176-10030-10168 JEK Assassination System . Date: 5/5/2016 Identification Form Agency Information v9.1 AGENCY: NARA __ RECORD NUMBER: 176-10030-10168  [Dup /4¢-16029-1 0085 RECORD SERIES: ORAL HISTORY AGENCY FILE NUMBER: Document Information ORIGINATOR : FROM: TO: TITLE: ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH EDWARD G. LANSDALE DATE: 07/11/1970 PAGES: 124 SUBJECTS : | VIETNAM; CUBA-BAY OF PIGS - DOCUMENT TYPE: TRANSCRIPT . CLASSIFICATION : Not Marked RESTRICTIONS: 1B CURRENT STATUS:  Redact DATE OF LASTREVIEW: 06/26/1998 OPENING CRITERIA : COMMENTS: _- sanitized version 34
6 Ba Shuiritgo M99 41 Too. Oral History Interview - with Duaed é> STE Lansdale July 11, 19706 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 Président Kennedy, or Senator Kennedy, if you met him before he was President? LANSDALE: . I don! recall meeting him before he was TL belie? oO Presidento, The first meeting, was] “Inbeliswe, . the first Saturday following the inauguration, whatever date that was. I was called into a> meeting in the White House by {Robert S.J ‘McNamara. It was a neeting,om, actually, on a report that I had written. for (Dwight D> Eisenhower It was sort of ay i'm not sure
Ti O'Brien: td LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -2- that it was,NSC (National Security Council) “meeting ybut it was comparable to that with the personnel that were: attending. There were several Secretaries: | Defense, State, and his - National Security people -were there. | Gould | | pad Tossrg mai eet g with McNamara ana [Reswell [J Giipweblc, wembers of the incoming administra- |... tion, before they actually assumed office? Just before, that is,a day or so before. I'd A . been in Vietnam for a brief visit and got back just before the inaugural, maybe two or three days, and at that time both McNamara and. | Gilpatric were in Defense getting briefed for their new jobs. I met them at that time. FO The outgoing Deputy Secretary of Defense asked - me to start working with Gilpatric, and so I jo Know A . avi ipatric rather than MeNamarag [James This is, Douglas. Douglas, Jim Douglase ail wesc Douglas) How is Douglas to work with,while you're with him?. Is he a pretty sympathetic person? got 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’ | bet | ceanding on his part . cnat because my views weren't always | opular in other parts of the government¢> I gathered that there was some opposition to: my going out, and he insisted on ‘it.. . I'd like to ‘come ack to that. - wonder if we could go on to talk about one of the major problems, which is Cuba. When is the first A ) . time that you hear: about the Bay of Pigs invasion) not the Bay of Pigs, but the plans?5, Sometime in the. fall of oixty. I think that I heard’ of it about the first time that it was brought up to the -suver-policy group of the Eisenhower administration: I was the Peputy, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, at the time, for Special Operations and used to accompany the Deputy Secretary, who was a an Oy member of ‘the AnterKpolicy group, to most of A
a the meetings that th: nad. When Allen Dulles A AO . (ATlen-W.—Dulles) ©..st raised the notion to aWis, tARCL™ . . . ,vhe*Senate” group, f{ was present at the meeting as an posist-- , | . O'BRIEN: What is the =ainking about it at that time? What kind of operation is an ~» it basically a guerilla operation at this point? LANSDALE: Initially,it was. Initially, it was very diifer- rom “ - ent than the way it turned out. It was based on a ‘premise thet many people in Cuba were “very Sotet) unhappy with the, Castro administration and the way it was turning away from the initial revolutionary objectives and the capture of ‘the revolutionary movement by the Communist Party, which surprised many of the supporters of ° Castro as a guerilla and as d revolutionary S 7) action. so the thought was to back a number | of iCubans whe 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 qradaa\\y) thing evolved fairly regis ond apparently there was a | planning group , anal CIA. § Central —
O'BRIEN: - LANSDALE: O'BRIEN:. LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: Intelligence Agency} who were working on this initial plan who started thinking in military invasion terms. I suspect that they were doing that because some of the Cuban military_ and military types), that is)very militant, r nae A kr soot “"i..GS, were coming, out of a* Supa as’ reiugees, and they suddenly saw a windfall of man power and started thinking in other terms of use of them. But / this-change? — «waS,. the changed plan towards the Bay of Pigs — the way t Waa Jolie , thing,jwas. well under way in the inner circle . thinking of CIA by December of 60) very defi- nitely so. Who were some of the inner circle people at you recall ? this point p-(heerre: fs) Salinger; —6f cot OLRIE nit, Amgen DRack ord mM. ] Bessel! rash, . Let's ‘seep ws On golly.4 Dick Bissell ; ~ eCiicharerar“BEsselE> was the overall chief of .. the group. Tracy Barnes, was he in it at that time? b Tracy was an earn ert ee him), How far @ ack A of ogg’ Tracy,went in the agua?’ planning” I have my doubts that he was. . . © ° | How about Soe. , William Sve ? Geilo yee)
LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -6- . He was one of a planning ‘group who were Syed planning the operation, but he wasn't je chief, and I can't. recall the. guy's name offhand. Oh well, maybe when por g get the transcript back; ; : |LANSD LE Maybe, 50% '@) you can. p How about . fre: ‘some of the other ° er re te ~ aot st places . ers c1) Yat, I Grete Bat tet ae Ses, but initially it was all CIA. “They ‘borrowed some military personnel to help with - Carly ow, - the planning eartien? but they were People - who had been attached to CIA for temporary - duty on other matters, and they hadn't come ' din 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 st. 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 L 2 Lemnitzer was si itting inythe meeting; — - He vasibatrean of the Jcs (Joint: Chiefs of + O'BRIEN: “LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: Staff} at the time, and he backed up my urging them to get some r‘7itary planning in on thats. After th - oo - .aent among our DOL: ea of that, and then the JCS set up. a special section to plan along with the | Cen: Fal—intelligencé: agency | on that., ' And viho . the hell headed that? This is yet in the Eisenhower administration. This is all back in 1960. This was still in ae“early planning stagedo 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 Conte critical of the concept, and it wes) just, too Ono clumsy and overt} and a poor-planned 25S Ree : ; Avot of ‘people. have knowledge of this, by the men Aeot” wee end of the Eisenhower administrationg “M*) 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. - -8- 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 =~. gt all,..do you?” Ye. ..csy were. There was a very definite, no, wait a minutes the candidates, no, I don't think they were. As a matter of fact, it was. . . im thic - still ina rather nebulous stage ef, shifting ‘over in ears Novenberg I think somebody told me, if.I recall correctly» that the concept - A was in the form.of a memo in CIA about August, so this would be well after the candidates had been nominated and so on. I imagine that Jus “id? - it was nerd by ,two or three people in, the CIA A OU at the time, Atleast, the rest of us certainly - a@idan't know it. I forget exactly when I first heard it, but it would be possibly October, put 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.
-J— O'BRIEN: Well, I suppose you had some conversations v. with Dulles and with Bissell and some of “these people about it. ' LANSDALE: Yes. O'BRIEN: What's their feeling? You already discussed Di et ny _sing you to sort of — noid your criticism,. - 0 | . , LANSDALE: Well, Bissell definitely felt the same wayo | Bissell was a very ‘hard; working, intenselperson, almost high-strung type of individual. He became rather impatient with ny questioning of the. changed Concept when it took place. J Hows bitianay te. ‘they had the correct’ personnel” _ and “ff 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/s did. #ke CIA have thesAmericans who could work: with such’ a situation? I just~ didn't know - of any, “but I was assured that t athere were such Americangy b but I'm not certain that there were. O'BRIEN: Did you question the kind of intelligence that was coming out about Cuba and the expected reaction of Cubans: to an invasion/ ana the
'} LANSDALE: - ~10- | reaction to Castro in general? ‘Just in very general terms. ::I didn't have oo enough concrete and specific information O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: myself that was separate from theirs: Most. of the intelligence take at the time, avail- able inside the U.S. government, was pretty :~ colored with this dissatisfaction and state-. ments of it. “sof 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. ~ Hee It Just sounded too much, Pied a sales job on a viewpoint. I'd question that, whether that was an accurate thing, so. this is about as far as I went. | How Goede guy like Douglas react? Do you recall? Well, he approved of . the plan, 50 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 to give ita real hard scrutiny and to. come . r
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: : (O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ~-ll- up with details of whether it could succeed or not, That was my last advisory role with hin. I was taken off advising on the project after that, actually by my own request because ‘I was apparently causing too much trouble and Woe vr i :-2«s of progress. "Lets tas reaction of the Joint Chiefs, people like Lemnitzer, towards this? Is there an . institutional rival ry or bureaucratic rivalry . | here in their minds? | Somewhat, somewhat q qt was a little bit as though, “well, somebody's going to be playing Boy Scouts) so this isn " really rivalry. They had. a difficult time taking this really. . ser Later, I know, when the JCS got ard tel, ipe in,on the actual planning of this, they became A much ‘more serious on it because they had a 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
~12- oe andy — met them, , qi didn't, get in on that The one woul person who, a view of their reactions willie on ad O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: Ay : would probably be Bill Bundy, (rettrenB pu) who 1 I know.at the time was discussing this with then.- Did you have. ee .... oundy and his fcc: ves ~+ ao that point? Yesg ‘nis was a Little out of Bundy’ 8 field. | - He was always trying to figure out what the chances were, the percentages of win or losse He was,lowy arid q hadn't known the final plan > on this thing, and Bundy did, ane he asked me what I thought. I told hin, “wellif the JCS - maybe e shad e- guarantees something, you can~take, it 10 percent lower than that and 0 along with itm I'm not ~ gure that they know a clandestine operation, | but they'd Sure know a military landing, whether) it would succeed or not. Given some of the -. ~ why shade it unknowns in this thing, wee Shae by 10 percent and go along with. the figure. ’ Well) apparently they had given it a high chance of Success, the JCS had, because Bundy said, Well, you mean : A apt oe ‘“ it's going to succeed then. I said, Well, I.
