Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 53]
-53-had already felt that our best bet was to turn to the king and force him to--or, not force, but to encourage himisto taking the leadership role that would be the one thing acceptable to all these leaders. Instead of that, we were starting to become parts-in partisan ourselves there and playing off one guy against another, and Americans aren't good at that game. We have many Americans who think they are, but this, I think, is a little too foreign to our nature and we fell in love with the factions and people, almost unconscious of the fact that we were doing that. The paratroop leader there . . .O'BRIEN: Kong Le?LANSDALE: . . . Yeah, who kicked over a revolt, had spent the night before his coup with a group of American friends, and there wasn't a damn one of them that knew that he was going to have a coup in the morning. This type of a thing I just found inconceivable. People get nervous and sort of absent-minded about what's happening at the time when they're planning an action
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 54]
-54-like that the next morning, and somebody thereamong the Americans should have been sensitiveenough to have said, "Well, aren't you feelingwell" or something, you know, and had gottensome feeling on it. But this sort of gettingin bed with people socially and saying, "He'sall right," a good fellow," and "he's my friend," and excusingeverything is a common blindness, and this hadworried me in Laos quite a bit.O'BRIEN:Well, I get the impression from reading ofthis period, that there really is some lackof coordination in the various efforts thatare there--in other words, the ambassador isnot completely privy to what the Agency isdoing, and the Agency is not completely privyto what DOD is doing through the PEO office.Do you get that feeling? Maybe in regard[John F.]to the Parsons-Irwin-Reilly mission thatgoes out there, do you get any feeling over thatat all?LANDSALE: Yes, I'm trying to recall. . . We hit acrisis at that point, and the group that wentout--Parsons was on home leave, and we had a
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 55]
-55-meeting in the Pentagon in the secretary of Defenses office, and there were a mob of people there. There were--I can't quite recall now what prompted the meeting, but there was a crisis of some sort in Laos. And the JCS gave a briefing, that's right, as part of the thing, and it was on the Pathet Lao positioning, and they suddenly discovered that there were passes over the mountains that had some importance to the Ho Chi Minh trail, and this great discovery was being lectured on at this meeting. And at the time, the Secretary of Defense--I think, I wonder, that might have been [Thomas] Gates [Jr.] at the time might have been, but whoever it was -- asked if I had a comment to make, and I said, "Take a look at that map that the JCS was showing us of Pathet Lao and the other situations on the thing" and I said, "it should tell everybody here just one thing. You've got an ambassador who is on home leave here he doesn't belong here; he belongs out in Vientiane right this moment and the rest of
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 56]
-56-you who are asking questions ought to havepeople out there with him who would tell youimmediately and take a first-hand look."And-the aI remember Irwin was pickedright on the spot to go immediately, and saidto me on the side, "You and your big mouthyouknow" [Laughter]O'BRIEN: Well, did you get involved in any of themeetings on Laos-after the Kennedy adminis-tration comes in, and some of the jockeyingthat goes around?LANSDALE: Some of them, yes. I can't quite recallwhich meetings they were at the time. I wasin on some of the questions of the support of the Meos, the guerrilla forces.O'BRIEN: Well, how did you see in terms of a strategyfor the area? There is a, as I read it, there seems to be some various strategies proposed;one is, you know, going down the full roadbehind Phoumi and supporting Phoumi, andanother is the panhandle strategy--I've neverbeen able to quite understand what the pan-handle strategy was--that you know, rings
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 57]
-57-a bell.LANSDALE: Hmm, yeah well,m, my memory isn't too good on this thing. There was some talk at the time--there's high country across the Bolovens Plateau and so forth down in the south, and there was talk at the time of that being the dominant area, and what we should do was to make use of that and the high ground in Vietnam and so on, across into Thailand, and ensure that that state stayed in noncommunist hands.O'BRIEN: Well, there's also suggested in the Laotian crisis as early as 1961, the use of strategic bombing on supply routes, and even, as I understand it, to Hanoi, as early as that, and interdicting some of the supply lines, as well as the suggestion that subsequently in 1962 does become a reality the dropping of the SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization] plan five, as I understand it How did you feel about the Laotian crisis at that point, in terms of a strategy or a direction at which should work?
