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Dramatic Assassination Plots from History and Their Outcomes

Khalid Elhassan October 29, 2020 34 min

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - Austria-Hungary — The arrest of Gavrilo Princip after his shooting of Franz Ferdinand and his wife. BBC

21. The Assassination of Our Man in Saigon

President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles greeting Diem in Washington. Wikimedia

The Republic of South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem (1901 – 1963) came to power in 1955. He did so with a heavily rigged referendum that deposed Vietnam’s Emperor Bao Dai, and established the Republic of Vietnam with himself as to its president. A staunch Catholic, he pursued discriminatory policies that favored Catholics for public service and military positions, land distribution, tax concessions, and business arrangements.

Some Catholic priests even ran private armed militias, which they put to use demolishing Buddhist pagodas and forcing people to convert – activities to which the government turned a blind eye. Since Catholics were a distinct minority in the country, and about 90% of South Vietnamese were Buddhists, Diem’s pro-Catholic tilt did not sit well. Things would get worse, and end up with his assassination.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.