DODD BLAMES PRESS HOAX FOR DOWNFALL OF DIEM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200310039-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 1999
• Sequence Number: 39
• Publication Date: February 24, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

Sanitized - Approved For Rel
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FEB 2 4 1
Dodd Blames Press Hoax
For Downfall Of Dien
Washington, Feb. 2311P1---Senator
Dodd (D., Conn.) charged today
that a hoax for which he blamed
some of the press brought the
downfall of the Ngo Dinh Diem
yegime in. South Vietnam.
Ile criticized no newspaper by
nalanc.
Dodd made the, accusations in
a letter appended to a Senate-
financed reprint of a 324-page
r.=; port released last December 9
by a United Nations fact-finding
commission which had visited
Vietnam.
"Virtually Ignored"
The reprint was made at Dodd's
request as an official Senate In-
ternal Security subcommittee
document "for the information of
senators," Dodd said in a state-
ment.
He said he made the request
because he believes the report
was "virtually ignored by the
press for more than two weeks
STATINTL
enterprising commentators got
hold of the story."
Noting that the United Nations
made no formal findings on their
study of allegations of serious vi-
olations of human rights by the
Diem regime,. including persecu-
tion of Buddhists, Dodd declared:
"I' believe that any objective
person would have to conclude
from reading it that the accounts
of massive persecution of the
Buddhist religion were, at the
best, vastly exaggerated, and, at
the worst, a sordid propaganda
fraud."
Spontaneity Doubted
The Diem Government was''
toppled. last November 1, and;
Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, his'
strongman brother-in-law, were
slain.
Dodd' said that "some of the Mihailovlc-Tito Case
testimony presented in the report Dodd said that "importah'
raises doubts about the authentic-' American newspapers" during
ty and the spontaneity of sui- World War II pictured the Yugo-
after its release- date until someeides" by Buddhists who, burnedlslav underground leader, DrajaJ
themselves to death in Saigon nMihailovic as a collaborator with
;streets in .protest against alleged; the Nazis, and portrayed The as
persecution by the Diem Govern-'a hero, and "the result was the
meat. betrayal of Mihailovic and the,
Dodd said the fact-finders did installation of a Communist re-'
not report on political motives but gime."
_ _ ..
"
_r
h
said
He
that
Some
t
o
e
L a Hers" ieported `'
aganda 'was b ehindf many of f the p ! that China
:
atrocity stories. Chiang Kai-shek "was a crook"
Be said the report quoted a ;and the Chinese Communists!
19-year-old Buddhist monk a staff-,were agrarian reformers., and the i
lug that he had been talkeh info result was a confusion of policy
agreeing to burn himself to death, that led to the installation of a
nd Communist regime in China."
with stories of btt?ocities and:
promises that he would be given "Chaotic Situation"
pain-killing drugs. He said the . Dodd said "there were papers".
youth was prevented by' the police which contended that Cuba's Fidel
from setting himself ablaze. ' ' Castro was not a Communist' but
Dodd said the mission told also-a "cross between Robin Hood
of 'interviewin,; a number of and Thomas Jefferson; and ,the
Buddhists who had been reporterl result was a Communist regime
killed. and that the nrissipn in Cuba."
'could find no cviticitce to' sub- "Now we have been the,"victim
stantiate published reports in the of still another hoax, In; copse,
press that, Buddhist monks had querice of which the Government]
heen thrown from upper stories'of Ngo Dinh Diem has been. de-:
during the raid on the Xa t,oi:str?nycd and a chaotic situation.-
pagoda." 1has been created that will make-
1' "What all this adds up to, in a Communist takeover rrtore ,dif
my' opinion, Dodd -wrote, is ficult to resist," he wrote, -
that the American. people have Dodd said Congress and they
once again been grievously mis- Administration arc,' influenced. by
informed by. some of their news- what, they read in the newspapers
vitall .:oncernq ahem,' ; maki n; rule;
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000200310039-7