A fact finding expedition dispatched by the Kennedy administration to South Vietnam in early September 1963. The stated purpose of the expedition was to investigate the progress of the war by South Vietnam and the American military advisers against the Vietcong insurgency. The mission was led by U.S Marine Corps Major General Victor Krulak and Mendenhall. 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. The report of the conclusion was that Krulak presented an extremely optimistic report on the progress of the war, while Mendenhall presented an extremely bleak picture of military failure and public discontent. The divergent reports led US President John F. Kennedy to famously ask his two advisers whether they had visited the same country. The inconclusive report saw a follow-up mission sent to Vietnam, the McNamara Taylor mission, led by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor.