1 – The Churchill of Asia
Swearing in of Lyndon B. Johnson as President
“They started with me on Diem,” LBJ told an old friend, “that he was corrupt, and he ought to be killed. So, we killed him.” Not quite true, it turns out, but the brutal assassination of South Vietnam’s President Diem, just three weeks before JFK met the same fate in Dallas, would cast a long shadow over the Johnson presidency, and shape LBJ’s thinking on the war. 1963.
Featured commentator: Ed Miller, author of Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam and Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College
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