understanding and knowledge and then the president of south vietnam is shot and killed by a cabal of south vietnamese generals. >> once the u.s. had lead the coup to get rid of thieu, kennedy realized that the united states had finally bitten into a bad apple. >> monday, november 4th, 1963, over the weekend, the coup in saigon took place. i feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for it. i should not have given my consent to it without a round table conference. i was shocked by the death of thieu. the way he was killed made it particularly abhorrent. >> when that assassination took place, we owned it. it actually started that early in the '60s, in the kennedy administration. >> when kennedy came into office in january of 1961, you had on the order of about 600 u.s. military advisors in south vietnam.