O'BRIEN: . LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: - ‘LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: | SO LB . So a don't know.” , I gathered that he felt it would succeed. wen) then /you are pretty much out of touch fromthe Potat that. 4 ou battle il A with it until it actually comes | ofb, You~Wew LE! That's mn 0 OBEN: ' didn't get inlbe- any of the changes: in the a lans there at all a P Se eternber sertang vt we No. I left ‘&X around the. first of,December, . .. "60. I really didn! t. follow it from then ong Does fri? anyone come to you from the Agency / or from State/ or Brea the White House, as far A as that goes, and attempt to seek an indepen- — dent judgSaent on your partpjgmer backyemend jon Sutera. 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 ; wiv4, ‘in Detenise nd the people that are around you”. that really have no need to know and direct | involvement? I wasn't ‘aware.of it. There might have been, ‘but Ihave no knowledge of that. When Gne=thines the operation? actually begins ON 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 ¢2 you xy you. have-any- th ww Wat the (Maxwe11) Taylor conmitteet’ ok Ch makes . Hoa inquiry abit t 2 I met with them once, and they weren't iiterested \. with the Bay of Pigso. They were Me ee in the decision-making process) ois making dof -policy, and asked me if I had any ideas on how better the President. could be served in the policy decisions and arriving at then. The thing was,right at that moment, McNamara -had previously asked me for the same thing), and I had ‘come up with a proposal for him . which he put to. Kennedy. I just told then Weti. I had some ideas but I had given them - to somebody else, and I was skeptical of the boss anyhowp fad this was on putting together of task forces. The Kennedy administration had eliminated: a bureaucratic voonfdoggling thing
-15- vee what the hell was that called. _— O'BRIEN: “coat [operations | Coordinating Board]g LANSDALE: Yes, the OCBS L pointed out that the one. 7 . good thing about it was that the principals met for lunchyand I said the, rest of it's Gr. We birds pat to cpt men in oc’ ccvent who are talking ' to aa we oe are held responsible by him for managing men, money, and material and | ae so on, who can understand the problem well a , enough around. the lunch table to have one "secretary or “deputy secretary or under er secretary Oo oud $0 On, Ward say, “well, ‘we'll take care of that /,i¢a good way of doing business 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 7 was a good control. mechanism. F so essentially all I told the Taylor ‘people and told McNamara ain my paper was that this ‘function had | been eliminated, along with cutting out t diot of dead wood, and there was some live wood 14 “flow about restoring the live wood? This onoceialiy was what my proposition was with the task. force, A
him and so on, on Teg, and I vondered what the ~16- of getting the. people most. concerned with something) who ¢ could operate for. the. president, and having them get together and - help form the policy, get the president's | approval, and they were the same ones' who ed ae oe a could, st7~ _ 7" = 2 immediately. | -~ 4.ut to create another big vureaucratic thing. 7 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 OCB again, nos anites but it got -out of hand. Anytime you esto change the governnent around, it seems to come right back © . “A Ye BUEN? Ji Yes). wc have a tendency of doa! -in form again and close ranks on He But “that "46 Lancork “was all,I did with the Taylor group. Inciden- tally; in that inquiry’ into ‘the. Cuban bit was | the first time that I met (Robert F.) Bobby Kennedy. For some reason or other, I didn't oA .- connect him ersonall} with the ictures of P vd Ratner) P _ RY Om youngster was doing sitting in the meeting
” é O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: - O'BRIEN: _. LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: ' government would operate at a decision level, = -17- talking so much. Was he pretty tough 7 Well, he wasn't tough. . He was the most indver- ested of anyone in the room there of what I 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 Brebicme questions of how the A and they weren't naive at. ¢ all. He hada very © good understanding. He. was very much concerned about his brother’ getting good mabey in the | way of information and full details “of alterna tives and so on, on a policy decision. Well, Af=you;-you~knew, in that period right . after the’ Bay of Pigs--of course you had a lot Of contacts. and friendships in other places LANSDALE: Yes. O'BRIEN: . Outside the Pentagon. , What kind of an impact dots. Aare? the Bay of Pigs have, let's say over in. the Agency) and State Department, and in Defense, 2 an n and in the White House? ra)
~16- LANSDALE: It was a traumatic experience at top Levene — of the government. I think it affected President Kennedy more then any other single thing. It was almost a taboo subjectgif you were going in to do business and to get an ce approv- 2 on somovhane pi: “ever even hinted Chav SuUba on o. . ~uban affair. It was an Sutensertly. 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 even ayew ; didn't even want to, contemplate it... And yet they were honest enough people that they knew | they had to face up and ook. at it and. would ‘do so,.but it was an extremely emotional subject with them, very much so. . O'BRIEN: Well, in terms of the Agency, there's a number | of programs and of course involvenents in A 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
~ LANSDALE: wet encouragement of. some of the military who _ “A (=19-— rather than the Agency. I guess. ‘What I'm trying a: say is, can you see any decline in the narhoy influence Tab ne Agency "EY aecisions? Yes, I think so. I'm not certain ‘that it was” _ the military as such. It might, have’ been the — tee Pret =. 218 McNamara personally, » were Somewhat interested but wouldn't really have expressed the interest unless they were - directly askedy a: and: there always had been some. feeling of juneaseyi1 think would be the best. : word to describe it; -among the military about | type of A | any clandestine, 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 it. * put that would be sort of a dinner-codteil party type or a gambit on their. pert, rather than sitting and planning and so on of We must grab some of dhe! thid," | Riven 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 Detense, On this, I think that McNamara himself probably. started thinking initially that, this was a military operation and just to be more efficient ana effective, the military should take over } A sch things. I imagine that he talked that way who to some of the military people } were seeing “him from the JCS, awd. the Chiefs, and from the intelligence community, the military intelligence community. I know that DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] got its great start under McNamara,and - I feel almost certain, I've got a strong hunch, | oo 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. © A507 aotuairy, wasn't a military ambition to set up a rival intelligence agency to Weve CIA, though there had been tremendous rivalry between the military service intelligence agencies and ti CIA and had been right along. -- from the initiation of CIA originally. But this. was sort of a business rivalry,and it waste
-21- sort of dealing with them, of categories of work, and where the boundary lines of who did what on the things ana this is where their jealousies and emotions and everything would A of who would do what. It wasn't a thing of come up over almost nitpicking of boundary lines “we '12 do it all, and you go out of business /-tnat Av. feeling hadn't come up/-- but sae oe after the. Bay of Pigs, the DIA and its creation, a lot of : . the people in that who were civilian employees, ees O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: Defense Department employees, had an idea, "We can do a better job than CIA," and in a much. wicer field than the service intelligence agencies pied one. a , Are there enough. skilled and “competent people around, in the universities and the military, ' to staff all the intelligence agencies: the NSA [National Security Agency], DIA, CIA, and organi- - zations? Are there enough people or are these , operations just simply too viel, tadasea They might be too ‘big. é me need to know things is a very elastic bit. I'm certain ' that the chief executive of the United States,
O'BRIEN: — “LANSDALE: in whose name these works are accomplished, - would have no idea that he would ever désire “to Imow some of the ‘things that they're working on very hargZyou discover whole buildings and all sorts of equipment pusildy ecoumuiating facts ce Spires Be ‘would say, iI can't 8G .. soates) ever needing to know some of that "ek yet he would hesitate) given the A. world today and tne 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 objectiveslon this thing, it's very difficult to say whether you's. got too bigan establishment or not. Do you ever take this question up, or is this question ever raised in the administration by He. civilian people in DOD [Department of Defense] or the White’ House, with you? Not with me. No. My theme on overseas operations was reiterated enough so that it was known by G- _a number of people, and I always felt eh@t it was? A more efficient and effective to have a very aa small group working and to choose them with very
=23- | great selectivity and go for a handful. of highly qualified people rather than a large group of Americans charging overseas someplace. ‘This went for intelligence as well as diplomatic Lo and other. economic work, and soon. I used to point out the embassies--for example, ‘behind _ the Iron ‘Curtain--that would get desdimatea by | 2 -> being TNT A and so’.ong in Eastern Europe, -S for example, it Would neppeng ha toara wind up with an anbassador and two or three people left in en 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 fark that you get this reputation, mainly. out, the writings of guys like [Eugene] Burdick and Graham Greene, does this affect you dn any way in your relations with the bureau- cracy? | ' - LANSDALE: Yes. It-made life rather difficult. With 7 . much of the work, I had to do in Washington, I came back from a lot of operations abroad and went up into policy-forming levels in So, A .
-ch- 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 made ' them very unconfortableg ex 1 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 XAT would get backing throughout the U.S. - government for this thing/ and have an indi vidual 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 wepula be times: when these individuals would. ‘show up ina country, and the first time they, sent a message to mo, the ambassador would ask them kindly ‘to Teave: the country, to got out of there, just because of my name. I wea mast ~ Oo apparently the “enemy to some. of these
teertneem 6 Serene tena  ESFETEEARAEES  SAESSTSS STD aCe oe ste AEN MRM tr gD rs people. One of my assistants was traveling oetween. Thailand and Saigon, and there was a 2 ‘coup going on in Saigon at the time ané his plane, which was Air France, put down--commercial flight--in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, and the military attache very kindly picked up this. ? guy and: several other Americans from the plane and found a place for them to stay until they could get another flight out of Phnom Penh. He asked this lad of mine where he'd worked, and he said, “In the Pentagon,"-- he was a civilian employee--and he mentioned that he worked for me)and the attaché got all excited, called the ambassador, and he was given two hours to come out of the country. [Laughter] All he was doing was looking for " place to sleep at night SO it became very. ‘emotional and very silly, and detrimental to . 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 Americen, along with. . ra’ ‘ “A . one of the economic mission guys--there were
26-- “two Americans,” viho | were | not only best known by the Indonesians but were nae canal sabe | there was an affection theres. and I Mave, tod the ambassador at the time, afterwards, ‘nake real use of these peopled, the Indonesians believe them, and there's some antipathy towards the U. S.4.: but they make an exception, F tnese twopand they! re just inveluabieZ 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 Court staff, and this lad who was tall and blond-- a Nordic type, if you will--would go in,and - the small brown Indonesians wow ‘and their fami ies-welcoms him like a long lost uncle” or brother or .some thing. The children would run up and jump in his arms and climb all- over him, and he was Uncle 7 something® to them: Fs, later, when ‘the Soviets start moving in sane’ [ surf ace- to-air mi sgie] missile sites into ' Indonesia and the U.S. needed to know what looting 4nem” sort of antiaircraft armaments weregoing in;~ . oy ‘our embassy couldn't get the answers to its
O'BRIEN: ‘LANSDALE: | I suggested that.we. get the State, Defense sponsorship and send this one fellow who ns - a lieutenant- colonel over and Just let him > stay a week or so.- He'd go right in and talk to his old Triends)and they'd probably tell him what: the. soviets were up to. He arrived theref’ the Indonesian general staff sites took him out and. showed him these § j and. asked him what he thought of them and so on “the first day he was there. That night he id oo, got back, and wrote out a-radio niessage / and asked the ambassador to send it to me) at A . which point our ambassador told him ‘to leave the countryg = Now), this was Jones? A That was Jones, yeso = esa And he said, "Well, let me put that in the messages" sol jusd asked the Department of State, #6" ‘please let Jones know that you! re sponsoring this guy), ray - too,.snd there might be some more things that he finds out that you ‘need to know as much as 4 ny) a 40 aa ; we do. .So they told Jones , just tS sit back
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: | LANSDALE: Conte tes to =28- and let him do that. We have some wonderful Americans) and this was what I was trying to a0 swe to fina out which Americans have not only: our interests at heart but were enough interested in foreign @ *"'- 49 understand and have ry mpat. . _ 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 things Jena sort of aggravate a situation, than do ‘something rather simple. Almost sensitivity training. . 0 afontbe, tee ; . Sayapetin: Incidentally, along these lines, I've got a good story for your account. Great. 7 About*the time of the Cuban Missile frisis, 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 TeV, How the hell did I a o- know how to do that? He told me +inet-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 TWy stations broadcasting and get the people in the am 79° country to go immedi atelyyso their TaVy 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 [ could think of. to get some information . A oO ; together in a real crash basis. CIA couldn't vs 7 give me details, e% technical details<on any of the Dav Vy stations in Havandeh and elsewhere. . Ffone of the ‘Defense civilian scientists--and I fate A can't think’ ‘of his name offhand;,Bast. European nsame--left .the room and came back ten minutes “later and provided all the technical infor- mation, to the great amazement of everybody ‘there. And I said, Where the hell did you get that? and he said, "Well, I went out to. the corridor in the Pentagon / (where we were having the meeting), wat in one of the phone t a” booths there,’ and I called a friend of mine
