Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 25]
-25-people. [^1] One of my assistants was traveling between Thailand and Saigon, and there was a coup going on in Saigon at the time and his plane, which was Air France, put down--commercial flight--in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, and the military attaché very kindly picked up this guy and several other Americans from the plane and found a place for them to stay until they could get another flight out of Phnom Penh. He asked this lad of mine where he'd worked, and he said, "In the Pentagon"--he was a civilian employee--and he mentioned that he worked for me, and the attaché got all excited, called the ambassador, and he was given two hours to come out of the country.[Laughter] All he was doing was looking for a place to sleep at night, so it became very emotional and very silly, and detrimental to the U.S. [^1] For example, once in Indonesia, in meeting our folks around the embassy in Djakarta, I had spotted an assistant army attaché, who was the one American, along with one of the economic mission guys--there were[^1]: [^1]:
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 26]
-26-two Americans who were not only best known by the Indonesians but were respected, and there was an affection there and I have told the ambassador at the time, afterwards, "make real use of these people." The Indonesians believe them, and there's some antipathy towards the U.S., but they make an exception to these two and they're just invaluable but the army man was extremely close to the general staff of the Indonesian army. I went on some visits to members at their homes of the Indonesian General staff, and this lad who was tall and blond-- a Nordic type, if you will--would go in, and the small brown Indonesians (would) and their families welcome him like a long lost uncle or brother or something. The children would run up and jump in his arms and climb all over him, and he was Uncle "something" to them.So later, when the Soviets start moving in SAMS [surface-to-air missle] missile sites into Indonesia and the U.S. needed to know what sort of antiaircraft armaments were going in our embassy couldn't get the answers to it
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 27]
-27-I suggested that we get the State Defense sponsorship and send this one fellow who *was* a lieutenant-colonel over and just let him stay a week or so. He'd go right in and talk to his old friends, and they'd probably tell him what the Soviets were up to. He arrived there the Indonesian general staff took him out and showed him these *sites* and asked him what he thought of them and so on the first day he was there. That night he got back, and wrote out a radio message and asked the ambassador to send it to me, at which point our ambassador told him to leave the country.O'BRIEN: Now, this was Jones?LANSDALE: That was Jones, yes. And he said, "Well, let me put that in the message," so I just asked the Department of State, to "please let Jones know that you're sponsoring this guy, too,...and there might be some more things that he finds out that you need to know as much as we do." So they told Jones just to sit back
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 28]
-28-and let him do that.We have some wonderful Americans, and this was what I was trying to do: to find out which Americans have not only our interests at heart but were enough interested in foreign countries to be to understand and have really would be serving the best interests of other countries in things. I'd far rather see one man get in on something like that than send a whole team in with all sorts of things and sort of aggravate a situation, than do something rather simple.O'BRIEN: Almost sensitivity training.LANSDALE: Incidentally, along these lines,O'BRIEN: I've got a good story for your account.LANSDALE: Great. About the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara came back from a meeting at the White House one day and asked me to provide the means for President Kennedy to talk to the Cuban people on T&V. How the hell did I know how to do that? He told me that he wanted to do it within the next twenty-four
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 29]
-29-hours. Well, it didn't happen. I suspected that it would take longer than that; I don't know how you intrude on a T.V. stations broadcasting and get the people in the country to go immediately to their T.V. sets and watch a program. I called scientists in from all over the U.S., who were electronic whizzes on this type of a subject, and our intelligence people and everybody else I could think of to get some information together in a real crash basis. CIA couldn't give me details, on technical details on any of the T.V. stations in Havannah and elsewhere.One of the Defense civilian scientists--and I can't think of his name offhand; East European name--left the room and came back ten minutes later and provided all the technical information, to the great amazement of everybody there. And I said, "Where the hell did you get that?" and he said, "Well, I went out to the corridor in the Pentagon (where we were having the meeting), went in one of the phone booths there, and I called a friend of mine
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 30]
-30-down in Havana who operates a TV station and asked him. He gave me all the dope, and I just wrote it down." So this is the way we got the information for it. The intrusion of the TV space never took place, but we got the means together and some airborne TV transmitters. It was developed finally by the Navy, and the project--I've asked it to put on a sort of sled so that it could be picked up and changed over from one aircraft to another, or used elsewhere later when we started the TV broadcasts in Vietnam, this Navy equipment that was initially intended to let President Kennedy talk to the Cubans, was the broadcast equipment that was used from the air--flying in the aircraft--in Saigon, to initiate TV broadcasts in Saigon in 1965.O'BRIEN: Why didn't it come off?LANSDALE: It took us too long to figure ways of getting in on the theme and finding a channel and finding a way of getting people that do that.
