Kennedy occasionally recorded his own reflections, possibly for memoirs he was said to have planned to write. After the November, 1963, coup that overthrew the government of Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam, Kennedy recorded his own thoughts about the wire that was sent that suggested the coup – thoughts which show that he was upset by what he saw as faulty planning. "I feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for [the coup], beginning with our cable of early August in which we suggested the coup," he said. "In my judgment, that wire was badly drafted, it should never have been sent on a Saturday, I should not have given my consent to it without a roundtable conference in which [Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara and [General Maxwell] Taylor [who both opposed the coup] could have presented their views. While we did redress that balance in later wires, that first wire encouraged Lodge along a course to which he was in any case inclined."
