476-10030-10085 JFK Assassination System Date: 5/5/2016 Identification Form senna SE EE SSS SSS SSS Ss SE Eh SSS nena ED Agency Information AGENCY: NARA RECORD NUMBER: 176-10030-10085 RECORD SERIES: ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS AGENCY FILE NUMBER : Document Information ORIGINATOR: ‘CITIZEN _ FROM: TO: TITLE: ORAL HISTORY WITH EDWARD LANSDALE BY DENNIS O'BRIEN DATE: © 07/11/1970 PAGES: 123 SUBJECTS : . BAY OF PIGS DOCUMENT TYPE: TRANSCRIPT CLASSIFICATION: -Not Marked RESTRICTIONS: Open in Full CURRENT STATUS: Redact -DATE OF LASTREVIEW: 06/05/1998 ‘ { OPENING CRITERIA : COMMENTS : 1 Pages 3-21 and 28-34 talk about the Bay of Pigs. Pages 96 and 98 have been sanitized. cn hay
¢ wo | ShMITILED me 99H oo Oral History Interview - with Zdused 6 ETE 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? LANSDALE: . I don’t recall meeting him aia was Presidentg. The first meeting, was -E-beltove, the first Saturday following the inauguration, ' whatever date that was. TI. was called into a- meeting in the White House by {Robert Ss.) " McNamara. it was a neeting,om, actually, on a report that I had written. for (Dwight > Eisenhower It was sort | of ay _ i'm not sure.
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 O'Brien: Beds Doasmgo mein’ sew ceny with McNamara ont [Roswell [J A Gp tile, «embers of the incoming administra- ._. tion, before they actually assumed office? _ LANSDALE: Just before, that is,a day or so before. I'd my A 7 been in Vietnam for a brief visit and got back | a Gust 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 te Know A . got Gilpatric rather than NeNamarag, , . EJames W O'BRIEN; This is, Douglas. LANSDALE: Douglas, Jim Douglaso@aa esl Douglas)» ' Q'BRIEN: How is Douglas to. work with while you're with him?. Is he a pretty. sympathetic person? LANSDALE: Yes, very much so, very much sog He was ‘the one, actually, who wrote the orders and back-
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 consi.” ee ".. -vanding on his part — vnat because my .views weren't always | sopular in other parts of the governmentg 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 Bo 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 planst>, = . 6 06 “Sometime in the fall of sixty. I think thet I heard’ of it about the first time that it ner g- . was brought up to the dayeex’policy group of the Eisenhower administration. I was the Peputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, «4 , ; A at the ‘time; for Special Operations | and used to accompany the Beputy Secretary, who was a. - member of the jmnberpolicy group, to most of
~h- . the meetings that th «had. When Allen Dulles oT — Giienwebesy - 03% raised the notion to Wea LARGE” . th e/Senatd’ grour . If was present at the meeting - as an Assists: . , | . O'BRIEN: What is the ‘inking about it at that time?’ | What kind of operation is oo -v it a basically a' guerilla operation at this point? LANSDALE: Initially,it was. Initially, it was very differ- | ent tham the: way it turned out. It was based on a ‘premise thet ms many people in Cuba were “very _ unhappy with the Gastro 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 supporters of Castro as a guerilla and as Y revolutionary acneon: sof the thought was to back a number - of, {Cubans who either had been supporters of 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 qradua\\ } ‘ thing evolved tairiy deagueey” and apparently there was a | Planning group end? CIA A Gentral .
O'BRIEN: - LANSDALE: O'BRIEN:. LANSDALE: © O'BRIEN: -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 s some of the Cuban military and military types), that is)very militant, r er A: ene’ kr Soper EAE Y were coming, out of 4e vubda as’ veiugees )and they suddenly saw a windfall of man ._ power and started thinking in other terms of use of. them. But this ohange? was, the changed plan towards the Bay of Pigs — WW ded Jonse, =. dhe thingwas- well under way in the inner circle thinking of CIA by December of "60, very defi- — A nitely so. Who were some of the inner circle people at > sown recall ? this point 2} Sabinger;—6fcot! / OLRIEN: £ bene game. TL Rich ard M4 Bessel! was/,. “Let's seep ” we On golly.,"Diek Bissell Jf) —aticharé-MBisselt> was the overall chief of _the group. co Tracy Barnes, was he in. it at that time? racy was’ an assistant to him,~ eee O 4 A fly *’ Tracy, went in the Gotuat plarining, I have my doubts that he- was. . . O° How about Jroe., William Foe. 2 Eoin ye) ee
LANSDALE: . O'BRIEN: LANSDALE :” _ the planning 6 He was one of a planning ‘group who were jb planning the operation, but he wasn't ia chief, and I can't. recall the. guy's name offhand. Oh. well, "maybe when: a Elras get the transcript back} j " MANSDALE. ‘MBybe. 509 O you can. p How about . font Sone of the other ~ | places - aan . “ olen cl) Mann, I gers Ae tom ae es, but initially it was all CIA. ‘They ‘borrowed some military personnel to. help with - Carly ony jearkieny 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 thing. I was worrying about at. Tas a matter of fact, Allen Dulles brought his planners to a policy meeting, a policy group meeting, and they were explaining the concept, end ny questioning was such that Allen Dulles pleaded with me not to spoil the plan at an early
‘stage. I remember General (Lyman Le). oy oot -  Lemnitzer wa 3 sitting in “the meeting; ~ vA a je vas hasreas of the JCS (Joint Chiefs of | Staff} at the time, and he backed up my urging them to get some r‘litary planning in on thato. After th: oo | .ciit among our | poll: — ..yse of that, and then the JCS set up, a special section to plan along with the Caen: Fal—Intelligencé: Agency on that. And who - the hell headed that? + O'BRIEN: This is yet in the Eisenhower administration. LANSDALE: This is all back in 1960. This was still in) théearly planning stageds 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 i or looked | a critical ‘of the concept, and it wast just,too H ‘ OnnGQgd , clumsy and overt) ana a poor-planned foolinge— 3 } O'BRIEN: A\lot of people have knowledge of this, by the A a gue end of the Eisenhower administrations “Hj” LANSDALE: 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
O'BRIEN: "LANSDALE: "thought it was rather closely held. - B= 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 . You don't knew whether the ‘presidential candi- dates." og at: all,.do you?” Yer ..ey were. | There, was a very definite, no, wait a menue e% the candidates, no, rT. don't think they were. As. a matter of fact, it was. in ¥en - still in a rather nebulous stage ‘es, shifting ‘over in ears Novenberg I think somebody told me, “if I recall correctly) that the concept _ was in the form.of a memo in CTA about August, so this would be well after the candidates had been nominated and so on. I imagine that Jus to. a? - it was held by xtwo or three people int the CIA A ; O- at the time. At—keast, the rest of us certainly | didn't know it. I ferget 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.
Sow _ O'BRIEN: - LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: ‘LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: . -9- Well, I suppose you had some conversations ‘with Dulles and with Bissell and some of these people about it. Yes. . What's their feeling? You already discussed Dal a », ~eting you to sort of hoid your. criticism,. . @ Well, ‘Bissell definitely felt the same Wayo Bissell was a very hard-working, intenselperson, en od me almost high-strung type of,individual. He became rather impatient with my questioning ~~ _ of the. changed concept when it took place. (2 Haast thar nitially, - if they had the’ correct personnel /” and sf they had a correct reading of dissent _ inside of Cuba, that was a.fair chance to do "something. My only concern at the time was/: . O° did. tKhe CIA have tis Americans who could work with such a situation? I just” gidnit know - yes of any, “put I was assured that there were such Americanss 2 but I'm not certain that there were, Did you question the kind of intelligence that was coming out about Cuba and the expected reaction of Cubans’ to an invasion/ and the
-1O- . reaction to Castro intial LANSDALE: | Just in very general terms. !:I didn't have © enough concrete and specific information ” myself that was separate from theirs: Most of the intelligence take at the time, avail- able inside the U.S. government, was pretty 2 colored with this dissatisfaction and state-. nents of it. so) 1 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 o a little bit. - ee It Just Sounded ,r00 much, Sia sales job on a viewpoint. I'd question that, whether that was an accurate thing, so. this is about as far as I went. | O'BRIEN: How dees a guy like Douglas react? Do you ) recall? . LANSDALE: Well, he approved of the plan, so he and the - others at the policy level approved of going ahead with it fend. 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 n to give ita real hard scrutiny and to come .
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: - ~l1~ 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 wae vgn £ks of progress. et the reaction of the Joint Chiefs, people like Lemnitzer, towards this? Is there an | institutional ively or bureaucratic rivalry - here in their minds? Somewhat, somewhat © qt was a little bit as though, well, somebody’ s going to be playing Boy Scouts, so this isn't really rivalry. They had. a difficult time taking this really. .-. sere Later, I know, when the JCS got and fel ipe in, on the actual planning of this, they became a mach tore serious on it because they had a ‘O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: share of it. Well, do you get involved in the informing of McNamara and Gilpatric about this? Do you get any way of sensing what their reactions are on first being informed? No. They had apparently known by the time I
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -12- ang + —— met them) 4 . ean 't, get in on thatg The one . person whos] a view of their reactions tdi bhis on Fr Bill Bundy, (fetan Eo would probably be. BBG) who J I know at the time was discussing this with them.- Did you have. oe . ++. oundy and his fic° vse 2% that point? | Yeso ‘nis was a little out of Bundy’ s field. | - He was always ‘trying: to figure. out what: the | chances were, ‘the percentages of win or losse He was, 10Wgy ana I hadn't known the final plan on this thing, and Bundy did, ane he asked me what I thought. . i told hin, "well if the JCS. maybe shade - guarantees something, you can~take, it 10 percent lower than that and m0 along with its I'm not sure that they know a clandestine operation, | but they'd gure know a military landing, whether it would succeed or not. Given some of the -.~ unknowns in this thing, Say thet by 10 percent and go along with. the figure. Well, apparently they had given it a high chance of “Success, the JCS hag because Bundy said, "Well, you mean it's going to succeed then’, I said, yeaa, I -
O'BRIEN: | se ow Al 3. So don't know.” ,I gathered that he felt it would succeed. ve then / you are pretty much out of touch \_ From the Potat Anak. ate ov loatt| & ity Pe 7 with it until it actually comes ' of by You LE? That's LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: ‘LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: A oO MEW; - didn't get inlte any of the changes: in the ) lans there at all‘ ° September erty vw No. I left & around the. first of,December, . "60. I really didn't: follow ‘it from then ong ‘Does fir!’ anyone come to you from the Agency or from State/ or “Frew the White House, as far A as that goes, and attempt to seek an indepen-. dent judginent on your partypjrur bckeround od lly on execee "No. 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 gwar ‘in Defense ‘and the people that are around you. that really have no need to know and direct involvement? _ oo | I wasn't aware.of it. There might have been, ‘but I have no knowledge of that. ‘When ne<thins the operation/ actually begins. * and the landing has taken place, do you come . 7 é
: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: ~14~ into it again at that point at any time? No. — You do become involved in Cuban affairs at a * later time. LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: _ LANSDALE: Later, yes. When @: yu : _ . you. have any- Th we WO the (Maxwell) Taylor “coamstteet”oh Un, makes . Ha inquiry abit tf I met with them once, and they weren't interested -. - with the Bay of Pigso. They were Ma ey in the decision-making process of making dof .policy, and ‘asked me if I had any ideas on how better the Bresident, could be served in the policy decisions and arriving at them. The thing was,right at that moment, McNamara had previously asked me for the same thing, "A ‘and I had ‘come up with a proposal for him "which he put to. Kennedy. I just told them? oO on . . Weti, I had some ideas but I had given them — to somebody else,and I was skeptical of the - A boss anyhow, ona this was on putting together -- © = . task forces. The Kennedy administration had eliminated, a bureaucratic voonédoggling thing
an . sai what the hell was that called? _2- O'BRIEN:  ocRt ’ (perations Coordinating Board Ja LANSDALE: Yes, the OCB) I pointed out that the one - good thing about it was that the principals met for lunctipand I said the. rest of it's. for We birds, Put to sot men in oc --~snt who are talking “tot. ae . - wea 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 "seoretary or “deputy secretary or under er secretary Oo ovd $0 ON, Wad "say, “well, ‘we'll take care of that 8a good way of doing businesse Sa with the . president's own national security man sitting in on it, going back and telling hin this is’ going to happen for these reasons, why, it was a good control. mechanism. F so essentially all I told the Taylor ‘people and told . McNamara in my paper was that this function naa | been eliminated, along with cutting. out t diot of dead wood, and there was some live wood i, “jfow - about restoring the live wood? This oe sentiatiy was what my proposition was with the task. force, A
-16~ of getting the people most. concerned with something? who ¢ could operate for the president, and having them get together and foe ie re ee ee help form the policy, get the president's ‘approval, and they were the same ones’ who 7 couldsst:~ _ 5s I> immediately. | | ~~ aut to create another big wureaucratic thing. F ana 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 ocE again, not awites but it got -out of hand. Anytime you Eeyto change the governnent around, it seems to come right back . A You BRIEN! Ji Yes) we have atendeney of doa - dn form again and close ranks~ on aalt But “that ‘Yo Lanson. “was all,fI 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 A _- connect him ersonall with the ictures of Pp vy Wheat Pp him and so on, on Tee, and I wondered what the — Teo - youngster % was doing sitting in the meeting
vw 7 ¢ O'BRIEN: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: - LANSDALE : -_ government, would operate at a decision level, O'BRIEN: _ ~17- talking so much. Was he pretty tough ¢ | | Well; he wasn't tough. He was the most indter- ested of anyone in the room there of what ‘I a would say on things and plague me with many questions. | . How were his questions? Was he fairly naive - _ about the problems? Now, this was on probleme questions of how the “A . A and they weren't naive at.all. He had avery — good understanding. He was very much concerned a about his brother! getting good are in the way of information and full details “oP alterna tives and so on, on a policy decision. Well, #f=you;~you-know, in that period right after the Bay of Pigs--of course you had a lot ef contacts and friendships in other places LANSDALE: Yes. O'BRIEN: . outside the Pentagon. , What kind of an impact - deed. ; jdtd? the Bay of Pigs have, let's say over in. the Agency, and State Department, and in Defense, and in the White House?
