Inward Empire Inward Empire

In November 1963, a faction of South Vietnamese generals overthrew and assassinated Ngo Dinh Diem with the support of the Kennedy administration. In the final part of this series, we'll explore how infighting, ambition, and miscommunication sealed the fate of the Diem Experiment and set South Vietnam on the path to disaster.

After destroying his rivals in the Battle of Saigon, President Diem sets out to build a new nation in South Vietnam. On the one hand he offers land reform and a glittering new middle class, built on a tide of American aid. On the other hand is a ruthless anti-communist campaign of denunciations, torture, and re-education camps. A sprawling cast of characters comes together in this complex chapter: Saigon oligarchs, French philosophers, American New Dealers, landlords, peasants, Viet Cong guerillas, communist double agents, and rebellious paratroopers all help to shape the fate of the Diem experiment in its tumultuous early years.

In the 1950s, most Americans viewed the Cold War as a battle between freedom and tyranny. There was just one problem: how to explain alliances with anti-communist authoritarians like Ngo Dinh Diem. In this episode, we'll explore how American politicians, lobbyists, and one very enterprising Navy doctor imagined the new Republic of Vietnam as a bastion of democracy and freedom led by "a mandarin in a sharkskin suit who's upsetting the Red timetable."

Back in Saigon in 1954, Ngo Dinh Diem becomes premier of a country shattered by war and partition. With reunification elections looming, Diem barely controls the grounds of his own palace. Hostile Frenchmen, religious militias, a crime syndicate, ex-emperor Bao Dai, and Diem's own military conspire to end his rule before it can begin. Baffled American diplomats do political triage to avert a coup, urging Diem to bring his rivals to the table. But the new premier has other plans...

For nine years at the height of the Cold War, America's global crusade against communism rested on the shoulders of Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem. Hailed as a "miracle man" who brought the blessings of democracy and development to South Vietnam, Diem became a celebrity. But his miracles had a steep price. As his regime soaked up millions of dollars in American aid and military support, it ruthlessly suppressed its enemies, devastated villages, and failed to cope with a rising communist insurgency. As the Diem experiment began to absorb US prestige, money, and lives, Americans began to question whether their adventure in Southeast Asia was worth the cost...

Part one of this series explores Diem's rise to power and the origins of America's involvement in Vietnam. Diem tries to chart a "third way" between communism and empire; French, Japanese, and Americans vie for influence; and Vietnamese factions battle for the future of their country as a hapless emperor watches.

After sending the Molly Maguires to the scaffold in 1877, Pinkerton's National Detective Agency plunged headlong into America's labor conflict. At the vanguard of its war on organized labor was the Protective Patrol, an armed force that deployed to over seventy major strikes. Was the Patrol a lawkeeping elite, as the Agency and its employers claimed? Or, as labor leaders and reformers argued, was it a gang of cold-blooded, mercenary killers? After a disastrous intervention in 1892, testimony in a dramatic Congressional hearing revealed that both sides might have been wrong all along...