On 1 November 1963, the coup was launched. After the presidential palace was overrun in the fighting, Diệm was captured trying to flee Saigon and executed on 2 November 1963. The new government in Saigon was headed by General Dương Văn Minh. On 22 November 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and succeeded by Lyndon Johnson. In December 1963, Johnson sent McNamara on another "fact-finding mission" to South Vietnam to assess General Minh's performance. On 19 December 1963, McNamara reported the situation was "very disturbing" as the "current trends, unless reversed in the next two or three months, will lead to neutralization at best or more likely to a Communist-controlled state". He also admitted that the computer models and statistics, which he had attached such importance to, were "grossly in error" and that government control of rural areas had "in fact been deteriorating...to a far greater extent than we realized" since July. Regarding Minh's regime McNamara wrote at present "there is no organized government in South Vietnam". Through McNamara admitted that the new regime was "indecisive and drifting", he advised Johnson to undertake "more forceful moves if the situation does not show early signs of improvement". On 30 January 1964, General Minh was overthrown in a bloodless coup d'état by General Nguyễn Khánh. The change in leadership did not affect the war. Lyman Kirkpatrick of the CIA reported in February 1964 after visiting Saigon that he was "shocked by the number of our people and of the military, even those whose job is always to say we are winning, who feel the tide is against us". The same month saw a VC battalion in the Mekong Delta escape from South Vietnamese troops, who had been rated as some of the very best in the ARVN by the American advisers who had trained them, a battle that underscored the problems in the ARVN.