Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 103]
-101-LANSDALE: Oh, yeah. Both the South Vietnamese and the Tai were playing around with groups inside Cambodia or with exile groups that wanted to go back in Cambodia, and so on, and I'm not certain that the Americans from either Thailand or South Vietnam were fully aware of what all was going on. And I'm not certain that the Americans or the Cambodian government people inside Cambodia knew what was going on, and were tending to exaggerate some of this. Things get blown up out of all proportion in this. But just the fact that there was antipathy and it would take this form of expression, among others that were going on.I don't know which people would rather go in and take over and run Cambodia, the Thai's or the South Vietnamese it's about a toss up which one was down more on the Khmers than the other. And Diem used to follow the predictions of the royal fortune-teller in P nohm Penh to Sihanouk. Apparently, they were spending a lot of intelligence money to find out, you know, what's
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 104]
-102-happened in each others sessions and whathe was telling the guy. Then how usefulthis was, mind you, I don't know.O'BRIEN: Well, do you find again, in passing on tothe task force and the formation of that.Vietnam task force in the early part ofthe Kennedy administration--do you find the asensitivity on the part of the people, thepolitical appointees, to what's going onin South Vietnam? Are you able to explainwhat you're telling me right now aboutSouth Vietnam to these people?LANSDALE: Un, only partially. They were as bemused bythe mechanics of getting decisions in Washing-ton as they were with the problem that they wereemploying the mechanics to solve. It was allsort of new to them, and they wanted to do agood job, but in order to do it, they weresuddenly working with these instruments, thatwere foreign to them here. I think that theprinciples in the administration were notentirely aware of these people they were dealingwith in Washington. I recall, at the time, some surprisesRusk was violently opposed in the department
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 105]
-103-over where he was by some people and I noticed at times that he wasn't aware that he was turning around and asking a guy who minutes before Rusk had come in to him, was among his comrades, just, "This stupid jerk," and so on, which I felt was disloyal--behind the guy's back, you know. I was always urging them to speak up in front of people and so on, and they wouldn't do it. And the same damn thing was true against some of the military against McNamara, for example.Well, the McNamara and the Rusk and their unders and deputy types of people, and assistant secretaries, were trying to cope with people that they felt were-instinctively opposing and foot-dragging and so on, and trying to get that working so that to get them working on a given problem was really the thing that they were concerned with.You'd suddenly say, "Well, we're going to talk about Laos," or Vietnam, or Israel or something Yes, Yes, Yes. What have you got in the paper?" you know. And they were
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 106]
-104-to uwatching see: "Well, it*s just I*ve reallydone *this homework*" and-is-i-t-gonna come up with something or not?" rather than what is the real problem here, and how would I solve it if I weren*t sitting in this room in this particular group, and so on. So there was a . . .So then, working on this type of a thing which I saw very much in the task force on Vietnam--Gilpatric, I know, was shocked at the reactions of some of the foreign service people that came in at rank of ambassador and so on, that were sort of the staff assistants on the assistant secretary and undersecretary level.They would start a meeting, in fact I was asked to be sort of--I forget what the title was--executive officer or something of it, and they asked me to chair the meetings. Well, I*d no sooner open it than these guys would be passionately explaining why I *shouldn*t* be sitting in the chair of the meeting, see?O*BRIEN: Yeah.LANSDALE: I think it shocked some of the Kennedy administration people. It suddenly revealed a
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 107]
-105-feud and so on, and I hadn't said it, and I personally didn't care that much, you knowI'd say, "Have you got all the hate out of your system now? Let's go on with the meeting," see. This, of course, would activate it more, but I would say, "Well look, we really do have some problems here we've got to get to, and if you want, I'll meet you afterwards and we can have lunch or something, and you can spoil my lunch by telling me what a heel I am or something. But we've got work to do." So then, Gilpatric or somebody would tell me afterwards, "Do you think we better take you off?" "Well, yeah. If it's going to effect the work done, it's better to take me off. It's no fun for me to sit up and chair something under conditions like this,"O'BRIEN: Were you ever approached with the job as ambassador to Vietnam?LANSDALE: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.O'BRIEN: Who was pushing that?