218- LANSDALE: It was a traumatic: experience ‘at top Levene ihn O'BRIEN: of the government. I think it affected President. Kennedy more than any other single ” A thing. It was almost a taboo subjectgif you ‘were going in to do business and to get an approv. 2 o- somothine - .over even hinted ae oe Such aU ube os .. vuban affair. It was an oa" | : iutenseftlly 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 A ‘during the daytime working hours they just aye didn't even want to, contemplate it.. “And yet they were honest: énough 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 then, ‘very much so. Well, in terms | of the Agency, there! 3 a “number | of programs and, of course involvements in 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
oe LANSDALE: las encouragement of some of the military who -19- rather than the Agency. I guess what I'm trying a say is, can you see any decline in the aatnpy influence fa? the Agency "EY decisions? Yes, I think so. Thin not certain ‘that at was , "well _ the military as such. It might, have been the — Pref uP D0 ke “Werranara personally,” - were somewhat interested but wouldn't really have expressed the interest unless they were - directly asked, and there always had been some feeling of juneasey#I think’ would be the best. ss, word to describe itj--among the military about: : type of | any crandestine, operations. They felt that once it got over into guerrilla type of operations _ or anything that would involve a military subject, thet it would be far better to let the military — establishment of the U.S. handle | at. "But that would be sort of a 2 dinner-codtail party type of a gambit on their. part,rathor than sitting and - “a planning and so on of "We must grab some of - dhe, PRE) " | ven though among themselves they talked that way. They didn't express it in terms of .. their attendénce at policy councils or even in
~20- \ ‘talks with people like the Secretary of Pefense or the civilian executive Side of Defense. “On this, I think that McNamara himself probably. started thinking initially that, this was a military operation and just to be more efficient and effective,the military should take over 0 “A such things. I imagine that he talked that way | who ot to some of the military people } were seeing “him from the JCS, andthe Chiefs, and from the. intelligence community, the military intelligenca community. é: 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.. © A 50] sctuariy, wan't a military ambition to set up a nivel intelligence agency to ve CIA) though there had been tremendous rivalry between the military service intelligence agencies and “2% CIA and had been right along. from the initiation of CIA originally. But this - was sort of a business rivalry,and it wash - A S,
-el@ sort of: dealing with them, of categories of work, and where the boundary lines of who did what on the things 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 u Swe !12 do it all, end you go out of business J-that A. feeling hadn't come up/-- but kivtle atter the. Bay of Pigs, the DIA and its creation, a lot of | - the people in that who were civilian employees, LANSDALE: Defense Department employees, had an idea, "We can do a better job than Cra," and in a much. wider field than the service intelligence agencies (peek tone. aa 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, GTA, and organi- . zations? Are there enough rece om are are pnese oS operations just simply too vigh, | Wretdiaa They mi ght be too vig. (me need to know things is a very elastic ‘bit. --I'm certain that the chief executive of the United States,
O'BRIEN: “LANSDALE: me ~22- in whose name these works are accomplished, ~ would have no idea that he would ever desire. “40 know some of the ‘things that they're working = on - very nerd you discover whole buildings and all sorts of equipment busily acoumusering facts °° Ba “> vould say, iI can't BCG i. svates ever » needing to know some of thaty "ak yor he would hesitate, given the A. . 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 youv'S. “A so got too bigan establishment or not. Do you ever take this question up, or is this question ever raised in the administration by Phe. civilian peopie | 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 a number of people, and I autos felt wee it was? l 7 more efficient and effective to have a very 2" small group working and to choose them with very
“oe 0 7 -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 a and other. economic work, and so on. I used to ; point out the enbassies:-for example, behind . _-the Tron ‘Curtein--that would get. ae sdimated by - 2 -e being * TNT ‘de and so ong i in Eastern Europe, - for example, it would neppeng thar Toure wind up with an anbassador and two or three people left in an embassy, and their work would increase in quality, and their representing U.S. interests would seem ‘to improve tremendously when that would happen. - O'BRIEN: Does the were that you get this reputation, 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? — | | . LANSDALE: Yes. It made life rather difficult. With | ; much of the work had to do in Washington, I came back from a lot of operations abroad and went up into policy-forming levels in
Washington almost immediately, and into facing people who were very sensitive on my presence abroad initially. Since I didn't just stick in.a regular military category but would get over into their own subject matter, this maiie ‘them very unconfortebleg en I can understand it.while it happened but it was carried to | 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 SO Ong xa I would get backing throughout the U.S. - government for this thing/ 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 wgpula be times when these individuals would show up in.a country, and the first time they sent a message to ne, the ambassador would ask them kindly to leave the country, to get out of there, just because of my name. I wed. , mash ~ , ; ; apparently the enemy to some. of these “A nO, ,
| 2s. FI between. Thailand and Saigon, and there was a on . people. One of my assistants was traveling ‘coup going on in Saigon at the timepan@ his plane, which was Air France, put down--commercial a . A oo, 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 A 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 . B place to Sleep at nights so it became very emotional and very silly, and detrimental to . the U.S. For example, once in Indonesia, in meeting our folks around the embassy in Djakarta, I had spotted an assistant army attaché, who was the one American, along with | e f\ . “A one of the economic mission guys--there were
~26- “two Americans ~~ who were not only best known by the Indonesians but were nae coanes oui | there was an. affection theres. on I Mave, vole the ambassador at the time, afterwards, make real use of these peopled, the Indonesians believe them and there's some antipathy towards the U.S.'.but they make an exception, these twopand they're just inveiuable 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 Cour staff, and this lad who was tall and blond-- a Nordic type, if you will--would go in, and the small brown Indonesians @wout and their families—welcome him like a 1ong lost uncle/ or brother or something. The children would run up and jump in his arms and climb all- ‘over him, and he was Uncle “Something” to then: i later, when ‘the Soviets start moving in | sand’ [eurface- to-air missle] missile sites into _ Indonesia and the U.S. needed to know what. sort of antiaircraft armaments weregoing ing? A ~*~ our embassy couldn't get the answers to its
O'BRIEN: - LANSDALE: -27- I suggested that. we. get. the State; Defense warn sponsorship and send this one fellow who es*— 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 pret and. asked him what he thought of them and so on ‘the first day he was there. That night he he ; got back, and wrote out a radio message / and asked the ambassador to send it to me, at ; ; 7 OA which point our ambassador told him ‘to leave — the countryg——J Now) this was Jones? That was Jones, yeso <==” and he said, "Well, a _ . ‘ A let me put that in the message" so I jase asked the Department of State, + ‘please let ; 2 s Jones know that you're sponsoring this guy, , “ -¢00,.snd there might be some more things that he finds out that you need to know as much as uv an) — +0 aa : we do. So they told Jones , just tO sit back
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -28- and let him do that. We have some wonderful Americans) and this was vhat I «as trying to a0) whe to fina out which Americans have not only: our interests at heart but were enough interested in foreign eeunteios to te mo ag understand and have npet a véally would be serving the best interests of other countries. in things. I'd far rather see one man get in on something like that than - send a whole team in with-all sorts of rings Jena sort of aggravate a situation, than do ‘something rather Simple. , Almost sensitivity training. . O | G— eayapars: Incidentally, along these lines, I've: got a good story for your account. Great. : 7 About*the time of the Cuban Yassile dvisis, McNamara came back from a meeting at the White House one day and asked me to provide the means for President Kennedy to talk to - the Cuban people on T,.V< ‘How: the hell dia I % 4 o- know how to do that? He told me -smet-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 TW, stations broadcasting and get the people in the country to & imediately’to their TyVy sets .and watch a program. ‘I called scientists in from all over the U.S., who were electronic whizzes on this type of a subject, and our ‘intelligence people and everybody else I could think of to get some information together in a real crash basis. ‘CIA couldn't give me details, e% technical detailsZon any A: A of the TV, Stations in Havangay ana elsewhere. . Fone of the Defense civilian scientists--and I can't think’ of his name offhand; “Bast European name--left the room and came back ten minutes later and provided all the. technical infor- matin, to the great amazement of everybody | ‘there. And I said, Where the hell did you get that?/ ana he said, “Well, I went out to. the corridor, in the Pentagon/ (where we were having the meeting, wht in one of the phone 1 raY booths there, and I called a friend of mine
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -30- down in Havana who ‘operates a al station jis and asked him. He gave me all jee” dope, and I. just wrote it down." So this is the “vay we got the information for it. Fone intrusion | ‘of the nv espace never took place, but we got ‘the means together and some airborne” wh - transmitters. Tt. was developed finally by the hot | that tbe Navy) and the project--Itve*asked +e~So, put on a sort of sled so that it could be picked up and changed over from one aircraft to another, or used elsewhere later when we- started the. rly broadcasts in Vietnam, this Navy equip- ment that ‘was “initially intended to an ee ae vw President Kennedy talk to the Cubana was, the broadcast equipment that was used from the dont  ‘air--flying in the aircraft--in Saigon downs eC - to initiate th / broadcast din Saigon in ° 1965. Why didn't it come off? put ; It took us too. long to figure, ways of getting in on the theme and finding a channel and to finding a way of getting people thet’ do that.
