| 1965 South Vietnamese coup | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Vietnam War | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 ARVN rebels |
| ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Trần Thiện Khiêm Lâm Văn Phát Phạm Ngọc Thảo (spy of North Vietnam) |
Nguyễn Khánh Nguyễn Cao Kỳ Nguyễn Chánh Thi | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 50 tanks, several infantry battalions | At least one infantry regiment and marine brigade | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| None | |||||||
On February 19, 1965, some units of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam commanded by General Lâm Văn Phát and Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo launched a coup against General Nguyễn Khánh, the head of South Vietnam's ruling military junta. Their aim was to install General Trần Thiện Khiêm, a Khánh rival who had been sent to Washington D.C. as Ambassador to the United States to prevent him from seizing power. The attempted coup reached a stalemate, and although the trio did not take power, a group of officers led by General Nguyễn Chánh Thi and Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, and hostile to both the plot and to Khánh himself, were able to force a leadership change and take control themselves with the support of American officials, who had lost confidence in Khánh.
Although Khánh had seized power in January 1964 in alliance with Khiêm, the pair had soon fallen out over policy disputes along religious lines, and the Catholic Khiêm began to plot against Khánh. Khiêm was believed to have helped plan a failed coup in September 1964, and Khánh exiled him as a result. While in Washington, Khiêm continued to plot alongside his aide Thảo, who was actually a communist agent bent on trying to foment infighting at every opportunity. Aware of Thảo's plans, Khánh summoned him back to Vietnam in an apparent attempt to capture him, and Thảo responded by going into hiding and preparing for his attack. In the meantime, Khánh's hold on power was slipping as his military support dwindled, and he became increasingly reliant on the support of civilian Buddhist activists who favored negotiations with the communists and opposed escalation of the Vietnam War. The Americans—most notably Ambassador Maxwell Taylor—were opposed to this and had been lobbying various senior Vietnamese officers such as Kỳ to overthrow Khánh, who knew that American-sponsored moves to depose him were afoot.
However, the Americans were not counting on Thảo and his fellow Catholic Phát trying to seize power on an explicitly religious platform, claiming fidelity to assassinated former Catholic President Ngô Đình Diệm and promising to recall Khiêm from the US to lead the new regime. This caused alarm among the Buddhist majority, who had campaigned heavily against Diệm's discriminatory religious policies in the months leading up to his ouster in November 1963. Although they wanted Khánh gone, the Americans did not want Thảo and Phát to succeed, so they sought out Kỳ and Thi in an attempt to have them defeat the original coup and then depose Khánh. During the initial attack, Thảo and Phát tried to capture both Khánh and Kỳ, but both men escaped narrowly, although some of their colleagues in the Armed Forces Council were arrested. Although the rebels were able to take control of Tan Son Nhut Air Base, the largest in the country and the military headquarters of South Vietnam, Kỳ was able to regroup quickly and retain control of the nearby Bien Hoa Air Base, using it to mobilize air power and stop the rebel advance with threats of bombing. Late in the night, Thảo and Phát met Kỳ in a meeting arranged by the Americans, where an agreement was reached for the coup to be ended in return for Khánh's ouster. By early next morning, the bloodless military action was over as Thảo and Phát went into hiding, and the junta voted to sack their leader Khánh, who was absent on a military inspection tour, thinking that Kỳ and Thi were on his side.
When Khánh heard of his ouster, he declared it to be illegal. After defying his colleagues and travelling around the country for a day in a fruitless attempt to rally support for a comeback, Khánh went into exile after being named to fill the meaningless post of Ambassador-at-Large and allowed an elaborate, ceremonial, military send-off to save face. Phát and Thảo were later sentenced to death in absentia. Thảo was hunted down and killed in July 1965, while Phát remained on the run for several years before turning himself in and being pardoned.