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 31]
-31-It took us then, twelve days to do it, and thetime for them to do it had passed over, andthe Russians stood down in the interim, so theneed had passed.O'BRIEN: Well how do you come back into . . . well,maybe, perhaps we ought to pursue this wholebusiness of counterinsurgency first. It sortof becomes the thing with the Kennedy admin-istration, doesn't it?LANSDALE: Yes.O'BRIEN: How do you see that? I was in the MarineCorps in the late fifties 50's, and there was a gooddeal of guerrilla and counterguerrilla trainingthat was going on, and it becomes a part ofthe new administration. Who are the principleproponents of this, outside of yourself? Doyou have any conversations, say, with Bobby--well, you don't really see Bobby until afterApril But do you have any conversations withthe president, let's say, meeting with him . . .LANSDALE: No, no, I didn't I don't know who talked to himabout this. When he came in office, this wasalready one of his themes Where he picked
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 32]
-32-that up originally, I don't know. I was rather surprised--he seemed to have seen copies of lectures and other things that I've given on the subject, who had passed those to him and who had talked to him about it, I just don't know.O`BRIEN: Let's say, let's take a person like Max Taylor.Do you have anything in the way of conversations with Max Taylor in the late fifties?LANSDALE: No..O'BRIEN: How about the rest of the Joint Chiefs?LANSDALE: No. Taylor was opposed to this type of thingHe did quite a considerable switch, see? He was about the last person I would have ever picked to have headed up something the way Kennedy asked him to do itO BRIEN: That's what I was wondering about, Taylor's role in this whole thing. He is opposedLANSDALE: Well, he was the one that in the very early
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 33]
-33-formation of the Special Forces in the Army--he was Chief of Staff of the Army at the timeand took one look at these American troops ingreen berets and said, "Take that God damn sillyheadgear off," or "Take that--that's it." Nogeeen berets, and he ruled the out ofthe thing. He wasn't too happy with a specialunit of that nature. But at the time, it wasHe went along with the concept thatit was only a wartime outfit, that somebodywould have to go and jump in and work withgquerrillas. Again, this is a rivalry type ofa thing, so there wouldn't be another OSS (Officeof Strategic Services) there'd be a CIA orsomething doing it, but this, after all, is partof the modern military function, so let's makeit military. So he went that far on the thing.But that was a concept-you have a regularforce fighting battle,and someplace back of theenemy lines, you'd want to blow up bridges and
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-34-gather information and so on to support your tactical force so well why not have somebody in working and fomenting trouble back there for the enemy, but connected with the forces? Now the concept of people's war--Mao[Tse-Tung] fare now is pushed; We've seen them in Vietnam and elsewhere. Really wasn't something that he or others understood at all, that almost all of us would be speak-see-guerrilla-or counter-guerrilla, and that people like special forces might well, having learned guerilla operations, would then be qualified to start coping with them and would understand the importance of political basis for operations and political goals and behavior and the psychological part of the operations. This really wasn't in any of their thinking because, as witnessed in Korea, we went and sort of had a small World War II in Korea. And in Vietnam later, we went in-again with Taylor as the ambassador, but
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 35]