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE : - 30- down in Havana who ‘operates a tiv station Jie and asked him. He gave me all jee aope, and I just wrote it down." So this is the “way we got the information for it. “one intrusion | of the av espace never took place, but we got the means together and some airborne 2V 7 transmitters. It | was developed finally by the hoe thet, it he Navy) and the project--I're™asked 4 put on a sort of sled so that it could be picked up and changed over from one aircraft to enother, or used elsevhere@ Later when we» started the tly “oroadcasts in Vietnam, this Navy canip- ment that was “{nitially intended to tet aye President Kennedy talk to the Cubans was, the broadcast equipment that was used from the ‘air--flying in tHe aircraft--in Sai gon, down O° to initiate tht /proadcast#in Saigon in ° 1965. Why didn't it come off? out It took us too . long to figure, ways of getting , in on the. theme and finding a channel and +0 . finding away of getting people ,thet” do that. t
eee een ean ae A CY EER aS ened eEe i wet me ceetfin wiemctticeDhD aA Giban ir ohd O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -31- It took us t#én “tuielive days to do it, and the time for them to do it had passed over, and ra the Russiaris stood down in the interim, so the. need had passed. -. «Well how do you come back into. . * 6 well, maybe, perhaps we ought. to pursue this whole business of counterinsurgency first. It sort of becomes the thing with the Kenne dy admin-~ istration, doesn't it? Yes. . How do you see that? I was in the Marine o tres , Corps in the late 50+s) and there was a good : A . ‘deal of guerrilla and counterguerrilla training that was going on, and it becomes a part of : ee . fe the new administration. Who are the principte* ‘proponents of this, outside of yourself? ADO 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 >
a ~32- that up originally, I don't know. I was rather surprised--he seemed to have seen copies of lectures and other things that hot? Ive’ given on the subject, Ee, who had ‘QO BRIEN: - __ LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ' © BRIEN: LANSDALE: passed those to him and who had talked to him about it; I just don't know. Let's ‘say, let's take a person like Max Taylor. Do you have anything in the way of conversations with Max Taylor in the late fifties? No. ‘How about the rest of the Joint Chiefs? No. Taylor was opposed to this type of things -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® - 2 Well, he was the one that in the very early ; A
+m mine om oe meet mart eet oe tment artes x eon tome entice he RIP aR. Basie ts teat ~33-— formation of the: Special Forces in the Army-- . - he was Chief of Staff of the Army at the time J-— ara took one look at these American troops: in green berets and said, "Pake that God damn silly headgear off," or "Take that--that'’s it." No nr 7. : . . really sot Tough oy oe gween berets, and he xeted-the e——_{___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 on ee ae ee . Cee” it was only a wartime outfitsthat somebody would have to go and jump in and work with oe gquerrillas. “Again, this is a rivalry type of a thing,so there wouldn't be another OSS [Office of Strategic Services] there, be a CIA or” something doing it, but this, afterpll ist part - A of the modetn military function) so let' s. “make ral it military. “So he went that far on the thing. luaatd But that was a concept--tyou a, have a regular force fighting battle,and someplace tack of. the A enemy lines, you'd want to blow up bridges and LA
-34— gather information and so on to support at somebody in working and fomenting trouble co . your tactical force? so well why not have back there for the enemy, but connected with the forces? Now the concept of peopies” war~ se-Tury ) cs a : --Mool fare now is. pushed, we've seen then? in Vietnam. _ & and elsewhere feally wasn't something that he or others understood at all, that almost _ ; all of us speak—see—querriliacoe counter-guer- _ ao) rilla, and that people like special forces ss . might well, having learned guerilla operations, would—then be qualified to start coping with joselgwone understand the importance of i political basis for operations and political. | goals and behavior and the psychological part \ of .the operations © this really wasn't in any of their thinking because, as witnessed in Korea, we went and sort of had a small World War II in Korea. And in Vietnam later, we went inPagain with Taylor as the ambassador, but
~35— having quite a bit of an advisory role with beg , our military commanders out there, and influence ‘ gd WAR ~ C. with them, was fighting another Korea in Vietnam ! af we “hon De more or less. There wes some changes in tactics) . . . fy ‘de But ,was more use of helicopters just for: verti- cal envelopment nothebiGoaest instead of Sfar€ moving guys along the groune to,with the thing. O'BRIEN: Why don' t they | come to an understanding? fbarking) > DANSDALE+—-E!m= sure that's “going to make~a.: good=broadcast= Cm for-youy-axgood~tape” 7, a . ‘ Q BRIEN:—--A—diversionwatzleast. a! aoe LANSDALE: I'm completely. baffled by that. I just don't | know. | O'BRIEN: Don't they read? LANSDALE: They speak the words, ang particularly when they were talking with President Kennedy, they picked up the words and enthusiasm. and responded, but would show by what they did that they didn't understand what they were saying. It's some- thing that, of course, I have been trying to
~36- “do something about all along. I've never ‘understood what it was/,. .@ I've always pS . mo felt that I was too inarticulate or: hadn't | a So 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) ho. have written rather good books ‘on the subject and on parts of ie Atnat you ‘d by pow surely think, that we Americans would produce . . top tener some understanding of some- /\ thing that Mao [Tse<tungy and,Giap and others : Oe we . C ‘have gotta , every page down -ehroegh the rank - | \ and file to undérstand. ., — E Counter incu cqeneg] @) BRIEN: Well, in the formation of the CI,)group--it was designed, as I understand it, primarily as a kind of educational group for toprievel 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: 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 aa@ Taylor sat in on those meetings after he got his CI group going. But/ in forming the CI group “inadtianty, 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 sach 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 severallsessions in my office A .
~38- and put together some rough first papers for Taylor to start his thinking for the , 4irme 6 president. Then when ‘Taylor stipe his. group) : ‘ . A I wasn't invited in on it,and Z didn't attend. A O'BRIEN: . Sure, “rc wane fn got any insight. .... fab. whi at, right after the formation of that group,and early--it was‘in May or June-- . : A | , , . they dispatched some teams to go around Latin America to survey the ability of various nations ee to respond to Castro-type guerrilla activity. LANSDALE: Yes, yes.’ O'BRIEN: Did you get involved in the planning of that at all.or any of the fallout of that?- LANSDALE: Just peripherally on both. I forget the,,details on that. ‘I had been worrying about places like a) . - . . Colimbia and several other Latin American 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. 4 bad encouraged Hae the coliimbians start civic action eo? A
a antag eR ae atte -O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ~39— ‘in dealing with some of the dissident areas and so on. All’ I’ had done was, not plan- ning as much as coming in with sort of a ‘shopping list of what people might look for, _and individuals in these countries they might talk to to, get information, on what was happening. Well, are lyon in Colenbia in the Kennedy administration at all as . No.-No, the most I did was--1 went to venezusla 4i/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, or I was stopped really at ‘policy levels from going back into Vietnam or the pniidippines J ox anyplace in Asia. I begged to be permitted to go down and take a look in Latin America ,and Gilpatric Lins ‘dhe one Hot ta Whe A a the decision bod Kener made BEGIN SIDE II TAPE I outside of Venoguelay | : ‘ ) Bi you get to any other countres? , A O BRIEN:
j a : , a -y0- . LANSDALE: Well, Bolivia. In Bolivia, I was interested | in particularly the Bolivian Air Force's. work of setting up a public school system over in the eastern slopes of the Andes--- down in the jungles and in the very sparse settlements. ‘They were really the one — governmental group that could get around places. “they were very enthusiastically setting up one-room school houses down there / and flying in teachers and bringing some education in there, which I thought was a great project, andnencouraging is a | then. k Yhiile Io 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. 2 OM > government was involved ,até the U.S. Economic “jf = e ote 6D ecied cnet ematie tie hy BAS oe. — Y&ssion was working with them, and the - Bolivian military was supporting it with trucks Sonce , and with, péople going in. But/ this was a very tenn exciting agricultural-community-type of a A A ; project of moving people out where they'd have an economic chance at life/ and also a chance to own land. It was changing the social
structure considersbly 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. Venez Mae Lins on are not only oil proauction) but we’ rave steel milis down there and a number of thingsZbut I did this as much for the Venezuyilan x conse Ministry as I did for - the United States at the time. They were concerned. “O'BRIEN: ' What are your relations with the people : involved in the school in Panama’ which spreads a lot of this entity gospel of civic action among the military? Are your relations with those people pretty good? - LANSDALE: It was. They had picked up a lot of my | material from earlier times, in the form OL. ard WOmnes Hat . of memeszemt léctures, I had written on these / subjects. Whiten they set up the school, I "talked with them on the program of instruction ls that they were going to pea give. The first’. adoption of any of these principles was in
O'BRIEN: =l2- Guatemala, and it worked very well there for. a a time. The Latin Americans became quite enthusiastic, though again jealousies come in. ra They thought the Guatemalans were boasting . too much about it. so / when I was told that A\S ‘ problem,I said, Weil, get them to emulate and A try and ‘beat them and get a healthy rivalry - going, which is what happened actually. - I suspect [Fulton] Freeman is there as ambass~ .  ador in Colfinbi a when you" re there--no, Freeman mee : LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: * O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ‘ was in Coltinbia. . Yes, he was in corynbia. I can't think of the guy who was in Venezu a that was anbassador. oh, he was from. Arizona: and was 4a journalist. Not C}tauric Me Boeinbasen- LAnsDALE: No- Well, how is he to deal with, and do you get a chanéé to see [Romulo]: ‘Betancourt or any of the political leaders? Yes, I saw political leaders there. I had five days in Venezufla, and I think I got “AA two hours’ sleep all the time.I was there. I [C. Allan Stew t | found our ambassador there,at the time very gard AY geod tp wmk wifra open-minded, I wrote a report, coming back
_ -43- from Venezupie afterward, and. submitted itor by the - time I got to Washington. It went up " to President Kennedy as well as ‘Dean 3 Rusk, “and some. of: Rusk's staff immediately wired the anbassadorpand it was one of these) "You don't want to buy this, do you," and they said I'd - cone out’ with a report on Veneaifile, and here were the main points 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 . 7 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." | “vou don't have, to be in @ place long. For example, we had a phopty 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 —
O'BRIEN: -Wh- business community and the U.S. Enbassyg aot I had urged that they meet maybe once a week or once 2a month--the. American executives and the Ambassador and several members ‘of his staff,and have lunch together rather frequently. and discuss mutual problems because the U.S.” firms dow there had very large security start), (they were very close to the police type | of forces, the constabulary ‘down there}< and tarde the embassy would be very. well informed. from this) as well as passing some of this information back to these people; and everybody A would gain by it. Well, this doesn't take very long to. . : - In talking to the vice in cha president | of os. Sie Steel operations - down there, “ypld ak say, "One thing you would change if you ‘had the power--what would it belt and he'd ; tell you something like this, youzinou, so, rth; it was rather easy to come up with tus thet? ' thing.. Did you find them fairly knowledgeable and enlightened about some of the things that you were very . . -@
BANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -yS- ) ne Very much so, very much sog.——< ‘Like rural economic development) and agricul- tural developmentg—+< | Particularly the oil companies, and I was - A" Qe surprised. Standard [0il Company]of-ew=erseyt showed me what it was doing because the. rigs out. in: “Lake Maracaibo were getting blown up== and their pipelines were getting blown up _ by saboteurs. coming in who were ‘really expert. I found out. later that they. were affiliated with communists in Coldnbi a and had come on of overs“ they were really experts at explosives, . and they weren't- the student type of revolu- | tionaries and so on, who also were present A in Venezuela. But/ in seeing what they were doing, it went far beyond a company ‘aternalism They type of a thing for employees, that st started credit systems with farm groups and housing projects for people living in the vicinity om oat any of their jemployeese—not thet wat employees so much,who also gained a great deal out of this. ro ; And then U.S. Steel, in pushing its developments
So oO hb I'd like to put in was? =< On my reports from Vietnam in the very early days of -- “just before he was inaugurated, and he read it : A . apparently right after the inaugural--one of the reports was a little side piece that Ie ‘didoona village in’ South Vietnam inhabited by some Chinese refugees that: President Ngo Dinh Hewbanks Diem had located down in the midst of a communist-held territory, and I was very - — | gate" 3 = way down to the south. .. +, He-probably ‘4 wouldnt doit; he'd ‘chew the wire-in-two"~ \ “here. O'BRIEN: Oh my God._..It!s.a wonder -he-hasn‘t~electri=— cuted. himself. --:[Laughter]- LANSDALE: Yeah...It!s not yours, it's: "some-of=mine .~ . 7 . an OLBRIEN: Wellj—Tin. not... worried: about. that.~ Wires;- these-sort-of-wires| “can-be- replaced.” = Tin vA . : not sure. ebout™ yours. LaNSDALE: ~~ Worse “srcpats. __ oe, fous ; _ OABRIENS— —VWell;- “he's -a- ‘spirited ‘animal and ke ‘canTt Co 7 -help-admiring*that.~ eee ce ee TT en aon oem me - : LANSDALE’ Yeah. 7 Well, one of the stories on Kennedy
ao impressed by them, arfd 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 A ana about the Zz. « « It was still January, '61, ‘about ten days ‘after the inaugural, my telephone in the Pentagon rangyand this che A “voice ‘that sounded like Presigchs Kennedy ' Ss told me’ it was President Kennedy talking, and an he had read this report of mine and wanted me to have it published in the § Saturday Evening & at df, ue home Post. I was wondering which joker in the- _¥, oo aes . . Pentagon s-you=know, was imitating this Harvard,.Massachusetts aééent and was putting 30 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 Kennedy, 30 I had to then go sheadZ 114 promised to do 1, eo 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.