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 58]
-58-LANSDALE: Well, I had wanted the Laotians to defend their country, and I was all for the work with the Maoists and so on of doing it.Once it left that and started involving Vietnamese or us, on bombing or anything else, I felt that the cost of saving some real estate would be too high to ever engage in, And on the bombing, I felt that as long as you had all of the communication with the people means in the hands of communist leaders such as in North Vietnam and then Hanoi where this was pushing, that anything overt such as aerial bombing that would then permit them to use that as a unifying force psychologically with the people would be dead wrong.[^1] I used to remind them of what (Winston) Churchill had done with the German bombing of Britain, and just on radio with the people and here were leaders with complete access to radio and working with the people, and it would have a reverse effect, as far as trying to stop the ambitions and aims and so forth of the North Vietnamese, who after all, the guys organizing[^1]: 9
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 59]
-59-the Pathet Lao and pushing on into the area.I felt that more could be done with the armed forces of Laos themselves in making them more able to stand up for themselves and defend their country. But if it couldn't, I couldn't see an intervention of any sort in there. Morally, we'd have been on a moral ground then to turn around and start using some international moral pressure, through the press and so forth, to sort of shame the North Vietnamese out of their attempts. I'm a great believer in exposing things to bring such pressure.O'BRIEN: Well, how do you see the relationship of Vietnam and Laos at that point, or do you?LANSDALE: Oh, yes. The passes and the Ho Chi Minh trail in bringing things down was one of the key things on this. But again, there was even talk at the time of taking Vietnamese troops in there, and secretly, and using them up to try and stop that, and I was opposed to that I didn't want to see intervention like that from the outside.
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 60]
-60-O'BRIEN: Well, when does some of the covert activity, interms of the use of some of the Montagnards yards-in interdicting those supply lines in Laos, you know from Vietnam, start? Is that going on in the late Eisenhower administration; or does it begin in the Kennedy administration?LANSDALE: I think it was the Kennedy administrations there had been a little of it, or there had been talk of it in the Eisenhower administration. There had been thoughts along that line by the top Vietnamese leaders-1955-'56-and I remember President Diem's brother, went to in his older brother went into Laos are about '55 or maybe '56, and had come up with a scheme very similar to that at the time. He had talked about the mountain people of Laos being akin to the mountain people of Vietnam, and wouldn't it be good to get some of our mountain people in with them, and together they could be trained.O'BRIEN: Yes, well, you're in Vietnam in the middle of the fifties, and then you go back in 1960 in the late Eisenhower administration. What's
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 61]
-61-changed, or has anything?LANSDALE: Oh, a great deal. Excuse me. [Interruption]O'BRIEN: What changes. do you find?LANSDALE: Well, the main change was in a growing isolation from reality of the constituency of the President of Vietnam, a repression of, you might say, a loyal opposition or a noncommunist opposition to him in political terms. These were professionally some among the military that was taking the Vietnamese military apart from their people more than it had been when I had left, because I had gotten them working very closely with a number of projects and a growing isolation of the American embassy in particular, but including some of the American agencies, from the Vietnamese officialdom, and taking a very strange form of concentrating on gossip essentially--gossip as much as fact--about oh what the-hell's-the word-I'm trying to think of, of misdeeds
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 62]
-62-Vietnameseand so forth by public officials orpeople connected with the regime in Vietnamso that the information-gathering processof the United States there was devoting anexorbitant amount of time on sort of nitpickingon the people that were in power. The relationships, such as the ambassador with thepresident of the country, the ambassadorwould go into details of malfeasance, in officeand so forth, or mishandling of funds by theVietnamese on an internal matter, and thepresident would have to correct him and say,"you don't have all the facts," and the ambassador would say, "Yes, I do, too." This to mewas very poor. I felt that we had some Americans that were close enough to the topofficials of the Vietnamese (who weren'tpresent in the country always), who shouldbe brought there and told, "Look, we under-stand these guys are doing something wrong.
