187. Telegram From the Secretary of State to the Embassy in Vietnam1
723. From USDel. Saigon personal for Kidder from Secretary. We have now for four days and nights been reviewing the situation with Premier Faure and Ministers Pinay and LaForest and their advisers. We have consistently maintained the position that Diem’s government must be supported and that this support must be unconditional, and that while we would naturally offer it any advice or suggestions that would be welcomed, we were not in a position to give any undertakings on behalf of that government.
The French Government have now acquiesced in our point of view, and we expect today to draft broad instructions2 in this sense which will guide you and the Ambassador when he arrives in your future relations. We shall show this to the French. We hope that the French will also draft instructions which, while not identical, will require their representatives also to support Diem, although for reasons of domestic policy, they may not be able to say so publicly.
The status of Bao Dai has not been discussed except in a very marginal way. We have taken the position that it may be useful to preserve a thread of legitimacy at least pending orderly consideration of this problem by representative Vietnamese processes and assuming that Bao Dai does not in the interval attempt arbitrary interference in governmental processes.
You may informally advise Diem in above sense as a personal message from me.