Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
[176-10030-10085.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
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 30]
-30-down in Havana who operates a *T.V.* 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 *T.V.* space never took place, but we got the means together and some airborne *T.V.* 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 *T.V.* 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 *T.V.* 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.
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 31]
-31-It took us then, twelve days to do it, and the time for them to do it had passed over, and the Russians stood down in the interim, so the need had passed.O'BRIEN: Well how do you come back into. . . well, maybe, perhaps we ought to pursue this whole business of counterinsurgency first. It sort of becomes the thing with the Kennedy administration, doesn't it?LANSDALE: Yes.O'BRIEN: How do you see that? I was in the Marine Corps in the late 50's, and there was a good deal of guerrilla and counterguerrilla training that was going on, and it becomes a part of the new administration. Who are the principle proponents of this, outside of yourself? Do you have any conversations, say, with Bobby-- well, you don't really see Bobby until after April. But do you have any conversations with the president, let's say, meeting with him . . .LANSDALE: No, no, I didn't. I don't know who talked to him about this. When he came in office, this was already one of his themes, where he picked
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 32]
-32-that up originally, I don't know. I wasrather surprised--he seemed to have seencopies of lectures and other things thatI've given on the subject, who hadpassed those to him and who had talked tohim 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 conversationswith 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? Hewas about the last person I would have everpicked to have headed up something the wayKennedy asked him to do itO BRIEN: That's what I was wondering about, Taylor'srole in this whole thing. He is opposedLANSDALE: Well, he was the one that in the very early
[176-10030-10085.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 reled-the-sally got tough ong 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
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 34]
-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 speak-see guerrilla or counter-guerilla, 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
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 35]
-35-having quite a bit of an advisory role withour military commanders out there, and influencewith 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 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
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 36]
-36-do something about all along. I've neverunderstood what it was... I've alwaysfelt that I was too inarticulate or hadn'tfound a way of doing things for myself, butthere have been so many other exponents ofthis thing--not just Americans, but of manycountries, who have written rather good bookson the subject and on parts of it that you'dsurely think that we Americans would producetop leaders with some understanding of some-thing that Mao (Tse-tung) and Giap and othershave gotten every page down through the rankand file to understand.O BRIEN: Well, in the formation of the CIA group--it wasdesigned, as I understand it, primarily as akind of educational group for top-level admin-istration people--when do you first come intothat group?LANSDALE: I was never really part of that group. I wasworking with a smaller group of executives, ofwhich Taylor was a part.
[176-10030-10085.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 iniatially, 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
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 38]
-38-and put together some rough first papers for Taylor to start his thinking for the president. Then when Taylor formed & 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 formation of that group, and early--it was'in May or June-- they dispatched some teams to go around Latin America to survey the ability of various nations to respond to Castro-type guerrilla activity.LANSDALE: Yes, yes.O'BRIEN: Did you get involved in the planning of that at all or any of the fallout of that?LANSDALE: Just peripherally on both. I forget the details on that. I had been worrying about places like Columbia and several other Latin American countries close to the Panama Canal and had urged that this be looked into, on some of the specific things that were being done there. I had encouraged that the Columbians start civic action
[176-10030-10085.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 Phillippines 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?