Ci bee tne ees et EE EG SOY Oe EAD nt wane, aad catecPetN ties 2 natitetbersist O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ‘proponents of this, outside of yourself? Ah Gg Tt took us t#en, twelve gays to do it, and the time for them to do it had passed over, and A the Russians stood down in the interim, so the. need had passed. _. «Well how do you come back into. Lae well, 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? Yes. 7 . How do you see that? I was in the Marine a f ties . Corps in the late 50+s) and there was a good “ deal of guerrilla and counterguerrilla training that was going on, and it becomes a part of er . | fe the new administration. Who are the principte” Do you have any conversations, say, with Bobby-- well, you don't really see Bobby until after April@ But do you have any conversations with the president, let's say, meeting with him... .. No, no)I didn't@ I don't know who talked to him A ’ about this. When he came in office, this was already one of his themesg Where he picked
we ~32- that up originally, I don't know. I was rather surprised-—he seemed to have seen copies of ‘lectures and other things that - 13d given on the subject, _s who had -O BRIEN: — LANSDALE: | O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O BRIEN: LANSDALE: passed those to him and who had talked to him about it ; I just don't know. oo A a 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? No. ‘How about the rest of the Joint Chiefs? No. Taylor was opposed to this type of thinge 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 © That's what I was wondering about, Taylor's role in this whole thing. He is opposed® Well, he was the one thatein the very early A
¢ mte Gane oe a ARATE GET ARTE Seente on pee Meet ati, he lP a alt AE lett Ht tettacteth pre we een cage A ~33-— formation of the- Special Forces in the Army-- - he was Chief of Staff of the Army at the time J- — ard 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." No r 7° oo ; celly aor Tote h ono géeen berets, and he sted: the-——! 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 outtitZthat somebody A : would have to go and jump in and work with. oe : oN gquerrillas. 7 again, this is a rivalry type of a thing,so. there wouldn't be another oss loftice — } ae of Strategic Services] ~-theze“d, be a CIA or’ Sb . something doing it, but syieyatveraniyse part , ; . a “ of the modern military function) so let's: make oo A. a | it military. So he went that far on the thing. | ne But that was a concept-—tyou i, have a regular "force fighting battle ,and someplace hack of. the A enemy - lines, you'd want to blow up bridges and mm
-34- gather information and so on to support oo , your tactical forcelf’ so Wet why not have somebody ‘in working and fomenting trouble back there for the enemy, but connected with the forces? now the concept of peoples! wax -- MoE G sectors} e. ~ fare F ls pushed), We' ve seen jerent in vietnam. and cvsewnerel~flest1y wasn't something that he or others understood at all, that almost C yen of us coethsee-querritiewee counter-guer- xilla, and that people like special forces \ sone vn well, having jearned guerilla operations, | wo aia_then be qualified to start coping with jo oe understand the importance of i political basis for operations and political. goals and behavior and the psychological part ee ree -\ 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 inZ again with Taylor as the ambassador, but ui
~35— having quite a ‘bit: of an advisory role with & dhe o | _ Pit military commanders out there, and influence , . ga Miah : ~“ with them, was fighting another Korea in Vietnam tard Lae ‘more or less. There wes some changes in tactics, ‘ A but , was more use of helicopters just for: verti- cal envelopnent neath Goeest instead of Sfar€ moving guys along the ground to,with the thing. O'BRIEN: Why don' t they | come to an understanding? foarking] ~ LANSDALE+—=I+m=sure™ that's going to “takeza:good=broadcaast— a eo ae for-youy-a» good—tape- 4, a . Qe O_ BRIEN:——A-—diversion wateleast. 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 A : 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 wasf.. a) I've always felt that I was too inarticulate or hadn't found a way of doing. things for myself, but there have been so many other exponents of ‘this thing--not just Americans, but of many countries, who have written rather good books ‘on the subject and on parts of it,that you'd surely think, that we Americans would produce . . top lender some anderstanding of some- a = [Vo Ngu Zn] . Shing that Mao [Tse<tunc] and,Giap and others . Qe we +d . . C ‘have gotten | every page down through the rank | and file to understand. f ne 7 \o: F counterina 42 1 O BRIEN: Well, in the formation of the CI,group--1t was designed, as I understand it, primarily as a kind of educational group for toprlevel admin~ istration people--when do you first come into that group? “LANSDALE: I was never really, part of that group. I was working with a smaller group of executives, of which Taylor was.a part.
O'BRIEN: " - LANSDALE: -~37- This is Mongoose, isn't it? Yes. This was a national security: group of. top executives.close to the president, with the undersecretary of State, and the deputy secretary of Defense,and so on, and the national ‘security advisorg an@ Taylor sat in on those meetings after he got his CI group going. But/ in forming the CI group “inideiarty, Taylor was starting to do some. studies for Kennedy, and Kennedy had asked me ‘to . A help him: ‘So I put my staff in the Pentagon at Taylor's disposal. ‘Initially, in Kennedy's presence, I offered to put together a study for Taylor on resources in the United States ‘and among our alliesifor such things--not allies as much as friends of the United;States in many countries--and this was done with dome CIA and ~ some of the military services and the intelli- gence part of State. They had a little working group, and we had severalsessions in my office A
O'BRIEN: | LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: and put together some rough first papers © for Taylor to start his thinking for the } , fav me q president. Then when Taylor scpleee his. group) aon “A I wasn't invited in on it) and = didn't attend. Sure. wre Swandi “oo got any insight. . woe wk wilsu it, right after the formation of that group, and early--it was‘in May or gune-- they dispatched some teams to go around Latin America to survey the ability of various nations to respond to Castro-type guerrilla activity. Yes, yes.’ . | Did you get involved in the planning of that at all or any of the fallout of that? Just peripherally on both. I forget the,,details on that. ‘I had been worrying about places like OF i; - . . 7 Colwmbia and several other Latin American A. countries close to the Panama Canal and had urged that this be looked into, on some of the “A > . specific things that were being done there. I¥e bod encouraged +a the Coldmbians Start civic action oe A .
a= ‘erereeateenst eee uae ERED 0 seme /O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -39- ‘in dealing with some of the dissident areas and so on. All I’ had done was, not pilan- 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. Well, are you in Colambia in the Kennedy administration ‘at all as. No.-No, the most ‘I did was--1 went to venezusta 4j{A during the Kennedy administration, and Bolivia, ; A No, by that time folks were highly sensitive about my showing up in ‘foreign countries-~ that is, Americans, not foreigners-~and I really A wasn't permitted, ox I was stopped really at policy levels from going back into Vietnam or the phiikippines / ox anyplace in Asia. I begged to be permitted to go down and take a look in ‘TA lace Latin “America ,and Gilpatric was the Gre thet we + A _ the: deeision hod know mace BEGIN SIDE II TAPE t 1 Bid you get to any other countres? A O BRIEN:
tha ¢ Binks weather Be a WS a, LANSDALE: -O- Well, Bolivia... In Bolivia, I was interested in particularly the Bolivian Air Force's | -. work of setting up a public school system over in the eastern slopes of the Andes--- down in the jungles and in the very sparse | settlements. They were really the one governmental group that could get around places. “They were very enthusiastically setting up one-room school houses down there J and flying in teachers and bringing some education in there, — WAS ; which I thought was a great project, andnencouraging Tt Thenys them. A Maile I. was in Bolivia, I gotinvolved with the resettlement of. indians from the Altiplano over onto the eastern slopes into some new communities, in which the whole Bolivian government was involved,afa the U.S. Economic a 7 Diission was working with them, and the ' Bolivian military wag supporting it with trucks © sone, and with, people going in. But/ this was a very exciting, agricultural-community-type of a project of mowing people out where they'd have an economic ‘chance at lite/ and also a chance to own land. It was changing the social
j “O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -1- veh structure considerably for the, , lowest class in Bolivia, and with the armed forces doing it. This, again, was the very first visit. In Venezia, I had come up with some ways of safeguarding our own interests in. Veneavhte Loanion are not only oil production), but we't ave steel mills down there and a number of thingsZbut I did this as much for the Venezujilan * sense 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 esi 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 Oe. and wErnres Fa of -memuszssd léctures, I had written on these sub jects. Whiten they set up the school, I talked with them on the program of instruction a that they were going to B¥ye give. The first~ . adoption of any of these principles was in
O'BRIEN: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: * O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ~h2- Guatemala, and it worked very well there for. ff. . "atime. The Latin Americans.became quite enthusiastic, though again jealousies come in. ay . . . oa . They thought the Guatemalans were boasting .. too much about it. “$0 / when I was told that “ ; . problem,I said, Well, get them to emulate and NW , ' try and -beat them and get a healthy rivalry yoo. , 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 Colfinbia. . Yes, he was in colin a, I can't think of the guy who was in Veneauitha that was ambassador. oh, he was from-Arizona and was a journalist. Not CMaucice He Beinbosmn- LAnsDALE: No- Well, how is he to deal with, and do you get a chancé to see (Romlo)- ‘Betancourt or any of the political leaders? Yes, I saw political leaders there.: I had . a five days in Venezugla, and I think I got “A two hours’ sleep all the time.I was there. I [C. Allan Hewat ] found our ambassador there,at the time very gerd WAY geod tp wmnk wi tia open-minded I wrote a ‘report, coming back P A oming
. ~h3- from Veneaugila afterward, and. submitted ityee 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 anbassadorjenk it was one of these} "You don't want to buy this, do you," and they said I'd come out! with a report on Venezvigla,and here were the main omnes of my recommendations and some findings. “He was just there five days. > He couldn't possible have found out enough to come to these conclusions, isn't that right?” Bless his heart, the ambassador came . - back and said,in effect, "I'm amazed that he . found out. that much, and the recommendations are sound, . and we'd discussed this before he left, and we're working with them already.": . “you don't have, to be in @ place long. . For example, we had a phoney large American community down there who themselves were | practically government}: U.S. Steel.and all . our big oil companies and so on. There was very little relationship between the American |
-hh- business community and the U.S. Embassy aid | I had urged that they meet maybe once a week or once a month-- the’ Anerican 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 statts), (they were very close’ to the police type of . forces, the constabulary down there}< and sedi tha embassy would be very well informed from this) as well as passing some of Ais “information back to these people; and everybody would gain by it. Well, this doesn't take very long to. . : - din talking to the vice in cha 7 president of oS. Ste Steel operations: down there, “you'd and say, "One thing you would change if you ‘had the ‘power--what would it pel" and he'd tell you something like this, yairiow, so shy it was rather easy to come up with this that thing. os | | | O'BRIEN: Did you find them fairly knowledgeable and . enlightened about some of the things that you were very . +» -@
BANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: , Q- Very much so, very much sop. ‘Like rural economic development/ and agricul- tural development¢ ie Particularly the oil companies, and I was” surprised. Standard {Oil Company] of-towvercey! showed me what it was doing because the rigs out, in Lake Maracaibo were getting blown up and their pipelines were getting blown up-~ _by saboteurs coming in who were really expert. ce 4 I found out, later that they were affiliated with communi sts in coldmbi a and had come on: of oo ; overis* they were really experts at explosives, _and they weren't the student type of revolu- | tionaries and so on, who also were present F , in Venezuela. But/ in seeing what they were doing, it went far beyond a. company paternalism They type of a thing for employees, that ot started credit systems with: farm groups and housing projects for people living in the vicinity _ oe -of their Gmployess~-not there employees so much, who also gained a great deal out of this. And’ “then vU. s. Steel, in “pushing its developments
_. “h6- . . ve | Sactesryhe" 3 way down to the south. . . +, He-probably wouldnt doit} he'd chew the wire-in-two" Ce . : ‘here. OQ. O'BRIEN: | . cuted. himself.” “= [Laughter]- af LANSDALE: Yeah....It!s not yours, it's “some of - mine .— | . a) we Cue. . Well;—I-'m.not..worried about. that.~ Wires;- these_sort-of-wires canbe replaced.*" I'm — - O!BRIEN: not sure. ebout™ Fours. LANSDALE: Worse —ifien-rats. C 7. we our ——VWell;~ he's: a- spirited: “animal “and ke can't Ch Pa —— -help~ admiring” ‘that’ ae wee Yeah. F¥ell, one of the stories on Kennedy LANSDALE’ . Oe Lo, I'd like to put in was! ua On my reports from Vietnam in the very early days of ,-just before he was inaugurated, and he read it “A apparently right after the inaugural--one of - the reports was a little side piece that. I: ‘did oon a village in South Vietnam inhabited by some Chinese refugees that: President Nqo Dinh F- (Hge-Bank Diem had located down in the midst of a communi'st-held territory, and I was very - Oh my God. TES: a wonder: *he- -hasn!t~electri=— | \
-h7- impressed by them, ard just as an example of what humans will do in such a Situation, I'd written it up and turned in a separate report | on ite“ ana about the 2. _ It was still . January, '61, about ten days after the inaugural, my telephone in the Pentagon rangyand this A Cle “voice ‘that sounded like PP esigehs Kennedy" s told me it was President Kennedy talking, and A he had read this report of mine and wanted me to’ have it published in the ‘Saturday Evening t ar dhe dome , Post. I was wondering which joker in the- ve ea ae Pentagon =you=know, was imitating this Harvard, Massachusetts aécéent and was putting $0 F. | me on and I said, "Yes, yes, yes." I then A : had my secretary check over at the White House)and sure enough, it had been President , A 7 Kennedy, so I had. to then go aheadg-I'd promised to do 1b) oa figuring out I didn't know how.to get Something in the Saturday Evening Post, but quickly. found. out how, and they published this thing afterwards as a report that the President wanted published in their magazine.
=U 8- O'BRIEN: VWeli=thetw— You had teken/-of course, 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.ené the incoming administration. Did.you have eny intent or . pylipose 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 £0. jo _ do. was, have me tell him about Vietnam, and this was essentially what most of the incoming administrative officialss+when they'd talk 7 . Ao-- to mes2would want me to,explain what was _) oa happening and what the situation was. This: essentially was =how and why I felt on. these subjects, but my thesis right along on this was to help the people in the countries to help themselves rather than,go in and do things for them. It was mostly on the nuts and bolts, ox how you go about doing this, and “A the individuals you! & pick to do it, and how you'd select them, and ‘please dlet's ‘have A highest quality and fewer people doing these seme Oh ane 2 we:
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: - -49- ° things. Well, you have some successes and failures in--I guess mostly failures in the last of the Bisenhower adninistration“I'm thinking oo in terms of Laos. Laos is the immediate problem in 1962. How do you respond to sortie of these people who are in policy-making sositions at that time? I'd like to get your feeling for thenZ people like (Waltkera] RobertsonZin the State department --peonie | Rohewieon and [J. Graham] Parsons; John Irwin in bike Defense; and on‘: the Agency side, people like [Desmond] Fitzgerald. How do they see. . «9 You have named a group of people, all of whom are friends of mine, and we were very friendly, and I had worked with a number of them for “ enough years so that we more or less under- stood each other and could take shortcuts in “conversations and so on. All of those you RAM IYS wy Falk named , -end—talked*with me expressed similar beliefs to mine)so' it was very easy in : A talking to them, and there were others in the
O'BRIEN: -LANSDALE : -50- Eisenhower administration. Now this wasn't true throughout the administration at all, “put 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 . . .o{ Interruption] Well, Laos,as I understand it,is)with the mp2 0 + aid that's gem in there ,ahet-it really does in. some ways tear up the economy of the . country. Now, how do you look on the training ~ of the Laotian army in Late.|360--ee '59, '60-- _ some of the activities of the Agency in Laos, as well as the army and through the PEO {Programs Evaluation Office] office and things he like this? Is this the kind of thing,you envision in terms of--I hate to use the term "nation puilding"--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) a ” mo, A
qei- 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 mach bigger: way than merely toting guns around and guarding borders. It's usually the organization that is nationwide, and there might not be any other organization that's nationwide in the. country, such as agricultures ¢ even the administrative structure: that usually comes : he under, department or ministry of the Interior ! won't really have the manpower, the communi- cations) and so forth) that the military forces So, given that, why not then get: the military to start doing constructive things be 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 athere! s still energy’ ‘A Ona o4 feth and personnel, involved in that who have a lot of man-hours left over that could do other ~ so | things» and essentially;this is what I was trying to get the American advisory missions
to do--not only the military advisory missions) but when. other egencies 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. - O'BRIEN: - Well, an this Leotian deterioration that takes A place, yeu=know the competing people there-- ia Nosavaw } ov mn 7 - Phoumi Erongbeenity ¢ and Souvann Phouma and -all--how do you read that in 1960 just prior to the administration coming in? boxyor eS How do you see Phoumi; how do you see Souvannah Phouma,as people? First of all; A. have you met them at any time ¢ ane LANSDALE: Yes, yes, yes, I didn't know them well at all. | I'd met them a usually at formal gatherings of one ‘ycind or another. The main thing that I saw in Laos in the way of political stability actually stemmed out of the king of Laos {this 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
O'BRIEN: ~ Cute oe a hada already felt that our best bet was to turn to the king and force him --or, not force, but to encourage nimito ‘taking the leadership role that would be the one thing — acceptable to all these leaders. ’ Instead. of that, we were starting to become pants-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 foretpx To our relive g A _ exrd we fell in love with the factions ‘and - tnd 00 fort people, _alnost: unconscious of the fact that “we were doing that. The paratroop leader | Kong Le? LANSDALE: Yes oaks, who kicked over a revolt) had spent the A’ ‘a night before his coup with a group of American friends, and there wasn't a damn one of them rr ai 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 i Lo.
like that the next morning, and somebody there : = ”, a among the Americans should have been sensitive enough to have said, "Well, arent you feeling ~ = wellt’ gor. something, youseHnany and had gotten some feeling on it. But) this sort of ge fF ing | in bed with people Wranoret and saying, “He's On dHele el righ u a good: fellow,’ and“he ! s ng friend, and excusing *” everything is a common blindness, and this had ; ; A . worried me in Laos quite a bit. a O'BRIEN: Well, I get the impression from Areading of this perioa/ that there really is some lack. 4 of coordination in the various efforts that are there-~cAotherWords, the ambassador is ' not completely privy to what the Agency is doing, and the Agency is not completely privy to what] DOD is doing through the PEO office. Do you get that feeling? Maybe in regard > [dakn Fe) to the Parsons- ~Irwin-Reilly mission that goes out there, do. you get any feeling over Hot at all? LANDSALE: Yes, I'm trying to recall. - +. We hit a | crisis at that point, and the group that went . “A out--Parsons was on home leave, and we had a
-55- meeting in the Pentagon in the secretary of a } Defenges office,and there were a mob of people theres <<» There weres<I can't. quite recall now what prompted the mee ting y but there was a erisis of some sort in Laos. . And the JCS gave a briefing, that's right, as " part of’: the thing,and it was on the Pathet Lao | positioning and ‘they suddenly discovered bree there were passes over the mountains that | had some importance to the Ho Chi Minh trail, and this great discovery was being lectured Ft .5- ‘on at this meeting. Ad at the time, the Secretary of Defense--I peut: bank, I wonder, joe ‘that mi ght have been [ Thomas} Gates Lin] at . the time might have been, but whoever it was-— “asked sft 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 mo A oo - tell everybody here just one thing. You've a Sis | got an ambassador whoc2,on home leave heres. he doesn't belong neret“he belongs out in Vientiane right this moments exd the rest of
O'BRIEN: - ~ LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: ~56- you who are asking questions ought to Have | people out. there with him who would tell you immediately and take a. first. hand look. ce And—the~a I remember Irwin, was ‘picked he right on the spot to go immediately) and, said. to me on the ~ side, "You and your big mouths, yousous [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 Meo ay the Neos, the guerrilla forces. A ‘wenn, Row ad you see in. terms of a strategy for “the area? mrerets-. By as I read it, there Hob are seems to ‘be some various strategies, proposed; one is e;+yolrsknan, 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- i oé handle strate was-~that wowrinow, rings =; >
-S7- a bell. - LANSDALE: - Hom; —yeahswell; bam, my memory isn't too good on this thing. There was some talk at the time dothere' 1g high country across _thdBolovens 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 dojvas to make use.of that and the high ground in Vietnam end so on, across into Thailand, and ensure that that state stayed a in noncommunist hands. : _a O'BRIEN: “ Well, there's 3 also suggested in the Laotian : Oo crisis as early as 1961, the use of strategic. bombing on supply routes, and even) as I “A “A understand it, to “Hanoi, as early as that) ann in7er iting A A Aé odsecarg some of. the supply lines, -as ' well as the suggestion ,that subsequently in 1962 does become a reality)” the dropping of the 'SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization] plan five,as [I understand ity, ow did you A 1 . Teel about the Laotian crisis at that point, in terms of a strategy or a direction rd which = . should work? -
carrer ements: Genes memes mem LANSDALE: nner On “a -58- Well, I had wanted the Laotians to defend owe their, country, and Iwas all for the work - Meos with the "ebcoeP ana so on of doing it. - Once. it left that and started involving = Vietnamese or us, on bombing or anything else, I felt that the cost ‘of saving some real estate would be too high to ever engage - awh oler worko in, And on the bombing, I felt that: as long as you had all of the" communication with the people weeks in the hands of gommunist leaders such as in North Vietnam and then Hanoi where this was pushing, that anything overt such as aerial ‘bombing that would then permit them to use that as a unifying force psychologically with the people would be dead wrong. 4 I used to rémind them of what [Winston] Churchill had ‘gone ‘with the German bombing of Britain, eh A Fgust on radio with the peoplog and here were ‘leaders with complete access to radio and working with the people,and it would have a reverse effect, as far as trying to “stop the ambitions and aims and so forth of the North were, Vietnamese, who after all, the guys organizing _ “A
-59- the Pathet: Lao end pushing on into the area. Wt felt that more could be done ‘with the 7 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 burn around and start using some international moral pressure )through the _ “press and so forth, to sort of shame’ the. North ‘Vietnamese out of ‘their attempts. I'm a great believer in exposing things to bring ‘such pressure. | | . | . O'BRIEN: Well, how do’ you see the relationship of Vietnam. | and Laos at that point, or do you? | | LANSDALE: Oh, yes. The passes and the Hobhi 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 Vietnemese troops in there, efe—secretlyand using them up to try and stop that, “and I was opposed to thatf, I didn't want to see intervention like that from the outside.
O'BRIEN: Well, when does some of the covert activity, interms of. the “use of some OF the. Minteg words. oe yerds- in interdicting those supply lines in oo Laos ,2you=khou, from Vietnam, start? Is that A ‘going on in the late Eisenhower acministretion, “ . or does it begin - in the Kennedy administration? LANSDALE: I think ‘it was the Kennedy administrations there haa been a little of itor there had been talk of ityin the Eisenhower administration. A There had been: ‘thoughts along that line by: ee the top Vietnamese “readers 41555 1 logan t “remember President Diem! s brother, wert™—Soe- his older ‘brother Zvent into Leos gee about SS or. “maybe | “is6ana 3 had come up with a scheme “very similar to that ; at the time. He had talked about ‘the mountain people of ‘Laos ' being ein” to: ‘ the mountain people of Vietnam ) and wouldn 't: it be good to get some of our ° mountain people in with them ,and ‘together ‘they could be trained. A O'BRIEN: "Yes, well, you're in Vietnam in the middle ‘of the fifties,and then you go back’ in 1960 in the late Eisenhower administration. What!
wi» Lenten ay, ~61-_ changed, or has anything? LANSDALE: Oh, a great deal. Excuse me. [Interruption] O'BRIEN: What changes. do you find? LANSDALE: Well, the main change was in a growing isola- \ > tion from reality of the constituency of the { ’ president of Vietnamy a repression of, you’ might say,a loyal opposition or a noncommunist . ray opposition to phen? in political terms a” “There wer professionally some among the military that | : > eT taking the “vietnamese military apart from | ‘their people more than it had been when I had lefty because I-had gotten them working very “ the pepe on closely with 3 nombér, of ecenteoon projectsp Al ana a growing isolation of the American ’ : S18 ae Nile Oe AM tet a * Sw Tam items aaah ncsditeh tratentle Biche attaaln AA tant 7 oy eeneiaaOGnoe bd ols Rtas om aaiasDen te, eomanby ant alt 8 sine otitis eta D Ndi Sitrontsle Ds dein ble on hee ¥ .. embassy in particular, but including some of. , A the American agencies, from the Vietnamese ; A officialdom, and taking a very strange form 2 oe nk RUE Ey Og wk ate of concentrating on gossip essentially--gossip as much .as fact~-about eh,—what-the-hellts- ~ the--word-I'm-trying.to-thinkof,-ez misdeeds
~62- Vis yan and so forth by, public officials or people connected with the regime in Vietnam @ SO that the information~gathering process of the United States there was devoting an | exorbitant amount of time on sort of nitpicking on the people that were in power. fhe rela- tionships,such as the ambassador with the A president of the country, the ambassador would go into details of malf&iance jin office me ' and so forth, or mishandling of funds by the Vietnamese on an internal matter, and the president would have to correct him and Say, : ; A. A was very Poor. I felt that we had some _ A Po \you Gon't have all the facts, and the ambass- +, _ . IN . Aoi . | ador would say, Yes,I do,too. This. to me | a Americans strat were close enough to the top sees ete des officials of the Vietnamese(who weren't A . present in the country always), who should 3 ° . be brought there and told, “Look, we under- a , stand these guys are doing something wrong.
since they don't understand us that well, ~63- Can you go in and get them to start doing things right,as a friend of theirs?" rather A ve . a —e . je . ; than going and trying to scold them and \ . . . ‘ . something and getting the backs up of people, and they'd figure, "Well, these damn nosey Americans-only got half the facts, and - “A 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. Cry also ‘felt that Diem was paying too much attention -to similar types of his own people, his intelligence people, wren were <iecturn 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 A 7 A. ‘cases against them so that they could take actions,ard he, in turn)was getting too much “A A x
-gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu, - andoat which point he asked me where I had ~64- secondhand from people) and this tended to of 7 , f. . ® 7 _ . isolate him more ince his. main intelli-- “A ray A who was an ambitious person,too, I felt that it was a poor arrangement ‘on: the Vietnamese side. "2 personally urged Diem at the time to get in touch with some-of his opposition, “A been at certain times of the day during my visit theres and I said, I was talking to | your opposition and I'm not. going to tell you who it was bx: where I was, but just the mere fact that you know that shows that you” were having me trailed aroundsara you know I'm a friend of your country's,and I'm | ; A trying to help all of you succeed here, and you happen to be the elected leader, and you “A jolly well better start reflecting what your. people desires) a ig-youn& spena your time and money and efforts and so forth watching
© BRIEN: LANSDALE: ~65-. a guy like me, I'm sure you're doing. a lot. - : | y more for someone else you really suspects) — OL , ; and. How would he réact to something like this? Listen, I was told by a number of people) that Iwas about the only one that really: _~ . ever talked to him in this manner, and he would listens and at the time, one of the people most critical of him was his vice- ‘president, and I went over and saw the vice~ president, whose name was [Nguyen Ngoc] Tho, and Tho immediately started jtelling me that the president had spies all over‘ his office and in his staffgand as he was telling me this, one Of the clerks was serving us tea, and I said, “Is this guy one of the president's . y- spies?’ and he said, "Probably, I think so.” [Laughter] Maybe he'll go-back and report . toe) this one. I said, When was the last time you two talked to each other?” Well,it had . , A
‘to get in’ touch with.some of his opposition, anduat which point he asked me where I had © -64-_ secondhand from people, and this tended to / K _ isolate him more) Since his main intelli-- , 2 oe gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu, A who was an ambitious person,too, I felt that it was a poor arrangement'on the Vietnamese side. -I personally urged Diem at the time “A been at certain times of the day during my visit theres and I said, I was talking to your opposition and I'm not going to tell you who it wa’s or where I was, but just the mere fact that you know that shows that you. were having me trailed around gard 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 ; ; A jolly well better start reflecting what your people desires, ofa is you™a spend your time and money and efforts and so forth watching
O BRIEN: LANSDALE: | =65-) a guy like me, I'm sure. you're doing. a lot | oo ee, more’ for someone else you really suspects oC , afid==_. 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 listeng a#@ at the time, one of the people most critical of him was his vice— ' president, and I went over and saw the vice president, whose name was [Nguyen Ngoc] Tho, and Tho immediately started telling me that the president had spies all over his office and in his staffgand as he was telling me this, one of the clerks was serving us tea, \ - . and I said, Is this guy one of the president's ; ; . spies?” and he said, "Probably, I think so." {Laughter] Maybe he'll go back and report dee? this one. TI Said, When was the last time you two talked to each other?” Well, it had a
-66- wer been months» so I, back to Diem, and I jumped = A himg I said; You've got a vice-president who you've made responsible for ali the economic development of the country, and I A know that you consider that very importante) ~ You haven't talked to him for a long time,” . ' A and I forced him to tell ne when yastd done it last»so I said,’ well,” pick up the telephone - and call him over here your ‘first free time, a A and you sit down and have ‘a long talk with . n ‘ himpy. So he did itg He picked up. the phone, and I got the two of them together againg He was really out of touch» He promised me at the time to get in touch with some of the Abs political oppositiong he swore up_ and down W yell, . “he wasn't oppressing anyones and I said, You don't know what your own police are doing) u oo . ‘then, and-I gave him the list of names of A ’ people who were in prisonf, who had been arrested at nignight and pulled out of their homes and — es oe eee pp ee en Fee IEEE NA tI | A A aree .
112 eee met ry et A A eo ER Uh A nae ON A Stach Rainn Hamed Abt aetna 8: thd. 2 ache ais fag atneme puaene O'BRIEN: _ LANSDALE: _ =67= "sO ong and he promised to.look into their cases immediately and do something about : ss “ - itg And iI said, I've gotten this from. ” 2 ; > ; . . ° people who,in the opposition to you, but I whether ge” “A don't know 3 “you ‘ve,gotten any reports. He said he'c 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. Well,why is this? Is it, the development of | fA . 4 . it fhe an independent bureaucracy, or is |there—a@ degree of U.S. influence on, let's ‘say, the A inter iigence X wae There, was oc opably: some. so “I think by ‘that time the Vietnamese intelligence was. way beyond any control by U.S.. intelligence, A 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) ; . “ initially, he was really trying to serve his
ceeeee meee ne cewe 5 cares +1 neneeee emanate iss nl nents Qe | CECA Sct tS) ASE AE Ey Ss nti th AeA ABE AAO te os te seen seal Rte 6 cian wn O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ~65- brother, and he was doing it by trying to A vas get the goods on. everybody working for his brother throughout , the governmént and anybody opposed to his’ brother, and the intelligence | people picking it up)discovered that if they brought in bad news about some guy that the brother. didn't Like, he'd pay them and believe it. So I'm sure that there was a lot of manufactured evidence in the intelligence take that was coming ing afd I don't think the Americans were screening “any of that type of information because it went xight into the palace,and there was a vA} big room behind the president's office that - had many files and was the main n pexsonnel 7 dossier type of file place. Well, you're critical of the MAAG [Military Assistance Advisory croup] operation there. fdie 2 | What's wrong with it) in the late Sos A Well, I felt that MEAG under “hanging” Sam Pett | (Samae1 T. ] Williams in the late "so+s% was
-~69- anfunusually well-run American military _Operation. There were some unusual things being done that made it so. One of them’ was one of the best ideas I've ever bumped into. “General Williams brought over the chief of staff of the Vietnamese army whenever .the American advisors, who at that. time were out in the countryside; but ete A or soa oe : . we at fairly ‘high leveis,and were running OA, training camps more than advising on opera- oy O- ‘tions or anything/--But. when they would come in once a month for a weekend in Saigon, Williams would get the Vietnamese Chief of | Stafé to come in and talk to them. The Vietnamese €hief of Staff at that time was General [Tran Van] Don. Don was quite diplomatic, but had a way of being candid in Po: his remarks and not having them hurt too much hanes ard “when they were told. He would leave out, so ‘on, but he would tell these Americans what t pee Oe
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE -70- ‘their Vietnamese counterparts in the Viet-- namese army and so forth thought of them and . ’ a their work,and their advice, andthe reactions " wi oo : throughout the armed forces to thems 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. A This was a very healthy thing. ° 7 e where.” Yes, I-can feel it SF wewld ko A te Sause even though it was tough diplo- o— , matically, the most sordid truth, wetid— the a | _psto OC 2-- hardest factg@would come out in, jbhe~ . And then Williams himself had been in . Vietnam a long enough time by then--I forget how-long; it may be three years at the time, A four years-~so that when he moved around the Vietnamese army, it wasn't only just the top staf £ officers and commanders who would be with him, but I noticed in a visit, there--1
-71- think it was *59--that sergeants and junior lieutenants and so‘on would come up and talk to hims and I'd moved in close enough to | eavesdrop on some of the conversations,and OA, these were personal problems, family problems, and financial problems and so forth that “individuals hadpavfd, this was a very unusual. relationship for an Amex ican to have. And since the American was also running our | ' presyre 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: was going on in places. Some of these problems-- personal problems--would actoally involve the “military work that was going forward, people _ griping that something was wrong and so ons 5- >, ave they were doing this out of a friendshi
~72- and heSvas not to tell.on their bosses or anything, but usually personal worries and concern. that Wastase or something going ‘wrong would ‘difect them. Later they moved in an educdtor--a military educator--{Paul -D. ] Harkins, and. . .@ O'BRIEN: Well, [Lt.. Gen. Lionel -C.] McGarr comes in. LANSDALE: McGarr, It was McGarr, yes, you're right. fats rt was. before Harkins. McGarr. And ‘McGarr -.? built.up a staff to work on, counter -insurgency . So , there before that; doesn't he? | and probably put together the best staff ; a3 HAE. , : studies on count r-insurgenc am an unte iv, g y fj» y | American military men have ever done. | O'BRIEN: Is ‘that right? | LANSDALE: He got American military men who had ‘been guerrilla leaders in the Philippines, for _ example) in World War II)and in Burma and so A A . on,and in Europe, and switched most of his. A : : work over into comoiling “How to Do it” fhanuals, 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 vas. apparently, to: start increasing staff and American military personnel to ‘handle whatever wWiatévexr was area sg? coming up out of this whole process. The a . feeling was was that there should be closer , American supervision of what was happening 3 units } o ‘out .in Banwcd which meant peut you ‘a put down your’ Americans at lower echelons and then get a separate reporting system on back SO, “A feeding in the research process of the Americans abe teh Delano Mlitnacinas 6 200 8 ti! sity oan Ba te iB. initially more than anything else. It wasn't for control; ‘it was just for information that would go into fields of studyoad this ela Lede Arverizan to a proliferation of anmilitary presence that was intended sort of for the education of Americans)I think) more than anything else, ; A A ; A but of course didn't work out that way. You
-74~ put some red-blooded American boys in uniform. out’ someplace) and they're going to start doing . A a - other things as well. In collecting information) Do ho: beck) A _they couldn't help but tell a guy, Well, ,if you didn't do it this way and did it the other _way, it would work better, and so on. It“s wa~ a very human. thing that started workings ar as this happened »we started building up our advisory effort more and more. . é O'BRIEN: Well,in the meantime,while this is going on, , UA , A . . { the insurgency's building up, isn't it? LANSDALE: Yes. O'BRIEN: Just what is the condition of the country- ‘ side that's different from when you're there : in the middle f}fties “sete and when you go. i back in aw 19L 08 . i a’ jos LANSDALE: Oh, there were guerrilla ,by an enemy )which ra) a ' there hadn't been in the period from Geneva on up to the time I left in the end of ‘56m 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 ; wilk. th what you ‘d expect in any country“crime rate ale . going=2 the fact that former ViethSm: guerrillas “O = ; ; A 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 Hoke , terrorism,was going on. By my next visits later in the pais there were areas of 4 guerrilla bands at work, with roads that were “A “: a unsafe and so on) FA ,areas that were unsafe, \ A ray 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. 7 py the end of '60--when I got there xf Christmas of '60--there were fair-= size enemy, Vietcong units operating and dominating areasf, it had escalated considerably. by then.
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: - O BRIEN: “got a figure in.there. The last figure | -76- Is this terrorism campaign on the local officials as serious as some of the people . : oe . . . > An have written/ abotw=tt? Oh, yes. Do you ever get any feeling about the “number of people? “I've heard all kinds of estimates. . No, I've got (Stephen -T.] Hosmer's study there: on fat , and, I haven't read it yet. I just got that from him. I imagine he's aroun® I remember on it was--in about ' 66--worpehetE A\ Fox something oe es Forty thousand. That many? Yes. These were officials<not their families or anything. But these were village officials ana@ district officials) and sort of federal -government officials, Well, what do you see happening as a result of this “A the-gbilily @ in terms of Diem ra just simply govern in. those ha Lo 9. bitch years? ts Re Gared cs govern deteriorating?
