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ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS
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CITIZEN
FROM:
TO:
TITLE:
ORAL HISTORY WITH EDWARD LANSDALE BY DENNIS O'BRIEN
DATE:
PAGES:
07/11/1970
123
SUBJECTS:
BAY OF PIGS
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06/05/1998
Pages 3-21 and 28-34 talk about the Bay of Pigs. Pages 96 and 98 have been sanitized.
33
SANITIZED
Mk. 99.41·12/00
Oral History Interview
with
EDWARD G
Lansdale
July 11, 1970
Alexandria, Virginia
By Dennis J. O'Brien
For the John F. Kennedy Library
O'BRIEN:
I think a logical place to begin in anything
like this is just simply with the question;
when did you first meet President Kennedy,
or Senator Kennedy, if you met him before
he was President?
i
LANSDALE: I don't recall meeting him before he was
I believes
Presidento The first meeting was I believe,
tover
the first Saturday following the inauguration,
☐ whatever date that was. I was called into a
meeting in the White House by [Robert S.]
McNamara. It was a meeting, on, actually, on
a report that I had written for [Dwight D.]:
n
25-
Eisenhower. It was sort of an
n
I'm not sure.
.10
سبه
-2-
O'Brien:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
that it was NSC [National Security Council]
meeting, but it was comparable to that with
.^
the personnel that were attending. There were
several Secretaries: Defense, State, and his
National Security people were there.
Could
Did... wre mine with McNamara and [Roswell Lo
Giri, members of the incoming administra-
tion, before they actually assumed office?
n
Just before, that is, a day or so before. I'd
been in Vietnam for a brief visit and got back
just before the inaugural, maybe two or three
days, and at that time both McNamara and
Gilpatric were in Defense getting briefed for
their new jobs. I met them at that time.
The outgoing Deputy Secretary of Defense asked
me to start working with Gilpatric, and so I
to Know
Λ
got Gilpatric rather than McNamara
Λ
[James H.]
This is Douglas.
Douglas, Jim Douglas (James H. Douglas)
How is Douglas to work with, while you're with
Λ
him? Is he a pretty sympathetic person?
Yes, very much so, very much so☹ He was the
.
one, actually, who wrote the orders and back-
.:
-3-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
stopped my visit to Vietnam, and back-
stopped it principally so that I could take
a look at some of the political factors as
well as economic, military, and psychological
and everything else. This, frankly, took a
consid
Scanding on his part
that because my views weren't always
popular in other parts of the government①
I gathered that there was some opposition to
my going out, and he insisted on it..
^
I'd like to come back to that. I wonder if
we could go on to talk about one of the major
problems, which is Cuba. When is the first
time that you hear about the Bay of Pigs
invasion, not the Bay of Pigs, but the plans
1600
Sometime in the fall of sixty. I think that
I heard of it about the first time that it
innerg
was brought up to the inter policy group of
the Eisenhower administration.
I was the
20
Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense,
n
at the time, for Special Operations and used
to accompany the Deputy Secretary, who was a
inner
member of the inter policy group, to most of
n
-4
the meetings that the had. When Allen Dulles
(Allen W.
this
W-Dulles
inner
st raised the notion to
the Senate group I was present at the meeting
1
as an
Assist
O'BRIEN: What is the thinking about it at that time?
LANSDALE:
What kind of operation is
r
- it
basically a guerilla operation at this point?
Initially, it was. Initially, it was very differ-
from 1
n
ent than the way it turned out. It was based
on a premise that many people in Cuba were very
[file]
unhappy with the Castro administration and the
way it was turning away from the initial
revolutionary objectives and the capture of the
revolutionary movement by the Communist Party,
which surprised many of the
Castro as a guerrilla and as
supporters of
✓ revolutionary
action. So, the thought was to back a number
The
of Cubans who either had been supporters of
n
Castro or were very unhappy, were still resident
in Cuba, and to cause some overturn at the time.
The change of plan towards the Bay of Pigs
gradually
thing evolved fairly fragilely and apparently
in
there was a planning group and CIA (Central
Context
?
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
-5-
Intelligence Agency) who were working on this
initial plan who started thinking in military
invasion terms. I suspect that they were
doing that because some of the Cuban military.
because
and military types, that is, very militant,
kr
--
Λ
__ were coming out of
Cuba as refugees, and they suddenly saw a
^.
windfall of man_power and started thinking in
other terms of use of them. But, this change
was, the changed plan towards the Bay of Pigs
the way it was going,
thing, was well under way in the inner circle_
and
thinking of CIA by December of '60, very defi-
Λ
nitely so.
Who were some of the inner circle people at
do you recall?
this point, (Pietre) Salinger, of course
DERIEN: Imagine [Richard M.] Bissell was!.
Let's see in Oh golly. Dick Bissell
LANSDALE
A
(Richard M. Bissell was the overall chief of
the group.
O'BRIEN: Tracy Barnes, was he in it at that time?
but
Λ
LANSDALE: Tracy was an assistant to him, ^ How far
O'BRIEN:
actually
detailed
Λ
or anything...①
Tracy went in the actual planning, I have my
doubts that he was.
•
.
อ
How about Broe, William Broe ?
Exiliam V. BROE
-66
LANSDALE: He was one of a planning group who were
O'BRIEN:
بری پاری
planning the operation, but he wasn't a chief,
and I can't recall the guy's name offhand.
Oh well, maybe when you get the transcript back;
LANSDALE: Maybe som O'BRIEN:
you can. How about from some of the other
A
1 places i
supp
Camin
days?
HMS C.) Mann, I
LANSDALE: Yes, but initially it was all CIA. They
.
borrowed some military personnel to help with
early on,
the planning earlier, but they were people
who had been attached to CIA for temporary
duty on other matters, and they hadn't come
in initially for this specific planning.
In
December, when the planning had obviously
started coming in with a beach landing and so
on, the way it turned out, I urged at that
point to get military planning in on the
A
thing. I was worrying about it. As a matter
of fact, Allen Dulles brought his planners
و
to a policy meeting, a policy group meeting,
and they were explaining the concept and my
questioning was such that Allen Dulles pleaded
with me not to spoil the plan at an early
-7-
» O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
stage. I remember General (Lyman L.)
بله
Lemnitzer was sitting in the meeting
the
i
He was chairman of the JCS (Joint Chiefs of
Staff) at the time, and he backed up my urging
them to get some military planning in on thato.
After the
Ment among our
po
Eple of that, and then the JCS set up.
a special section to plan along with the
(Central-Intelligence.) Agency on that. And who
the hell headed that?
This is yet in the Eisenhower administration.
This is all back in 1960.
an
the early planning stages:
This was still in
This was before
training or anything like that was put forward.
When the JCS got into the act, I asked to be
disassociated with the project.
I was rather
looked
و
critical of the concept, and it was just too
overty
doingo
clumsy and overt, and a poor-planned feeling
don't they
of people have knowledge of this, by the
end of the Eisenhower administration? throughout government
I don't know how widespread it was. There
were key executives that were knowledgeable,
there was a small group in the JCS that was
i
-8-
O'BRIEN:
knowledgeable, and there was a planning group
at CIA, but I don't think it went beyond that.
I don't know how far it was known, but I
thought it was rather closely held.
You don't know whether the presidential candi-
at all, do you?¨´
dates
LANSDALE: Yes Mey were.
no, wait a minute
think they were.
There was a very definite
the candidates, no, I don't
3
As a matter of fact, it was
in this
still in a rather nebulous stage of shifting
over in early November I think somebody
told me, if I recall correctly, that the concept
ላ
was in the form of a memo in CIA about August,
so this would be well after the candidates
had been nominated and so on. I imagine that
just
to.
Λ
side
it was held by two or three people in the CIA
نو
at the time. At least, the rest of us certainly
didn't know it. I forget exactly when I first
heard it, but it would be possibly October,
but it might have even been November by the
:
time I heard about it. As I say, I heard.
about it when it was surfaced with the inner
circle of our administration executives.
)
-9-
O'BRIEN:
Well, I suppose you had some conversations
with Dulles and with Bissell and some of
these people about it.
LANSDALE: Yes.
O'BRIEN:
What's their feeling? You already discussed
Dat
G
asking you to sort of
•
0
hold your criticism,.
LANSDALE: Well, Bissell definitely felt the same wayo
Bissell was a very hard-working, intense person,
an
almost high-strung type of individual. He
Λ
became rather impatient with my questioning
of the changed concept when it took place. I thought
that
✓nitially if they had the correct personnel
Λ
and i they had a correct reading of dissent
inside of Cuba, that was a fair chance to do
something.
بو
as7:
My only concern at the time was
did the CIA have the Americans who could work
with such a situation? I just didn't know.
yes,
of any, but I was assured that there were such
א
Americans but I'm not certain that there were.
O'BRIEN: Did you question the kind of intelligence that
was coming out about Cuba and the expected
reaction of Cubans to an invasion.
ngan
and the

-10-
reaction to Castro in general?
LANSDALE: Just in very general terms. I didn't have
enough concrete and specific information
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
myself that was separate from theirs. Most
of the intelligence take at the time, avail-
able inside the U.S. government, was pretty.
colored with this dissatisfaction and state- .
ments of it. So, I had no real way of
determining the accuracy or inaccuracy of it.
Some of the adjectives used in describing this
in briefings to us alerted me a little bit.
like
Λ
of
It just sounded too much like a sales job on
Λ
a viewpoint. I'd question that, whether that
was an accurate thing, so this is about as far
as I went.
did.
How does a guy like Douglas react?
recall?
.
Do you
Well, he approved of the plan, so he and the
Λ
others at the policy level approved of going
ahead with it, and developing it. I was his
advisor on this thing? (That was my staff
job),
´and I told him to be certain to get the JCS
to give it a real hard scrutiny and to come
-11-
up with details of whether it could succeed
or not. That was my last advisory role with
him. I was taken off advising on the project
after that, actually by my own request because
I was apparently causing too much trouble and
Arks of progress.
พา
O'BRIEN:
s the reaction of the Joint Chiefs, people
like Lemnitzer, towards this? Is there an ..
Λ
institutional rivalry or bureaucratic rivalry
here in their minds?
LANSDALE: Somewhat, somewhato It was a little bit as
though, well, somebody's going to be playing
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
Boy Scouts, so this isn't really rivalry.
.^.
They had a difficult time taking this really.
seriously. Later, I know, when the JCS got
and helped
in on the actual planning of this, they became
much more serious on it because they had a
share of it.
Well, do you get involved in the informing
Do you
of McNamara and Gilpatric about this?
get any way of sensing what their reactions
are on first being informed?
No.
They had apparently known by the time I
-12-
and
met them, I didn't get in on that。
would have
a
person who has P.].
The one
of their reactions
would probably be Bill Bundy, (William
Λ
n
Bundy) who I know at the time was discussing
this with them.-
O'BRIEN:
Did you have.
bundy and
his fit
_at that point?
:
LANSDALE: Yes, This was a little out of Bundy's field.
He was always trying to figure out what the
chances were, the percentages of win or losso
abit
9
He was low, and I hadn't known the final plan
on this thing, and Bundy did, and he asked me
い
what I thought. I told him, well, if the JCS
maybe shade
guarantees something, you can take it 10 percent
lower than that and go along with ito I'm not
sure that they know a clandestine operation,
but they'd sure know a military landing, whether
it would succeed or not.
Given some of the
why, shade it
unknowns in this thing, I say that by 10 percent
and go along with the figure." Well, apparently
they had given it a high chance of success,
the JCS had, because Bundy said, "Well, you mean
n
it's going to succeed then?" I said, "Well, I
ለ
So
-13-
O'BRIEN:
don't know." I gathered that he felt it would
succeed.
A
Well, then you are pretty much out of touch that you battle its
( point
with it until it actually comes off "You LANSDALE: That's
Rights O'BRIEN:
on
A
didn't get into any of the changes in the
plans there at all?