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 108]
-106-LANSDALE: I don't know. I heard about it the first Saturday after the inaugural--I think that's it. It was very early in the administration.McNamara asked me to come down to the White House and meet him there, and I thought it was to brief him on something. And I was working on a number of intelligence matters in Defense at the time, and I showed up,and he asked me to just wait outside, and they were meeting in the Cabinet room, and as I said, it was essentially an NSC group. And after a bit, they asked me to come on, and they had me sit opposite the president.And he looked at me, and he said, "Did Dean (Rusk) tell you, I want you to be ambassador to Vietnam?" I said, "No, he didn't mention that." Well, he hadn't at all, and there was a long, painful silence, and I figured, Well, maybe he's asking me if I want to be,or would I accept the job." So I finally said, "Well, it would be a great honor," and that was the last I ever heard of it. But, I heard all sorts of rumors that are usual for Washington, and this afterwards that Dean Rusk
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 109]
-107-was very much opposed to it, and opposed on the ground that I was a military man and they didn'twant military people in on the situation.O'BRIEN: Yeah. YesLANSDALE: And then later I had met one of Rusk's staff officers at the time, and he was telling me that Rusk was figuring, he could get me a job some other place or a promotion or something to get me out of the way at the time. I apparently had become a target for a lot of gossip and rumors at the time. But after that, then, they asked me--Kennedy asked me pretty point blank--about Durbrow, and I said, "Well, after what you just asked me and so forth, I'm a little hesitant, but you're the President and you need the truth, so I'll just tell you right now, I think he's a very ill man his judgement's impaired by his physical condition he's a fine professional foreign service officer.and could be used some place, but don't keep him on in Vietnam anymore. He's sick, he's on his back a lot of the time, and you need someone very alert, whoever it is and pull him
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 110]
-108-out." And they got--Rusk and everything, you know "You're off your subject, boy." But I said, "Well, Durby's an old friend of mine, and I like the guy and I saw a lot of him when I was in Vietnam on this brief visit and I think it's a shame that the guy's kept on there because he was quite ill, in bad shape."And Durby never forgave me for it; it got right back to him that I had sacked him and so on because he was withdrawn after that but this certainly didn't hurt his career at all, in any way, and even though State put him on a make-work job after that, but he held the rank of ambassador which is as high as you can get in the foreign service. And he was ill, he really was.O'BRIEN: Well, how does (Frederick E.) Nolting come into this . . .LANSDALE: Well, Nolting came in, as the apparently, as the foreign services rebuttal to my going on out of there. I remember both McNamara and Gilpatric asked me about him, and I didn't know him. I said, "Well, I'd just go on what I have heard from
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 111]
-109-other foreign service officers who respect him very much." So finally, Nolting was-- a meeting was arranged with Nolting, and I liked him very much when I talked with him. He asked me if I would give him some briefings on Vietnam, which I did do. And when I wound up the end of that, I was asked again by McNamara, who said he was going to tell Kennedy and I said, "Well, this looks like a very good man, and I think it's a sound appointment." [^1] I didn't want to be ambassador. Jesus. During the Eisenhower administration, they wanted to make me ambassador of the Philippines, and I begged them not to. I think that's one of the world's worst jobs. You're stuck where you can't do what your job is supposed to be, and I knew they were going to put me in places where I'd be up against Communist political leaders of some sort, working the other side. And of course, you aren't in that position, but allegedly you are going to have people running circles around you, if you know it and couldn't lift a little finger to stop them. And this[^1]: .
