Lieutenant General Tôn Thất Đính was an officer who served in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). He is best known as one of the key figures in the November 1963 coup that led to the arrest and assassination of Ngô Đình Diệm, the first president of the Republic of Vietnam, commonly known as South Vietnam.
Đính in 1963
Prime Minister and Air Force chief Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, who jailed Đính.
1963 South Vietnamese coup d'état
In November 1963, President Ngô Đình Diệm and the Personalist Labor Revolutionary Party of the Republic of Vietnam were deposed by a group of CIA-backed Army of the Republic of Vietnam officers who disagreed with Diệm's handling of the Buddhist crisis and the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong threat to South Vietnam. In South Vietnam, the coup was referred to as Cách mạng 1-11-63.
President Diệm of South Vietnam, deposed in a coup
Diệm's brother Ngô Đình Nhu (right), shaking hands with then US Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1961
St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, where the Ngô brothers were arrested.
Diệm dead. Initial rumors said that he and his brother committed suicide.