LANSDALE: -77- Yes: In some ways it was. Initially, he was onwi Lig to delegate any authority : rd wa! . at all“and he had the tendency to try and ras 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 laters SO he had learned to be more the administrator and executive later on,as far as putting some authority in the “ aoe oo, , ; . hands of others. But at the same time, he also seemed to have lost some of his critical of faculty, ef, some of the things that were going wrong,- of not being able to see it. He was getting around the country and visiting, but. : “A not as much anymore because of the security - problems. He had.been shot at several.times, A so that he had a larger and larger security © guard around him all the time,which meant Oo a that.whnen he went in and talked to veople,
‘they were very much aware of plain clothes policemen, secret service types, all around ; him, and others)that were screening out tA = 7 peoples so that the dialogue between the president and the people became thinner and thinner, and less and less meaningful. So while he-was.on paper. becoming a better executive, hé was,in terms of being the , So . , aa national leader, wis being less effective all | A , . ee the time because he had no means of measuring what was true and what wasn't what was a | we Ay worth doing and wasn't, and What wes work ; ews A wontda'EO. _. and what wasn" It was a considerable ; . ; A impairment of his critical faculty. This was one of the reasons I was urging him to -start dialogues with his political oppositions even if it started at opposite poles and,led QO- : to tremendous emotional clasheg thé 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
-79- ‘meal or something,and had some way of -- do. ve penity A . 7 fakteniag the most emotional irritations owt ob that would take place, just how-t “tie” people boos saened- polite at the time3 so the content of what they, wo Say would be something that he..wasn't gettingnelsewise. O'BRIEN: Yes, well, as I understand it,the vgCs [Viet ; at A Cong] make-a great deal of headway in those years on the basis of the land system. LANSDALE:.- That was one of them. me ; se A some rub. between the U.S. in this regard O'BRIEN: Wellj;what. . ...As I understand it)there's A and Diem about putting through some land reform which would cure some of the rural ' @ultural problems that the French had sort of created, as I understand, from on yourkniow the Vietnamese moving into the country. . .© LANSDALE: Yes, yes. O'BRIEN: Well, how do you see that? Are you pushing hime A for this sort of chinghat Hot polit 2 an he hod i) LANSDALE: Yes. Actually, we~rave some very sound land A
-80— reform measures on the books and had issued decrees on them that were good. As usual, the diffgculty i when you get a piece of legislation or somethingy,tis then implementing ad A oo it correctly)and I was pushing him mostly on “A ‘ g ; implementing his measures. “Now the land ‘ . .o- reform workex that Diem approved and used 1nskK as the basis for his éecrees came from 4/F lad ej” ¢ oH : and Wolf) was, when he left U.S. employment, wee actually employed by Dien as his advisor on. ASE 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 . . A. affectionate friendship between the two mens 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 things. ‘and I felt that the main thing that ~needed doing was demonstrating to President Diem, who was sympatnetic towards this, of where’ ra
-~81- things weren't going right and changing some. . . : . this, . 7 of the inner workings of tre “thing)instead A A of just falting him on intent. And his “intent was very sound, very good. I think he was ignorant of some of these things. going. wrong. I felt that we should have bornejdown on the matters in which he was ‘ignorant and tried to get some changes there -'and make these things work, because certainly 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 of himg 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 én, and then dictating what they would grow and ‘so OngAcause he'd just figure, A Nell,-in the national economy ,we need this . A
/ =-82- type of fiber grown or this type of crop or somiething,and the land will produce it up’ A there,and so they should do that. sol ne A sort of |. was only circumventing: ‘the lawafor the greater good, in his own mind, Z his own | extent. - - ; O'BRIEN: . This centralization brings about a reaction, — an ; A -though;, doesn't it? LANSDALE: | Yes. «| | , oy Me . TAPE II SIDE I LANSDALE: You asked about the falling out between a... . Ludejinsky and Diem. I know there was - just something of that nature, but, what it consisted of, ox why, I don't know. r remember that the. American ambassador ° Ahi _ O'BRIEN: “@t,would have ‘been [Elbridge] Duxbrow?: “LANSDALE: _ purbrow 2S. was mindful of the fact that A Se ee Ledejgnsky was. having breakfast with Diem and was close to him, and,in a ‘rather general pod axked Ladejin OA Y way, to bring up: thoughts of corruptiong in A
—~23- the government and subjects beyond anything like land reform. And I suspect that Ledejinsky had started getting very political in his talk,as a result of this,with Diem, 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, a 2 a Ladejinsky had wanted to go someplace and oN ‘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 a I, had- hadn't wanted him to go/ and he*suggested that he attend a conference--I think in Latin Americasemia finally, they had agreed between the two of them, and Ladejinsky had - . “A fre hod gone on to:do these other things thet, taken sort of a sabbatical leave to do that. But this was a very personal thing between two - men, and it was two friends/ rather than a A president and his consultant working. I know Le@ejinsky 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, the feelings of affection and so forth would come over, and say, Well, even if that is true and everything, I still like the. guy, and,vwant to help him ang So ony and this existéd between the two. Sof they might have’ differed on some things and perhaps : on carrying out land reform exact ly the way fot Wolf ‘wanted, but the two men kept seeing each other all the time, and he had ample A opportunity to work on that. Qe thts penta ‘the | suggestion sis made sometimes Is that the Vietnamese nilitary hag not been trained for the kind of war and the kinda of insurgency that they did encounter in 1960-61/--ney had not been properly trained for that before. Is there any validity “in this at all? eee eee set Sentence IT Pre rt PSF Pe SR Sant
~85- wae o “LANSDALE: 0h yes), They were being trained actually to | | meet the challenge that the Vietnamese and American top officials. foresaw, and they were ‘thinking shat this--end incidentally, the French General [Paul] Ely before he left. was thinking the same way-- just: in terms of contigency. 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, 2 that they thought might happen. ” Instead of this, of course, it was more of the same old A. story againget ee there were many of the officers .- Te ee ee ere se ma in the Vietnamese armed forces who had formerly been guerrillas themselves, who had formerly had been viet ‘Pex in. the old: days of fighting the French, who had broken with the gommunists and wanted no pert of the gommunists -and were very sincere, patriotic wationalists. But
“high school and so on. Ye sincé they had had 4 this former affiliation - and had teken 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, ; A “A as graduates of the Vietnamese Military Academy atid the others coming right out of | Gh So as a result, the officers corps who vere Imowledgeable 2yof “of how to counter what was happening were kept at fairly Junior grades, and in the late: Sots. ‘the highest any of them oo that I ever knew thee about was jrank of Majorg and they had to take orders from Colonels’ and so forth who had served under the French in very much the Same type of a conventional military organi- — gation as the Americans had put up and were advocating. And these junior types who warited to do different things were simply too junior > to do it and were unable to convince anyone A ‘of the need. The initial meeting of the thrsot: mor] -.. was thought, to be a police problem than an army problem, and there wes a lot of work:
-87- on trying to equip and train the national . . oO police to cope with itg exi@ 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 Ft urban crime problems in the U.S. Well, you. can't take aman who is very good at precinct 4 work in Detroit, Michigan, or piffninghan, Alabama ) or something, and move him’ out tio an Asian A country where his problem is > What do you do A- when a company of guerrillas comes in end “ambushes yourlpolice: station? A completely foreign type of a thingy s so that we had " who police acvisors Pe nee were | insisting on all ‘policemen being arncSed with nothing more than,say)a 38-caliber revolver, with the policemen saying, waa 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 nec wore fire power." Well, it was foreign
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -B8- ‘to them. So there was a mixup on a number of things on this coping with the insurgency ~ G: | that was - growings“not only. the conventional A ‘formation of the Vietnamese army but of a conventional. urban police formation of the police.’ And yet, throughout the systend’ therey there were meny 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." “Well, in terms of these people we were talking “about a | little earlier--the late Eisenhower people, like Pitegerala/ end tewin/ ana Parsons-- Do they conceive of the kind of insurgency it thot ket point) that's developing in South Vietnam, or are they 2 6 oO . | Fairly well. Peirly well.: They were more aware of, or had more understanding of, the 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 Ir remerked earlier, these were personal
-89- friends of mine,and when I'd talk to them and °2 tell them my views, there was always sympathy . for them)so I might have mistaken: that for A understanding and so ong and even that was v |. Pare enough so- “that I. felt that, Uricersuptson) 17 cus ‘ | O'BRIEN: - How long | is the manuscript? ao” LANSDALE: Ho ho. I went through first /-the publishers wanted me ‘to tell ell; Anptherwords, just | write as much as qT could for later editing gnd\seid this is the way people do it. So lars a -I wound up with really three osansiitg Long books, and ‘since I was writing one not too long book, why I wound up with a tremendously . L oy them long manuscript. | ‘And urged shen that I could . we would . cut it down to two books) and | publish it as A _ 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 to. we. 4 GM tantea off initially with a cut-and-paste job, but I discovered [ couldn't ' do that and retain the proper narrative and gecat Qe Ke joer eS on the thingy © 6G I wound up Raving
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: Re memes SiteNcte MEER SEIS -90- to rewrite almost of all of it, and recast it, and ‘retell it ina “somewhat different form. I'm about half-way through, thet,, but it'll be a fair-size book even so. . Werk that's good/mainly on the Philippines and the early period in Vietnan? | | Unmhmm. | Good, you know wnat s really 2 2 © D . Well, there's realty one big period in Vietnam that isn't known too well, and most historians a A. have passed over it,and the ones who haven't 7 ; OA Lo ; have been championing a cause) and their work A is quite suspect. Some of the French were of sort of agents «<2 provocateurs at the time, A. . and they are more or less Justifying what they aiad 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]? - aces I'm trying to remember. JI think that's who it was. Well, most-.of the French writings “about Ho and some of the explanations in
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -91- official documents of the French, trying to explain him end so ony by friends, I found Fn ian very interestingserié T had. no way of, juagfing really on itZtnere was a tremendous sympathy | and so conth, being expressed, and then a very. = “A mo, : moo. strong attempt to work out an accomodation oe with him’ afterwards, with<him, by the French. And again, a highly emotional sensitivity to any “interference sia what they were trying to do) and they saw almost anything as interference. sof vhat is written by. them, I read mindful of their sensitivities. at the time and whet they're trying to prevent anybody ever believing that would be opposite at @ll,)or something. _ — different at leasty era it vas just amazing. The French press was screaming that I was starting World War TIT in Vietnam in !55 Lee Mind if I get this on tape--well, it is on tape, I'm sorryy I didn't realize it was going. 7 | | , 7 simply because I think there was a feeling by the French colonialists in Indochina/ of not wanting to give up the French presence thereg*~
| gee "and it's a human, understandable type of a’ thing. They nad been there and. ‘associated there, and some of them had spent their entire lives there, end here, they. were having to. give up something; iat Swiss journalist once explained. it te me! rt was like a man giving’ “up his. mistress and seeing some Sexy in a big car driving by in the streetgand even .. though he'd given NO up, he'd just sey,well, he hates that guy/btcause he got. the mistress ‘allegedly with material means such as an automobile and maybe a fur coat and Te) on) and he : . isn't the man that the former exy was. 4 So some of this feeling was very prevalent there and for some reason.or other, I happened to "i | suddenly become the focal point of it) through a a z . my name or something, @usthew)so that they went to great Lenahfls of charging me ‘with all sorts of things that I was doing: I was out) Sect Loreas oO < buying up the loyalties of set Gourses with( « millions of dollars, end things that would bel hard to prove that % wasn't, mind you, except Ga to say, "Look, I didn't have ‘a million dollars to buy anything with." . 4nd they'd
: . : _ a ~93-. say, "Well, the U.S. _ government aid, and you were a secret agent for then, and soon. It _ was very hard to disprove some of theirjtalk . and say, Well, that just isn't 80. Except once in a while. they!d get really wild and claim I was down-~I walked in on a briefing, . for exemple; with French officers telling |, how some American visitors from Washington gsm at that very moment I was trying ¢ tO, buy off a sect leader, and very naively, with. a suitcase full of moneyoeXa 1 didn't enow but the guy was going to ambush me end take _ all the money and not do whatever I was going to plan to do. And at that moment, I just | asked him, I said, “well, please keep on with your briefinghy I want to know whes dther the guy, killed me or not.” trazy. Now tesa bot 4 wey were very responsible French cttictats! and * the fact that I'd be miles away from the scene of some of these things never stopped the daw circulation of these stories. I don't know how you ever stop that stuff, O'BRIEN: yk well how about people like Bernard Fall’ ~ and Patty 2 Borg and their writings? Are they .. -@
Soke. LANSDALE: Well) they’ re very sound, very sound. Fall's background, as was Honey's, was out of ania or information collection units , 7 Zid, their different countries. Fall's initial | writings were all out of a French army historical. sectif’ and I had to tell him one time Ite read some of his work originally by the original author. “put/ it was a deteiled military history of operations that he'd delved intow _ ofa T don't know, I’ doubt that it was intentional ae plegarism on his part. He was probably rushing : through, getting a book published»for academic . credits ‘end: so on. And uoney/ the same way | | with British” intelligence, who were quite active in Indochina during the French days. waa But it was )--some of the stories and happenings were just nlmost incredible. Wow ~—w=» Some’ of the French journalists were ‘politically apie partisan. © They had connections ,with the - A 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 therég end when the