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 112]
-110-isn't my idea of a good spot to be in. You just get belabored over that.O'BRIENLANSDATE: Well, did Nolting ever try to get you back to Vietnam in an advisory position?LANSDALE: I think so. There were a number of attempts by the Vietnamese themselves, and unfortunately, some of them werecouched in terms of wanting me to come out as ambassador, by the Vietnamese but Nolting and I had very friendly relations, and I think he had proposed that I come on out several times. But these things would usually only come to me sort of second or third hand and one time apparently President Kennedy had said something to the JCS because suddenly my relations with the Chiefs went down to less than zero and sub-zero, and I finally asked General [Curtis E.] Lemay of the Air Force, because I'm an Air Force officer, what the trouble was. And he said, "You and your ambitions to have four stars." I said, "What's this again?" Apparently Kennedy had said something to the Chiefs of, what would they think of my being given four stars and being put in charge of operations in Vietnam?
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 113]
-111-And I didn't know about it, and they took it that I was pushing myself for it. I said "something again, that isn't I'd want to do." So this was about the time that--no, maybe (William Westmoreland) Westy was coming in about then it was around that time.O'BRIEN: Well, the task force really forms up the instructions for Nolting, doesn't it...LANSDALE: Yes.O'BRIEN: . . for the next few years. Just what kind of recommendations come out of that task force?LANSDALE: Well, I was only in on the very original one, which was to undertake some things such as changing the specific types of things to meet a situation in there. One of them was: we would get a political section that would work out better relations with the Vietnamese government, a political section in our embassy, and that the foreign service would go and search through their own personnel for people with some real political savvy to get into guide, rather than control or belabor or have confrontations with the Vietnamese government
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 114]
-112-to carry out essentially political reforms, and getting some of the just criticism of the opposition considered in the governing body. [^9] Another thing was on the police, of getting police training done so that they could cope with meeting enemy units, rather than doing urban police work. In this, I was begging them to at least get to a state level constabulary as far as American advisors were concerned, and I wasn't certain that the U.S. Army's military police could cope with it, but maybe they could get a team of them in and then I was pointing out that there were constabulary officers and officers from other countries, including South America and the old Philippine constabulary, who knew the law-and-order conditions--quite similar to Vietnam--and bring them in if they wanted to go international. I was trying to get them to get very realistic and solving problems by changing the quality and the approach that we had. We drew up an original draft that went to the President, out of meetings that[^9]:
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 115]
-113-lasted about ten days, at which point, atRusk's insistence, the task force went overto State and became a general, regular bodythere. They then proceeded to rewrite ouroriginal instructions and drafts andeverything, and both McNamara and Gilpatricsaid-coming back from the White House "Ed,you had better not get in there." I said,"If I can help in any way, I will." They said,"Well, right for the time being, you'd better notgo near that group, see" so I actually didn'tget in to some of their policy formation, againin a fairly early period, on the thrust ofthings in Vietnam, except for some of theDefense people who were over there. I wouldtalk to them on what was being proposed andgoing on, but this was sort of second andthird echelon type of a thing, pulling backout of it. But initially, I was actuallytrying to get a quality U.S. representationin Vietnam, and actually smaller again thanit was at the time, and to pick a few keythings, and to concentrate on that, and really
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 116]
-114-to get the Vietnamese coping with their ownproblems more effectively than they weredoing.O'BRIEN: Yea. Well, between this time and the timeof the Taylor-Rostow mission, are you involvedin Vietnam on a kind of regular basis or . . .LANSDALE: Uh, no. Off and on I was, but again withsecond-and third-echelon type of problems.I was seeing Gilpatric everyday and workingvery closely with him, so that a lot of timesas things would come up, he would discuss themwith me. But again, I was trying to explainwho certain people were that were named, theirbackgrounds, and their qualities, and certainevents and places, and going to maps with him and describing terrain, and so on, whatthe situation really meant that was makingthe problem. So I was fairly well out of it.As a matter of fact, I was working with somevisiting Burmese on their concepts of defenseof a country, and they brought me in withthe Israeli who had had a mission helping themwith their defense problems in Burma. And theIsraeli had turned around to their defense
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 117]
-115-minister and some of the others, and invitedtake ame to look at their defense system in Israel.I was quite enthusiastic about going and hadeverything arranged and was to leave on aSaturday, when about on a Wednesday or ThursdayI was asked to go to Vietnam with the otherImission and stuff and unfortunately had tocancel out everything and never got into seewhat I wanted to see there.O'BRIEN: Well, you end up working on border--actually,serling &the seating of the border, then, don't youthaton the Taylor-Rostow thing?LANSDALE: Yes. Yes.O'BRIEN: What about that preoccupation? Where doesthat idea come from is that Rostow's?LANSDALE: Well, Taylor was the one that charged mewith it. Taylor said, "Well you folks"--this is a flight which started.-"Will eachthatof you write down some of the things youthink we should look into and what you mightlike to look into." So I gave him a list ofabout twenty things I'd like to look intonone of them being this, of course.
