one. Minh threatened Diem in every way, exerting that he had no patience and would "blast him off the face of the earth" if he did not surrender. After a bombardment of artillery fire to intimidate Diem, Minh ordered an assault on the palace. The next morning Diem finally called the JGC Headquarters promising to surrender if he had safe passage out of the country. Americans had ordered that the Diem and Nhu were kept safe but an officer of Minh had placed them into an armored vehicle and shot them to death. The Americans began to focus on fixing the makeup of the coup rather than the policy of the successor's government after they had realized how bad Diem was as a leader. The CIA paid $42,000 in immediate support money to the plotters the morning the coup, given by Lucien Connie an act of prefigured in administration planning. On July 8, 1963, A CIA officer was told by Major General Tran Van Don(South Vietnam's army commander) that there were plans by the military to overthrow President Diem. In November 1963, the CIA, or "the Station", was relied upon by Vietnamese generals, who had recently staged a coup, to aid in the set up of a new regime. The Station was coming out of a U.S. Mission moratorium on contacts with the new leadership imposed by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. A White House tape of President Kennedy and his advisers confirms that top U.S. officials sought the November 1, 1963 coup against South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem without apparently considering the consequences for Diem personally. With support of the coup coming from the U.S. it would have the potential of making us responsible for the outcome in South Vietnam. Vietnam 1964 Intelligence analysis A Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) issued in May theorized that a short but intense air and naval campaign against the DRV would deter an invasion of the South, although not stop activities there. It also estimated that this would be a strong morale boost to the RVN. The campaign described, however, was different than the actual gradual attacks that resulted from the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August. This tactic failed spectacularly, as it drove the North Vietnamese and Vietcong to use vicious guerrilla tactics against the U.S. In October, another, less optimistic SNIE was issued, limited to the South. It said the situation