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| - Before dawn on September 13, 1964, the ruling military junta of South Vietnam, led by General Nguyen Khanh, was threatened by a coup attempt headed by Generals Lam Van Phat and Duong Van Duc, who sent dissident units into the capital Saigon. They captured various key points and announced over national radio the overthrow of the incumbent regime. With the help of the Americans, Khanh was able to rally support and the coup collapsed the next morning without any casualties.
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| abstract
| - Before dawn on September 13, 1964, the ruling military junta of South Vietnam, led by General Nguyen Khanh, was threatened by a coup attempt headed by Generals Lam Van Phat and Duong Van Duc, who sent dissident units into the capital Saigon. They captured various key points and announced over national radio the overthrow of the incumbent regime. With the help of the Americans, Khanh was able to rally support and the coup collapsed the next morning without any casualties. In the immediate month leading up the coup, Khanh's leadership became increasingly troubled. He had tried to augment his powers by declaring a state of emergency, but this only provoked large-scale protests and riots calling for an end to military rule, with Buddhist activists at the forefront. Fearful of losing power, Khanh began making concessions to the protesters and promised democracy in the near future. He also removed several military officials closely linked to the discriminatory Catholic rule of the slain former President Ngo Dinh Diem; this response to Buddhist pressure dismayed several Catholic officers, who made a few abortive moves to remove him from power. In part because of pressure from Buddhist protests, Khanh removed the Catholics Phat and Duc from the posts of Interior Minister and IV Corps commander, respectively. They responded with a coup supported by the Catholic-aligned Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang, as well as General Tran Thien Khiem, a Catholic who had helped Khanh to power. Having captured the radio station, Phat then made a broadcast promising to revive Diem's policies. Khanh managed to evade capture and, during the first stage of the coup, there was little activity as most senior officers failed to support either side. Throughout the day, Khanh gradually rallied more allies and the US remained supportive of his rule and pressured the rebels to give up. With the backing of Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, commander of the Vietnam Air Force, and General Nguyen Chanh Thi, Khanh was able to force Phat and Duc to capitulate the next morning, September 14. Duc, Ky and Thi then appeared at a media conference where they denied that any coup had taken place and put on a choreographed display of unity, claiming that nobody would be prosecuted over the events. Convinced that Khiem was involved in the plot, Khanh had him exiled to Washington as ambassador, and eased General Duong Van Minh out of the political scene, thereby removing the other two nominal members of the ruling triumvirate. However, concerned that Ky and Thi had become too powerful, Khanh had Phat and Duc acquitted at their military trial in an attempt to use them as political counterweights. Despite his survival, the coup was seen by the historian George McTurnan Kahin as the start of Khanh's ultimate political decline. Due to the intervention of Ky and Thi, Khanh was now indebted to them, and in an attempt to maintain his power in the face of increasing military opposition, he tried to court support from Buddhist civilian activists, who supported negotiations with the communists to end the Vietnam War. As the Americans were strongly opposed to such policies, relations with Khanh became increasingly strained and he was deposed in February 1965 with US connivance.
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