| -8- - Or . O'BRIEN: | welithets——~ You had taken/-of course, you'd had that interest in Vietnam and Laos. ee _You talked to a lot of ‘people, as I under- . Stand, about Laos and ‘Vietnam end”the incoming administration. Did .you have eny intent or . pyipose in mind outside ‘of Just explaining . _ the way that it was? LANSDALE: ‘That was principally my intent. The first | meeting I had with McNamara, all he wanted to- \ : do. was, have mé tell him about Vietnam, and this 7 was essentially what most of the incoming administrative officialss“when they'd talk” to mes2would want me to explain what was A happening and wnat 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 eat mn ente B i ae Ott Sidon dda alee oo tt td te be wcte bat o ohenntites aecesbtnced Neath: Leiden things for them. It was mostly on the nuts_ and bolts pon how you go about doing this, and the individuals you'd: pick to do it, and how you'd select. them, and ‘please let's ‘have A highest quality and fewer people doing these re Sere ees ae err
O'BRIEN: - LANSDALE: - -ho- things. Well, you have some successes and failures in--I guess mostly failures in the last of the Eisenhower adninistrationZI'm thinking _ in terms of Laos. Laos is the immediaté . problem in 1962. How do you respond to some of these people who are in policy-making: _ positions at that time? I'd like to get your feeling for thenZ people like (Waltkers] Robertson-Zin the State "department; craps non ioor and (J. Graham] Parsons: John Irwin in n& Defense; and on: the Agency side, people Like [Desmond] Fitzgerald. How do they see. . on You have named a group of people, all of “whom are friends of mine)and we were very friendly, A . A and TI 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 Rl2 YS in Fark = named. A -end—teiked with me expressed similar beliefs to mine) soit was very easy in A talking to them, and there were others.in the
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -50- Bi senhower ‘administration. Now this wasn't true throughout the administration at all, but there.was a considerable group of people 2% ‘who were in various executive slots just down the second and third level who had been through the . . . 9{ Interruption] —_ | | F the Well, Laos,as I understand it,is,with the mp2 0 4 wn ey ce IM FH, oy” aid that's going in there, het“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--&" '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 fhe “like this? Is this the kind of thing,you envision in terms of--I hate to use the term "nation building"--helping a country to-help - itself, in‘ helping, people to help themselves? Yes, as long as in the modern world the leaders of the country will think in terms of as large a military establishment as they can afford in a country. And they do this without any advice from anybody. This is just a natural) a , A
ce1- self- preservation type of an impulse on thoir part. Then my thought is: They will be doing this. Then let's make the- military establish- ment serve the country in ‘a much bigger. way than merely toting guns around and guarding borders. It's usually the organization that is nationwide, and there might not be any other organization that's nationwide in the. country, such as agricultures even the ” vi es 3} ° . oS UF 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 AU A do. Bg, given that, why not then get-the military to start doing ‘constructive things around and making full use of the manpower that you have anyhow; Have. them be good military men as the very first requisite of "thea this, but, given that athere's still energy OA Ona o4 paul a and personnel, involved in that who have a4 lot of man-hours left over that could do other - Oe . things» and essentially,this is what I was trying to get the American advisory missions
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -52—°- 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, © yy and aiding and abetting, including economick projects and educational work and sO on. © . Well, in this Leotian deterioration that takes A oe place, yeuxkmnow the competing people there-- Cc Nosavan _] on Phoumi rongbeenity ¢ and Souvann Phouma and -all--how do you read that in 1960 just prior: a to the administration coming in? . bo=y6iwe=s=.—- How do you see Phoumi ; how do you see Souvanna Phouma,as people? First of ali; have you met them ‘at any time © we Yes, yes, yes, I didn't know them well at all. I'd met them we usually at formal gatherings of one kind or another. The main thing that I saw in Laos in the way of political stability actually stemmed out of the king of Laos fy 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
ie O'BRIEN: LANSDALE:, ’ -53- , bang had. calréedy felt that our best bet was to turn to ‘the king and force him --or, not force, but to encourage himite ‘taking the leadership réle that would be the one thing | . acceptable to all these leaders. “Instead of that, we were starting to become pants-inX= partisom 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 fey to ow nature w _ era we fell in love with the factions and - ond 00 ( people, almost: unconscious of the fact that i “we were doing that. The paratroop leader | there .« 26 «°) ‘ | none Le? 7 es boat, who kicked over a revolt, haa spent the night before his coup with a group of pmeiican friends, and there wasn't a damn one of them that knew that he was going to have a coup in the morning. This type of a thing/ I just > found inconceivable. People get nervous and sort of absent-minded about what's happening at the time when they're plenning an action
O'BRIEN: LAN DSALE: ~Sh- like that the next morning, and somebody there A among the Americans should have been sensitive enough to have seid, "Well, aren't you feeling well fox -gomething, yousknax; and had gotten some | feeling on it. put) this. sort of getting | in bed with people Ware and saying, “He's Od Hale adh reghd , a good: feliow,, andn ‘he's ‘my ‘friend, and excusing everything is a common blindness, and this had ; A worried me in Laos quite a bit. a ‘Well, I get the impression from areading of this. perioa/ that there really is some lack. .j of coordination in the various efforts that are there—ctotherwords, the ambassador is not completely privy to what the Agency is doing, and the Agency is not completely privy “A to what DOD is doing through the PEO office. Do you’ get that feeling? Maybe in regard . | | Coskn Fo to the Parsons-Irwin-Reilly mission that goes out there, do. you get any feeling over Hote at all? 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 A .
-55- meeting in the Pentegon in -the secretary of , Defenges office, and there were a mob of A. people theres US <~— + There were JI can't. quite, recall now what prompted the meeting) is a “ but prhere was @ crisis. of some sort in Laos. | And the JCS gave a briefing, that's right, as ' part ‘of the thing,and it was on the Pathet Lao positioning )and they suddenly discovered that OA there were passes over the mountains that had some importance to the Ho Chi Minh trail, and this great discovery was being lectured tS on at this meeting. Anda at the time, the Secretary. of Defense--I pkntle think, I wonder, that mi ght have been tonomad)” Gates 5-3 at the time, mi ght have been, but whoever it was-— asked if I had a comment to make, and I said, _ \take a look at that map that the Jes was H showing us of Pathet Lao and the other situa-| tions on the thing! and I said, "it should nO , A ~ tell everybody here just one thing. You've Sis . . got an ambassador whog2,on home leave here? he doesn't belong heretthe belongs out in A Vientiane right this moments axe the rest of
-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." Coe And—the—a~ I remember Irwin, was ‘picked right on the spot to gO immediately, and, said. to me on the side, "You and your ‘big mouths , yousiions? [Laughter] O'BRIEN: - 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? | | | LANSDALE: Some of them, yes. 7 can't quite recall which meetings they were at the time. JI was in on some of the questions of the support of Meso the Mere the guerrilla forces. O'BRIEN: Well, hod aia you see in. terms of a strategy | for “the area? _ mrorets-. Ory as I read it, there that are seems to be some various strategies,proposed: ° ee Bard Wea bic. Biatoas - one is ey syoucknon, ‘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-
‘ ce ete me dew tetomenin 6 vat shee we tA wippadiniet es ee beak Scare tines nD tictitcnt Dotiaocaab' LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: a ‘bell. Enm;_yeah=welly- ham, my memory isn't too good on this thing. - ‘There was some talk oy. _ at the time |-there! s high country across theBolovens Plateau and so forth down in the A that.being the dominant area,and what we south, and there was talk at the time ,of _ should dojuas to’ make use. of that. and the high ground in Vietnam and so on, across an Dy into Thailand, and ensure that that stete Slaw "in noncommunist hands. s Well, there! 3 also suggested in the Laotian “A ‘ 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 ) and interdict ing A Sennidieting 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). How aid you A. feel about the Laotian crisis at that point, al A in terms of a strategy or a direction a € which should work? Qo.