-95- Americans started showing up on the scene) Yu there was, very patern elistic feeling of 2 . “Well, these Are | our pecpleZthese Vietnamese,” or Khmer 7 or La0,% and you keep your © cotton-picking fingers off of them" type of a thing that went to very great lengths J~ ~ Yolatile emotions erupting on this type of a thing. 71 remember one of the journalists, . | ae ; John Beret; published @ newspaper in Saigon and wrote a lot of the early propaganda for individuals in the French army end had ‘sort | adventurer types among them. He then went to. Pnohm Penh ,»where he. started a weekiy newspaper and started also writing speeches for LNoro dow | Sihanoukgand the next thing I knew, Sihanouk - was: "accusing me of plotting to murder him or assnssinate hims Ze I hedn't Gzenvbeen near Cambodia, and I hadn't), thought of Sihanouk’ when this happened. The governor of Siem Reap, . who had been very close to Sihanouk before-- ° . and Siem Reap is where Angkor Wak end the historical ruins are--suddenly died, and the story started seeping out a little bit with Sihanouk charging that this governor, whose
ft oe ear nl Ge ne EE ntES Dato hE 8 mene O'BRIEN: det Chiywe' Ye 56 -96- name was Da Cra , and I were in a conspiracy to murder him end take over the government of Cambodia. And it didn't do any good that I had never met ih: we ‘and never had any dealings with hin, and Cambodia was way outside my bailiwickg b but this is the story that's gone on and: on. and on. ‘Well, there was a little bit of truth to J that, dee, wesn'lt thereé o 8 LANSDALE: Re Well, he was a national leader and . 4 -was foreign to me at the time. actually had formed the political groupings initially that supported Sihanouk and gave 7 him his political powergi~ ~=he 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 LA the government back into reflecting more the will of the people. . How far he got, I don't knows but this was really something ‘that Fy got sent back into Cambodia afterwards, from Washington, with i various military assistance groups / or > economic groups a presidential commissions”
-97- and SO On exd gach time they'd 2 have Pnohm . dust. bs y 3% Penh on the thing 1 'dasay, Me Y better check the embassy there. " Back would come word thaty No, Sihenouk Was ‘afraid that it ‘I were a member of the party, I would be going in to murder him. Ty actually went in’ one: time} and the chief of police of Pnohm ‘Penh met our | party--along' with the: foreign minister end so on--at plane, seen we came downs end the Chief of Police walked right next to me,and he said, "I'm your Li agon A S- man from now mg!. ed I said, "You're keeping an eye on me, I knowg it's’ atifri ght. I'm not going to murder your boss; I have no idea of doing that." [Laughter] That is G about '65, 166--in which he played the 6d oye orimander' jRoyat Naval Intelligence foiling strange. ‘ And then Sihanouk made a movie-- 8 _ great American spy, who happened to have ; oN my name) and was a role played by some pettoe Frenchie paw who. was visiting theres, and I was out to overthrow the kingdom, but, of course, our boy A . hero thwarted the ugly 4merican and won the girl, wno was the daughter of the Brazilian
O'BRIEN: -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 ’ movies@t'a love to see it, you imow. It Om sounds great and... . [Laughter] | Yas). a Yeeh; I hadn't heard about that. | Weld) that : does hit on Something though) +n regard to Southeast Asia. .. As . understana, |] | bret there’ was an Agency involvement | and the Agency does seem . _to have a kind of free hand in some of these sian Southeast nations Can you LANSDALE: ‘at. ai} \ BreKes ran see any Bresks put on them as’ a result of the change of administrations’+how do you react to this sort.of activity? Well, most of the things that they did that had political consequences of any major size ard Sy are only ,t taken by the Agency after approval up at topsideg so as far te ne nn ne er
| 7 | a fo -99- as brakes are concerned) they've had them from a A the beginning. However, the objectives and 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 ere happening, then I think much depends on the individuais/: the  ambassador/ and the station chief, and how "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 want to know or Ee are opposed, all such’ things, and if an order comes down to do 1%) they very ° unwillingly tell the guy to go ahead, but watch it now, not too far. “A station chief, ‘A : then, with orders to do some things)will have. 3 is - A“ ; told the ambassador he Averett’ going to, this but i “he starts, ‘in things, and he figures, thes if he goes back and tells the ambassador what's happening, that he's not going to get any . : A understanding and will probably get an order f + Jem Oe. ' prohibiting him Eo? doing something anc won't - : =
- O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: ' Washington wants us to have this happen. ~100- . ‘ \y . be able to explain; Well, if I stop doing this, then this other thing won't work, and. » just rs The ambassador willysay,. No, I don't see -it that way. Don't.do it. ? So I'm sure there are things thetsare. 3 happening that aren't cold for this--for operational reasons, and again, it's a juae¥ment of an individual on that thing. It's not a policy type of a thing from the Agency. ; | vos?” Do you find any--in the time that you |. re there in the middle fifties as well as when you go back in '60, '61,and later involvement in Vietnam--do you find differences between the embassies “between the U.S. embassy in, particularly, Pohm Penh and Saigon? I didn't notice ‘that. It might have existed “A and I wouldn't have even known that. Well, there! S some feeling. among people . dung . involved with Cambodien relations &@ ae that time, as [I understand it, that somehow there’ 8 an involvement on the part of the South Vietnamese in some of the groups like the .. .@
v Sn Ais te Bt bien Phas teh Bat deecbtcne dilate mech DORAL dats ack ttt BA TMS arhatint Aer pes 8 Une Lets doen shale shears ane ntetdett te ANE tnltee «Sine Ht Sint ete Gaeh > Bx anlinbithmnttrenntsiealit Ll tea’ _ LANSDALE: -101-_ ree ler Oh, seh’ “4 Both the South Vietnamese and the. chs were playing around with groups inside Cambodia) or with exile groups: that wanted | to go back in Cembodia) and so ony and I'm not certain thet the fmericens 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. . . 4 t don't know which people would rather go in and take over and run canbodiar Zens Thai’s « or the south Vietnamese? it's about a ‘boss up which one, wee” down more on the Khrers than the other. 4 ana Diem used.to follow the predictions of the royal fortune-teller in P nohm Penh to Sihanouk. ‘Apparently, they were spending a lot of A intelligence money to find-out, you know, whats
-102- happened in each otherssessions and what he was telling the guy. Then how useful this was a aateeen aumanee wets 1 camer + ie oe Min cise ek OLED m Sete AS, jmind you,I don't know. O'BRIEN: Well) do you find)--again, in passing on to , the task force-and the formation of that. Vietnam task. force in the early part of ' the Keniie dy administration--do you find the o sensitivity on the part of the people, the a political appointées, 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? LANSDALE: ue only partially. They were as bemused by ae 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 ar . good job, but in order to do it, they were you gcc) suddenly working with these instruments, that were foreign to them here. I think that the > princippés in the administration were not entirely aware of thespeople they were dealing with in Washington. I recall, at the time, (Sone SUNpliseSs @ Rusk was violently opposed in the department
/-103- . on over where he was by some peoples end 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 pin wee ; Ie dix pages 4 Mee <Y Called him A mo, _ among his. comrades, just; "This stupid jerk," 7 and so on, which I felt was disloyal--behind , the guy" s back, you know. t was always urging them to speak up in “front of people and 80 on, and they woulait do it. And the ct same damn thing was true eainedsone of the. . military against McNamara, for example. oe fi Well, the MeNanarafand ‘the “Rasiéand their unders, and deputy Ztypes of people, and assistant secretaries, were trying to cope with people that they, felt Were=tastinctively) opposing and foot- -dragging and SO on, and trying’ to get that working..80 that bo get them working on a given problem was really the thing that they were concerned with send fl you'd suddenly say, "Well, we're going to talk about Leos, ” or Vietnam or- Israel or | . something-Yes, Nes, Fes. What have you got in Ss =f papery you nowt And they were
° ete BB nan cg eon tl teed ited ve seeriaaente Sent ti only -10)- watching, “sees: "Well, spleajust “tive meally A Z. ; avd “Es he ges done rhis: homework, and—i.s—it=gontra come.up A with some thing or not?" rather than what is the real problem here, and how would I solve “a it if I weren't sitting in this room in this particular group, end so on. So there was Be ee. so. then, working on this type of a ‘thing which ©'BRIEN: LANS DALE: I saw very much in the task force on Vietnam/-- Gilpatric,I know, was shocked at the reactions of some of the foreign service people that came in at, rank of ambassador and so on) that A were sort of the staff assistants on the ; assistant secretary and undersecretary level. rg kt O: They would start a neeting—infact 7 I was asked to be sort ot f-1 forget what the title was executive officer or something of es they asked me to chair the meetings. Well, I'd no sooner open it. thon these guys would be passionately explaining why I ‘fouran't be sitting in the chair of the. meeting, see? I think it shocked some of the Kennedy administration people. It suddenly revealed a ee ee et te eR EON Ct
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: _ feud and so ony end I hadn't said it, and I -105- or . . Qo personally didn't care that much, you know! I'd say, "Have you got all the hate out of your system now? Let's go on with the vY a meeting,’ see.? This ,of course,would activate A “ it more, but I would say, "Well look, we really A do have some problems here we've: got to get to, and if you want, 122 meet you afterwards A ae and wercven have lunch or something) and you ray can spoil my lunch by telling me what a heel I am or something. But we've got work Fi | to do." So then, Gilpatric or somebody would. tell me afterwards, "Do you think we better take you off?" "Well, yeah. If it's going to erteet, the work done, it: re better 45 take me off. It's no fun for me to sit up and . _ y chair something under conditions like this, so... .@ o- | Feeh. Were you ever approached with the job as ambassador to Vietnam? Yes, Y¥eS* a ¥Seah.—Yeehy Who was pushing that?
-106- LANSDALE: I don't know. I heard ebout ib be ec’ first ‘Saturday after the ineugurel--I think shat'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. pnd I wes working on a number of intelligence matters. in Defense at the times wea I showed upyand he asked me to just wait outside)and they “ o- were meeting in the Cabinet roomy ard as I: said, it was essentially an NSC group. and after a bit, they asked me to: come on, end they had me sit opposite the president. And he looked at me,and he said, "Did Dean (Rusk] tell yous T want you to be ambassador to Vietnam?" I said, "No, he didn't mention that." | ‘Well, he hadn't at alls & A there was a ina painful silence and I figured, “yell, eee, maybe he! 3 asking © me if I want to be, or would I accept the joo.” So I finally said, “Well, it would be a great honor,’ and thet was A the last I ever heard of it. But JI heard on ucual a all sorts of rumors that pea Fr S2e for TH eee Washington; and=chinzys afterwards thet Dean Rusk . to
STO mem caren ate ee eee eine tenes meena RNAS DANE ASE Dogan een, ate O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -107- was very much opposed to it, and opposed on the ground that I. was a military man and they didn! twent military people in on the situation. ech. “Yaso. che And then later I hea met one. of Rusk's staff officers at the time, and he wae telling me ueu bo L : that Rusk was figuring, =m: he could get. me a job some other place or a promotion or — cm something to. get me out of the way at the tim mex ra sert oF I apparently © had becomeAa target for a lot of “ and go on F . gossip and rumors,at the time. But after that, A then, they asked me--Kenne dy asked me pretty Arsitassador point blank--about,Durbrow, and I said, "Well, ra\ after: what you just asked me and so forth, I'm ‘a little hesitant, but you're the President and / you need the truthy so I'll just tell you right now, I think he's a very ill mang, his juage~ ment's impaired by his physical conditiong,he's a fine professional foreign service officer.and could be used some_place, but don't keep him on . A | in Vietnam anymore. He's sick, he's on his ror back a lot of the time, and you need someone a “A oor ' “very alert, who Tiir-~whoever it isg a and pull hin © “A
~108- out." And they got--Rusk and everything, you know~="You're off your subject, boy." But I said, "Well, Durby's an old friend of mine) ‘ “A and I like the guyg.=%i I saw a lot of him , , Qe when I was in Vietnem on this brief visits end I think it's a shame that the guy's kept on ~ there Lécause he was quite ill, in bad shape." And Durby never forgave me for it9,it got right back to him that I had sacked him and | . so on because he was withdrawn after thaty but - O'BRIEN: ’ LANSDALE: this certainly didn't hurt his career at all, in any way, ena even though: State put him on a make “work job arter thatg but he held the rank of ambassador which ; is as nigh as you can io in the foreign service. And he was 14, he really was. Well, how does [Frederick E. ] Nolting come into a this . . ./ CW. Well, Nolting came in), as= sothie, apparently, as the A A foreign services rebuttal to my going on outlet pure I remember both McNamara and Gilpatric asked me about him, and I didn't know him. I said, on “Well, I'd just go on what I have heard from ee are ere a eerie A creel ete TL ON, SORT STAY
: ¢ So Ore ateaiaw ahe Ge Boat. tore. * ~109- other foreign service officers who respect him very much." So finally, Nolting was-- & meeting was arranged with Nolting, and I diked him very much when I talked Wwe ale hing He asked me if I would give him some briefings on Vietnam, which I did do. And when I wound up thée'end of that, I was asked again by .. McNamara, who ‘said he was going to tell Kennedy end I said, “well, this looks like a very good man, and I think it's a sound appointment." " t didn't want to be, ambassador. Jesus. During the Eisenhower administration, they wanted to make me anbassador $4" the Philippines) and I begged them not to. [| 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 IT knew they were “A “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 oO. ae oO you are, ard you ‘pe-going=to have people running . oS wy, ph circles eround you) 32, oud inow it and couldn't . lift a ‘little finger to stop them. Ad this ~—— es
we but Nolting and I had very friendly relations, -110- isn't my idea of a good spot to be in. You just get belabored over that. Well, did Nolting ever try to get you back to A oy vietnam/ in an advisory position? . I think so. There were a number of attempts by the Vietnamese themselves, and unfortunately), ; a f\. some of them werecouched in terms of wanting “me to come out as ambassador, by the Vietnameseg “ and TI think he had proposed that I come on out several times. But these things would usually only come to me sort of second or third hands ond ‘one time apparently President Kennedy had said something to the JCS because suddenly my. relations with the Chief's went down to leas than zero. and sub-zerog and I finally asked General [Curtis E.] Lemay of the Air Force, because I'm an Air Force officer, what the trouble was. And he said, "You and your ambitions to have four stars." I said, "What's this again?” Apparently Kennedy had said something to the Chiefs of) what. would A they think of my being given four stars and being put in charge of operations in Vietnam?