September something -- it w₂
LANSDALE: No. I left at around the first of December,
O'BRIEN:
160. I really didn't follow it from then on@
Does
✓ anyone come to you from the Agency) or
from State & or 12 the White House, as far
as that goes, and attempt to seek an indepen-
بو
Λ
with
dent judgement on your part your background and all, on success
LANSDALE:
No.
O'BRIEN:
How about the noise level on this? Obviously
you're out of it, but is there much talk
about it that is sort of filtering down
amorg
in Defense and the people that are around you
that really have no need to know and direct
involvement?
LANSDALE: I wasn't aware of it. There might have been,
but I have no knowledge of that.
O'BRIEN:
When the thing the operation / actually begins
and the landing has taken place, do you come
-14-
into it again at that point at any time?
LANSDALE: No.
O'BRIEN: You do become involved in Cuban affairs at a
later time.
LANSDALE: Later, yes.
O'BRIEN: When d
thi
you have any-
with the (Maxwell) Taylor
committee? which makes the inquiry about it?
LANSDALE: I met with them once, and they weren't interested
with the Bay of Pigso. They were interested
air the
of
g
&
in the decision-making process, of making of
policy, and asked me if I had any ideas on
"
how better the President could be served in
the policy decisions and arriving at them.
The thing was, right at that moment, McNamara
I had previously asked me for the same thing)
and I had come up with a proposal for him
which he put to Kennedy. I just told them?
Well, I had some ideas but I had given them
to somebody else, and I was skeptical of the
boss anyhow.
task forces.
One
this was on putting together
The Kennedy administration had
eliminated a bureaucratic boon doggling thing
-15-
O'BRIEN:
in-
✓ and, what the hell was that called?
ہو۔
OCB? [Operations Coordinating Board o
قي
LANSDALE: Yes, the OCB I pointed out that the one
good thing about it was that the principals
و
met for lunch and I said the rest of it's for the birds,
But to get man in nå
to
ent who are talking
are held responsible by
him for managing men, money, and material and
so on, who can understand the problem well
enough around the lunch table to have one
secretary or deputy secretary or under secretary
I and so on, was
ዘ
say, well, we'll take care of that, is a
Than
न
good way of doing business and with the
president's own national security man sitting
in on it, going back and telling him this is
going to happen for these reasons, why, it
q
was a good control mechanism. So essentially
all I told the Taylor people and told
McNamara in my paper was that this function håd
been eliminated, along with cutting out alot of
in it, and
dead wood, and there was some live wood How
Λ
about restoring the live wood? This essentially
was what my proposition was with the task force;
-16-
of getting the people most concerned with
something ) who could operate for the
president, and having them get together and
help form the policy, get the president's
approval, and they were the same ones who
then
could sta
immediately.
10t to create another big
q
bureaucratic thing. And of course, after they
first tried this, it rapidly started becoming :
a big bureaucratic thing. The task forces
that were later set up were just big staffs
sitting in different buildings.
It was
almost like OCB again, not quite, but it got
:
до
- out of hand. Anytime you try to change the
government around, it seems to come right back
_you? BRIEN: Yes, we have a tendency of doin
in form again and close ranks on ite But that
N
that
was all, I did with the Taylor group. Inciden-
tally; in that inquiry into the Cuban bit was
the first time that I met (Robert F. Bobby
Kennedy. For some reason or other, I didn't
Λ
connect him personally with the pictures of
and whatnot,
him and so on, on TV and I wondered what the
youngster was doing sitting in the meeting
That's LANSDA
Tovo
017-
talking so much.
O'BRIEN: Was he pretty tough
7
LANSDALE: Well, he wasn't tough. He was the most ineter-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
ested of anyone in the room there of what I
would say on things and plague me with many
questions.
1
How were his questions? Was he fairly naive
about the problems?
يو
Now, this was on problems questions of how the
levela
government would operate at a decision level
and they weren't naïve at all. He had a very
good understanding. He was very much concerned
about his brother's getting good service in the
and
way of information and full details of alterna-
Λ
tives and so on, on a policy decision.
O'BRIEN: Well, if you, you-know, in that period right
after the Bay of Pigs--of course you had a lot
of contacts and friendships in other places
LANSDALE: Yes. O'BRIEN:
outside the Pentagon. A What kind of an impact
does
^ did the Bay of Pigs have, let's say over in
the Agency) and State Department, and in Defense,
and in the White House?
-18-
LANSDALE:
It was a traumatic experience at top levels throughout
the government. I think it affected
President Kennedy more than any other single
Λ
thing. It was almost a taboo subjectoif you
were going in to do business and to get an
approve something
پھ
an juba on
9
nover even hinted
Such
Suban affair. It was an
Λ
O'BRIEN:
intensefully sore subject among all of these
people. I felt that almost all of the key
executives in the administration must have
dreamt about it at night or something, and
Λ
during the daytime working hours they just
even
oven
didn't even want to contemplate it. And yet
they were honest enough people that they knew
they had to face up and look at it and would do
so, but it was an extremely emotional subject
with them, very much so.
Well, in terms of the Agency, there's a number.
of programs and, of course, involvements in
ለ
Λ
operations that they have.
Do you see any
shift in these, any attempt on the part of the
Defense Department to move into some of these
:
areas which they felt were traditionally theirs
✓
rather than the Agency.
I guess what I'm
-19-
trying to say is, can you see any decline in
on
in
the Amy influence in the Agency of decisions?
Λ
I'm not certain that it was
LANSDALE: Yes, I think so.
the military as such. It might have been the
t
will.
A
and
_ke McNamara personally^
_s encouragement of some of the military who
were somewhat interested but wouldn't really
have expressed the interest unless they were
directly asked, and there always had been some
feeling of unease 2 I think would be the best
=
tF-amor
word to describe it--among the military about ·
type of 'n
any clandestine operations. They felt that
once it got over into guerrilla type of operations
or anything that would involve a military subject,
بو
that it would be far better to let the military
establishment of the U.S. handle it.
tail
A
But that
would be sort of a dinner-coctail party type of
a gambit on their part, rather than sitting and
planning and so on of "We must grab some of
that
this," Even though among themselves they talked
that way. They didn't express it in terms of
their attendence at policy councils or even in

١٠
-20-
talks with people like the Secretary of Defense
or the civilian, executive side of Defense.
Λ
9.
On
this, I think that McNamara himself probably.
well,
^
started thinking initially that this was a
military operation and just to be more efficient
and effective, the military should take over
such things.
Λ
I imagine that he talked that way
who
to some of the military people that were seeing
him from the JCS, and the Chiefs, and from the
intelligence community, the military intelligence
community. I know that DIA [Defense Intelligence
Agency] got its great start under McNamara, and.
I feel almost certain, I've got a strong hunch,
that the Bay of Pigs and the misreading of the
temper of the people in Cuba gave McNamara
great impetus in setting that up initially..
Λ
9. So it actually, wasn't a military ambition
to set up a rival intelligence agency to
CIA, though there had been tremendous rivalry
between the military service intelligence
و
agencies and the CIA and had been right along.
from the initiation of CIA originally. But this
was sort of a business rivalry, and it wasm
^.
-21-
sort of dealing with them, of categories of
work, and where the boundary lines of who did
what on the thing, and this is where their
jealousies and emotions and everything would.
come up over almost nitpicking of boundary lines
of who would do what. It wasn't a thing of
up!--
Λ
Λ
we'll do it all, and you go out of business --that
that
feeling hadn't come up,
but we after the
Bay of Pigs, the DIA and its creation, a lot of
the people in that who were civilian employees,
Defense Department employees, had an idea, "We
can do a better job than CIA," and in a much
wider field than the service intelligence agencies
had
have done.
O'BRIEN: Are there enough skilled and competent people
around, in the universities and the military,
to staff all the intelligence agencies: the NSA
[National Security Agency), DIA, CIA, and organi-
Λ
zations? Are there enough people, or are these
gat this point?
operations just simply too bigg
2.
LANSDALE: They might be too big. & The need to
know things is a very elastic bit. -I'm certain
that the chief executive of the United States,
-22-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
in whose name these works are accompli
blished,
would have no idea that he would ever desire
to know some of the things that they're working
on very hard for you discover whole buildings
and all sorts of equipment busily by accumulating
facts
300
would say, I can't
Λ
States ever needing to know some
of that and yet he would hesitate, given the
world today and the technological advances and
everything, it's very hard to say what you need
to know and what you don't. Given this sort of
a gray shading of the end objectives on this
thing, it's very difficult to say whether you'v
Λ
got too bigan establishment or not.
Do you ever take this question up, or is this
question ever raised in the administration by the
civilian people in DOD [Department of Defense]
or the White House, with you?
Not with me. No. My theme on overseas operations
was reiterated enough so that it was known by
جو
• always
a number of people, and I always felt that it was
Λ
more efficient and effective to have a very
small group working and to choose them with very
-23-
great selectivity and go for a handful of
highly qualified people rather than a large
group of Americans charging overseas someplace.
This went for intelligence as well as diplomatic
and other economic work, and so on. I used to
point out the embassies--for example, behind
ہوتا
the Iron Curtain--that would get dessimated by
n
> > being TNT'& and so on in Eastern Europe,
for example, it would happen
It could
that would 
wind up
ላ
with an ambassador and two or three people
left in an embassy, and their work would increase
Λ
in quality, and their representing U.S. interests
^
would seem to improve tremendously when that
would happen.
O'BRIEN:
Does the fact that you get this reputation,
of
mainly out, the writings of guys like [Eugene]
Burdick and Graham Greene, does this affect you
in any way in your relations with the bureau-
cracy?
With
LANSDALE: Yes. It made life rather difficult.
that
much of the work I had to do in Washington,
I came back from a lot of operations abroad
and went up into policy-forming levels in
-24-
Washington almost immediately, and into facing
people who were very sensitive on my presence
abroad initially.
Λ
Since I didn't just stick
in a regular military category but would get
over into their own subject matter, this made
ہو
them very uncomfortable and I can understand
it while it happened, but it was carried to
ለ
99
too great an emotional length. At times I
would suggest certain individuals be sent to
look into a situation in a given country and
would arrange their transportation and some CDC::C:D:D:Do
يو
and I would get backing throughout the U.S.
government for this thing, ar
and have an individual
approved by the Secretary of State as well as
Defense and up at the White House and so on,
but would set up a means of communicating
back so
that we would get reports back. There
we could be times when these individuals would
show up in a country, and the first time they
sent a message to me, the ambassador would
Λ
ask them kindly to leave the country, to get
out of there, just because of my name.
I was
was?
apparently the
_enemy
.
to some of these
-25-
q
people. One of my assistants was traveling.
between Thailand and Saigon, and there was a
Λ
بو
coup going on in Saigon at the time and his
==
plane, which was Air France, put down--commercial
Λ
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.
= .
place to sleep at night, so it became very
"emotional and very silly, and detrimental to
9
the U.S. For example, once in Indonesia, in
meeting our folks around the embassy in
Djakarta, I had spotted an assistant army
attache, who was the one American, along with
Λ
one of the economic mission guys--there were
-26-
two Americans who were not only best known
by the Indonesians but were respected, and
و
"Let
there was an affection there, and I have
"1
told
the ambassador at the time, afterwards, make
real use of these people : the Indonesians
=
believe them, and there's some antipathy towards
Λ
the U.S., but they make an exception to these
يو
Λ
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
:would
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
%
2
him, and he was Uncle " something" to them.
Rso
1
:
later, when the Soviets start moving in
SAM: [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 5
-27-
O'BRIEN:
· LANSDALE:
I suggested that we get the State - Defense
sponsorship and send this one fellow who is
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
sites
took him out and showed him these sights and
asked him what he thought of them and so on
the first day he was there. That night he
شد
got back, and wrote out a radio message & a
Λ
asked the ambassador to send it to me, at
.
