--- title: Roger Hilsman description: Presidential adviser canonical: https://time.com/23006/roger-hilsman/ author: Nate Rawlings article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-03-13T10:09:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T06:44:50.664Z article:section: World og:title: Roger Hilsman og:description: Presidential adviser og:url: https://time.com/23006/roger-hilsman/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Roger Hilsman twitter:description: Presidential adviser twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Roger Hilsman by [Nate Rawlings](/author/nate-rawlings/) ## Nate Rawlings Mar 13, 2014 10:09 AM CUT by [Nate Rawlings](/author/nate-rawlings/) ## Nate Rawlings Mar 13, 2014 10:09 AM CUT As a young Army officer in World War II, Roger Hilsman led commando missions deep behind enemy lines in Burma. After the war, he earned a doctorate in international relations at Yale. Armed with a warrior’s clout and an academic’s intellect, Hilsman joined the New Frontiersmen, bright young men who formed President John F. Kennedy’s foreign policy inner circle. In August 1963, as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, Hilsman helped draft a fateful cable to Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. Alarmed by raids on Buddhist pagodas by forces of South Vietnam’s Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem, Kennedy’s advisers declared that Lodge must tell Diem to rid himself of his brother Nhu, who had orchestrated the raids. If Diem refused, they wrote, “we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved.” Two months later, South Vietnam’s army deposed Diem. When it became public years later, the “Hilsman cable” was seen by many as an implied go-ahead for the coup, which opened the period of instability that may have brought on the escalation of the war in Vietnam. After Kennedy’s assassination, Hilsman, who died Feb. 23 at 94, taught at Columbia University for nearly 30 years. –NATE RAWLINGS ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/23006/roger-hilsman/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/23006/roger-hilsman/"},"headline":"Roger Hilsman","datePublished":"2014-03-13T10:09:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T06:44:50.664Z","description":"Presidential adviser","url":"https://time.com/23006/roger-hilsman/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nate Rawlings","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/nate-rawlings/"}],"articleSection":"World","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/23006/roger-hilsman/","name":"Roger Hilsman"}}]}] ```