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 63]
-63-Can you go in and get them to start doing things right, as a friend of theirs?" rather than going and trying to scold them and something and getting the backs up of people, and they'd figure, "Well, these damn nosey Americans only got half the facts, and since they don't understand us that well, the hell with them. We aren't going to do what they wanto" I just felt that we weren't playing a very wise ballgame there at the time, on the American side. I also felt that Diem was paying too much attention to similar types of his own people, his intelligence people, who were in turn telling him what the Americans were doing too damn much, or were bringing in alarming news about his own subjects--and particularly political oppositionists--and I suspect, manufacturing cases against them so that they could take actions and he, in turn, was getting too much
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 64]
-64-secondhand from people, and this tended to isolate him more, Since his main intelligence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu, who was an ambitious person, too. I felt that it was a poor arrangement on the Vietnamese side. I personally urged Diem at the time to get in touch with some of his opposition, and at which point he asked me where I had been at certain times of the day during my visit there and I said, "I was talking to your opposition, and I'm not going to tell you who it was or where I was, but just the mere fact that you know that shows that you were having me trailed around and you know I'm a friend of your country's, and I'm trying to help all of you succeed here, and you happen to be the elected leader, and you jolly well better start reflecting what your people desire, and if you spend your time and money and efforts and so forth watching
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 65]
-65-a guy like me, I'm sure you're doing a lot"more for someone else you really suspectandO BRIEN: How would he react to something like this?LANSDALE: Listen, I was told by a number of people that I was about the only one that really ever talked to him in this manner, and he would listen and at the time, one of the people most critical of him was his vice-president, and I went over and saw the vice-president, whose name was [Nguyen Ngoc] Tho, and Tho immediately started telling me that the president had spies all over his office and in his staff and as he was telling me this, one of the clerks was serving us tea, and I said, "Is this guy one of the president's spies?" and he said, "Probably, I think so."(Laughter) Maybe he'll go back and report to him, this one. I said, "When was the last time you two talked to each other?" Well, it had
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 66]
-64-secondhand from people, and this tended to isolate him more, since his main intelligence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu, who was an ambitious person, too. I felt that it was a poor arrangement on the Vietnamese side.I personally urged Diem at the time to get in touch with some of his opposition, and at which point he asked me where I had been at certain times of the day during my visit there and I said, "I was talking to your opposition, and I'm not going to tell you who it was or where I was, but just the mere fact that you know that shows that you were having me trailed around and you know I'm a friend of your country's, and I'm trying to help all of you succeed here, and you happen to be the elected leader, and you jolly well better start reflecting what your people desire, and if you spend your time and money and efforts and so forth watching
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 67]
-65-a guy like me, I'm sure you're doing a lot"more for someone else you really suspectandO BRIEN: How would he react to something like this?LANSDALE: Listen, I was told by a number of people that I was about the only one that really ever talked to him in this manner, and he would listen and at the time, one of the people most critical of him was his vice-president, and I went over and saw the vice-president, whose name was [Nguyen Ngoc] Tho, and Tho immediately started telling me that the president had spies all over his office and in his staff and as he was telling me this, one of the clerks was serving us tea, and I said, "Is this guy one of the president's spies?" and he said, "Probably, I think so."[Laughter] Maybe he'll go back and report to him.I said, "When was the last time you two talked to each other?" Well, it had
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 68]