[176-10030-10085.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 some 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
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 41]
-41-structure considerably for the very lowest classin Bolivia, and with the armed forces doingit. This, again, was the very first visit.In Venezuala, I had come up with someways of safeguarding our own interests inVenezuala (which are not only oil production,but we have steel mills down there and anumber of things, but I did this as much forthe Venezuelan Defense Ministry as I did forthe United States at the time. They wereconcerned.O'BRIEN: What are your relations with the peopleinvolved in the school in Panama which spreadsa lot of this pure gospel of civic actionamong the military? Are your relations with,those people pretty good?LANSDALE: It was. They had picked up a lot of mymaterial from earlier times, in the formof memos and memos that lectures, I had written on thesesubjects. When they set up the school, Italked with them on the program of instructionthat they were going to give. The firstadoption of any of these principles was in
[176-10030-10085.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 [C. Allan Stewart] found our ambassador there at the time very open-minded and very good to work with. I wrote a report, coming back
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 43]
-43-from Venezuala afterward, and submitted it onby the time I got to Washington. It went upto President Kennedy as well as Dean Rusk,and some of Rusk's staff immediately wired theambassador and it was one of these, "You don'twant to buy this, do you," and they said I'dcome out with a report on Venezuala, and herewere the main points of my recommendations andsome findings. "He was just there five days.He couldn't possible have found out enoughto come to these conclusions, isn't thatright?" Bless his heart, the ambassador cameback and said, in effect, "I'm amazed that hefound out that much, and the recommendationsare sound, and we'd discussed this before heleft, 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 Americancommunity down there who themselves werepractically government: U.S. Steel and allour big oil companies and so on. There wasvery little relationship between the American
[176-10030-10085.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 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. . .
[176-10030-10085.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 the employees so much, who also gained a great deal out of this. And then U.S. Steel, in pushing its developments
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 46]
way down to the south. [Interruption] He probably wouldn't do it; he'd chew the wire-in-two here.O'BRIEN: Oh my God. It's a wonder-he-hasn't-electri cuted 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.0BRIEN: 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 [Ngu-Danh] Diem had located down in the midst of a communist-held territory, and I was very
[176-10030-10085.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.
[176-10030-10085.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 purpose 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
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 49]
-49-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 [Walthers] 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 things.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 understood each other and could take shortcuts in conversations and so on. All of those you named always in talks and talked with me expressed similar beliefs to mine, so it was very easy in talking to them, and there were others in the
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 50]
-50-Eisenhower administration. Now this wasn't true throughout the administration at all, but there was a considerable group of people who were in various executive slots just down the second and third level who had been through the . . .[Interruption]O'BRIEN: Well, Laos, as I understand it, is, with the impact of the aid that's going in there that-it really does in some ways tear up the economy of the country. Now, how do you look on the training of the Laotian army in late 1960--'59, '60--some of the activities of the Agency in Laos, as well as the army and through the PEO [Programs Evaluation Office] office and things like this? Is this the kind of thing you envision in terms of--I hate to use the term "nation building"--helping a country to help itself, in helping people to help themselves?LANSDALE: Yes, as long as in the modern world the leaders of the country will think in terms of as large a military establishment as they can afford in a country. And they do this without any advice from anybody. This is just a natural,
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 51]
-51-self-preservation type of an impulse on their part. Then my thought is: They will be doing this. Then let's make the military establishment serve the country in a much bigger way than merely toting guns around and guarding borders. It's usually the organization that is nationwide, and there might not be any other organization that's nationwide in the country, such as agriculture even the administrative structure that usually comes under department or ministry of the Interior won't really have the manpower, the communications, and so forth, that the military forces do. So, given that, why not then get the military to start doing constructive things around and making full use of the manpower that you have anyhow. Have them be good military men as the very first requisite of this, but, given that, there's still energy and personnel involved in that who have a lot of man-hours left over that could do other things, and essentially, this is what I was trying to get the American advisory missions
[176-10030-10085.pdf — page 52]
-52-to do--not only the military advisory missions,but when other agencies would get in and beworking on these things, to themselves becomeinterested in the military doing such things,and aiding and abetting, including economicaprojects and educational work and so on.O'BRIEN: Well, in this Laotian deterioration that takesplace, you know the competing people there--NosavanPhoumi Wongbichit and Souvannak Phouma andall--how do you read that in 1960 just priorto the administration coming in? Do youHow do you see Phoumi; how do you seeSouvannah Phouma, as people? First of all;have you met them at any time?LANSDALE: Yes, yes, yes, I didn't know them well at all.I'd met them at, usually at formal gatheringsof one kind or another. The main thing thatI saw in Laos in the way of political stabilityactually stemmed out of the king of Laos thiswas the only unifying political force thatexisted there in the minds of all of the variousLao leaders whom I'd met. So when the othersstarted splitting and opposing one another, I