Eisenhower left office. Kennedy had ramped up American military presence in RSVN to nearly 17,000 by the time that he was killed 2 1/2 years later.
Kennedy approved the coup against Diem in order to get him out of the way and gain more control of RSVN. My father and another Colonel named George Patton IV were tasked with evaluating whether Vietnam was suitable for American ground combat forces while Kennedy was still alive. They said it wasn’t. Somebody should have paid attention.
From this examination of JFK’s intentions on withdrawal, before his assassination:
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/
“Before a large audience at the LBJ Library on May 1, 1995, McNamara restated his account of this meeting and stressed its importance. He confirmed that President Kennedy’s action had three elements: (1) complete withdrawal “by December 31, 1965,” (2) the first 1,000 out by the end of 1963, and (3) a public announcement, to set these decisions “in concrete,” which was made. McNamara also added the critical information that there exists a tape of this meeting, in the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, to which he had access and on which his account is based.”
And,
“There followed, on October 4, a memorandum titled “South Vietnam Actions” from General Maxwell Taylor to his fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals May, Wheeler, Shoup, and Admiral McDonald, that reads:
“The program currently in progress to train Vietnamese forces will be reviewed and accelerated as necessary to insure that all essential functions visualized to be required for the projected operational environment, to include those now performed by U.S. military units and personnel, can be assumed properly by the Vietnamese by the end of calendar year 1965. All planning will be directed towards preparing RVN forces for the withdrawal of all U.S. special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965.”