Scope and Contents

Two black and white ink jet photographs of the Ngo family of Hue in 1961.

Biographical / Historical

Born in 1920 and a graduate of the Harvard Law School, Joseph Mendenhall was a career diplomat in the State Department, where he worked with the Marshall Plan and Vietnamese affairs. He served in the American Embassy at Saigon between 1959 and 1962; was director of Far Eastern affairs in Washington, D.C. between 1964 and 1965; was director of the U.S. Agency for International Development mission in Vientianne, Laos, between 1965 and 1968; and served first as deputy then as acting assistant administrator of USAID Vietnam in Washington between 19*68 and 1969. In 1963 President Kennedy sent Mendenhall and General Victor Krulak to Saigon to assess the situation in Vietnam; Krulak decided the was war being aggressively pursued and could be won, while Mendenhall decided that the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem was near collapse. Mendenhall reported that educated, urban Vietnamese were more interested in eliminating Diem than in fighting the Viet Cong and that there was a 'virtual breakdown of the civil government in Saigon.' He warned of a religious war between Catholics and Buddhists and saw no chance of defeating the Viet Cong unless 'as a minimum, Nhu [Diem's brother] withdrew or was removed from the government.' When Mendenhall and Krulak returned, John Kennedy remarked, 'You two did visit the same country, didn't you?'