-66-been months, so I went back to Diem, and I jumped him I said, "You've got a vice-president who you've made responsible for all the economic development of the country, and I know that you consider that very importantYou haven't talked to him for a long time," and I forced him to tell me when he'd done it last so I said, "Well, pick up the telephone and call him over here your first free time, and you sit down and have a long talk with him." So he did it He picked up the phone, and I got the two of them together againHe was really out of touch He promised me at the time to get in touch with some of the his political opposition he swore up and down 'he wasn't oppressing anyone, and I said. You don't know what your own police are doing, then, and I gave him the list of names of people who were in prison, who had been arrested at midnight and pulled out of their homes and
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 69]
-67-so on, and he promised to look into theircases immediately and do something aboutit. And I said, "I've gotten this frompeople who in the opposition to you, but Idon't know whether or ever you've gotten any reports."He said he'd never heard of these cases,and I think he was telling the truth. Hehad no reason to dissemble with me at allon these things.O'BRIEN: Well, why is this? Is it the development ofan independent bureaucracy, or is it the there adegree of U.S. influence on let's say, theintelligence, Nhu knew.LANSDALE: There was probably some. I think bythat time the Vietnamese intelligence wasway beyond any control by U.S. intelligence,who initially had been helping it, and Diem'sbother Nhu was really--really had the bit inhis teeth and was his own man. And I suspectinitially, he was really trying to serve his
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 70]
-68-brother, and he was doing it by trying to get the goods on everybody working for his brother throughout, the government and anybody opposed to his brother and the intelligence people, picking it up, discovered that if they brought in bad news about some guy that the brother didn't like, he'd pay them and believe it. So I'm sure that there was a lot of manufactured evidence in the intelligence take that was coming ing and I don't think the Americans were screening any of that type of information because it went right into the palace, and there was a big room behind the president's office that had many files and was the main personnel dossier type of file place.O'BRIEN: Well, you're critical of the MAAG (Military Assistance Advisory Group) operation there.What's wrong with it, in the late fifties?LANSDALE: Well, I felt that MAAG under "hanging" Sam [[Samuel T.) Williams in the late '50's was
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 71]
-69-an/unusually well-run American militaryoperation. There were some unusual thingsbeing done that made it so. One of themwas one of the best ideas I've ever bumpedinto. [^9] General Williams brought over thechief of staff of the Vietnamese armywhenever the American advisors who at thattime were out in the countryside, but at fairly high levels, and were runningtraining camps more than advising on opera-tions or anything. But when they would comein once a month for a weekend in Saigon,Williams would get the Vietnamese Chief ofStaff to come in and talk to them. TheVietnamese chief of staff at that time wasGeneral [Tran Van] Don. Don was quitediplomatic, but had a way of being candid inhis remarks and not having them hurt too muchwhen they were told. He would leave out soon, but he would tell these Americans what[^9]: General
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 72]
-70-their Vietnamese counterparts in the Viet-namese army and so forth thought of them, andtheir work, and their advice, and the reactionsthroughout the armed forces to them. Thiswas the one part of the monthly gatheringswith Americans around that everybody wouldstop dozing off or thinking of something elseand would sit up and pay attention becausethey were the subject of the talk, of course.This was a very healthy thing.O'BRIEN: Yes, I can see where I would be.LANSDALE: . . . because even though it was tough diplo-matically, the most sordid truth, would thehardest facts would come out in that.And then Williams himself had been inVietnam a long enough time by then--I forgethow long; it may be three years at the time,four years--so that when he moved around theVietnamese army, it wasn't only just the topstaff officers and commanders who would bewith him, but I noticed in a visit there--I
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 73]
-71-think it was '59--that sergeants and juniorlieutenants and so on would come up and talkوto him, and I'd moved in close enough toeavesdrop on some of the conversations, and;Λ.these were personal problems, family problems,and financial problems and so forth thatGindividuals had and this was a very unusual.1=Arelationship for an American to have. Andsince the American was also running ourthroughout,advisory effort too, I just figured that thisconstant feeding and contact with the echelonsof Vietnamese military that were down belowthe big wheels was again a very healthyinfluence that was constantly at work withhim. So that he would know very well what9was going on in places. Some of these problems--personal problems--would actually involve themilitary work that was going forward, peoplegriping that something was wrong and so onوand they were doing this out of a friendship)=.A
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 74]
-72-and he was not to tell on their bosses or anything, but usually personal worries, and concern that wastage or something going wrong would effect them. Later they moved in an educator--a military educator--[Paul D.] Harkins, and.O'BRIEN: Well, [Lt. Gen. Lionel C.] McGarr comes in there before that, doesn't he?LANSDALE: McGarr, It was McGarr, yes, you're right. It was before Harkins. McGarr. And McGarr built up a staff to work on counter insurgency and probably put together the best staff that studies on counter-insurgency than any American military men have ever done.O'BRIEN: Is that right?LANSDALE: He got American military men who had been guerrilla leaders in the Philippines, for example, in World War II, and in Burma and so on, and in Europe, and switched most of his work over into compiling "How to Do it" manuals, but I've never seen the finished
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 75]
-73-products. I saw them working on it at the time, and all I know is they had tremendous stacks of papers with the results of their typed-out work and were putting it together.And the interpretation of this was apparently, to start increasing staff and American military personnel to handle whatever was coming up out of this whole process. The feeling was that there should be closer American supervision of what was happening out in units, which meant you'd put down your Americans at lower echelons and then get a separate reporting system on back, feeding in the research process of the Americans initially more than anything else. It wasn't for control; it was just for information that would go into fields of study and this lead to a proliferation of an American military presence that was intended sort of for the education of Americans, I think, more than anything else, but of course didn't work out that way. You
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 76]
-74-put some red-blooded American boys in uniform out someplace, and they're going to start doing other things as well. In collecting information, they couldn't help but tell a guy, Well, if you didn't do it this way and did it the other way, it would work better, and so on. It was a very human thing that started working and as this happened we started building up our advisory effort more and more.O'BRIEN: Well, in the meantime, while this is going on, the insurgency's building up, isn't it?LANSDALE: Yes.O'BRIEN: Just what is the condition of the countryside that's different from when you're there in the middle fifties 50s and when you go back in 1960?LANSDALE: Oh, there were guerrilla operations by an enemy, which there hadn't been in the period from Geneva on up to the time I left in the end of '56.You could drive roads at night and so forth
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 77]
-75-and not be worrying about guerrillas. There were isolated incidents of violence, but they were very minor--it would be about what you'd expect in any country with the crime rate going the fact that former Vietnam-guerrillas were the guys pulling the trigger didn't matter too much as far as the overall crime rate went. It was in a nature of minor terrorism, was going on. By my next visits later in the fifties, there were areas of guerrilla bands at work, with roads that were unsafe and so on, in areas that were unsafe, with great problems of police posts being attacked and with their families being wiped out in small massacre type of things, though the type and degree of violence had increased a great deal. By the end of '60--when I got there in Christmas of '60--there were fair-size enemy, Vietcong units operating and dominating areas it had escalated considerably by then.
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 78]
```-76-```O'BRIEN: Is this terrorism campaign on the localofficials as serious as some of the peoplehave written, about?LANSDALE: Oh, yes.O'BRIEN: Do you ever get any feeling about thenumber of people? I've heard all kindsof estimates.LANSDALE: No, I've got [Stephen T.] Hosmer's studythere on that, and I haven't read it yet.I just got that from him. I imagine he'sgot a figure in there. The last figureI remember on it was--in about '66 aroundforty thousand40,000 or something . . .O'BRIEN: Forty thousand. That many?LANSDALE: Yes. These were officials not their familiesor anything. But these were village officialsand district officials and sort of federalgovernment officials,O BRIEN: Well, what do you see happening as a result of thisin terms of the ability of Diem to just simply govern in thoseyears? Is his ability the value to govern deteriorating?