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANS DALE: meet a situation injthere. One of them was,: -lll- | And I-didn't know ebout it, and they took it that. t was pushing myself for it. I said Soren Ns 4 again, that isn't, te want to do. So this was about the time that--no, maybe [William Westmorelend) Westy was coming in about thens= it was around that time. Well) the’ ‘task force really forms up the instructions A . for Nolting, doesn't ith... Yes. .. . for the next J few years. Just what kind of recommendations come out of that task | ' force? — Well, I was only in on the very original one, which was to undertake some things such as changing the spécific types of things to : or } ; A 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 injbo ee / guide,’ rather tnan control cr belabor or have confrontations with the Vietnamese government
-ll2- to carry out essentially political reforms, and getting some of the just criticism of. the opposition considered in the governing poay. ” 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 , constabularyyjas far as American advisors were concerneds 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,exa 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. lew-and-order conditions--auite similar to A | . Vietnam--and bring them in if they wanted'to - go international. I.was trying to. get them ‘to get very realisticsad solving problems by changing the quality and the approach that | we had. We drew up an original draft that went to the President, out of meetings that — A
ed ce oe eee ae naan sen ee Ht nations Retlageaah ia Sp netencetenana at Ltt ahn ica WER tan” + + a tcl deh ha 8 ed Soe ee ee -113- lasted about ten days, at which point, at Rusk's insistence, the task force went over to State and became e general, regular body — there. They then proceeded to rewrite our original és3/ instructions and drafts and > . everythings ex both McNamara end Gilpatric said<coming back from the White Housert "Ba, ray you had better not get in there." I seid, "Tf I can help in any way, I will." They said, "well, right for the time being youdbetter not > dit go near that group, sees" bt actually didn't f 1 ol get in to some of their policy formatién, again. in a fairly early period, on the thrust of things in Vietnam,except for some of the A. 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.“ putf initially) I + was actually trying to get a quality U.S. representation in Vietnam, and actually smaller egein than it was at the time, and to pick a few key things, and to concentrate on that,and really A A
-=1ly- to get the Vietnemese coping with their own problems more effectively than they were doing. O'BRIEN: Yeon. Well, between this time and the time - of the TaylorzRostow mission, ave you involved in Vietnam on a kind of regular basis or . ar) LANSDALE: uh, no. Off end on I was, but again with | , second~ and third-echelon type of problems. I was seeing Gilpvatric everyday and working’ very closely with him,so that. a lot of times ) as things would come up, he would: discuss them with me. Bat again, 1 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 hi d describing terrai d ae im an escribing terrain, and so ong, wha "the situation really meent that was making the problem. So I was fairly well out of it. - fas a matter of fact, I was working with some | visiting Burmese on their concepté of defense of a country) and @E6y they brought me in with the Israeli who had had a mission helping them with their defense problems in Burma. And the app ov oe israeli hac Crsn turned around to their defense
~115- minister and some of the others, and invited sda ve de ras ie se me to,look at their defense system in Israel. Fr was quite enthusiastic about going and had everything arranged and was to leave on a Saturday, when about on a Wednesday or Thursday 7 I was asked to go to Vietnem with the other mission and stuff 2 unfortunately had to cancel out everything and never got into see what Twanted to see there. O'BRIEN: Well,you end up working on border --actually, “A 62 par'ng A the ~seat tive vor the border , then, don't yous : th ot “A on Sue? Taylor ~Rostow thing? LANSDALE: Yes. Yes. O'BRIEN: What about that preoccupation? Where does that idea come svori-Zis that Rostow's? A LANSDALE: Well, ‘Taylor was the one that charged me with it. Taylor said, nba J yon roles J” eee Pete Vu akon ret rer eo Ww WOnrIar WBTaeeE Was Rous Omer er Fenrev? Puy ve Vy | he. this is eflight which startea “yaa each hate 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 Yon” CG about twenty things, I'd like to look intoas oe A none of them being this,of course. £3 . * A .
-~-116- T suggested some other subjects for other people ; kimOQ - - on the thing and gave it to thet, exd he called me back, said that it was a very interesting a luria jeiat | I had given him, end would L please work on es a defense on the porder. And [I Ce » ‘said, HEEL what sort of a defense? He said, “Well, a system of fortifications or a wire like the Tron’ Curtein in Europe. I said, "Good God, you aren't going to do that, ere you?" And he said, "Well,look into it." So that Supposedly Ne : wasihall I was suppoSed to do, and of course, I got called in on otner things immediately. @ But I wasn't even invited along to go in and see Diem with him. I said, Look, these are old friends of mine. If you'd like, way I'll - do anything I can Jou can hit them high, and ‘I'll hit’ them low if you want. We can get some things done that way.” He said, "Well, you aren't on our protocol list, so you don't A attend any of these calls on the President. F we landed in Sai gon, and the people from the were Prere ay oe presidency,met usg az Taylor and Rostow were over talking with reportex>s who were interviewing
. Sree Aen neat bt a ee th a tm shun » anemtane tartts ( bndSTO sts “ashton «fa weet wwe dn natal taney th 8m th rm nds ele Stee, ae os Oe ate te . iw ao . -117- them plene side, and these people from the © presidency said, "President Diem wants you -to come to dinner tonights" and I said, "Well, I better chook “ox ny boss on tnig. Taylor was | busy, but I grebbed Rostow who wasn't talking at the moment and told him, end he said, "Go. ahead. m sof said, "wena T wasn't even on the protocol, end everything. I don't care about going up to these protocol meetings anyhow, bes I went in and saw Diem, whose ° 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 Ao meeting with you tomorrow)and you'll find “A out." And then it became very personal. We < ral we just started talking over his two old friends fi “whthonin, and I had dinner with him. And he ‘“prought his nephew in. to join us--Nhu's boy, | oldest boy--who had a new toy missile, like a rocket with a launcherg and I was trying to explain to this youngster who was squatting 2. & on the floor next to his uncles the Presiden: bee. , x ssid, ; “aA : wno was busiiy eating dinner--you don't point this ag (at hi ims2T dicén't know how big a spring this
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE ee -118- thing had on it, whe ther it would take his. (a? ede a“ TAH 9 5 Pt head off or not. baterrer} I pera him to shoot it up into the ventilating fan in the ceiling. We spent dinner actually, taking ray . parachutes and things out of the ventilating ~ fans,and the kid and I were climbing up A a Ladder’ ‘to get these things out of the thing in the palace. This was very different: from an official protocol meeting. Yas Ss. i Yeehs~ How is Diem at that point? ' 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 sat next to himy a and wnen TiaskeS Diem a question, his brother would answer it® a and I'd have to tell him I wasn't asking him the O . ; questiond) I was asking his brother. A very A strange relationship at the timeg end I found that he was a talker--Diem was--and he was very clear and concise in his statements and had too big a grasp of details t4 wnat- ever subject he was calking about. It'd go on for hours--detesils on it, which fascinated
’ O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -119- me but used to bore other people. But he oo. _ did know his countryy and its history,which he would give at the drop of a hat.- This . evening in '61, seeing him, he was very hesitant in his talk and hadn't--it was or” some thing physical as well as,;mental hazard or something, 7 felt. fn evid SRO Lae porrhe— pe govnte” inet later? No. There was mentally, people were telling -me that his brother had ‘taken over in the & dust _ the year followings US oe 8 dominance onathing. . 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 sawhimin 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? - cL No; no. He wasn't superstitious. wow He a was a very rational sort of a person~--pragmatic.
O'BRIEN: LANS DALE: O'BRIEN: - -120- Well) when you get back, you talk to President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy? and John McCone) A es I understand, in a rather private meeting. What happened here? ‘Well, this wes,when I came back, I met the nN. President I went in with Taylor and Rostow-- . all oftis did who - were out on the “mission--and | . pat ' he thanked us all very muchg ai and as we were, he .asked me to stay behind and talk to. “him o& that was when he asked me to perform this other service for him,which was initially to think about it)and itt came up with some ideas, way to put them down, can sr brhetiye on paper and give them to nim. 7 4nd I said, "Well, do you want" to forget about Vietnam for the time being »because I haven!t written - A. ; my report yet about Vietnam." He said, "Yes, act 7] this other takes priority over itj,so I —_ didn't even finish writing my reports on what '“T had seen in Vietnam at the time. TI went immediately into this other work. Well,about that time, there's at least some A thinking in terms of momos that are going to the Presicent about the only wey to save Vieinawe “A ee ee ce an RR RR HASTE CESSES om IT nee ap AAAS, TSOP TS
-121- is with a rather substantial commit£ment of U.S. troops. Is that... .@ | LANSDALE: Yes;.there was some. Now where. .. . Emm, | there was some, and I can't remember just A . where it was coming from. This was one of the things, that Diem asked me when I saw him. He asked’ me if he should ask for U.S. troops, and [I said, "Do you need them?" He said, “ft asked rou a question," and I said, "Well, I'm asking you a very legitimate question on this - - D: . . ‘ things ah t said,"Are you ready to admit that ihe you have so lost control of your] situdtion that you can't cope with it here?" and I said, NYou'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, “A i and you've answered my question, so apparently <— he didn't ask. There keve been some conversations, going on -E'msure. with some of the Americans befor: tha tg would be my guess on this thing htcause he didn't say, "What Nel oO do you ‘think of, ues Te=sthers anything, of A a A & My % 3 * : o 7 fa} ' “should I ask?" which was sort of like somebody had recommenced this at some point,and [I A ee me ee eet tA Etre mt
O'BRIEN: . LANSDALE: 2122- don't think it would have been completely in Cy ow Bee aVactnanese contex Neéh, do you get any of this thinking” when you | get back? Any contengency planning or thinking about the building of troop levels to a more substantial evelenaybe linked with the settling ‘of the Laotian question first? There might have been, and Tr might have known - some of it. I can't recall now oF nye it's someplace in the back of my head ,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 , GY and working on some things. My staff would get in and out of some of these other things, and A I used to shove them in to take my place in a , could meetings and so ong and I pa “only then just get very quick briefings on them, but they were essentially supporting wnatever McNamare and Gilpatric were doings, so I'd just have them .go in and report directly and work with them directly.
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: Bowl O'BRIEN: -123- eon Yrs. ure ta Yost. Who were the people, on your staff at that point? Well, let's see? One of them was Sam Wilson, ’ ae “ “ vihdse’ now a brigadier general in the srmy {o A . Jack Bowles: was a Navy Captain who went: down - . . 4 . . to serve with the JCS afterwards and.is now with Standard Oil and working out of Singapore... fic tise And I had five or six « people Like that, but those were my two princi §x7 ones. Well, this is about ready to run out, and we' ve. A oe covered @e.2w guile a Lito