Ambassador Maxwell Taylor meets twice with South Vietnamese Premier General Nguyen Khanh to register U.S. disapproval of the recent calls by Khanh and Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky to extend the war into North Vietnam.
Both meetings were reportedly “heated.” It was also said that Khanh stood firmly against Taylor’s reprimands, arguing that the war had changed because of the presence of North Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam. Khanh offered to resign at the second meeting, but Taylor, who had become convinced that Khanh was partly right about taking the war to the North Vietnamese, not only dissuaded him but also ended up cabling Washington that the United States should undertake covert planning with the South Vietnamese for bombing the North. In a news conference in Washington on July 24, President Lyndon B. Johnson insisted that relations were good between the U.S. and South Vietnam.