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 118]
--116-I suggested some other subjects for other people on the thing and gave it to them, and he called me back, said that it was a very interesting list that I had given him, and would I please work on building a defense on the border. And I said, "Well what sort of a defense?" He said, "Well, a system of fortifications or a wire like the Iron Curtain in Europe." I said, "Good God, you aren't going to do that, are you?" And he said, "Well, look into it." So that was all I was supposed to do, and of course, I got called in on other things immediately.9 But I wasn't even invited along to go in and see Diem with him. I said, "Look, these are old friends of mine. If you'd like, why I'll do anything I can you can hit them high, and I'll hit them low if you want. We can get some things done that way. He said, Well, you aren't on our protocol list, so you don't attend any of these calls on the President."9 We landed in Saigon, and the people from the presidency met us and Taylor and Rostow were over talking with reporters who were interviewing
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 119]
-117-them plane side, and these people from thepresidency said, "President Diem wants youto come to dinner tonight" and I said, "Well,I better check with my boss on this." Taylor wasbusy, but I grabbed Rostow who wasn't talkingat the moment and told him, and he said, "Goahead." So, I said, "Well, I wasn't even onthe protocol, and everything. I don't careabout going up to these protocol meetingsanyhow, but I went in and saw Diem, whosequestion was, "What's this mission doing here?What are you all up to?" I said, "Why don'tyou wait, and they'll be in here to have ameeting with you tomorrow, and you'll findout." And then it became very personal. Wejust started talking over his two old friendswith-him, and I had dinner with him. And hebrought his nephew in to join us--Nhu's boy,oldest boy--who had a new toy missile, like arocket with a launcher, and I was trying toexplain to this youngster who was squattingon the floor next to his uncle the president,who was busily eating dinner--you don't point thisat him-I didn't know how big a spring this
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 120]
-118-thing had on it, whether it would take hishead off or not. [Laughter] I told him toshoot it up into the ventilating fan in theceiling. We spent dinner, actually, takingparachutes and things out of the ventilatingfans, and the kid and I were climbing upa ladder to get these things out of the thingin the palace. This was very different froman official protocol meeting.O'BRIEN: Yeah. How is Diem at that point?LANSDALE: He was a very changed man. It was the firsttime in our talks with each other....When I met him at the palace that night, hisbrother Nhu came in for the first time andsat next to him, and when I'asked Diem aquestion, his brother would answer it andI'd have to tell him I wasn't asking him thequestions; I was asking his brother. A verystrange relationship at the time and Ifound that he was a talker--Diem was--and hewas very clear and concise in his statementsand had too big a grasp of details, in what-ever subject he was talking about. It'd goon for hours--details on it, which fascinated
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 121]
-119-me but used to bore other people. But he did know his country and its history, which he would give at the drop of a hat. This evening in '61, seeing him, he was very hesitant in his talk and hadn't--it was something physical as well as mental hazard or something, I felt.O'BRIEN: Any evidence ofDid he go into that later?LANSDALE: No. There was--mentally, people were telling me that his brother had taken over in the year following this dominance on thing. But this was a man that wasn't as sure of himself as he had been when I had seen him less than a year before. And there had been one assassination attempt only, but the big one had taken place before I saw him in January or December of '60--the attack on the palace and so on. So it hadn't been an outside, physical happening like that that had caused the change.O'BRIEN: Was he a spiritualist at all?LANSDALE: No, no. He wasn't superstitious. He was a very rational sort of a person--pragmatic.