-35-having quite a bit of an advisory role with our military commanders out there, and influence and were with them, was fighting another Korea in Vietnam more or less. There was some changes in tactics, but was more use of helicopters just for vertical envelopment rather than just instead of moving guys along the ground to start with the thing.O'BRIEN: Why don't they come to an understanding? (barking)LANSDALE: I'm sure that's going to make a good-broadcast for you, a good-tape..O'BRIEN: A diversion at least.LANSDALE: I'm completely baffled by that. I just don't know.O'BRIEN: Don't they read?LANSDALE: They speak the words, and particularly when they were talking with President Kennedy, they picked up the words and enthusiasm.and responded, but would show by what they did that they didn't understand what they were saying. It's something that, of course, I have been trying to
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 36]
-36-do something about all along. I've never understood what it was!.. I've always felt that I was too inarticulate or hadn't found a way of doing things for myself, but there have been so many other exponents of this thing--not just Americans, but of many countries, who have written rather good books on the subject and on parts of it that you'd surely think that we Americans would produce top leaders with some understanding of something that Mao [Tse-tung] and [Vo Nguyen] Giap and others have gotten every page down through the rank and file to understand.O BRIEN: Well, in the formation of the CI group--it was designed, as I understand it, primarily as a kind of educational group for top-level administration people--when do you first come into that group?LANSDALE: I was never really part of that group. I was working with a smaller group of executives, of which Taylor was a part.
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 37]
-37-O'BRIEN: This is Mongoose, isn't it?LANSDALE: Yes. This was a national security group of top executives close to the president, with the undersecretary of State, and the deputy secretary of Defense, and so on, and the national security advisor and Taylor sat in on those meetings after he got his CI group going. But in forming the CI group iniátially, Taylor was starting to do some studies for Kennedy, and Kennedy had asked me to help him. So I put my staff in the Pentagon at Taylor's disposal. Initially, in Kennedy's presence, I offered to put together a study for Taylor on resources in the United States and among our allies for such things--not allies as much as friends of the United States in many countries--and this was done with CIA and some of the military services and the intelligence part of State. They had a little working group, and we had several sessions in my office
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 38]
-38-and put together some rough first papersfor Taylor to start his thinking for theformed &president. Then when Taylor selected his group,I wasn't invited in on it, and I didn't attend.O'BRIEN: Sure. ::: got any insight.it, right after the formationof that group, and early--it was'in May or June--they dispatched some teams to go around LatinAmerica to survey the ability of various nationsto respond to Castro-type guerrilla activity.LANSDALE: Yes, yes.O'BRIEN: Did you get involved in the planning of thatat all or any of the fallout of that?LANSDALE: Just peripherally on both. I forget the detailson that. I had been worrying about places likeColumbia and several other Latin Americancountries close to the Panama Canal and hadurged that this be looked into, on some of thespecific things that were being done there. I hadencouraged that the Columbians start civic action
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 39]
-39-in dealing with some of the dissidentareas and so on. All I had done was, not plan-ning as much as coming in with sort of ashopping list of what people might look for,and individuals in these countries they mighttalk to to get information on what was happening.O'BRIEN: Well, are you in Colombia in the Kennedyadministration at all as . . .LANSDALE: No. No, the most I did was--I went to Venezueladuring the Kennedy administration, and Bolivia,No, by that time folks were highly sensitiveabout my showing up in foreign countries--that is, Americans, not foreigners--and I reallywasn't permitted, or I was stopped really atpolicy levels from going back into Vietnam orthe Philippines or anyplace in Asia. I beggedto be permitted to go down and take a look inLatin America, and Gilpatric was the one that told methe decision had been made....BEGIN SIDE II TAPE IOutside of Venezuela,O BRIEN: Did you get to any other countres?
