On November 11, 1960, a failed coup attempt against President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam was led by Lieutenant Colonel Vương Văn Đông and Colonel Nguyễn Chánh Thi of the Airborne Division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).
The rebels demanded the removal of First Lady Madame Nhu (pictured left, with Lyndon Johnson).
Colonel Lansdale (pictured here as a Major General), a CIA agent who assisted Diệm in the past, called for the removal of the US ambassador to Saigon.
Ngô Đình Nhu
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Ngô Đình Nhu was a Vietnamese archivist and politician. He was the younger brother and chief political advisor of South Vietnam's first president, Ngô Đình Diệm. Although he held no formal executive position, he wielded immense unofficial power, exercising personal command of both the ARVN Special Forces and the Cần Lao political apparatus which served as the regime's de facto secret police.
Ngô Đình Nhu meets then US Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1961
Diệm's dead body in the back of an armoured personnel carrier