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 122]
-120-O'BRIEN: Well, when you get back, you talk to President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and John McCone, as I understand, in a rather private meeting. What happened here?LANSDALE: Well, this was when I came back, I met the President. I went in with Taylor and Rostow--all of us did who were out on the mission--and he thanked us all very much and as we were leaving he asked me to stay behind and talk to him, and that was when he asked me to perform this other service for him, which was initially to think about it, and if I came up with some ideas, why to put them down, briefly on paper and give them to him. And I said, "Well, do you want me to forget about Vietnam for the time being, because I haven't written my report yet about Vietnam." He said, "Yes, this other takes priority over it, so I didn't even finish writing my reports on what I had seen in Vietnam at the time. I went immediately into this other work."O'BRIEN: Well, about that time, there's at least some thinking in terms of memos that are going to the President about the only way to save Vietnam.
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 123]
-121-is with a rather substantial commitment ofU.S. troops.. Is that..LANSDALE: Yes, there was some. Now where. . . Hmm, there was some, and I can't remember just where it was coming from. This was one of the things, that Diem asked me when I saw him.He asked me if he should ask for U.S. troops, and I said, "Do you need them?" He said, "I asked you a question," and I said, "Well, I'm asking you a very legitimate question on this thing, and I said, "Are you ready to admit that you have so lost control of your situation that you can't cope with it here?" And I said, "You'd have to do that before you ever turn around and ask for American troops in here."And he said, "No, we can still handle things, and you've answered my question, so apparently he didn't ask. There have been some conversations, going on-sure with some of the Americans before that would be my guess on this thing because he didn't say, "What do you think of or is there anything, of 'should I ask?'" which was sort of like somebody had recommended this at some point, and I
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 124]
-122-don't think it would have been completely inthe Vietnamese context.O'BRIEN: Yeah, do you get any of this thinking when youget back? Any contingency planning or thinkingabout the building of troop levels to a moresubstantial level-maybe linked with thesettling of the Laotian question first?LANSDALE: There might have been, and I might have knownsome of it. I can't recall now of any it'ssomeplace in the back of my head, there weresome things like that going on. I turnedaround, just took time off completely fromother things and concentrated on this otherproblem for a time afterwards. Actually, throughDecember of that year, I was sort of holed upand working on some things. My staff would getin and out of some of these other things, andI used to shove them in to take my place inmeetings and so on, and I can only then justget very quick briefings on them, but they wereessentially supporting whatever McNamara andGilpatric were doing so I'd just have themgo in and report directly and work with themdirectly.
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 125]
-123-O'BRIEN: Yes. Yeah Who were the people on your staff at that point?LANSDALE: Well, let's see one of them was Sam Wilson, whose now a brigadier general in the Army Jack Bowles was a Navy Captain who went down to serve with the JCS afterwards and is now with Standard Oil and working out of Singapore. And I had five or six people like that, but those were my two principle ones.O'BRIEN: Well, this is about ready to run out, and we've covered quite a Lito
[176-10030-10168.pdf — page 0]
# 2025 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992## JFK Assassination System Identification FormDate: 5/5/2016## Agency InformationAGENCY: NARARECORD NUMBER: 176-10030-10168 [Dup 176-10030-10085]RECORD SERIES: ORAL HISTORYAGENCY FILE NUMBER:## Document InformationORIGINATOR:FROM:TO:TITLE: ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH EDWARD G. LANSDALEDATE: 07/11/1970PAGES: 124SUBJECTS: VIETNAM, CUBA-BAY OF PIGSDOCUMENT TYPE: TRANSCRIPTCLASSIFICATION: Not MarkedRESTRICTIONS: 1BCURRENT STATUS: RedactDATE OF LAST REVIEW: 06/26/1998OPENING CRITERIA:COMMENTS: sanitized version