Λ
and
which point our ambassador told him to leave
the countryo'
[Howard P.]
Now, this was Jones?
Λ
Λ
That was Jones, yeso
7 And he said, "Well,
و
let me put that in the message①" so I just
211
asked the Department of State, to please let
Jones know that you're sponsoring this guy,
n
too, and there might be some more things that
he finds out that you need to know as much as
11
to
يو
we do. So they told Jones just to sit back
^
-28-
and let him do that.
We have some wonderful Americans, and this
و
: ለ
was to find out
was what I was trying to do?:
do? : 
ws
which Americans have not only our interests
at heart but were enough interested in foreign
count to be
o understand and have
really would be serving the best
interests of other countries in things.
I'd
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
far rather see one man get in on something
like that than send a whole team in with¯all
Jan
sorts of things, and sort of aggravate a
rather
situation than do something rather simple.
Almost sensitivity training
•
•
ANSDALE Incidentally, along these lines,
I've got a good story for your account.
Great. N
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 TGV How the hell did I
that he
know how to do that? He told me that he
wanted to do it within the next twenty-four
-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.
TV 
stations
22
broadcasting and get the people in the
ہو
950
country to go immediately to their T,V
な
Λ
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
وارج
together in a real crash basis. CIA couldn't
Λ
give me details, on technical details 2 on any
n
-
of the TV stations in Havannah and elsewhere.
One of the Defense civilian scientists--and I
it was an
can't think of his name offhand; East European
Λ
name--left the room and came back ten minutes
later and provided all the technical infor-
mation, to the great amazement of everybody
"1
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
ለ
having the meeting), wht in one of the phone
booths there; and I called a friend of mine
n

B
-30-
down in Havana who operates a T/V/ station
this
يو
and asked him. He gave me all the dope, and
Λ
I just wrote it down." So this is the way
9
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.
transmitters. It was developed finally by the
ho.d that it is
Navy, and the project--I've² asked it to put on
Λ
^'
a sort of sled so that it could be picked up
and changed over from one aircraft to another,
Σlate:
or used elsewhere later when we started the
TY✓✓ broadcasts in Vietnam, this Navy equip-
ment that was initially intended to let
I
дисло
in '62;
President Kennedy talk to the Cubans was the
broadcast equipment that was used from the
done
air--flying in
the
aircraft--in Saigon, downe
^^
to initiate T/V/ broadcast in Saigon in
that was,
?
1965..
O'BRIEN:
Why didn't it come off?
LANSDALE:
out
It took us too long to figure ways of getting
in on the theme and finding a channel and
to
Λ
finding a way of getting people that do that.
-31-
O'BRIEN:
It took us the
ten, twelve days to do it, and the
Λ
time for them to do it had passed over, and
the Russians stood down in the interim, so the
need had passed.
well,
*Well how do you come back into.
maybe, perhaps we ought to pursue this whole
business of counterinsurgency first. It sort
of becomes the thing with the Kennedy admin-
istration, doesn't it?
LANSDALE: Yes.
O'BRIEN: How do you see that?
LANSDALE:
I was in the Marine
c. fifties
Corps in the late 50's, and there was a good
deal of guerrilla and counterguerrilla training'
سكة
that was going on, and it becomes a part of ·
the new administration. Who are the principle
proponents of this, outside of yourself?
4D0
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
No, no, I didn't I don't know who talked to him
Λ
about this. When he came in office, this was
already one of his themesⒸ Where he picked
-32-
O BRIEN:
that up originally, I don't know. I was
rather surprised--he seemed to have seen
copies of lectures and other things that
hat
I've given on the subject. But, who had
n
=
passed those to him and who had talked to
him about it; I just don't know.
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 thing
○ BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
He 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 it ①
That's what I was wondering about, Taylor's
role in this whole thing. He is opposed ①
و
Well, he was the one that, in the very early
ለ
-33-
formation of the Special Forces in the Army--
he was Chief of Staff of the Army at the time
ana
and took one look at these American troops in
green berets and said, "Take that God damn silly
headgear off," or "Take that--that's it."
really got tough on a
geeen berets, and he ruled the
Л
No
out of
the thing. He wasn't too happy with a special
unit of that nature. But at the time, it was
He went along with the concept that
it was only a wartime outfit, that somebody
would have to go and jump in and work with
97
gquerrillas.
9-
Again, this is a rivalry type of
a thing, so there wouldn't be another OSS [Office
Λ
Zor
of Strategic Services] - there'd be a CIA or
something doing it, but this, after all, is part
of the modern military function, so let's make
n
it military. So he went that far on the thing.
I would
But that was a concept--you have a regular
force fighting battle, and someplace back of the
Λ
enemy lines, you'd want to blow up bridges and
л
?
-34-
gather information and so on to support'
your tactical forces s
forces we why not have
somebody in working and fomenting trouble
back there for the enemy, but connected with
79
people's? war-
the forces! Now the concept of people's
--Mao Tse-Tung
it
برو
fare How is pushed; we've seen them in Vietnam.
Λ
,and elsewhere!
Λ
g- Really
wasn't something that
he or others understood at all, that almost
would be..
2
all of us speak see guerrilla or counter-guer-
Λ
rilla, and that people like special forces
might well, having learned guerilla operations,
would then be qualified to start coping with
Jand
them would understand the importance of
Λ
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
Zagair
in, again with Taylor as the ambassador, but
-35-
O'BRIEN:
having quite a bit of an advisory role with
the a
Λ
our military commanders out there, and influence
and were
with them, was fighting another Korea in Vietnam
willy
more or less. There was some changes in tactics,
ند
but was more use of helicopters just for verti-
cal envelopment rather
han just instead of
start
moving guys along the ground to with the thing.
^.
Why don't they come to an understanding? (barking]
arking
LANSDALE -I'm sure that's going to make-a-good-broadcast-
O BRIEN:
ཚ-----
for you a good-tape..
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
Λ
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 some-
thing that, of course, I have been trying to
-36-
do something about all along. I've never
understood what it
was?..
99
I've always
O BRIEN:
´LANSDALE:
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
by now
surely think that we Americans would produce
Λ
top leaders with some understanding of some-
Ivo Nguyen
thing that Mao [Tse-tung] and Giap and others
I in
ለ
to
have gotten every page down through the rank
and file to understand.
[counterinsurgency]
Well, in the formation of the CIA group--it was
designed, as I understand it, primarily as a
kind of educational group for top-level admin-
istration people--when do you first come into
that group?
I was never really, part of that group. I was
working with a smaller group of executives, of
which Taylor was a part.
-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
ہے
national security advisor a Taylor sat
in on those meetings after he got his CI
group going.
Stially,
at gi
✓✓ in
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
99
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 intelli-
gence part of State.
group,
They had a little working
everal sessions
hs 
in my office
and we had seve
-38-
and put together some rough first papers
for Taylor to start his thinking for the
formed
و
Then when Taylored his group)
president.
I wasn't invited in on
O'BRIEN:
Sure.
it, and I didn't attend.
⠀ got any insight.
in it, right after the formation
Λ
of that group, and early--it was'in May or June--.
л
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.
Λ
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
ላ
countries close to the Panama Canal and had
urged that this be looked into, on some of the
Λ
specific things that were being done there.
had
то
encouraged that the
Columbians start civic action
Λ
-39-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
in dealing with some of the dissident
areas and so on. All I had done was, not plan-
ning as much as coming in with sort of a
shopping list of what people might look for,
and individuals in these countries they might
talk to to get information on what was happening.
are you
Well, are you in Colombia in the Kennedy
administration at all as
No. No, the most I did was--I went to Venezu
nezuela
during the Kennedy administration, and Bolivia,
No, by that time folks were highly sensitive
about my showing up in “foreign countries--
that is, Americans, not foreigners--and I really
Δ
wasn't permitted, or I was stopped really at
1
policy levels from going back into Vietnam or
the Phillippines or
j
or anyplace in Asia. I begged
to be permitted to go down and take a look in
Latin America, and Gilpatric was the one that told me
BEGIN SIDE II TAPE I
O BRIEN:
Outside of Venezuela,
the decision had been made....
Did you get to any other countres?
countres?

་
-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
and flying
up one-room school houses down there,
e 
and
Λ
in teachers and bringing some education in there,
which I thought was a great project, and encouraging
Thien
them. A hile I was in Bolivia, I got involved
with the resettlement of indians from the
=
Altiplano over onto the eastern slopes into
.1
some new communities, in which the whole Bolivian
✓
ہو
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
^.
2
exciting, agricultural-community-type of a
Λ
Λ
project of moving people out where they'd have
i
an economic chance at life, and also a chance
to own land. It was changing the social
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
i
-41-
very
structure considerably for the lowest class
in Bolivia, and with the armed forces doing
it.
This again, was the very first visit.
میوپی
In Venezuala, I had come up with some
ways of safeguarding our own interests in..
Venezuala (which are not only oil production)
but we have steel mills down there and a
number of
2 but I did this as much for
things) 2 but
Λ
the Venezualan Defense Ministry as I did for
the United States at the time. They were
concerned.
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?
.:
It was. They had picked up a lot of my
material from earlier times, in the form
and memes that.
e
of mend lectures^ I had written on these
subjects. When they set up the school, I
talked with them on the program of instruction
و
that they were going to give give. The first
adoption of any of these principles was in
-42-
Guatemala, and it worked very well there for.
a time.
Λ
The Latin Americans became quite
enthusiastic, though again jealousies come in.
Λ
They thought the Guatemalans were boasting
too much about it. So, when
"
So when I was told that
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
• O'BRIEN:
problem, I said, "Well, get them to emulate and
try and beat them and get a healthy rivalry
"
going, which is what happened actually.
I suspect [Fulton] Freeman is there as ambass-
ador in Columbia when you're there--no, Freeman
was in Columbia.
بود
Yes, he was in Columbia.
Venezuala
I can't think of the guy who was in Ven
that was Ambassador.
U he was from Arizona and was a journalist.
Not [Maurice M.] Bernbaum, LANSDALE: No.
Well, how is he to deal with, and do you get
a chance to see [Romulo] Betancourt or aný
of the political leaders?
LANSDALE: Yes, I saw political leaders there. I had
five days in Venezuela, and I think I got
two hours' sleep all the time I was there. I
[C. Allan Stewait]
found our ambassador there at the time very
and very good to work with o
open-minded I wrote a report, coming back
-43-
e
from Venezuala afterward, and submitted iton
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
Venezula
come out with a report on Venezuala, and here
were the main points of my recommendations and
findings.
"1
!
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
Λ
found out that much, and the recommendations
are sound, and we'd discussed this before he
left, and we're working with them already.".
Λ
You don't have to be in a place long.
:
a very
For example, we had a pretty large American
community down there who themselves were
بو
practically government: U.S. Steel and all
Λ
our big oil companies and so on. There was
very little relationship between the American
-44-
business community and the U.S. Embassy, and
I had urged that they meet maybe once a week
Key
Λ
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)
n
and that the embassy would be very well informed
of his
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 charge
In talking to the vice
O'BRIEN:
president of U.S. Steel operations down there,
Л
Q-e
"you'd and say, "One thing you would change if you
´had the power--what would it be,
be?"
and he'd
-
6°5
tell you something like this, you know, so,
و
un, it was rather easy to come up with the is that
thing..
Did you find them fairly knowledgeable and
enlightened about some of the things that you
were very
-45-
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
Very much so, very much son.
Like rural economic development, a
tural development -
بو
and agricul-
Particularly the oil companies, and I was
Λ
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,--
Λ
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
over they were really experts at explosives,
and they weren't the student type of revolu-
tionaries and so on, who also were present
in Venezuela.
