ABSTRACT
John F. Kennedy took office as president of the United States on January 20, 1961. As a senator, Kennedy had been one of the Catholics to whom Francis Cardinal Spellman had introduced Ngo Dinh Diem during the latter's stay in the United States. Kennedy also had worked with the so-called "Vietnam lobby" to promote Diem's candidacy for the premiership in 1954. When Kennedy took office, Vietnam's tribulations had yet to enter US consciousness as a war. The Communists devoted a good deal more time to organization and propaganda than to armed attacks. But in September 1961, they did manage to seize a provincial capital just eighty kilometers from Saigon. Revolutionary armed forces grew briskly. US intelligence estimated that the number of "regular" troops under communist command grew from 4,000 to 10,000 during 1960 alone. Kennedy's hope in waging a "special war," however, was to keep US forces in the background, to support and build Saigon, not do its fighting.