LANSDALE: -58- Well, I had wanted the Laotians to defend | wre their, country, and Iwas all for the work - Meas . Oe with the [Maoists and so on of: doing it. Once. it left that and started involving =e 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 ant oller WOtLED in), And on the bombing, I felt that: as long peda as you had all of the , communication with the people teake in the hands of communist leaders - such as in North Vietnam and then Hanoi where this was pushing, that anything overt such as aerial ‘bombing that would then permit them to use that as a unifying force psychologically with. the people would be dead wrong Ay used to remind them of what {Winston] Churchill had ‘done | with the German bombing of Britain, “A “gust on radio with the. peoples and here were ‘leaders with complete access to radio and working with the people,and it would have a A reverse effect. as far as trying to stop the ambitions and aims end’so forth of the North were, . Vietnamese, who after all, the guys organizing . A
-59- f the Pathet: Lao end pushing on into the area. oe W + felt that more could be done with the “ O'BRIEN: LANSDALE :. and defend their country. But if it couldn't) armed forces of Laos themselves in making them more able to stand up for themselves - ; “A I couldn't see an intervention of any sort , in there. Morally, we'd have been on a moral ground then to turn around and start using some international moral pressure)through the . "press and so forth) to sort of shame the. North . “A Vietnamese out of their attempts. I'm a great believer in exposing things to bring such pressure. Well) how do you see the relationship of Vietnam. A and Laos at that point, or do you? Oh, yes. The passes and the Hothi Minh trail in bringing things dow was one of the key ‘things on this. But again, there. was even talk at the time of taking Vietnamese troops in there, aXa—secretly,;Zand using them up 2 > to try and stop that, and I was opposed to thatfot didn't want to see intervention like that from the outside.
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: _ O'BRIEN: -~60- Well, when does some of the covert activity, interms of. the use of some of the. Montag rords. Coe yards- in interdicting those supply lines in ee Laos ,xyoutkhou, from Vietnam, start? Is that “A ‘going on in the late Eisenhower acministration, A or does it begin in the Kenne dy administration? a I think it was the Kennedy administrations< there had been a little of it,or there.had been talk of it,in the Hisenhower administration. A ; There had been: thoughts along that line by. ‘the top Vietnamese’ aenanne G55 Segoe © ; An. his older an into raed heaton A 'SS or ‘maybe’ '56,and had come up with a scheme A very similar to that at the time. He had talked about the mountain people of ‘Laos being ekin to! ‘the mountain 3 people of Vietnam ) . “A and wouldn't t be good to get some.of our mountain people in with them,and together ; ; A they could be trained. ‘Yes, well, you're in Vietnam in the middle ‘of the fifties,and then you go back’ in 1960 . A in. the late Eisenhower administration. What's
i tarabstate, ~61-_ changed, ox has anything? LANSDALE: on, a great deal. Excuse me. _ [Interruption] O'BRIEN: What changes do you. find? 7 | LANSDALE: Well, the main change was in a growing isola- \ > tion from reality of the constituency of the { ° President of Vietnamg a repression of, you might say,a loyal opposition or a noncommunist . A opposition to then in political terms@ a” “There eA Wh— professionally some among the military that wee > : 7, was’ taking the Vietnamese military apart from their people more than it had been when I had left) because I'had gotten them working very _— the pepe orn G- closely with a numbér of atertt-or-— projects» Al and a growing isolation of the American embassy in particular, but including some of the American agencies) from the Vietnamese officialdom, and taking a very strange form of concentrating on gossip essentially--gossip eer as much .as fact--about, eh,—what<the-hell+s- the: -word-I'm-trying.to-think-of,-eé misdeeds é
denthch (wall ot detec Gnd diosa 9 ttle aiden 2 oes tt tot wewette, citeabdatdeeetin. O8n . a on the people that were in power. Ghe rela- ~62- "Yate se and so forth by, Public o 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 tionships, such as the ambassador with the a“ : president of the country, ‘the ambassador H ¥ would go into details of malf2x6ance in office and so forth, or mishandling of funds by the Vietnamese on an internal matter, and the president would have to correct him and Say, oo H ador would say, ves) I do , too. This. to me . . A A , was very poor. I felt that we had some wr Oo y , \you don't have all the facts, and the ambass- _ Americans A were close enough to. the top officials of the Vietnamese(who weren't , A present in the country always) who should A be brought there and told, “Look, we under- 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?" x ather A . jhe oe . than going and try'ing 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 wantg" I just felt that we weren't playing a very wise baligame there -, . at the time, on the American side. Cfr also ‘felt that Diem was paying too much attention -to similar types of his own’ people, his futur) Se a intelligence people, who, were cLnssasar 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 A ‘Cases against them so that they could take actions awd hein turn) was getting too much
ba tet ee ene soe manana 9 en ~64-— secondhand from people) and this tended to a A oi, ; isolate him more Since his main intelli-- gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] Nhu , A. 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 to get in’ touch with some of his opposition, A anhevat which point he asked me where I had | 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 ox where I was, but just the mere fact that you know that shows that you were having me trailed aroundgand you know I'm a friend of your country's,and I'm | oO 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 ae i$ . people desires aa if you™@ spend your time and money and efforts and so forth ‘watching
O BRIEN: LANSDALE: we ~65-. a guy like me, I'm sure you're doing. a lot ; 7] more for someone else you really suspects) Cwm 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 listens and at the time, one of the people most critical of him was his vice-- ' president, and I went over and saw the vicem 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 . ; spies? and he said, “Probably, I think so." {Laughter] Maybe he'll go back and report . to Mew J this one. I said, When was the last time you two talked to each other?” Well, it had
~64- secondhand from people, and this tended to isolate him: Moxey) Since his main intelli~ “A gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] way who was’ an ambitious person, too. I felt. that it was a poor arrangement’ on the Vietnamese side. -I personally urged Diem at the time “to get. in “touch with. some of his’ opposition, “A anh at which point he asked me where I had ; been at certain times of the day during my visit theres and I said, Se was talking to | your - opposition and I'm not. going to tell . C you who it was or where I was, but just the mere fact that you know that shows that you - ‘were having me trailed aroundgar€ 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 aha it you™é spend 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 . . . . . 7] more for someone else you really suspects oe . , ava _. How would he react 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 listeng an@ 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, . 2 WM . . and I said, Is this guy one of the president's spies?” and he said, "“Probably,.I -think so." [Laughter] Maybe he'll go back and report to Mew this one. I said, When was the last time you two talked to each other?” Well, it had . " . A
" -66- . "qq wert. . . . been months» so I back to Diem,and I jumped = A A ; .  w, ces ) himg I said; You've got a- vice-president who you've made responsible for all the ' economic development of the country, and I . ano . | oe _ know that you consider that very importants. © You haven't talked to him for a long time,” . i A and I forced him to tell me when psued done it last oso I said, well,’ pick up the telephone “and call him over here your -first free time, Lo: oo A and you sit down and have ‘a long talk with . himp, So he did it© He picked up the phone j 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 ) | 7 , . Kyl, ~ he wasn't oppressing anyones and I said, You don't know what your own police are doing) A y _ | then, and-I gave him the list of names of A _ ’ people who were in prison, who had been arrested’ A at midnight and pulled out of their homes and
2+ meee eee a ae a a Ah pan tm SE RE NASA ER Scr He i datas at abe be Sham toa, whew eute -67- “SO Ong and he promised. to.look into their cases immediately and do something about . eo. . \q ‘ . . itm And I said, I've gotten this from. people who,in the opposition to you, but :I ; whether ens a “A don' t know saad £“you /Veagokten any reports. He said he'G 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 Seve bopment of an independent woreaveracy, or is ier degree of U.S. influence on, ‘Let's say,)the Nhu 7 a spel iigence) x knew. There was propebly sone. se “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, A initially, he was really trying to serve his . a atti =tnbetinse———er anne
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: brother, and he was doing it by trying ‘to A . get the goods on. everybody working for his brother throughout, the government and anybody opposed to his brother, and the intelligence people, picking it up) discovered that if | they brought in ‘bad news about some guy that the brother didn't Like, he'd pay them and believe it. So I'm sure that there was 3 lot of manufactured evidence in the intelligence take that was coming ing ard I don't think the Americans were screening ‘any of that. type of information because it .- went right into the palace,and there was a A) big room behind the president's office that - had many files and was the main n personne 7 dossier type of file place. Well, you're criti¢al of the MAAG [Military Assistance Advisory Group] operation there. fldine ' What's wrong with it) in the late Sokss A Well, I felt that M2AG under "banging" Sam peti | [Samuel T. od Williams in the late “Sos was
-~69- anfunusually well-run American military . 4 . . . 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. 4General Willians brought over the chief of staff of the Vietnamese army whenever .the American advisors who at that. time were out in the countryside, but -«cm ; A oe eo ea ‘ we at fairly high levei.s,)and were running training camps more than advising on opera- ‘ OQ ‘tions or anything-But. when they would come in once a month for a weekend in Saigon, Williams would get the Vietnamese Chief of Staff to come in and talk to them. The Vietnamese ¢hief of Staff at that time was General [Tran Van] Don. Don was quite diplomatic, but had a way of being candid in PER . his remarks and not having them hurt too much Aames ant “when they were told. He would leave out, so ‘on, but he would tell these Americans what ’ ec Me ee
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 | | a | a throughout the armed forces to them This ‘was the one part of the monthly gatherings © with Americans around that everybody would stop dozing off or thinking of something else and would sit.up and.pay attention because they were the subject of the talk,of course. This was a very healthy thing. .. | ste where. - Yes, I can feel"it FF vwvld eo te iZause even though it was tough diplo- Ga the matically, the most sordid truth, wetid— hd O hardest facty“would come out in, heme , 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 t yodig with him, but I noticed in a visit, there--I
re eee ae Sema ot -~71- think it was *59--that sergeants and junior lieutenants and soon would come up and .taik a to -himg and I'd moved in close enough to eavesdrop on some of the conversations,and | , oO fn. these were personal problems, family problems, and financial problems and so forth that. individuals had,arrd this was a very unusual 4 relationship.for an American to have. And _ Since the American was pis running our advisory ettort tom I “just figured that this ~~ constant feeding and contact with the echelons of Vietnamese military that were down below: “oo 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 actaally involve the military work that was going forward, people griping that something was wrong and so ong. ae they were doing this out of a friendship)
tater S tied seit ated 2 Sean 98 eons Oats Mima = 8D < 268 ate, At Tet enn amen os sone men ele Aten tn he att O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ‘O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -72- and neLvas not to tell.on their bosses ox _ anything, but usually personal worries and concern that wastage or something going a co 7, wrong would @ffect ‘them. Later they moved in an educator-~a military educator-- {Paul -D.] Harkins, and. . -@ | well, [Lt.. Gen. Lionel -C.] McGarr comes in. there before that; doesn't he? McGarr, It was McGarr, yes, you're right. it was before Harkins. McGarr. And ‘McGarr. built,up a staff to work on counter “insurgency and probably put together the best staff Hat. , studies on counter-insurgency Fhan any / American military men have ever done. Is that right? 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 rat on,and in Europe, and switched most of his work over: into compiling “How to Do it” manuals, but I've never seen thé finished
~73- products. I saw them working on it at the _ time, and all c know is they had tremendous stacks of papers with the results of their typed-out work’ and were putting it together, f ana the interpretation of this w&% apparently“ to: Start: increasing staff and American military personnel to ‘handle whatever winter was coming up out of this whole process. The [nad , ° feeling was waé that there should be closer American Supervision of what was happening (out .in Bunre, which meant yewétt you'd 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 initially more than anything else. 'It wasn't for control; ‘it was just for information that would go into fields of studygax4 this ek Lad Areriean ~ 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 —_ - other things as well. In collecting information) a we kek) 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. Its was a very human. thing that started workings and as this happened )we started building up our en A advisory effort more and more. O'BRIEN: Well,in the meantime, while this is going on, , UA , A : . { the insurgency's building up, isn't it? LANSDALE: Yes. ee and Oe O'BRIEN: Just what is the condition of the country- side that's different from when you're there ‘ a  cpttnc alent at 8 Oo AF in the middle é$fties “sete and when you go back in wen 19 LO 8% . ; va ‘ jos fom | LANSDALE: Oh, there were guerrilla,by an enemy ,which oO ' there hadn't been in the period from Geneva on up to the time I left in the end of ‘56@ You could drive roads at night and so forth ce rene egg ee
-~75— and not be worrying about guerrillas. There were isolated incidents of violence, but. they were very minor--it would be about oe a wilh tae what you'd expect in any country, crime rate . ene ae _ goin sethe fact that former Viethen: guerrillas — . t 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 Het terrorism,was going on. By my next visits later in the A vv 'S, there were areas of , . . guerrilla bands at work,with roads that were areas that were unsafe, unsafe and-so on, A \ A nA 4 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.” py the end of ‘60--when I got there xn Christmas of '60--there were fair - size enemy, Vietcong units operating and oO dominating areasf, it had escalated considerably by then.