But in
in seeing what they were
doing, it went far beyond a company paternalism
I They
type of a thing for employees, that started
credit systems with farm groups and housing
projects for people living in the vicinity
plants--e
ہو
of their employees not their employees so
much, who also gained a great deal out of this.
Λ
And then U.S. Steel, in pushing its developments
-46-
way down to the south.
[Interruption]
•
Λ
He-probably
O'BRIEN:-
wouldn't do it; he'd chew the wire-in-two
here:
ހ
n't olec
Oh my God. _ It's a wonder he-hasn't electri-
2
cuted himself. (Laughter]-
LANSDALE: Yeah. It's not yours, it's some of mine.-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
OBRIEN:
LANSDALE:
Well, I'm not worried about that. - Wires,-
these sort-of-wires can be replaced.
not sure... about yours.
2
Worse than rats.
e
You
I'm-
Well; he's a-spirited animal and he can't
help-admiring that:-
Yeah. ¶ Well, one of the stories on Kennedy
ھے
On my reports
I'd like to put in was:
from Vietnam in the very early days of -- just
it)
before he was inaugurated, and he read it
Λ
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 Dinhe
[Ngu-Dunh] Diem had located down in the midst
1
of a communist-held territory, and I was very ·
:
-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
.99
و
on it. And about the á.
•
•
It was still
January, 161, about ten days after the inaugural,
Λ
my telephone in the Pentagon rang,and this
Λ
voice that sounded like President Kennedy's
told me it was President Kennedy talking, and
Λ
he had read this report of mine and wanted me
to have it published in the Saturday Evening
at the time
Post. I was wondering which joker in the
Λ
Pentagon you now, was imitating this
Harvard, Massachusetts accent and was putting
So 9.
me on, and I said, "Yes, yes, yes." I then
лл
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
2
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
Λ
they published this thing afterwards as a
report that the President wanted published in
their magazine.
بي
-48-
·
O'BRIEN:
Well that:
•
You had taken /
.course,
coul
Λ
you'd had that interest in Vietnam and Laos.
You talked to a lot of people, as I under-
in
stand, about Laos and Vietnam and the incoming
administration.
Did you have any intent or
pupose 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
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, 2 would want me to a explain what was
20--
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
to
help themselves rather than go in and do
Λ
things for them. It was mostly on the nuts
of 9.
and bolts on how you go about doing this, and
Λ
n
the individuals you'd pick to do it, and how
品
Λ
you'd select them, and please let's have
Λ
highest quality and fewer people doing these
-49-
O'BRIEN:
things.
Well, you have some successes and failures
in--I guess mostly failures in the last of
پور
the Eisenhower administration I'm thinking
Laos is the immediatè
in terms of Laos.
problem in 1961. How do you respond to some
of these people who are in policy-making
Λ
positions at that time? I'd like to get
و
your feeling for them - people like (Walthers]
Robertson, in the State department--ople
نو
ላ
Robertson and [J. Graham] Parsons; ^ John Irwin
و
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,
Λ
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
always in Talks,
named
1
and talked with me expressed
similar beliefs to mine, so it was very easy in
Λ
talking to them, and there were others in the

-50-
O'BRIEN:
.LANSDALE:
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 . . . of Interruption]
Well, Laos, as I understand it, is, with the impact
:
Λ
gone C
n
aid that's going in there, that it really
Λ
that
л
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--of 159, 160--
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?
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,
Λ
of the
-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 establish-
ment 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
n
other organization that's nationwide in the
country, such as agriculture, even the
administrative structure that usually comes
بشرالا
under department or ministry of the Interior
^
won't really have the manpower, the communi-
cations, and so forth, that the military forces
ao.
Λ
Λ
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
then
this, but, given that, there's still energy
'n
and co
joi
and personnel involved in that who have a lot
Λ
of man-hours left over that could do other
things
Λ
0
and essentially, this is what I was
trying to get the American advisory missions
-52-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
to do--not only the military advisory missions,
but when other agencies would get in and be
working on these things, to themselves become
interested in the military doing such things,
•
and aiding and abetting, including economic
projects and educational work and so on.
Well, in this Laotian deterioration that takes
D
A
place, you know the competing people there--
I Nosavan Ice
Phoumi Nova and Souvannah Phouma and
all--how do you read that in 1960 just prior
to the administration coming in? Do your
How do you see Phoumi; how do you see
Souvannan Phouma, as people? First of all;
have you met them at any time?.
Yes, yes, yes, I didn't know them well at all.
و
I'd met them at usually at formal gatherings
of one kind or another.
The main thing that
I saw in Laos in the way of political stability
actually stemmed out of the king of Laos;
So this
g
was the only unifying political force that
existed there in the minds of all of the various
Lao leaders whom I'd met. So when the others
started splitting and opposing one another, I
-53-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:...
had already felt that our best bet was to
turn to the king and force him to--or, not
force, but to encourage him into taking the
Λ
leadership role that would be the one thing
acceptable to all these leaders. Instead of
that, we were starting to become parts in partison
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 o
Λ
^
and we fell in love with the factions and
and so forth
people, almost unconscious of the fact that
i
we were doing that. The paratroop leader
there
•
Kong Le?
... Yes, Keaks, who kicked over a revolt, had spent the
Λ
thing!
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
-54-
O'BRIEN:
like that the next morning, and somebody there
Λ
Emong the Americans should have been sensitive
enough to have said, "Well, aren't you feeling
well" for something, you and had gotten
.
some feeling on it.
But th
this sort of getting
U
in bed with people socially and saying, He's
And He's all right, "
"
a good fellow," and "he's my friend," and excusing
=
everything is a common blindness, and this had
worried me in Laos quite a bit.
Λ
a
"Well, I get the impression from reading of
this period, that there really is some lack
of coordination in the various efforts that
there another words, the ambassador is
are
in
not completely privy to what the Agency is
doing, and the Agency is not completely privy
Λ
to what DOD is doing through the PEO office.
Do you get that feeling? Maybe in regard
[John F.]
to the Parsons-Irwin-Reilly mission that
goes out there, do you get any feeling over that
at all?
LANDSALE: Yes, I'm trying to recall.
crisis at that point, and
out--Parsons was on home
•
•
We hit a
the group that went.
leave, and we had a
Λ
-55-
meeting in the Pentagon in the secretary of
Defence's office, and there were a mob of
people there
^ .
There were ?--I
can't.
quite recall now what prompted the meeting;
نٹنا
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
Λ
ہو
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
the time, the
Secretary of Defense--I think, I wonder,
Jr.
that might have been [Thomas] Gates (JP) at
يو
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 situa-
tions on the thing" and I said, "it should
Λ
tell everybody here just one thing. You've
ç is
got an ambassador who, on home leave here
he doesn't belong here; he belongs out in
Vientianə right this moment and the rest of
-56-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
you who are asking questions ought to have
people out there with him who would tell you
immediately and take a first-hand look."
And the a
Λ
I remember. Irwin was picked
he
right on the spot to go immediately, and said
to me
Λ
on the side, "You and your big mouth
S-
youknow." [Laughter]
Well, did you get involved in any of the
meetings on Laos-after the Kennedy adminis-
tration comes in, and some of the jockeying
that goes around?.
Some of them, yes. I can't quite recall
which meetings they were at the time. I was
in on some of the questions of the support of
Meos,
"
the Maos, the guerrilla forces.
Λ
wikite
Well, how did you see in terms of a strategy
Λ
=
for the area? There'sa, as I read it, there
that are
seems to be some various strategies proposed;
one is you know, going down the full road
behind Phoumi and supporting Phoumi, and
another is the panhandle strategy--I've never.
been able to quite understand what the pan-
if
handle strategy was--that _ you know, rings
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
-57-
a bell..
Hmm, yeah well; humm, my memory isn't too
good on this thing. There was some talk
a
I there
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.
Well, there's also suggested in the Laotian
Λ
crisis as early as 1961, the use of strategic
bombing on supply routes, and even, as I
Λ
Λ
understand it, to Hanoi, as early as that;
and interdicting ^
Δ
ላ
in oddicting 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]
was called o
○ 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?
-58-
LANSDALE:
Well, I had wanted the Laotians to defend
own
their country, and I was all for the work
Λ
Meos
2
with the Macists and so on of doing it.
i
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
and other worko
?
in,
And on the bombing, I felt that as long
means of
as you had all of the communication with the
Λ
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
q
with the people would be dead wrong. I used
to remind them of what [Winston] Churchill had
wit
يو
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
n
reverse effect as far as trying to stop the
".
ambitions and aims and so forth of the North
Were,
Vietnamese, who after all, the guys organizing
Λ
Λ
-59-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
99.
the Pathet Lao and pushing on into the area.
n't /
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
Λ
Vietnamese out of their attempts. I'm a
great believer in exposing things to bring
such pressure.
Well, how do you see the relationship of Vietnam.
and Laos at that point, or do you?
Oh, yes. The passes and the Hochi 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
ہو
و
in there, and secretly, and using them up
Λ
Λ
to try and stop that, and I was opposed to
that I I didn't want to see intervention like
that from the outside.

O'BRIEN:
Well, when does some of the covert activity,
LANSDALE:
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?
I think it was the Kennedy administration
there had been a little of it, or there had
been talk of it, in the Eisenhower administrațion.
އ
There had been thoughts along that line by
the top Vietnamese leaders 2 - 1955)-1562
"
و
and I
remember President Diem's brother, went to
I
✓ in
his older brother,_went into Laos about
'55 or maybe 156, and had come up with a scheme
Λ
very similar to that at the time. He had
talked about the mountain people of Laos
being akin to the mountain people of Vietnam,
Λ
and wouldn't it be good to get some of our
mountain people in with them, and together
they could be trained.
Λ
O'BRIEN: Yes, well, you're in Vietnam in the middle
of the fifties, and then you go back in 1960
Λ
in the late Eisenhower administration.
What's
changed, or has anything?
-61-
LANSDALE:
Oh, a great deal. Excuse me.
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
4
What changes do you find?
[Interruption]
Well, the main change was in a growing isola-
tion from reality of the constituency of the
President of Vietnam, a repression of, you
=
might say, a loyal opposition or a noncommunist.
Λ
him
Λ
opposition to them in political termso
There were
professionally some among the military that.
و معاشب
was taking the Vietnamese military apart from
their people more than it had been when had
left, because I had gotten them working very
the people on
Λ
closely with a number of
projects,
a growing isolation of the American
and a
embassy in particular, but including some of
the American agencies, from the Vietnamese
Λ
officialḍom, 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
-62-
Vietnamese
and so forth by public officials or
people connected with the regime in Vietnam
so that the information-gathering process.
=
n
of the United States there was devoting an
exorbitant amount of time on sort of nitpicking
The rela-
In
on the people that were in power. The rela-
tionships, such as the ambassador with the
Λ
president of the country, the ambassador
ベ
would go into details of malfer sance in office
and so forth, or mishandling of funds by the
'
Vietnamese on an internal matter, and the
president would have to correct him and say,
"
"you don't have all the facts, and the ambass-
Λ
ador would say, "Yes, I do; too. This to me
Λ
was very poor. I felt that we had some
who
و
Americans that were close enough to the top
officials of the Vietnamese
Vietnamese (who
(who 
weren't
ለ
present in the country always), who should
n
be brought there and told, "Look, we under-
stand these guys are doing something wrong.
-63-
Can you go in and get them to start doing
things right, as
in
^
a friend of theirs?" rather
than going and trying to scold them and
イ
something and getting the backs up of people,
and they'd figure, "Well, these damn nosey
^
Americans only got half the facts, and
.
Λ
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. C I also
· felt that Diem was paying too much attention
to similar types of his own people, his
in turn,
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
ለ
^ .
cases against them so that they could take
actions, and he, in turn, was getting too much
=
Λ
-64-
secondhand from people, and this tended to
isolate him more, since his main intelli-
gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu,
who was an ambitious person, too. I felt that
it was
a poor arrangement on the Vietnamese
:99
side. I personally urged Diem at the time
to get in touch with some of his opposition,
Kat
and at which point he asked me where I had
been at certain times of the day during my
ル
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 an
you
'know
I'm a friend of your country's, and I'm
Λ
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
و
و
people desire, and if you a spend your time
and money and efforts and so forth watching
Л
-65-
O BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
a guy like me, I'm sure you're doing a lot.
more for someone else you really suspecto
aña
How would he react to something like this?
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
at the time, one of the
at
"
people most critical of him was his vice-
president, and I went over and saw the vice-
president, whose name was [Nguyen Ngoc] Tho,
Δ
and Tho immediately started telling me that
the president had spies all over his office
و
and in his staff and as he was telling me
this, one of the clerks was serving us tea,
"1
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,
11.
this one. I said "When was the last time
you two talked to each other?" Well, it had
Λ
-64-
secondhand from people, and this tended to
ለ
isolate him more, Since his main intelli-
gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu/
^.
who was an ambitious person, too. I felt that
it was a poor arrangement on the Vietnamese
.:9
side. I personally urged Diem at the time
positi
to get in touch with some of his opposition
are
and at which point he asked me where I had
been at certain times of the day during my
"1
visit there and I said, 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
and if
و
people desire and if you & spend your time
and money and efforts and so forth watching
-65-
○ BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
a guy like me, I'm sure you're doing a lot
more for someone else you really suspecto
and
How would he react to something like this?
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,
ለ
and Tho immediately started telling me that
the president had spies all over his office
و
and in his staff and as he was telling me
.'
this, one of the clerks was serving us tea,
"1
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
Λ
-66-
୩
went
been months, so I back to Diem, and I jumped
11
Λ
him I said, You've got a vice-president
himⓇ
who you've made responsible for all the
economic development of the country, and I
Λ
know that you consider that very important ctitici:_l_l
You haven't talked to him for a long time,"
he'd
and I forced him to tell me when you'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
"1
himo
So he did it:D:D:D:D:D:D:CHECK CHECKED: ::_icked up the phone,
and I got the two of them together again
д
He was really out of touch "He promised me
at the time to get in touch with some of the his
political opposition Ⓒn he swore up and down
"Well,
'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
Λ
prison },
people who were in prison.
who had been arrested
^
at midnight and pulled out of their homes and
:
-67-
so on and he promised to look into their
cases immediately and do something about
ito And I said, "I've gotten this from
are
people who, in the opposition to you, but I
Whether
ever
Λ
orts."
don't know you've gotten any reports.
Λ
He said he'd never heard of these cases,
and I think he was telling the truth. He
had no reason to dissemble with me at all
on these things.
O'BRIEN:
Well, why is this?
Λ
Is it the development of
it the
an independent bureaucracy, or is there a
LANSDALE:
n
degree of U.S. influence
on, let's say, the
Λ
Nhu
intelligence, know.
in
There was probably some.
I think by
that time the Vietnamese intelligence was.
way beyond any control by U.S. intelligence,
who initially had been helping it, and Diem's
bother Nhu was really--really had the bit in
his teeth and was his own man. And I suspect,
suspect
,
initially, he was really trying to serve his
Λ

-68-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
brother,
brother, 
and he was doing it by trying to
Λ
get the goods on everybody working for his
brother throughout, the government and anybody
و
opposed to his brother and the intelligence
=
people, picking it up, discovered that if
Λ
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
ہو
intelligence take that was coming in 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
Λ
big room behind the president's office that
had many files and was the main personnel
dossier type of file place.
Well, you're critical of the MAAG [Military
Assistance Advisory Group] operation there.
fifties?
What's wrong with it, in the late 50-52
it /
Λ
Λ
Well, I felt that MAAG under "hanging" Sam
fiftin
a
[[Samuel T.] Williams in the late 50's was
Λ
-69-
an unusually well-run American military
operation.
%
There were some unusual things
being done that made it so. One of them g
was one of the best ideas I've ever bumped
9
into. General Williams brought over the
chief of staff of the Vietnamese army
whenever the American advisors who at that
Λ
time were out in the countryside, but
*
Λ
at fairly high levels, and were running
Λ
training camps more than advising on opera-
tions or anything. But when they would come
--
in once a month for a weekend in Saigon,
Williams would get the Vietnamese chief of
:
Staff to come in and talk to them. The
Vietnamese Chief of Staff at that time was
General [Tran Van] Don. Don was quite
diplomatic, but had a way of being candid in
Л
his remarks and not having them hurt too much
names and
out
when they were told. He would leave out so
on, but he would tell these Americans what
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
-70-
their Vietnamese counterparts in the Viet-
namese army and so forth thought of them, and
n
their work, and their advice, and the reactions
人
throughout the armed forces to them. This
was the one part of the monthly gatherings
with Americans around that everybody would
stop dozing off or thinking of something else
and would sit up and pay attention because
they were the subject of the talk, of course.
This was a very healthy thing.
see where.
Yes, I can feel it
އ
Λ
I would be o
because even though it was tough diplo-
matically, the most sordid truth, wood the
facts would
Prato
hardest facts would come out in the
Α
And then Williams himself had been in
e
Vietnam a long enough time by then--I forget
how long; it may be three years at the time,
Λ
four years--so that when he moved around the
Vietnamese army, it wasn't only just the top
staff officers and commanders who would be
I made
with him, but I noticed in a visit there--I
Λ
-71-
think it was '59--that sergeants and junior
lieutenants and so on would come up and talk
و
to him, and I'd moved in close enough to
eavesdrop on some of the conversations,a
, 
and
^.
these were personal problems, family problems,
and financial problems and so forth that
ين
individuals had, and this was a very unusual.
q
relationship for an American to have. And
since the American was also running our
throughout,
advisory effort too, I just figured that this
constant feeding and contact with the echelons
of Vietnamese military that were down below.
the big wheels was again a very healthy
influence that was constantly at work with
him. So that he would know very well what
Д
was going on in places. Some of these problems--
personal problems--would actually involve the
military work that was going forward, people
griping that something was wrong and so on
ہو
and they were doing this out of a friendship,
=
1
نو
-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 ar ffect them. Later they moved
in an educator--a military educator-- [Paul D.]
Harkins, and.
O'BRIEN:
Well,
LANSDALE:
[Lt. Gen. Lionel C.] McGarr comes in
there before that, doesn't he?
McGarr, It was McGarr, yes, you're right.
It was before Harkins.
McGarr. And d McGarr
O'BRIEN:
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.
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,
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
-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
یزه
was
to start increasing staff and American military
personnel to handle whatever whatever was
coming up out of this whole process.
The
feeling was was that there should be closer
American supervision of what was happening
units,
و
out in Eunice which meant you'd put
Λ
down your Americans at lower echelons and
^
then get a separate reporting system on back,
feeding in the research process of the Americans
q
initially more than anything else. It wasn't
for control; it was just for information that
!
would go into fields of study and this wealed
American
to a proliferation of an military presence
that was intended sort of for the education
of Americans, I think) more than anything else,
Λ
but of course didn't work out that way. You
-74-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
put some red-blooded American boys in uniform
out someplace, and they're going to start doing
n
other things as well. In collecting information,
looki
แ :
they couldn't help but tell a guy, "Well, if
you didn't do it this way and did it the other
"1
way, it would work better, and so on.
و
It's was
an
a very human thing that started working and
then
as this happened, we started building up our
advisory effort more and more.
i
antime
Well, in the meantime, while this is going on,
the insurgency's building up, isn't it?
Yes.
Just what is the condition of the country-
side that's different from when you're there
in the middle fifties -50% and when you go
back in S 1960?
n
operations
Oh, there were guerrilla by an enemy, which
n
there hadn't been in the period from Geneva
on up to the time I left in the end of '560
You could drive roads at night and so forth
-75-
and not be worrying about guerrillas.
There
were isolated incidents of violence, but.
they were very minor--it would be about
with the
crime rate
what you'd expect in any country ^
mish
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
that
유
terrorism was going on. By my next visits
fiftion,
later in the 50 s, there were areas of
,
guerrilla bands at work, with roads that were
المیش نشود
unsafe and so on, in areas
unsafe and so on, in areas that were unsafe,
Λ
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. 9,
نوانه
By the end of '60--when I got
there 23 Christmas of '60--there were fair -
size enemy, Vietcong units operating and
astro
dominating areas,
as it had escalated considerably
by then.
O'BRIEN:
-76-
Is this terrorism campaign on the local
officials as serious as some of the people
S-
have written? about it?
LANSDALE:
Oh, yes.
O'BRIEN:
feeling
Do you ever get anly feeling about the
number of people? I've heard all kinds
of estimates.
LANSDALE:
No, I've got
O'BRIEN:
[Stephen T.] Hosmer's study
there on that, and I haven't read it yet.
I just got that from him. I imagine he's
got a figure in there. The last figure
I remember on it was--in about 66-Wo
n
forty thousand
Λ
40,000 or something .
A
around.
Forty thousand. That many?
LANSDALE:
Yes. These were officials -not
✓ not
their families
O BRIEN:
or anything. But these were village officials +
and district officials, and sort of federal
government officials.
Well, what do you see happening as a result of this
Well,
the ability of
in terms of Diem to just simply govern in those
years?
his ability
Is the value to govern deteriorating?
···-77-
LANSDALE:
Yes: In some ways it was.
Initially, he
was unwilling to delegate any authority
the thing!
in
ور
at all and he had the tendency to try and
Λ
do everything himself. If the problem
came up in agriculture, he would be the
guy to do all the paper work and the deciding
rather than his Minister of Agriculture and
so on. He had gotten over that to a very
large extent later so he had learned to be
more the administrator and executive later
on, as far as putting some authority in the
유
n
.
hands of others. But at the same time, he
also seemed to have lost some of his critical
I in
faculty, of some of the things that were going
wrong, of not being able to see it. He was
getting around the country and visiting, but.
Λ
not as much anymore because of the security
problems. He had been shot at several times,
so that he had a larger and larger security
guard around him all the time, which meant
Δ
that when he went in and talked to people,
n

-78-
they were very much aware of plain_clothes
a11
policemen, secret service types, all around
him, and others; that were screening out
n
people, so that the dialogue between the
president and the people became thinner and
4
:
thinner, and less and less meaningful. So
while he was on paper becoming a better
executive, he was, in terms of being the
ለ
national leader, was being less effective all
Λ
the time because he had no means of measuring
what was true and what wasn'ts, what was
nouite
worth doing and wasn't, and what was work
wouldn'to
Λ
and what wasn't? It was a considerable
Λ
impairment of his critical faculty. This
was one of the reasons I was urging him to
start dialogues with his political opposition;
just
even if it started at opposite poles and^led
و
to tremendous emotional clashes that there
would be some means for dialogue to take
place that would have been useful to him,
particularly if he had invited them into a
O'BRIEN:
-79-
· meal or something, and had some way of
dampening
Jastening
^
fattening the most emotional irritations
out of
ہو
that would take place, just how the people
being
seemed polite at the time, so the content
would have.
of what they had to say would be something
ላ
at
that he wasn't getting elsewise.
Yes, well, as I understand it, the VC (Viet
Λ
Cong] make a great deal of headway in those
years on the basis of the land system.
That was one of them..
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
Well, what..
Well
, w
As I understand it, there's
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
some rub between the U.S. in this regard
and Diem about putting through some land
reform which would cure some of the rural
cultural problems that the French had sort
of created, as I understand, from you know
the Vietnamese moving into the country.
Yes, yes...
.
Q
Well, how do you see that? Are you pushing him
for this sort of things at that point?
he lat
?
Yes. Actually, we have some very sound land
Δ
h
-80-
reform measures on the books and had issueḍ
decrees on them that were good. As usual,
the difficulty 12/6, when you get a piece of
Λ
legislation or something, is then implementing
"
Λ
it correctly) and I was pushing him mostly on
9.
implementing his measures. Now the land
2
reform worked that Diem approved and used
as the basis for his decrees came from Wolf Ladejinsky,
و
and Wolf, was, when he left U.S. employment,
was actually employed by Diem as his advisor on.
that
نو
the subject, and Wolf was getting over and
having breakfast with Diem quite a bit.
Wolf is a very articulate, personable type
of a guy, and there was a great deal of
affectionate friendship between the two meno
So
so 
that Wolf, who is a champion of reforms
and of helping the man on the land, had full
access to this guy and had a way of doing
4.
things. "And I felt that the main thing that
needed doing was demonstrating to President
Diem, who was sympathetic towards this, of where
n
-81-
things weren't going right and changing some
this
of the inner workings of the thing, instead
of just faulting him on intent.
Λ
And his
intent was very sound, very good. I think
he was ignorant of some of these things.
P
going wrong. I felt that we should have
borne down on the matters in which he was
ignorant and tried to get some changes there
and make these things work, because certainly
Λ
landlords and others were circumventing
the law of the land that Diem thought was
operating or when he circumvented it, he
was doing it for good reasons of his own,
-
which was again open to education by somebody
A
of him but he was moving in people whom he .
could trust--who were refugees--into farm
communities and distributing land to them
for security reasons and political reasons
and so on, and then dictating what they
would grow and so on. Acause he'd just figure,
Λ
Well, in the national economy, we need this
Λ
O'BRIEN:
-82-
type of fiber grown or this type of crop or
something, and the land will produce it up
there, and so they should do that. So he
Sort of
Λ
was only circumventing the law^for the
greater good, in his own mind, in his own
extent.
This centralization brings about a reaction,
though, doesn't it?
LANSDALE:
Yes.
TAPE II SIDE I
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
You asked about the falling out between
Ladejinsky and Diem. I know there was
just
something of that nature, but what it
ለ
consisted of, or why, I don't know. I
remember that the American ambassador
This
It would have been [Elbridge] Durbrow?
Durbrow.
Ladejansky
Б
was minǎful of the fact that
was having breakfast with Diem
and was close to him, and, in a rather general
had asked Ladejinsky
ለ
2:
way, to bring up thoughts of corruptions in
Δ
-83-
the government and subjects beyond anything
like land reform. And I suspect that
Lådejinsky had started getting very political
in his talk, as a result of this, with Diem,
규.
^
and that Diem had resented it. But beyond.
this, there was a very deep affection between
the two. When I was there in '59 or '60,
2
بو
Ladejinsky had wanted to go someplace, and
I forget where it was.
I know one
of the places was Indonesia, but there was :
n
another country he wanted to go to,and Diem
had
Λ
hadn't wanted him to go.
gogan
and suggested
that he attend a conference--I think in
Latin America a finally, they had agreed
between the two of them, and L3 dejinsky had
Λ
I. He had
gone on to do these other things that taken
tb
sort of a sabbatical leave to do that.
But
this was a very personal thing between two
riends & I
men, and it was two friends, rather than a
Λ
president and his consultant working. I
know Les dejinsky is very sentimental about
O'BRIEN:
-84-
Diem as a man, and I know that Diem recipro-
cated this very much. There was a point
where the rational thought would end, and
Λ
the feelings of affection and so forth
14
would come over, and say, "Well, even if that
is true and everything, I still like the.
Λ
:I.
"
and want to help him, and so on, and
Λ
guy,
this existed between the two. So, they
might have differed on some things and perhaps
on carrying out land reform exactly the way.
Wolf wanted, but the two men kept seeing
that
each other all the time, and he had ample
Λ
opportunity to work on that.
that's
W the suggestion is made sometimes is
d
that the Vietnamese military has not been.
trained for the kind of war and the kind
of insurgency that they did encounter in
1960-61--they had not been properly trained
Λ
for that before. Is there any validity
in this at all?
-85-
SILICO
LANSDALE: Oh yes,^ They were being trained actually to
meet the challenge that the Vietnamese and
American top officials foresaw, and they were
2
thinking that this--and incidentally, the
French General [Paul] Ely before he left was
thinking the same way--just in terms of
Ⓒ
contingency planning they saw a lot of artil-
lery and armor being given the North Vietnamese
army. So, being given that information, they
saw any attack or military trouble in Vietnam
as consisting of divisions of North Vietnamese
with a lot of artillery and armor coming
across the border. So they built up an army
to meet the foreseeable thing that was happenings
q
that they thought might happen. Instead of
this i
of course, it was more of the same old
و
story again, and there were many of the officers
in the Vietnamese armed forces who had formerly
been guerrillas themselves, who had formerly
had been Viet men in the old days of fighting
Minh
the French, who had broken with the communists
and wanted no part of the Communists and were
very sincere, patriotic Nationalists. But
حالا
-87-
i
1
since they had had
this former affiliation
↑
and had taken their basic military training
with the enemy, so to speak, they never quite
had the same stature among their fellow
officers in the Vietnamese army, for example,
Λ
as graduates of the Vietnamese Military
Academy and the others coming right out of¨
#b
¨high school and so on. So as a result, the
officers corps who were knowledgeable
of how to counter what was happening were kept
fiftian
at fairly junior grades, and in the late 50's.
the highest any of them got that I ever knew
the
about was rank of Major, and they had to take
Λ
orders from Colonels and so forth who had
Colonels
served under the French in very much the
same type of a conventional military organi-
zation as the Americans had put up and were
advocating. And these junior types who wanted
to do different things were simply too junior
to do it and were unable to convince anyone
क
of the need. The initial meeting of the threat
More
Λ
was thought to be a police problem than an
army problem, and there was a lot of work
-87-
on trying to equip and train the national
ہو
police to cope with it and we Americans
did that through our economic mission and
through Michigan State University had a
group helping on administration there. They
recruited some very good police officials from
the U.S. who were quite used to dealing with
9.
urban crime problems in the U.S. 'Well, you.
can't take a man who is very good at precinct
سونا
work in Detroit, Michigan, or Burmingham, Alabama,
or something, and move him out to an Asian
Λ
Λ
%:
country where his problem is: What do you do
when a company of guerrillas comes in and
ambushes your police station? A completely
foreign type of a thing in so that we had
who
police advisors that were insisting on all
policemen being armed with nothing more
than, say, a 38-caliber revolver, with the
A
Λ
Yos,
policemen saying, "Yeah, but people are
shooting at us with rifles, and we need rifles
or something like that to shoot back at them,
or how about sub-machine guns or some--we
need more fire power." Well, it was foreign

-88-
O'BRIEN:
दी
'to them. So there was a mixup on a number of
things on this coping with the insurgency
Л
that was growing, not only the conventional
formation of the Vietnamese army but of a
conventional urban police formation of the
police. And yet, throughout the systems there)
there were many individuals who knew better,
and who knew how to cope with it, and who
were continually begging, "Give us a chance
to do it some other way.
11
Well, in terms of these people we were talking
about
little earlier--the late Eisenhower
Irwin, an
people, like Fitzgerald, an
and Irwin, and Parsons-
po they conceive of the kind of insurgency
at that point
that's developing in South Vietnam, or are
•
LANSDALE:
they
Fairly well.
Fairly well. They were more
aware of, or had more understanding of, the
Λ
needs than did some of the folks that were
coming in sort of brand new to the problem
or who had been steeped in a far more
conventional approach to the problem, as were
some of our military leaders at the time.
But, as I remarked earlier, these were personal
CIANS
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
-89-
.
friends of mine, and when I'd talk to them and
Λ
tell them my views, there was always sympathy
for them, so I might have mistaken that for
^
بو
understanding and so on, and even that was
rare enough so that I felt that [Interruption]
How long is the manuscript?
Ho ho. I went through first. the publishers
wanted me to tell all; another words, just
Λ
write as much as I could for later editing①
they
__and said this is the way people do it. So
=
n
very
I wound up with really three of really long
books, and since I was writing one not too
^.
long book, why I
long manuscript.
wound up with a tremendously
I I
them
And urged then, that I could
^
We could
cut it down to two books, and publish it as
Λ
Λ
two different things, and the subject matter
would have permitted me. They still want
just one book, so I am now going back with
editor's notes and with my own notes and trying
99 had
to.
I started off initially with a
cut-and-paste job, but I discovered I couldn't
do that and retain the proper narrative and
interest
%
entries on the thing, I wound up having
-90-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
.
to rewrite almost of all of it, and recast it,
and retell it in a somewhat different form.
with
I'm about half-way through that, but it'll be
n
a fair-size book even so.
و
.^
good✓ ✓ mainly on the Philippines
Well that's good of mainly
1
and the early period in Vietnam?
Umhmm.
Good, you know that's really
ہے
•
LANSDALE: Well, there's really one big period in Vietnam
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
that isn't known too well, and most historians
have passed over it, and
n
have been championing a
^ .
the ones who haven't
cause, and their work
is quite suspect. Some of the French were
ہو
sort of agents provocateurs at the time,
and they are more or less justifying what
they did, and leaving out important parts of
it.
How about the French journalist (Jean] Lacouture?
What do you think of his work? Is it Lacouture
that's done the thing on Ho [Chi Minh]?
داپیشرو لا
-
Yeah, I'm trying to remember. I think that's
who it
.
was. Well, most of the French writings
about Ho and some of the explanations in
-91-
.O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
official documents of the French, trying
to explain him and so on, by friends, I found
و
very interesting, and I had no way of judgsing
really on i -there was a tremendous sympathy
0 =
and so forth being expressed, and then a very.
Λ
strong attempt to work out an accommodation
♡
n
with him afterwards, with him, by the French.
And again, a highly emotional sensitivity to
with &
و
any interference was what they were trying to
Λ
do, and they saw almost anything as interference.
sof w
9 So
what is written by them, I read mindful
of their sensitivities at the time and what
they're trying to prevent anybody ever believing
that would be opposite at all, or something.
2
different at least:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:ded it was just amazing.
The French press was screaming that I was
starting World War III in Vietnam in 155
Mind if I get this on tape--well, it is
on tape, I'm sorry I didn't realize it was
going.
simply because I think there was a feeling
by the French colonialists in Indochina.o of not
wanting to give up the French presence there
.-92-
;
and it's a human, understandable type of a
Λ
thing. They had been there and associated
there, and some of them had spent their entire
lives there, and here they were having to
give up something; and Swiss journalist once
Λ
explained it to me: It was like a man giving
Λ
up his mistress and seeing some
guy in a
big car driving by in the street and even
here
though he'd given him up, he'd just say, well,
he hates that guy/because he got the mistress
allegedly with material means such as an
automobile and maybe a fur coat and so on,
950
and he
isn't the man that the former guy was.
some of this feeling was very prevalent there
and for some reason or other, I happened to
suddenly become the focal point of it, through
my name or something, on other so that they
went to great lengths of charging me with all
sorts of things that I was
buying up the loyalties of
doing: I was out
sect forces
set courses with
millions of dollars, and things that would be)
Λ
hard to prove that I wasn't, mind you, except
to say, "Look, I didn't have a million
dollars to buy anything with." And they'd
-93-
O'BRIEN:
say, "Well, the U.S.government did, and you
"
Λ
were a secret agent for them, and so on. It
was very hard to disprove some of their talk
and say, "Well, that just isn't so. Except
once in a while they'd get really wild and
claim I was down--I walked in on a briefing,
for example, with French officers telling
Λ
some American visitors from Washington,
down
about how
at that very moment I was trying to buy off
a sect leader, and very naively, with a
بو
suitcase full of money and I didn't know
suitcase full of money
but the guy was going to ambush me and take
all the money and not do whatever I was going
to plan to do. And at that moment, I just
"1
Λ
asked him, I said, Well, please keep on with
your briefing. I want to know whenther the
"It was
guy killed me or not. Crazy. Now these
tacking
that way;
^
were very responsible French officials and
the fact that I'd be miles away from the scene
of some of these things never stopped the dam
circulation of these stories. I don't know
how you ever stop that stuff.
