Editing Robert McNamara (section)

====First 1963 fact-finding mission====
{{main|McNamara-Taylor mission}}
{{see|Krulak–Mendenhall mission}}
The Kennedy administration was unable to gain a consensus about what to do. In early September 1963 McNamara recommended Marine Major General [[Victor H. Krulak|Victor Krulak]] be sent on a four-day fact-finding mission; State Department official [[Joseph A. Mendenhall|Joseph Mendenhall]] was also assigned to the trip. Their divergent reports (Krulak stated the war was being won, Mendenhall strongly disagreed) led President Kennedy to ask them "You two did visit the same country, didn't you?"{{sfn|Halberstam|1972|p=308-321}} 

Kennedy two weeks later sent McNamara and General Taylor on a ten-day fact-finding mission to South Vietnam.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=293}} At a meeting in the Gia Long Palace, President Diệm showed McNamara various graphs and charts that purported to be proof that the war was being won. This performance convinced McNamara the war was as good as won.{{sfn|Langguth|2000|pp=246–247}} Kennedy wanted a negative assessment of Diệm to justify supporting a coup, but McNamara and Taylor instead wrote about the "great progress" achieved by Diệm and confidently predicted that the "bulk" of the American advisers would leave in 1965 as by that point they predicted that the VC insurgency would be crushed.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|pp=293–294}} McNamara predicted that if Diệm continued his policies, that by 1965 the insurgency would be "little more than organized banditry".{{sfn|Shafer|1988|p=270}} With the CIA and the ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.]] urging support for a coup while the Pentagon was opposed, Kennedy vacillated but ultimately gave the power of decision to Lodge.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|pp=299–301}} Lodge, who detested Diệm, gave his approval to the generals plotting against him.{{sfn|Karnow|1983|p=301}}