 The infighting <unk> Taylor , the US Ambassador to South Vietnam and former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff , who felt the disputes between the junta 's senior officers were <unk> the war effort . Only a few days earlier , General William Westmoreland — the commander of US forces in Vietnam — had invited him and the Vietnamese generals home to a dinner . There Taylor asked for an end to the persistent changes in leadership , and Khánh and his men assured him of stability . Westmoreland warned that persistent instability would turn the American political class and public against Saigon , as they would deem it useless to support such a regime . Taylor initially cabled the State Department back in the US to state a " naked military fist " had " <unk> [ the ] carefully woven fabric of civilian government " , and that the arrest of the civilians would be " immediately and understandably interpreted by all the world as another military coup , setting back all that had been accomplished " since the formation of the HNC and the creation of a veneer of civilian rule . He went on to say that an " <unk> conclusion that if a group of military officers could issue decisions abolishing one of the three fundamental organs of the governmental structure ... and carry out military arrests of civilians , that group of military officers has clearly set themselves above and beyond the structure of government in Vietnam . " Taylor <unk> the fact that the generals had shown no second thoughts about ignoring US policy recommendations , particularly in <unk> his explicit advice to maintain stable civilian rule , at least at a nominal level . Taylor issued a thinly disguised threat to cut aid , releasing a public statement saying Washington might reconsider its military funding if " the fabric of legal government " was not reinstated . 
