Subject: JFK Library releases tapes Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:51:44 -0500 From: Joseph Backes Organization: Star-Telegram Usenet server Newsgroups: startext.jfk Kennedy Tapes Show Vietnam Regrets .c The Associated Press By PAISLEY DODDS BOSTON (AP) -- Weeks before his own assassination, President Kennedy said he was troubled by his actions preceding the overthrow and killing of South Vietnam's president, according to tapes made public today. ``I was shocked by the death of Ngo Dinh Diem. He was an extraordinary character, while he became increasingly difficult in the last few months. He has been able to hold his country together for the last 10 months,'' Kennedy said in an Oval Office tape on Nov. 4, 1963. Two days earlier, a group of dissident generals assassinated Diem, and the United States became increasingly drawn into the civil war there. Kennedy also questioned what the outcome of the coup and assassination would be. ``The question is now whether the generals can stay together and build a stable government or whether public opinion will turn on Saigon.'' The recording was among 37 hours of tapes released by the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. Four hours of the tapes had been in the possession of Kennedy's personal secretary, Evelyn Norton Lincoln, who died in 1995 and left them to Robert L. White, a collector of Kennedy memorabilia. White gave the tapes to the library earlier this year. In the tapes, Kennedy expressed regret over sending a cable that preceded the Diem overthrow. Stephanie Fawcett, former senior foreign policy archivist for the JFK library, said the wire gave indirect support of the coup. ``I feel we must bear a good deal of responsibility for it. In my judgment that wire was badly drafted, it should have never been sent on a Saturday. I should have never given my consent to it without roundtable conference,'' Kennedy said. On the tape, made less than three weeks before Kennedy's assassination, the president said he sent another wire but the planning for the coup was already in place. Thirteen hours of tapes are from the president's telephone calls. In those recordings, Kennedy separately briefed former presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower following the end of the Cuban missile crisis. He told them he was pleased with the progress that was made with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev but worried about future relations with Cuba. ``I don't think the Cuban story is over yet,'' he told Truman. ``It may be only one more chapter in a very long story as far as Cuba is concerned.''