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 40]
-40-LANSDALE: Well, Bolivia. In Bolivia, I was interested in particularly the Bolivian Air Force's work of setting up a public school system over in the eastern slopes of the Andes--down in the jungles and in the very sparse settlements. They were really the one governmental group that could get around places. They were very enthusiastically setting up one-room school houses down there, and flying in teachers and bringing some education in there, which I thought was a great project, and encouraging them. While I was in Bolivia, I got involved with the resettlement of indians from the Altiplano over onto the eastern slopes into some new communities, in which the whole Bolivian government was involved and the U.S. Economic Mission was working with them, and the Bolivian military was supporting it with trucks and with people going in. But this was a very exciting, agricultural-community-type of a project of moving people out where they'd have an economic chance at life and also a chance to own land. It was changing the social
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 41]
-41-structure considerably for the lowest class in Bolivia, and with the armed forces doing it. This, again, was the very first visit.In Venezuála, I had come up with some ways of safeguarding our own interests in Venezuela (which are not only oil production, but we have steel mills down there and a number of things but I did this as much for the Venezuğlan Defense Ministry as I did for the United States at the time. They were concerned.O'BRIEN: What are your relations with the people involved in the school in Panama which spreads a lot of this gospel of civic action among the military? Are your relations with those people pretty good?LANSDALE: It was. They had picked up a lot of my material from earlier times, in the form of memos and lectures I had written on these subjects. When they set up the school, I talked with them on the program of instruction that they were going to give give. The first adoption of any of these principles was in
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 42]
-42-Guatemala, and it worked very well there for a time. The Latin Americans became quite enthusiastic, though again jealousies come in. They thought the Guatemalans were boasting too much about it. So when I was told that problem, I said, "Well, get them to emulate and try and beat them and get a healthy rivalry going," which is what happened actually.O'BRIEN: I suspect [Fulton] Freeman is there as ambassador in Columbia when you're there--no, Freeman was in Columbia.LANSDALE: Yes, he was in Columbia.O'BRIEN: I can't think of the guy who was in Venezuala that was ambassador.LANSDALE: Uh, he was from Arizona and was a journalist.O'BRIEN: Not [Maurice M.] Bernbaum. LANSDALE: No.O'BRIEN: Well, how is he to deal with, and do you get a chance to see [Romulo] Betancourt or any of the political leaders?LANSDALE: Yes, I saw political leaders there. I had five days in Venezuala, and I think I got two hours' sleep all the time I was there. I found our ambassador [C. Allan Stewart] there at the time very open-minded and very good to work with. I wrote a report, coming back
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 43]
-43-from Venezuala afterward, and submitted it by the time I got to Washington. It went up to President Kennedy as well as Dean Rusk, and some of Rusk's staff immediately wired the ambassador and it was one of these "You don't want to buy this, do you," and they said I'd come out with a report on Venezuala, and here were the main points of my recommendations and some findings. "He was just there five days. He couldn't possible have found out enough to come to these conclusions, isn't that right?" Bless his heart, the ambassador came back and said, in effect, "I'm amazed that he found out that much, and the recommendations are sound, and we'd discussed this before he left, and we're working with them already."You don't have to be in a place long. For example, we had a very pretty large American community down there who themselves were practically government: U.S. Steel and all our big oil companies and so on. There was very little relationship between the American
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 44]
-44-business community and the U.S. Embassy, and I had urged that they meet maybe once a week or once a month--the American executives and the Ambassador and several members of his staff and have lunch together rather frequently and discuss mutual problems because the U.S. firms down there had very large security staffs (They were very close to the police type of forces, the constabulary down there and that the embassy would be very well informed from this, as well as passing some of this information back to these people, and everybody would gain by it. Well, this doesn't take very long to. . . In talking to the vice president in charge of U.S. Steel operations down there, you'd and say, "One thing you would change if you 'had the power--what would it be?" and he'd tell you something like this, you know, so uh, it was rather easy to come up with this that thing.O'BRIEN: Did you find them fairly knowledgeable and enlightened about some of the things that you were very . . .
