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The rule and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem
In An American Requiem, James Carrol, one time Catholic priest and son of the Joe Carroll, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) speaks about the early support Diem received from US Cardinal ("My country right or wrong") Spellman. Carrol also speaks about the staged 'removal' of Catholic Vietnamese from the North to the South. Rather than being driven out by Communists, they were encouraged to move south to support Diem (who was Catholic) in Buddhist majority South Vietnam. The American CIA may have been involved. Diem's regime was highly nepotistic and its Catholicism was more aligned with the Inquisition than with the contemporary church. Cardinal Spellman continued to lend financial support as well as advocacy through his influence on the American public opinion and the US government. The widely recognized photograph of the self immolation of a Buddhist monk was a protest against persecution of Buddhists by Diem's Catholic dominated administration. That fact is rarely, if ever, presented alongside that horrific image. That this article touches so lightly on the role of Catholicism, particularly US Cardinal Spellman, in the Vietnam tragedy only adds to confusion surrounding that tragedy.