course, the assassination of Kennedy himself brought Lyndon B. Johnson into office, with a different philosophy toward the war. Kennedy was an activist, but had a sense of unconventional warfare and geopolitics, and, as is seen in the documentary record, discussed policy development with a wide range of advisors, specifically including military leaders although he distrusted the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was attracted to officers that he saw as activist and unconventional, such as Edward Lansdale. Johnson tended to view the situation from the standpoint of U.S. domestic policy, and did not want to render himself vulnerable to political criticism as the man who had "lost Vietnam". Early after becoming president, as he told Bill Moyers, he had the "terrible feeling that something has grabbed me by the ankles and won't let go." His response was to send Robert McNamara to examine the situation and reassure him. McNamara at this point, as he had with Kennedy, exuded a sense of logical control; he was not yet in the deep despair that led him to write, "...we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why." "Johnson was a profoundly insecure man who craved and demanded affirmation." When the North Vietnamese did not respond as Johnson wanted, he took it personally, and may have made some judgments based on his emotional responses to Ho. He also spoke with a much smaller advisory circle than Kennedy, and excluded active military officers. The Buddhist crisis begins While there had been long-standing animosity between Diệm and the Buddhists, in April 1963, for unclear reasons, the central government ordered the provincial authorities to enforce a ban on the display of all religious flags. This ban was rarely enforced, but, since the order went out shortly before the major festival, Vesak (informally called Buddha's Birthday), which fell on May 8, many Buddhists perceived this as a direct attack on their customs. In May, a government paramilitary unit fired into demonstrators. As part of a wave of protests, a Buddhist monk immolated himself; photographs of his body, apparently seated calmly in the lotus position as he burned to death, drew worldwide attention. By early June, the government was negotiating with the Buddhists as it had never done, with Vice President Nguyen Ngoc Tho, a Buddhist, apparently being an effective negotiator in spite of Diệm's brother and political advisor Ngô Đình Nhu's announcing