Yes,
Yeah well how about people like Bernard Fall
all t
and Patty Humy and their writings?
Are they
•
•
[P.J.] Honey
-94-
LANSDALE: Well, they're very sound, very sound.
Fall's
background, as was Honey's, was out of
intelligence or information collection units,
in
9
sof
and their different countries. Fall's initial
writings were all out of a French army historical
واحد
section and I had to tell him one time I to read
some of his work originally by the original
But, it was
fi
author. But o
a detailed military
history of operations that he'd delved into①..
بو
and I don't know, I doubt that it was intentional
plagiarism
sm 
on his part. He was probably rushing
through, getting a book published for academic
credits and so on. And Honey, the same way
the
with British intelligence, who were quite
Λ
active in Indochina during the French days.
But it was
ST) --some
and everything
Λ
-some of the stories and happenings A
were just almost incredible.
The
ہو
9
Some
of the French journalists were politically
partisan.
either.
They had connections with the
Communist Party or sympathies with them of
some sort. And Ho had been one of the
founders of the French Communist Party,
So
that
there was always a cultural or comradeship
feeling of some sort there, and when the
=
-95-
Americans started showing up on the scene;
there was
شار الا
32 very paternalistic feeling of ê
"Well, these are our people, 22 these Vietnamese
^
or Khmer g
J
دیشه
or Lao, and you keep your
cotton-picking fingers off of them"
type of
a thing that went to very great lengths J-
Volatile emotions erupting on this type of a
Я
thing. I remember one of the journalists,
✓ John Beret, published a newspaper in Saigon
and wrote a lot of the early propaganda for
They C.
individuals in the French army
and had sort
adventurer/types among them. He then went to
Pnohm Penh, where he started a weekly newspaper
and started also writing speeches for [Norodom]
Sihanouk and the next thing I knew, Sihanouk
A
was accusing me of plotting to murder him or
2
assassinate him and I hadn't Gren been near
2.VER
Cambodia, and I hadn't thought of Sihanouk
n
when this happened.
The governor of Siem Reap
who had been very close to Sihanouk before--
and Siem Reap is where Angkor Wak and the
historical ruins are-- -suddenly died, and the
story started seeping out a little bit with
Sihanouk charging that this governor, whose
-96-
O'BRIEN:
name was
Dap Chuch and I were in a conspiracy
:
to murder him and take over the government of
Cambodia. And it didn't do any good that I had
never metch and never had any dealings
with him, and Cambodia was way outside my
bailiwick but this is the story that's gone
on and on and on.
Well, there was a little bit of truth to that,
wasn't there? some involvement of CIA.
Day Chhun?Yes =
•
•
LANSDALE: Yeah Well, he was a national leader and .
actually had formed the political groupings
initially that supported Sihanouk and gave
him his political powers he
one was the organizer;
he was the chief political lieutenant of
Sihanouk. And then apparently, he felt that
Sihanouk was going sour, and he wanted to get
the government back into reflecting more the
will of the people.. How far he got, I don't
know but this was really something that
q
:
I was foreign to me at the time. I got sent
back into Cambodia afterwards, from Washington,
with
جوتی
various military assistance groups
or g
economic groups of presidential commissions,
ions &
Λ
or
نه
-97-
and so on, and each time
just.
Penh on the thing, I'd^say,
n
check the embassy there.
"I
they'd have Pnohm
wall, you had
"Weld better
Λ
Back would come
word that ? No, Sihanouk was afraid that if
I were a member of the party, I would be
q
going in to murder him. I actually went in
one time; and the chief of police of Pnohm
Penh met our party--along with the foreign
side
minister and so on--at plane when we came
یره
down and the Chief of Police walked right
i
next to me, and
man from now mo"
he said, "I'm your liason
میرے
Λ
and I said, "You're keeping
an eye on me, I know, it's all right. I'm
not going to murder your boss; I have no
idea of doing that." [Laughter] That is
q
strange. And then Sihanouk made a movie-
about 165, 166--in which he played the
in & Khmer
Commander of Royal Naval Intelligence foiling
Λ
a great American spy, who happened to have
my name, and was a role played by some prince Franchinar
^
man who was visiting there and I was out to
overthrow the kingdom, but, of course, our boy
Λ
hero thwarted the ugly American and won the
girl, who was the daughter of the Brazilian

-98-
ambassador or something.
Some French gal
played the role: I've been trying to get
a print of that or some way of seeing that
ie✓ ✓ ✓ I'd love to see it, you know.
movie
It
sounds great and.
•
•
. [Laughter]
Yasi
O'BRIEN: Yeah, I hadn't heard about that. Well, that
does hit on something, though, in regard to
Λ
Λ
Southeast Asia. . As I understand, in that
ہے
Dap Chhor incident, that there was an Agency
involvement with him, through a guy by the
name of
and the Agency does seem
to have a kind of free hand in some of these
fisian
Southeast, nations and I'm thinking of the
[ALEN L]
^ Pope situation in Indonesia as well.
brakes
Can you
see any breaks put on them as a result of
the change of administrations? now do you
react to this sort of activity?
=
LANSDALE: Well, most of the things that they did that
had political consequences of any major size
at all
all -- and certainly a thing with Don
under
and also the Pope thing are only taken by the
Λ
So
Agency after approval up at topsid:C: CID:C Code as far
-99-
as brakes are concerned, they've had them from
the beginning. However, the objectives and
again,
Fi
the intent are approved, and not, the means of
doing it--the nuts and bolts--which are
supposedly overseen by an ambassador. And
when we get down to the level of a country.
where these things are happening, then I
think much depends on the individuals,
individuals 
the
ambassador,
r) and the station chief, and how
Λ
they get along, and again, mostly on the.
Well, no, it isn't either; it's a fifty-fifty
^
proposition.
We have ambassadors who don't
✓
to
want to know or who are opposed all such
are opposed all such things,
and if an order comes down to do it, they very
unwillingly tell the guy to go ahead, but
Д
watch it now, not too far. A station chief,
then, with orders to do some things, will have
i do
is
و
told the ambassador he isn't going to this but
Λ
getting
he starts in things, and he figures, that if he
goes back and tells the ambassador what's
happening, that he's not going to get any.
Λ
understanding and will probably get an order
from a
he
won't
prohibiting him for doing something, and w
A
-100-
O'BRIEN:
"
be able to explain, Well, if I stop doing
this, then this other thing won't work, and
Washington wants us to have this happen.
just
"1
The ambassador will say, No, I don't see it
that way.
Don't do it.' So I'm sure there are
things that happening that aren't told for
this--for operational reasons and again, it's
& judgement of an individual on that thing.
It's not a policy type of a thing from thẻ
Agency.
Yes..
Yeah. Do you find any--in the time that
you're there in the middle fifties as well
as when you go back in '60, 161, and later
involvement in Vietnam--do you find differences
2
between the embassies, between the U.S. embassy
in, particularly, Pnohm Penh and Saigon?
n
LANSDALE: I didn't notice that. It might have existed,
O'BRIEN:
and I wouldn't have even known that..
Well, there's some feeling among people
during
involved with Cambodian relations that time,
as I understand it, that somehow there's an
involvement on the part of the South Vietnamese
in some of the groups like the
LANSDALE:
-101-
yes. c. I remember
Oh, yeah. Both the South Vietnamese and the
h
A
Tai were playing around with groups inside
Cambodia
iag
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
ambodia: the Thairs or the South Vietnamese,
Λ
look
Λ
it's about a toss up which one was down more
Я
on the Khiners 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
Λ
intelligence money to find out, you know, what's
-102-
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
.
happened in each other's sessions and what
he was telling the guy. Then how useful
this was, mind you; I don't know.
ላ
^
:
Well, do you find again, in passing on to
Λ
do
the task force -and the formation of that.
Vietnam task force in the early part of
نو
the Kennedy administration--do you find the a
sensitivity on the part of the people, the
political appointees, to what's going on
in South Vietnam? Are you able to explain
what you're telling me right now about
South Vietnam to these people?
un, only partially. They were as bemused by
the mechanics of getting decisions in Washing-
ton asthey were with the problem that they were:
employing the mechanics to solve. It was all
sort of new to them, and they wanted to do a
n
good job, but in order to do it, they were
you see,
suddenly working with these instruments, that
were foreign to them here. I think that the
gise.
principes in the administration were not
entirely aware of the people they were dealing
"
with in Washington. I recall, at the time, some surprisses,
ላ
9. Rusk was violently opposed in the department
ہو
-103-
q
А
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
in the patient called him, ^
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
of
gainst.?
same damn thing was true against some of the
military against McNamara, for example.
Well, the McNamara and the Rusk, and their
Λ and so on)
unders, ✓ and deputy types of people, and
Λ
assistant secretaries, were trying to cope with
instinctively
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 an
you'd suddenly say, "Well, we're going to
talk about Laos," or Vietnam To or Israel or
something - Yes, Yes, Yes. What have you got
the
in the paper you know? And they were
-104-
?
بلا
و
V.
ha this
guy a
watching see: "Well, it's just I've really
and "Is he going to
done this homework, and-is-it-gonna come up
Λ
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.
n
So then, working on this type of a thing which
I saw very much in the task force on Vietname
Gilpatric, I know, was shocked at the reactions
n
^
of some of the foreign service people that
a
came in at rank of ambassador and so on, that
were sort of the staff assistants on the
assistant secretary and undersecretary level.
night.
They would start a meeting at in fact I was
of I-I
asked to be sort of --I forget what the title
Λ
was--executive officer or something of it, and
A
n
they asked me to chair the meetings. Well, I'd
2
no sooner open it. then these guys would be
Souldn't be
passionately explaining why I souldn'
sitting in the chair of the meeting, see?
O'BRIEN: Yeah. Yes
LANSDALE: I think it shocked some of the Kennedy
administration people. It suddenly revealed a
کات
-105-
feud and so on, and I hadn't said it, and I
personally didn't care that much, you know: ①
I'd say, "Have you got all the hate out of
your system now? Let's go on with the
meeting, see.
"see.n This, of course, would activate
Λ
Λ
it more, but I would say, "Well look, we really
1
do have some problems here we've got to get
to, and if you want, I'll meet you afterwards
ب
Λ
and wardan 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
Я
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
Q get
ç
÷
to effect the work done, its better to take
me off. It's no fun for me to sit up and
chair something under conditions like this,
"
0
O'BRIEN:
Yeah. Were you ever approached with the job
as ambassador to Vietnam?
Yes, Yes,
LANSDALE: Yeah. -Yeah.
a
O'BRIEN: Who was pushing that?
انا شارالا
-106-
LANSDALE: I don't know. I heard about it this first
Λ
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.
=
W
Λ
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 an as I
Д
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
Λ
that." Well, he hadn't at all and there was
い
a long, painful silence, and I figured, Well,
ለ
Cea, maybe he's asking me if I want to be,or
ለ
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
are usual c
all sorts of rumors that house for
It sai
Washingtons and afterwards that Dean Rusk
-107-
O'BRIEN:
was very much opposed to it, and opposed on
the ground that I was a military man and they
didn't want military people in on the situation.
Yeah. Yaso
LANSDALE: And then later I had met one of Rusk's staff
officers at the time, and he was telling me
you know, if
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
sort of.