-76- | 7 O'BRIEN: Is this terrorism campaign on the local officials as serious as some of the people - a have written? abotb=at? LANSDALE: Oh, yes. A O'BRIEN: Do you ever get an y feeling about the “number of people? t! ‘ve heard all kinds of estimates: | LANSDALE: No, I've got [Stephen T.] Hosmex's study there: on Hal , ands I haven't read it yet. I just got that. from him. I imagine he's got a figure in.there. The last figure | aroun I remember on it was--in about ' 66--weeleste fe Soe 4 a or something . . «4,4 O'BRIEN: Forty thousand. That many? LANSDALE: Yes. These were officials not: their families 2 3 or anything. But these were village officials7 and district officials) and sort of federal -government officials, - © BRIEN: Well, what do you see happening as a result of this “A the: ability ef in. terms of Diem to just simply govern in. those M abitel his a bicty wi . _ years? Is the-vatu Y iG govern deteriorating?
LANSDALE:: - problems. He had.been shot at several.times, -77- _, YeS: In some ways it was. Initially, he was enwilling to delegate any authority ne thd! at all’ a he haa the tendency to try and “ns do everything himsel£. If the problem came op 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 “A ; hands of others. But at the same time, he also seemed to have lost some of his critical faculty, of Some of the things that were going wrong,- of not being able to see it: He was getting around the.country and visiting but A not as much anymore because of the security A so that he had a larger and larger security guard around him all the time,which meant . co a . that.when he went in and talked to veople,
~78- ‘they were very much aware of plain_clothes policemen, secret service types, all around : him, and others)that were screening out ar ; - 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 national leader, ws being less effective all the time because he had no means of measuring what was true and what wasn'tf what was So seth. worth doing and wasn't, and What wes work and what wasn-tc" It was a considerable ; ; a Ay: impairment of his critical faculty. This was one of the reasons I was urging him to start dialogues with his political opposition . ‘jast OA even if it started at opposite poles and,led to tremendous emotional clashegpthét 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. we peony A ‘Hattening the most emotional irritations owt ob. that would take place e, just how—the’ people hes we seemed polite at the timeg so the content of what they, Wt Say would be something that he: wasn't gettingnelsewise. O'BRIEN: Yes, well, as I understand it,the vgcx [Viet 0 a A. , Cong] make -a great deal of headway in those years on the basis of the land system. LANSDALE That was one of them. A some rub between the U.S. in this regard O'BRIEN: Welljwhat. . . . As I understand it)there's H . and Diem about putting through some land reform which would cure: some of the rural - cultural problems that the French had sort of created, as I understand, from youtkow the Vietnamese moving into the country. . -O& LANSDALE: | Yes, yes.. O'BRIEN: Well, how do you see that? Are you pushing him , A for this sort of thinggat Hot polit 2 . he bode | oO . LANSDALE: Yes. Actually, weave some very sound lane A
~BO0O- reform measures on the books and had issued decrees on them that were good. As usual, the diffgculty Z, when you get a piece of . . . . “a . . ; ot , legislation or somethingylis then implementing A it correctly) ana I was pushing him: mostly on implementing his neasores. Fwow ‘the land ; ° .O- reform worker that Diem approved and used o. ink as the basis for his Secrees came from Wolf lady ¢ Fa and Wolf, was, when he left U.S. employment, wns actually employed by Diem as his advisor on. AEE suviect, 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 . . aA affectionate friendship between the two mens 8? that Wol£, 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. ‘ana I felt that the main thing .that needed doing was’ demonstrating to President Diem,who was sympathetic towards this, of where’ A
-~8]- things weren't going right and changing some, . th, S of the inner workings of +he“thing)instead A A of tust falting him on intent. And his “intent was very sound, very good. I think he was ignorant of some of these things | . Fi going. wrong. 'r 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 “A 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, — A which was again open to education by somebody of hime but he was moving in people whom he . could trust~-who were refugees--into farm communities and distributing land to them for security reasons and political reasons and so on, and then dictating what they would grow and so ongAcause he'd just figure, ; A: Well, in the national economy ,we need this
| -82- LANSDALE: You asked about the falling out between as we. Ladejinsky and Diem. I know there was oO just. something of that nature, but,what it . type of fiber grown or this type of crop or | something, and the land will produce it up “A LL j there,and so they should do that. so} he A sort of was only circumventing. ‘the lawafor the greater good, in his own mind, if nis own | extent a O'BRIEN:: . This centralization. brings about a reaction, a ‘though, doesn't it? LANSDALE: | Yes. = , oy : TAPE II SIDE IT i | | consisted of, or why, I don't know. I remember that the. American ambassador . . hie O'BRIEN: *£t,would have been (Elbridge) Durbrow? LANSDALE: . sorrow SS was mindful of the fact that ; a a Lede} gnsky was having breakfast with Diem and. was close to him, and,in a. “rather general pad aaked Ladejinsky AK or _ : Cos way, to bring up thoughts of corruption§ in A
terete aioe Ome see Pion eo : : SARA DTS TE See mn ae otras ae actrees enn ance maeaneeeete MNSRRNNAE ERECT Enno tETites whee Reetheesiees STi A, teat tintelhettee, Wtalth sectRAy i velitht clei Meets bach donate atfhnerte pacncttinn bail oietdetilin nest te . ~83- the government ana subjects beyond anything like land ‘reform. And I suspect that Ladejinsky nad started getting very political in his talk,as a result of thisywith Diem,” A ; FT. 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, Ladejinsky had wanted to go someplace<and “A ‘I forget where it was. ... . I know one of the places was Indonesia, but there was A another country he wanted to go to,and Diem ee 7 had- hadn't wanted him to go/ and kev suggested that he attend a conference--I think in O- Latin Americasrans finally, they had agreed between the two of them, and rahes insky had — gone- on to: .do these other thingspthet , 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 presicent and his consultant working. I know ‘re vdejinsky 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 ; ny . would come over, and say, Well, even if that Av. oo is true and everything, I still like the. _—s ; , v -guy), and want to help him, and so ong and a — } this existed between the two. Sof they might have differed on some things and perhaps : on carrying out land reform exactly the way. frott Wolf ‘wanted, but the two men kept ‘seeing each other all the time, and he had ample opportunity to work on that. eo: that's BWebiscat the suggestion sks made sometimes I$ that the Vietnamese military neg not been trained for the kind of war and the kind 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? a gc gp net rete +
,- WAL Tibetan Tat OH Comer so Be LANSDALE: .. -85- wo? od Oh yes,, They were being trained actually. to . meet the challenge that the Vietnamese and American top officials foresaw, and they were ; Cle ; thinking thet=this--and 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, “a that they thought might happen. F tnstead of this, of’ course, it was more of the same old A. story againget ok there were many of the officers in the Vietnamese armed forces who. had formerly been guerrillas themselves, who had formerly ah had been Viet pon in. the old: days of fighting the French, who had broken with the gommunists -and wanted no part of the fommunists and were very sincere, patriotic Nationalists. But
‘high school and so on. since “they” had had fex'a this former effiliation - - A 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 as graduates of the Vietnamese Military Academy arid the others coming right out of — Ft So as a result, the officers corps who were knowledgeable 2uGn Sof how to counter what was happening were kept at fairly junior grades, and’in the late *5° ‘the highest any of them Bor that I ever knew die about was ,rank of Majorg end 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 wanted to do different things were simply too junior to do it and were unable to convince anyone F . ‘of the need. The initial meeting of the fhreot “A mor] --.. was thought, to be a police problem than en army problem, and there wes a lot of work
8, Fe -87- on trying to equip and train the national Lo OY police to cope with its eid we Americans - did that through our economic mission and | through, Michi gar 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 a man who is very good at precinct work in Detroit, Michi gan, ox pifininghem, Alabama )— or something, and move him’ out tio an Asian 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 things s so that we had "whe police acvisors pe “ee were insisting on all . “policemen being armcSea with nothing more 'than,say),a 38-caliber revolver, with the A : A~ Hos, ; policemen saying, pees but people are shooting at us with rifles, and we need rifles or something like that to shoots back at them, or how about sub-machine guns or some-~we neec «sre fire power." Well, it was foreign
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -88- ‘to them. So there was a mixup on a number of things on this coping with the insurgency © ¢; ; oY ' that was growing-+not only the conventional aA . . formation of the Vietnamese army but of a conventional. urban police formation of the police. And yet, throughout the syatend’ there) -there were many individuals who knew better, and who knew how to’ cope with it, and who were continually begging, “Give us a chance “to do it some other way." “Weil, in terms of these people we were talking about a Little earlier--the late Eisenhower . people, like Fitzgerala/ end tewin/ and Parsons-=- Do they conceive of the kind of abe oat iy that's developing in South Vietnam, or are they . a o . | Fairly well. Fairly 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 problemas were some of our military leaders at the time. But, as I remarked 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 t that was rare enough so that I. felt that, Lantexruption] 1 | - How long is tne wenuseript? _ a Ho ho. I went through first,--the publishers wanted me to tell all}. rotherwords, just | a“ write as much as I could for later editings at and, said this is the way people do it. So very -I wound up with really three omerseat 42 long books) and ‘since I was writing one not too A long book, why I wound up with a tremendously | . 9 ey them long manuscript. | Aad) urged veer, that I could wersulde > 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. . te tartea off initially with a cut-and-paste job, but I discovered I couldn't do that and retain the proper narrative and pdawat og a . , “Onur d@s on ‘the thing, be I wound up having
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -90- to rewrite almost of all of it, and recast it, and retell it in a somewhat different forn. I'm about half-way through thet,, but it'll be a fair-size book even SO. | \ err that's good-Zmainly on the Fhilippines and the’ early period in Vietnam? Unhmn. ‘Good, you know wnat’s really eS) . Well, there's nesity one big period in Vietnam that isn't known too well, and most historians A have passed over it,and the ones who haven't - A . have been championing a cause, and their work | is quite suspect. Some of the French were or . sort of agents e:2 provocateurs at the time, A _ and they are more or less justifying what they diay 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]? - 2 oe I'm trying to remember. I think that's who it was. Well, most.of the French writings about Ho and some of the explanations in
ate .O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: -91- official documents of the French, ‘trying to explain him end so ony by friends, I found very interesting,eré Io haa no way of judgZing "really on itZthere was a tremendous sympathy J and so corth. being expressed, and then a very. - For . . re . . . * Strong attempt to work out an accomodation oe with him’ afterwards, with=hio, by the French. And again, a highly emotional sensitivity to any “interferences od whet they were trying to do) and they saw almost anything as interference. sof what 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 a11,or something | different at leasts afd it was just amazing. The French press was screaming that I was starting World War IIT in Vietnam in '55 toe Mind if I get this on tape--well, it is on tape, Tt SOrry,) I didn't realize it was going. . os simply because I think there was a feeling by the French colonialists in Indochina} of not! wanting — to give up the French presence theres
