Charles Trueheart, a journalist "who waited most of his life to write a book about the bitter rupture in 1963 between two top U.S. diplomats who were also best friends--his father, William, the No. 2 diplomat in the United States embassy in Saigon, and Ambassador Frederick Nolting Jr.--over U.S. policy toward Ngo Dinh Diem, the faltering president of South Vietnam," died on September 15, the New York Times reported. He was 75.
In the book, Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict (University of Virginia Press, 2024), Trueheart focused on the period, from 1961 to 1963, before the U.S. began committing hundreds of thousands of troops to Vietnam. "The only salve for betrayal is forgiveness," he wrote. "I think the record is pretty clear that neither Fritz nor Bill ever forgave each other. They couldn't. It was a matter of principle."
Charles Trueheart was a child when the events occurred, but he waited until his late 60s to chronicle them, after his own career as a journalist, in academia, and as director of the American Library in Paris.
In June of 1963, while Nolting "was on a long, ill-timed vacation, a monk set himself on fire on a busy boulevard in Saigon, a grisly scene that escalated protests and became an international story," the Times wrote. As acting ambassador, Bill Trueheart confronted Diem, threatening to cut off U.S. support if he didn't enact reforms. "The tough talk--done with the backing of President John F. Kennedy's White House and State Department, which were also fast losing faith in Mr. Diem--differed from Mr. Nolting's style."
"It angered Diem that Nolting was not there, whom he found a much more pleasant and genial character," Charles Trueheart said in an appearance at the American Library in 2024. "And he was undoubtedly insulted that it was a mere No. 2 at the embassy delivering these warnings."
Nolting was eventually replaced by Henry Cabot Lodge, and Bill Trueheart was later transferred to a State Department position in Washington. The Nolting-Trueheart friendship was permanently fractured. On November 2, 1963, Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were assassinated in a coup d'état encouraged by the U.S.
In 1975, David Halberstam, the Vietnam War correspondent who had written about the Trueheart-Nolting relationship in The Best and the Brightest, told Charles Trueheart that his father and godfather's relationship was worthy of a novel. That suggestion "set me to thinking and has made its way through four decades of thinking into these pages of nonfiction," Trueheart wrote in Diplomats at War.
In 2007, Trueheart was named director of the American Library in Paris, a cultural center that has the largest English-language lending library on the European continent, the Times noted, adding that during his decade at the library, he doubled membership; raised more than $2 million for its 2016 renovation; instituted its annual book award; and expanded its public programs, including author events.
"It was a venue for people to come three or four nights a week--whether from out of town or within Paris," Cullen Murphy, a friend and writer, said in an interview. "It was like a movable feast."