 The four-day whirlwind trip was dispatched on the same day of a National Security Council meeting on September 6 and came in the wake of increasingly strained relations between the United States and South Vietnam.Civil unrest gripped that nation as Buddhist demonstrations against the religious discrimination of President Ngo Dinh Diem escalated.Following the raids on Buddhist pagodas on August 21 which left an estimated triple figure death toll, the US had authorised investigations into a possible coup in a cable to US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. as South Vietnam descended into chaos.