-92-_ “and it's a human, understandable type of a. thing. They had been there and. ‘associated there, and some -of them had spent their entire lives there, end here, they .were having to give up sonothing,ebi'svies journalist once explained. it te me « t was like a man giving up his. mistress and seeing some GS evy ina big car driving by in the streetgand even ~ though he'd given NOY up, he'd just séy, well, he hates that guy] bteause he got the mistress. allegedly with material means such: as an automobile and maybe a fur coat and so on) and he: isn't the man “that the former guy as. 9 So some of. this feeling was very prevalent theree and for ‘some reason.or other, I happened to | po! | suddenly become the focal point of it, through my name or something, @aatheEs0 that they | “went to great. Lenahfls of charging me with all sorts of things that I was doing: IT was out) sect Sores oo buying up the loyalties of se% Goursds with { ° ‘millions of dollars, end things that would bel hard to prove that . wasn't, mind you, except Gad to say, "Look, I didn't have a million dollars to buy anything with." . and they'd
-93-. say, "Well, the U.S. government did, and you were a secret agent for them, and soon. It _ Was very hard to disprove some of their/talk , and say, ‘Well, that just isn't so. "Except once in a while they'd get really wild and claim I was down--I walked in on a briefing, A. . for oxanple, with French officers telling b how a -  gipo* some American visitors from Washington atest down at that very moment I was arrying to. buy off a sect leader, and very naively, with. or suitcase full of money)pxa I didn't ‘now * 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 briefings, I want to know whet cther the - guy killed me or not. "Feany. Now ese . hot weal were very responsible French otficials*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. ave O'BRIEN: yoako well how about people like Bernard Pall ” and Patty Bow end their writings? Are they ...@
~ ohe. LANSDALE: Well) they! re very sound, very | sound. Fall's . " background, as was Honey's, was out of | ‘intelligence or information collection units / a * La their different countries. Fall's initial | writings were all out of a French army historical sects" and I had to tell him one time red read some of his work originally by the original author. “put/ it was a detailed military history of operations that he'd delved intep | fet don't know, I doubt that it was intentional plagarisn on his part. He was probably rushing through, getting a book published»for academic credits end’ so on. And Honey the same way | with British” intelligence, who were quite active in indochina during the French days. waned But it was J--some of the stories and happenings A were just nlmost incredible. he... a Some of the French journalists were ‘politically tithe partisan. They had connections ,with the Communist Party or sympathies with them of some sort. And Ho had been one of the founders of the French Communist Party, so rat there was always a cultural or comradeship. oy feeling of some sort therés exad when the —
-95- Americans started Showing up on the scene } there was, very patern realistic feeling of 2- “Well, these Are our peopleZthese Vietnamese,” ra) or Kher 7 or Lao,® and you keep your cotton-pigking fingers off of them" type of a thing that went to very great lengths J~ ~ Volatile emotions erupting on this type of a thing. 71 remember one of the journalists, “John Beret, published a 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 Fenh where he. started a weekly newspaper and started also: writing speeches for L-Noro dom | Sihanouk, and the next thing I knew, Sihanouk - was” accusing me of plotting to murder him or assnssinate him, cre I hadn't t Gxenbe een near Qvrerwwe Cambodia, and I hadn't, thought of Sihanouk | when this happened. The governor of Siem Reap, R . who had been very close to Sihenouk before-- . and Siem Reap is where Angkor Wak and the historical ruins are--suddenly died, and the A story started seeping out a little bit with Sihanouk charging that this governor, whose
-96- } Nat ae a name was Dao nav , and I were in a conspiracy to murder him and take over the government of Cambodia. And it didn't do any good that I had never met ve ow ‘and never had any dealings with him, and Cambodia was | way outside my: bailiwickg b but. this is the story that's gone on and: on and on. O'BRIEN: Well, there wes a little bit of truth to J that,” wesn't theret cee ep Chis MV2 56 LANSDALE: \ ¥oeh? Well, he was a national leader and . t actually had formed the political groupings initially that supported Sihanouk and gave - Oo" him his political powerg-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 the government back into reflecting more the will of the people. . How far he got, I don't Know™ but: this was really something that was foreign to me at the time.” 1 got sent back into Cambodia afterwards, from Washington, with Of various wilitary assistance groups / or a> economic groups pct presidential commissions 7
wap w overthrow the i:ingdom,but,of course,our boy . =" -97- and SO ona and each time they'd have Pnohm . Just We lt, 79 Penh on the thing? 'dasay, "We- ¥ better check the embassy there." Back would come word thaty No, _Sihenouk was. afraid that af rT were a member of the party, I would be going in to marder him. 7 actually went in one: time} and the chief of police of Pnohm “A ‘Penh met our party--along' with the’ foreign minister end so on--at plane’ when we came on down, and the Chiet of Police walked rignt _next to me)and he said, "I'm your Li agon “A - man from now eg! eid I said, "You're keeping an eye on me, I knows it's’ alifight. I'm not going to murder your boss; I have no idea of doing that." [Laughter] Thatis q about "65, 166--in which he played the Khwer dorimander' of Royal Naval Intelligence foiling strange. “ And then Sihanouk made a movie--~ | a great American spy, who happened to have my name)and was a role played by some prince frznhwa mair who: was visiting theres, and I was out to A hero thwarted the ugiy 4merican and won the girl, wno was the daughter of the Brazilian.
~98- ambassador or something. Some French gal played the role: I've been trying to get a print of that or some way of seeing that , moviesAI'd love to see it, you know. It - sounds great and... . ‘(iaughter] O'BRIEN: ~ vocko 1 hadn't heard about that. Weld) that 7 does hit on _Some thang ythoughy an regera to = 7 . Southeast Asia. .. AS a understand, [ ince there was an Agency involvement | | lana the Agency does seem - to have a kind of free hand in some of these Nstanw | | (ee ee - | Can you see any brocks put on them as'a result of the change of admini strations?how do you react to this sort.of activity? LANSDALE: Well, most of the things that they did that had political consequences of any major size at. ai) urd ety are only ,taken by the : 7 Agency efter approval up at topsides so as far ne ne | | enti te
~99- as brakes are concerned, they've had them from iat ? 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 are happening, then I think much. depends on the individuels/: 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 +0 ‘ want to know or ex are opposed, all such things, and if. an order comes down to do it, 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) wii have is “A told the ambassador he vers going to, this but he starts, in things, and he figures, tras 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 TO . prohibiting him fe doing something» and won't »
“O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: . O'BRIEN: Washington wants us to have this happen. -100- | ‘e | be able to explain; Well, if I stop doing this, then this other thing won't work, and — ” i just woo; The ambassador willpsay,.No, I don't see it that way. - Don't. do it? So I'm sure there are things thishoose. happening that aren't told for this--for operational reasonsg and again, it's a judgdment of an individual on that thing. It's not a policy type of a thing from the Agency. Yes. : ¥eek? Do you find any--in the time that youire there in the middle fifties as well as when you go back in '60, 61, and Later involvement in Vietnam--do you Pind differences between the embassies Zvetveon the U.S. embassy in, particularly, Pnohm Penh and Saigon? I didn't notice thet. It might have existed, and I wouldn't have even. known that. ‘ Well, there! s some feeling among people involved with Cambodien relations ee that time, as I understand it, that somehow there's an involvement on the part of the South Vietnamese in some of the groups like the .. «@
o = RO ARERR ee # aN oN eee + 0 5 waned ett ttle tee LANSDALE: -101-— ed YrSep, ZL uo wiles ad Oh, yeeh. , Both the South Vietnamese and the h . Tai were playing around with groups inside Cambodia or with exile groups that wanted | to go back in Cambodia; and So’ ons and I'm not certain thet the americans from either Thailend 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. put / just. the fact that there was antipathy and it would take this form of expression, among others that were going on... 4 1 don't know which people would rather go in and take over and run canbodiat Zine Thaifs or the south Vietnaneseg? it's about a. ‘boss up which one eee down more on the Khyers than the other. # 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 é intelligence money to find out, you know, what$
-102- te armen gat Sate on Hen oe happened in each others sessions and what he was telling the guy. Then how useful mind you,I don't know. this was, A O'BRIEN: “Well) do ‘you find)--again, in passing on to A ' o- ” the task force--~and the formation of that. ‘Vietnam task force in the early part of ’ the Kentiedy administration--do you fina eo sensitivity on the part of the people, the > 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: oe only partially. They were as bemised by : the mechanics of getting decisions in Washing-~ ton_asthey were with the problem that they were’ employing the mechanics to solve. It was all 4 sort of new to them,and they wanted to do a ; A 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 | principiesin the administration were not entirely aware of thespeople they were dealing with in Washington. I recall, at the time, Stine, SUAS Ss FR Rusk was violently opposed. in the department - erent cr re EE Att A ,
2103- Qa 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 him wee ; i. fis pape chiatg. called hin, A nn among his. comrades, just, "This stupid jerk," end so on, which I felt was di sloyal--behina the guy" s back, you know. qt was always urging them to speak up in front of people and so on, and they woulattt do it. And the Cr same damn thing was true, fgatne} some of the. . military against McNamara, for example. a ce Fi Well, the McNamara’ and ‘the “Rusig end their KS awd So en) unders ana deputy, types of people, and assistant. secretaries, were trying to cope with in ctinch& fy Loon pSo@ people that they, felt Were sinstinctively: opposing and foot-dragging and so on,and , - A trying’ to get that working.so that to get ' them working on a given problem was really the thing that they were concerned withsend fl you'd suddenly say, "Well, we're going to talk about Laos,’ or Vietnam/ or. Israe? or : | | - sonething*ssYes, Nes, Fee. What have you got les in the papery you | nowt, And they were
-10)- to ha, Fete guy a watching, see): "Well, spiesjust “tive really Zz on. ao “Ls Ae gees do done rhis: homework, and—is—it=gonna come.up “/ with something or not?" rather than what is the real problem here,and how would I solve “nr it if I weren't sitting in this room in this particular group,and so on. So there was a. . .. #So then, working on this type of a thing which I saw very much in the task force on Vietnam-- Gilpatric,I know,)was shocked at the reactions _ of some of the foreign service people that wi _ came in at, renk of ambassador and so on, that : were sort of the staff assistants on the . assistant. secretary and undersecretary level. yy png bY wy, \ They would ‘start a meeting—infaot, I was e 4 asked to be sort of Lr forget what the title on ; . was /mexecutive officer or something of it, and they asked me to chair the meetings. Well, I'd a Granth SBD meget nce a goes vine selobriack BS wens Start taster BARS ive id nets iit Bieta n acy Bani cect, AaB chee ot ici tt aE 2 (Beh ncaa ie habla ett OS ET ats Pisa OA 8 0 contenant 20 St AED Baby bh weet 2 : ia : no sooner open it. then these guys would be i oo passionately explaining why I ‘doutan't be . A sitting. in the chair of the: meeting, see? oO... O'BRIEN: Yesh.¥cx% LANSDALE: I think it shocked some of the Kennedy administration people. It suddenly revealed a cere ie eres geen ne ane ret EAE EEA a A
-105- ao _feud-and so ong en I hadn't said it, and I personally didn't care that much, you know 9 I'd say, "Have you got all the hate out of your system now? Let's go on with the meeting,” see. e This of course, would activate it more,but I would sey, "Well look, we really do have ‘some problems here we've’ got to get to, and if you want, 111 meet you afterwards Q- A and we=cen have lunch or something), and you : “~ can spoil my lunch by telling me what a heel I am or something. But we've got work va i 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 ger C- - to stteet, the work done, tths better +t) take me off. It's no fun for me to sit up and - : ous oy: .. 4 chair something under conditions like this, $0... ' O'BRIEN: eek. Were you ever approached with the job as ambassador to Vietnam? yas, Yes oo LANSDALE: ¥6ah:—Yeeh> O'BRIEN: Who was pushing thet?