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 45]
-45-LANSDALE: Very much so, very much soO'BRIEN: Like rural economic development and agricultural developmentLANSDALE: Particularly the oil companies, and I was surprised. Standard [Oil Company] of New Jersey showed me what it was doing because the rigs out in Lake Maracaibo were getting blown up and their pipelines were getting blown up by saboteurs coming in who were really expert.I found out later that they were affiliated with communists in Columbia and had come on over, they were really experts at explosives, and they weren't the student type of revolutionaries and so on, who also were present in Venezuela. But in seeing what they were doing, it went far beyond a company paternalism type of a thing for employees, that started credit systems with farm groups and housing projects for people living in the vicinity of their employees-not their employees so much, who also gained a great deal out of this.And then U.S. Steel, in pushing its developments
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 46]
way down to the south. [Interruption]O'BRIEN: Oh my God. It's a wonder he hasn't electrocuted himself. [Laughter]LANSDALE: Yeah. It's not yours, it's some of mine.O'BRIEN: Well, I'm not worried about that. Wires, these sort of wires can be replaced. I'm not sure about yours.LANSDALE: Worse than rats.O'BRIEN: Well, he's a spirited animal and he can't help admiring that.LANSDALE: Yeah. Well, one of the stories on Kennedy I'd like to put in was: On my reports from Vietnam in the very early days of just before he was inaugurated, and he read it apparently right after the inaugural one of the reports was a little side piece that I did on a village in South Vietnam inhabited by some Chinese refugees that President Ngo Dinh Diem [Ngo Dinh] Diem had located down in the midst of a communist-held territory, and I was very
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 47]
-47-impressed by them and just as an example of what humans will do in such a situation, I'd written it up and turned in a separate report on it. And about the . . . It was still January, '61, about ten days after the inaugural, my telephone in the Pentagon rang and this voice that sounded like President Kennedy's told me it was President Kennedy talking, and he had read this report of mine and wanted me to have it published in the Saturday Evening Post. I was wondering which joker in the Pentagon you know, was imitating this Harvard, Massachusetts accent and was putting me on, and I said, "Yes, yes, yes." I then had my secretary check over at the White House, and sure enough, it had been President Kennedy, so I had to then go ahead-I'd promised to do it, and figuring out I didn't know how to get something in the Saturday Evening Post, but quickly found out how, and they published this thing afterwards as a report that the President wanted published in their magazine.
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 48]
-48-O'BRIEN: Well that. You had taken, of course, you'd had that interest in Vietnam and Laos.You talked to a lot of people, as I understand, about Laos and Vietnam and the incoming administration. Did you have any intent or • pyupose in mind outside of just explaining the way that it was?LANSDALE: That was principally my intent. The first meeting I had with McNamara, all he wanted to do was have me tell him about Vietnam, and this was essentially what most of the incoming administrative officials--when they'd talk to me, would want me to explain what was happening and what the situation was. This essentially was how and why I felt on these subjects, but my thesis right along on this was to help the people in the countries to help themselves rather than go in and do things for them. It was mostly on the nuts and bolts on how you go about doing this, and the individuals you'd pick to do it, and how you'd select them, and please let's have highest quality and fewer people doing these
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 49]
-49-things.O'BRIEN: Well, you have some successes and failures in--I guess mostly failures in the last of the Eisenhower administration I'm thinking in terms of Laos. Laos is the immediatè problem in 1961. How do you respond to some of these people who are in policy-making positions at that time? I'd like to get your feeling for them people like [Walther's] Robertson in the State department people Robertson and [J. Graham] Parsons; John Irwin in the Defense; and on the Agency side, people like [Desmond] Fitzgerald. How do they see .LANSDALE: You have named a group of people, all of whom are friends of mine, and we were very friendly, and I had worked with a number of them for enough years so that we more or less under- stood each other and could take shortcuts in conversations and so on. All of those you named and talked with me expressed similar beliefs to mine, so it was very easy in talking to them, and there were others in the