At this time , Xuân walked into Minh 's office through the open door , unaware of Đôn 's presence . Xuân snapped to attention and stated , " '' Mission accomplished . '' " Shortly after midnight on 2 November 1963 in Washington , D.C. the CIA sent word to the White House that Diệm and Nhu were dead , allegedly by suicide . Vietnam Radio had announced their deaths by poison , and that they had committed suicide while prisoners in an APC transporting them to Tân Sơn Nhứt . Unclear and contradictory stories abounded . General Paul Harkins reported that the suicides had occurred either by gunshot or by a grenade wrestled from the belt of an ARVN officer who was standing guard . Minh tried to explain the discrepancy , saying " Due to an inadvertence , there was a gun inside the vehicle . It was with this gun that they committed suicide . " Kennedy learned of the deaths on the following morning when National Security Council staffer Michael Forrestal rushed into the cabinet room with a telegram reporting the Ngô brothers ' alleged suicides . According to General Maxwell Taylor , " Kennedy leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face which I had never seen before . " Kennedy had planned that Ngô Đình Diệm would be safely exiled and Arthur M. Schlesinger , Jr. recalled that the US President was " somber and shaken " . Kennedy later penned a memo , lamenting that the assassination was " particularly abhorrent " and blaming himself for approving Cable 243 , which had authorised Lodge to explore coup options in the wake of Nhu 's attacks on the Buddhist pagodas . Forrestal said that " It shook him personally ... bothered him as a moral and religious matter . It shook his confidence , I think , in the kind of advice he was getting about South Vietnam . " When Kennedy was consoled by a friend who told him he need not feel sorry for the Ngô brothers on the grounds of despotism , Kennedy replied " No . They were in a difficult position . They did the best they could for their country . " Kennedy 's reaction did not draw sympathy from his entire administration . Some believed that he should not have supported the coup and that as coups were uncontrollable , assassination was always a possibility . Kennedy was skeptical about the story and suspected that a double assassination had taken place . He reasoned the devoutly Catholic Ngô brothers would not have taken their own lives , but Roger Hilsman rationalised the possibility of suicide by asserting that Diệm and Nhu would have interpreted the coup as Armageddon . US officials soon became aware of the true reasons for the deaths of Diệm and Nhu . Lucien Conein had left the rebel headquarters as the generals were preparing to bring in the Ngô brothers for the press conference which announced the handover of power . Upon returning to his residence , Conein received a phone call from Saigon 's CIA station that ordered him to report to the embassy . The embassy informed Conein that Kennedy had instructed him to find Diệm . Conein returned to Tân Sơn Nhứt at around 10:30 . The following conversation was reported : Conein knew that if he saw the execution wounds , he would not be able to deny that Diem and Nhu had been assassinated . Conein refused to see the proof , realising that having such knowledge would compromise his cover and his safety . He returned to the embassy and submitted his report to Washington . The CIA in Saigon later secured a set of photos of the brothers that left no doubt that they had been executed . The photos were taken at about 10:00 , 2 November , showing the dead brothers covered in blood on the floor of an APC . They were dressed in the robes of Roman Catholic priests with their hands tied behind their backs . Their faces were bloodied and bruised and they had been repeatedly stabbed . The images appeared to be genuine , discrediting the generals ' claims that the brothers had committed suicide . The pictures were distributed around the world , having been sold to media outlets in Saigon . The caption below a picture published in '' Time '' read " ' Suicide ' with no hands . " After the deaths , the military junta asserted that the Ngô brothers had committed suicide . On 6 November , Information Minister Trần Tự Oai declared at a news conference that Diệm and Nhu had died through " accidental suicide " after a firearm discharged when Nhu had tried to seize it from the arresting officer . This drew immediate skepticism from David Halberstam of '' The New York Times '' , who won a Pulitzer Prize for his Vietnam reporting . Halberstam wrote to the US Department of State that " extremely reliable private military sources " had confirmed that the brothers were ordered to be executed upon their return to military headquarters . Neil Sheehan of UPI reported a similar account based on what he described as " highly reliable sources " . Father Leger of Saint Francis Xavier Catholic Church asserted that the Ngô brothers were kneeling inside the building when soldiers burst in , took them outside and into the APC . Lodge had been informed by " an unimpeachable source " that both brothers were shot in the nape of the neck and that Diệm 's body bore the signs of a beating
attacks on the Buddhist pagodas
Xá Lợi Pagoda raids
Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem