A House Divided: The CIA, State, and a Coup in South Vietnam

Jack Cheevers, who spent a decade on this research, unpacks the bureaucratic knife-fight between CIA and State Department factions over whether to support or remove Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. This is intelligence and policy history at the sharp end — the inter-agency dysfunction that shaped the trajectory of the entire Vietnam War. The episode benefits from Cheevers' access to newly available documents, and Andrew Hammond keeps the questioning tight on the operational consequences rather than letting it drift into Camelot mythology.