I apparently had become^a target for a lot of
and so on
q
gossip and rumors at the time. 'But after that,
then, they asked me--Kennedy asked me pretty
Ambassador
point blank--about Durbrow, and I said, "Well,
n
after what you just asked me and so forth, I'm
a little hesitant, but you're the President and
✓
✓ 
President
you need the truth so I'll just tell you right
now, I think he's a very ill man
and 
his judge -
9
ment's impaired by his physical conditions he's
a fine professional foreign service officer.and
could be used some place, but don't keep him on
He's sick, he's on his
in Vietnam anymore.
back a lot of the
A very alert, who
Q
^
Λ
time, and you need someone
^
whoever it is and pull him

-108-
q
out." And they got--Rusk and everything, you
ہے
know "You're off your subject, boy." But I
...
said, "Well, Durby's an old friend of mine,
с
^
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 cause he was quite ill, in bad shape."
و
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
Λ
rank of ambassador which is as high as you
can get in the foreign service. And he was
ille, he really was.
n
Well, how does [Frederick E.] Nolting come into
O'BRIEN:
this
•
n
с
LANSDALE: Well, Nolting came in, as-the, apparently, as the
foreign service's rebuttal to my going on
ላ
Λ
out of thereo
I remember both McNamara and Gilpatric asked
I said,
me about him, and I didn't know him.
"Well, I'd just go on what I have heard from
-109-
other foreign service officers who respect
"
him very much. So finally, Nolting was--
a meeting was arranged with Nolting, and
Λ
to
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
Kenne::C:C:D:D:D:D:D:D: : : : : : : I said, "Well, this looks like
a very good man, and I think it's a sound
99
appointment." I didn't want to be ambassador.
Jesus.
During the Eisenhower administration,
they wanted to make me ambassador of the
to a
Λ
Philippines, and I begged them not to. I
n
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
Λ
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
'
d
you are, and you're going to have people running.
=
Λ
Cond
circles around you, if you know it and couldn't
..
A
lift a little finger to stop them.
به ایری
And this
=
thi
-110-
isn't my idea of a good spot to be in. You
c'asion
just get belabored over that.
LANSDALE: Well, did Nolting ever try to get you back to
Λ
Vietnam, in an advisory position?
LANSDALE: I think so. There were a number of attempts
by the Vietnamese themselves, and unfortunately,
some of them were couched in terms of wanting
n
me to come out as ambassador, by the Vietname: :: :: :D:D:D:_l
se
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
94
third hand and one time apparently President
Kennedy had said something to the JCS because
suddenly my relations with the Chiefs went
و
down to less than zero and sub-zero, and I
Λ
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
n
they think of my being given four stars and
being put in charge of operations in Vietnam?
-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
Girival
was about the time that--no, maybe (William
Westmoreland] Westy was coming in about then-
then
بو
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:
LANSDALE:
for the next few years.
Just what kind
of recommendations come out of that task
force?
0
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
✓
Λ
guide, rather than control or belabor or have
confrontations with the Vietnamese government
-112-
to carry out essentially political reforms,
and getting some of the just criticism of
the opposition considered in the governing
Я
body. 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 a
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
in I
to get very realistic and solving problems by
Λ
A
changing the quality and the approach that
9.
we had. We drew up an original draft that
went to the president, out of meetings that
Λ
-113-
lasted about ten days, at which point, at
Rusk's insistence, the task force went over
to State and became a general, regular body
there. They then proceeded to rewrite our
original instructions and drafts and
و
رج
everything, and both McNamara and Gilpatric
said, coming back from the White House ("Ed,
Λ
Λ
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 not
ca
Λ
go near that group, see" do I actually didn't
vi
get in to some of their policy formation, again
in a fairly early period, on the thrust of
Λ
things in Vietnam, except for some of the
^
Defense people who were over there. I would
talk to them on what was being proposed and
going on, but this was sort of second and
"
third echelon type of a thing, pulling back
out of it.
n
19 But of initially, I was actually
Λ
trying to get a quality U.S. representation
in Vietnam, and actually smaller again than
Λ
it was at the time, and to pick a few key
things, and to concentrate on that, and really
Λ
}
> did or
didn't
O'BRIEN:
LANSDALE:
-114-
A
to get the Vietnamese coping with their own
problems more effectively than they were
doing.
Yea
Well, between this time and the time
^ [wait.]
of the Taylor-Rostow mission, are you involved
in Vietnam on a kind of regular basis or .
F no.
Off and on I was, but again with
second- and third-echelon type of problems.
Λ
n
I was seeing Gilpatric everyday and working
very closely with him, so that a lot of times,
ለ
so
^
as things would come up, he would discuss them
:
with me. But again, I was trying to explain
who certain people were that were named, their
:
backgrounds, and their qualities, and certain
events and places, and going to maps with
gand
him and describing terrain, and so on, what
Λ
the situation really meant that was making
the problem. So I was fairly well out of it.
As a matter of fact, I was working with some
visiting Burmese on their concepts of defense
of a country) and they they brought me in with
Λ
the Israeli who had had a mission helping them
with their defense problems in Burma. And the
بالات ان
Israeli had
ري
turned around to their defense
=
O'BRIEN:
-115-
minister and some of the others, and invited
take a
me to look at their defense system in Israel.
9 I was quite enthusiastic about going and had
everything arranged and was to leave on a
Saturday, when about on a Wednesday or Thursday/
I was asked to go to Vietnam with the other
و
I
mission and stuffy and unfortunately had to
Α
cancel out everything and never got into see
what I wanted to see there.
Well, you end up working on
border
--actually,
2
you,
the seating of the border, then, don't you✓ ✓
^ Sealing
that
2
on the Taylor-Rostow thing?
LANSDALE: Yes. Yes.
O'BRIEN:
What about that preoccupation?
from 218
Where does
that idea come from is that Rostow's?
LANSDALE: Well, Taylor was the one that charged me
with it.
Taylor said,
"Well, you folks, J"-
this is the flight which
یو
started. - "Will each
that
of you write down some of the things, you
think we should look into and what you might
like to look into." So I gave him a list of
Kiat
toes
about twenty things, I'd like to look into,-
none of them being this, of course.
Л
އ
!
--116-
I suggested some other subjects for other people
Λ
himog
9.
on the thing and gave it to them, and he
and
called me back said that it was a very interesting
list a
that I had given him, and would I please work
Λ
on building a defense on the border. And I
་་
a
said, "We what sort of a defense?" He said,
"Well, a system of fortifications or a wire like
"Well
9
:
")
the Iron Curtain in Europe. I said, "Good
God, you aren't going to do that, are you?"
Λ
11
And he said, "Well, look into it.' So that
Supposedly
wash all I was
supposed to do, and of course,
I got called in on other things immediately.
But I wasn't even invited along to go in and
I said, "Look, these are
see Diem with him.
old friends of mine.
do anything I can do you
If you'd like, why I'll
Λ
^
and you can hit them high, and
I'll hit them low if you want.
.")
We can get
"l
some things done that way. He said, Well, you
aren't on our protocol list, so you don't
Λ
Λ
attend any of these calls on the President."
D
We landed in Saigon, and the people from the
were there and
presidency, met us② and Taylor and Rostow were
over talking with reporters who were interviewing
-117-
them plane side, and these people from the
presidency said, "President Diem wants you
to come to dinner tonight" and I said, "Well,
thing
with a
11
I better check on my boss on this Taylor was
Λ
busy, but I grabbed Rostow who wasn't talking
at the moment and told him, and he said, "Go
^
ahead." So, I said, "Well, I wasn't even on
.11
Λ
the protocol, and everything.
I don't care
about going up to these protocol meetings
199
anyhow, but I went in and saw Diem, whose
Λ
question was, "What's this mission doing here?
What are you all up to?" I said, "Why don't
you wait, and they'll be in here to have a
Λ
meeting with you tomorrow, and you'll find
out."
And then it became very personal.
--
7
We
just started talking over his two old friends
A
him,
with 
him, 
and I had dinner with him. And he
brought his nephew in to join us--Nhu's boy,
oldest boy--who had a new toy missile, like a
rocket with a launcher and I was trying to
explain to this youngster who was squatting
بو
on the floor next to his uncle, the president
Λ
who was busily eating dinner-- you don't point this
him I
at him I didn't know how big a spring this

-118-
thing had on it, whether it would take his
head off or not.
ロー
taught
[Laughton) I told him to
☑
shoot it up into the ventilating fan in the
ceiling. We spent dinner, actually, taking
Λ
parachutes and things out of the ventilating
fans, and the kid and I were climbing up
a ladder to get these things out of the thing
in the palace. This was very different from
an official protocol meeting.
Yas.
O'BRIEN: Yeah How is Diem at that point?
LANSDALE:
He was a very changed man. It was the first
time in our talks with each other..
When I met him at the palace that night, his
brother Nhu came in for the first time and
0
sat next to him and when I laske Diem a
Λ
question, his brother would answer it and
I'd have to tell him I wasn't asking him the
questions; I was asking his brother. A very
Л
99
strange relationship at the time②:: ceded I
found that he was a talker--Diem was--and he
was very clear and concise in his statements
نوات
and had too big a grasp of details in what-
ever subject he was talking about.
It'd go
on for hours--details on it, which fascinated
Λ
-119-
me but used to bore other people. But he
did know his country and its history, which
Λ
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
a
something physical as well as mental hazard
or something, I felt.
Any evidence of^
O'BRIEN:
Λ
LANSDALE:
O'BRIEN:
Did he go into that later?
0
Λ
No. There was --mentally, people were telling
Λ
I Just
me that his brother had taken over in the
the
year following this a dominance on thing.
Л
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.
Was he a spiritualist at all?
LANSDALE: No, no. He wasn't superstitious.
was
He
a very rational sort of a person--pragmatic.
-120-
O'BRIEN:
Well, when you get back, you talk to President
Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and John McCone,
Λ
Λ
as I understand, in a rather private meeting.
What happened here?
LANSDALE: Well,
O'BRIEN:
--
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 he
· asked me to stay behind and talk to him
that was when he asked me to perform this
Leaving
other service for him, which was initially to
Λ
think about it, and if I came up with some
Λ
ideas, why to put them down, briefly,--
:
Λ
q
on paper and give them to him. And I said,
MC
"Well, do you want to forget about Vietnam
Λ
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.
Well, about that time, there's at least some
n
thinking in terms of momos that are going
to the President about the only way to save
Vietnam
Λ
-121-
is with a rather substantial committment of
U.S. troops. Is that..
•
LANSDALE: Yes, there was some. Now where.
Hmm,
there was some, and I can't remember just
ለ
where it was coming from. This was one of
السوم
the things that Diem asked me when I saw him.
%
He asked me if he should ask for U.S. troops,
Λ
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
1):
و
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
ald
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he didn't ask. There have been some
I'm sure,
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conversations, going on Hm-sure with some of
That
the Americans before that would be my guess
on this thing because he didn't say, "What
do you think of,.
"1
Is there anything, or
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"should I ask?" which was sort of like somebody
had recommended this at some point, and I
-122-
don't think it would have been completely in
9.0
the Vietnamese context.
O'BRIEN: Yeah, do you get any of this thinking when you
get back?
Any contingency planning or thinking
about the building of troop levels to a more
substantial level, maybe linked with the
settling of the Laotian question first?
LANSDALE: There might have been, and I might have known
some of it. 'I can't recall now of any it's
tat
someplace in the back of my head t
there were
some things like that going on. I turned.
around, just took time off completely from
other things and concentrated on this other
:
problem for a time afterwards.
Actually, through
December of that year, I was sort of holed up
Я
and working on some things. My staff would get
in and out of some of these other things, and
I used to shove them in to take my place in
could
meetings and so on, and I can only then just
get very quick briefings on them, but they were
essentially supporting whatever McNamara and
Gilpatric were doing so I'd just have them
go in and report directly and work with them
directly.
-123-
Yes.
who were
O'BRIEN: 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!
Bowell
Λ
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.
at the time
And I had five or six people like that, but those
رسالة
were my two principle ones.
O'BRIEN: Well, this is about ready to run out, and we've
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covered
quite
a
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