-106- the ¢. LANSDALE: I don't know. I heard about it phic’ first. oe manatee preenermmpS aeme ‘Saturday after the ineugurel--I think that's it. It was very early in the administration. McNamara asked me to come down to the White - House and meet him there, and I thought it was to brief him on something. nd I was working on a number of intelligence matters. : ee oO in Defense at the times, aid I showed up)and A he askéd me to just wait outside, and. they ray . were meeting in the Cabinet roomy and as I: said, it was essentially an NSC group. 7 and after a bit, they esked me “to: come on, end they had me sit opposite the president. And he looked at me, and he said, "Did Dean o [Rusk] tell you,’ I want you to be ambassador to Vietnam?" JI said, "No, he didn't mention - A that." Well, he hadn't at alls & ext phere was a ieee painful silence, and I figured, “well, ra Gee, maybe he" 8 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 the ‘last I ever heard of it. But,’ I heard all sorts of rumors that c2c} wis for CT weet Washingtons, and=tiinis afterwards that Dean Rusk
Tee eee cme ae eae amen ene ate ae tn RY NA A SAAN etn $ece «Acts it went eae + anor tnd mange wth ~107- was very much opposed to it, and opposed on the ground that I-was a military man and they didn! twant military people in on the situation. i . . O'BRIEN: Yeah. Jase. me LANSDALE: And then later I *£a met one of Rusk's staff officers at the time, and he was telling me wou bet 4 ; that Rusk was figuring, ses he could get me a job some other place or a promotion or © Something | to. get me out of the way at the times" a Sort of - Lapparently @ had becomena ‘target for a lot of , and S59 OO” F ' gossip and rumorsjat the time. But after that, A then, they asked me--Kenne dy asked me pretty Fi \rassa hol point blank--about, Durbrow, and I said, "Well, “NS after what you just asked me and so forth, I'm a little hesitant, but you're the President and you need the truthg so I'll just 6011 you right now, I think he's a very ill man fi his juage- ment's impaired by his physical condition#, he's a fine professional foreign service officer.and could be used some_place, but don't keep him on , “A in Vietnam anymore. He's sick, he's on his A back a lot of the time, and you need someone os “A . ' very alert, vt “len waoever it igs and pull him - A | =
-108- out." And they got--Rusk and everything, you know "You're off your subject, poy." But I | said, "Well, Durby's an old friend of mine, a ; and I like the guys. eid T saw a lot of him ~ é when I was in Vietnam on this brief visits and I think it's a shame that the guy's kept on - there Lécause he was quite ill, in bad shape." 7 F ana Durby never forgave me for tf, it got _pight back to him that I had sacked him and : . ‘go on bic ause he was withdraune after thats but | we _ this certainly didn't hurt his career at all, . in any way, eid even though’ State put him on a make-work job after thatg but he held the rank of ambassador which is as high as you | - can get in the foreign service. And he was oO ill¢,he really was. ra O'BRIEN: Well, how does [Frederick E.] Nolting come into . “As this . . .) - LANSDALE: Well, Nolting came in,as=+the, apparently,as the . ’ _ “OS foreign services rebuttal to my going on outdf fuee 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 heve heard from
alan findil SH aneabicte et sas OP dap at acntteit Phat hfe otal A OS wins EOS A dithsta! panitinettINe Renee blithe Tevet ws 8 thentenint dt Eni estates ER Stet Sb wa Whe ae aeetre ed Eatin Ek te DE eee, -109- other foreign service officers who respect him very much." So finally, Nolting was=- a “meeting was arranged with Nolting, and I tiked him very much when fT talked | aie Anims He esked me if I would give him some briefings on Vietnam, which I did do. And when T wound up the end of that, I was asked again by | McNamara, who said he was going to tell Kennedyg end I said, “yell, this looks like a very good man, and I think it's a sound appointment." 7 didn't want to be. ambassador. Jesus. During the Eisenhower administration, they wanted to make me anbessador "Sa the Philippines) and I begged them not to. [I think that's one of the world's worst jobs. You're stuck where you can't do what your job is supposed to be, and 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 [om ie Cf you ‘arey aid you | ‘'ne-going=to have people running & o ae circles eround you) if, “youlimow it and couldn't A, oh lift a ‘little finger to stop them. pea this —_ eh
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 “ co / _ Vietnam/ in an advisory position? T think so. There were a number of attempts by the Vietnamese themselves, and unfortunately) . , fn. some of them werecouched in terms of wanting me to come out as ambassador, by the Vietnameseg wN and I think he had proposed that I come on out several times. But these things would usually only come to me sort of second or third hands and one time apparently President Kennedy had said something to the JCS because suddenly my relations with the Chiefs went down to leds than zero. and Sub ~zerog and rT 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." TI said, "What's this again?" Apparently Kennedy had said something to the Chiefs of) what. would va they think of my being given four stars and being put in charge of operations in Vietnam?
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN : we LANSDALE : -lll- And I-didn't lmow ebout it, and they took it that I was pushing myself for it. TI said ’ a , S50 The y , again, that isn't,I'@ want to do. So. this was about the time that--no, maybe [William Westmoreland] Westy was coming in about theng= it wes around that time. | Well, the ‘task force really forms up the instructions for Nolting, doesn't ité.. oO Yes. | . . . for the next few years. Just what kind of recommencéations 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 specific types of things to , oy meet a situation injthere. One of them was: , “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 i with some real political savvy to get injo ce A / ide,’ rather tnan control cr belabor or have 6 : confrontations with the Vietnamese covernment &E To Ae ere ree eR oer va et A A Sn PF ce wa
ae -ll2- to carry out essentially political reforms, and getting some of the just criticism of the opposition considered in the governing body: 7 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 jeast get to a state level constabularynas far as American advisors were concernedy a and I wasn't certain that the U.S. Army! s military police could cope with it, but a maybe they could gst a team of them in, and then I was pointing out that there were constabulary officers and officers from other countries, including South America and the old Philippine constabulery, who knew the . Lew-end- “order conditions--quite Similar to Vietnam '-and bring them in if they wanted’ to | go international. I.was trying to. get them to get very realistidgid 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
rn Le ao camen me Cath paren a 17 namie cateos the £2 hatremmantatsh Lttiest kitivare ee Sines wee te! alte ant dele hte? temo: -113- lasted about ten days, at which point, at Rusk's insistence, the task force went over to State and became a general, regular body there. They then proceeded to rewrite our original ead instructions end drafts and > everythings ex both McNamara and Gilpatric saidZcoming back from the White Houses "Bd, you had better not get in there." I seid, "If IT can help in any way, I will." They said, "Well, right for the time being youdbetter not ) 2 ae n ' | oF go near that group, see, co I setuely didn't Q wv get in to. some of their. policy romifesén again” in a fairly early period,on the thrust of things in Vietnam except for some of the Defense people who were over there. I would talk to them on what was being proposed and | going on, - but this wes sort of second arid third echelon type of a thing, pulling back out of it. Tut f initially, 1% was actually trying to get a quality U.S. representation in Vietnam, and actually smaller again than it was at the time, and to pick a few key things, and to concentrate on that,and really ar K
_-114- to get the Vietnemese coping with their own problems more effectively than they were doing. O'BRIEN: Yeah. Well, between this time end the time - of the TaylorzRostow mission, ave you involved in Vietnam on a kind of regular basis or . OD LANSDALE: Uh, no.’:.O0ff and on I was, but again with : second-and third-echelon type of problems. A . I was seeing Gilpvatric everyday and working’ very closely with him)so that a lot of times ) A “ as things would come up,he would’ discuss them with me. ‘But again, I was trying to explain who certain people were that were named, their backgrounds, and their qualities, and certain events and places, and going to maps with him and describing terrain, and so on “that the situation really meant that was making the problem. So I was fairly well out of it. » #as a matter of fact, I was working with some visiting Burmese on their concepts of defense of a country, and @ES¥ they brought me in with the Israeli who had had a mission helping them with their defense problems in Burme. And the qlee Q- Israeli hac Geen turned around to their defense
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ~115- minister and some of the others), and invited - fate ob “ me to, look at thcip defense system in Israel. At was quite enthusiastic about going and had everything arrenged and was to leave on a Saturday, wnen about on a Wednesday or Thursday 7 I was asked to go to Vietnam with the other mission and stuff, et unfortunately,had to cancel out everything end’ never got, inlte see what Twanted to see there. Well, you end up working on Borde -~-actually, saab’ A the -2abuey of the border , then, don! t yout pact, a” on bk oTaylor- Rostow thing? Yes. Yes. What about that preoccupation? Where does 7. that idea come from<is that Rostow's? Well, ‘Taylor was the one that charged me “with it. Taylor said, nwo11 7 you ross J” ; he this is flight vhich startead“yi11 each fiat | 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 Han S about twenty things,I'd like to look inton? oj A none of them being this,of course. Fs oe A 110 a com EET = SY eee NETS pT ca
aa --116- Tt ‘suggested some other subjects for other people AimOa. - on the thing and gave it to tiem, exd he ne ; called me back, said that it was a very interesting [ist peiat I had given him, end would I please work on building e defense on the border. And I seid, “nea yhat sort of a defense?” He said, “yell, a system of fortifications or a wire like the “yron Curtain in Europe 2 I said, "Good God, you aren't going to do that, are you?" And he seid, "Well, look into it." So that Sursasedly A oe wash ‘all I was supposed to do, and of course, I got called in on other things immediately. @ But I wasn't even invited along to go in and see Diem with him. I said, Look, these are . old friends of mine. If you'd like, way I'll - ‘do anything I can 9 FOU can hit them high, and I'l hit’ them low if you want. We can get some things done that way. He said, Weld, you aren't om our protocol list, so you “don't attend any of these calls on the President.” F we landed in Saigon. and the people from the . werd Prere and 23" presidency, met us atc Teylor and Rostow were over talking with reportezs who were interviewing
‘ dehy Aecueune Ademco ie i ts ah ance Som dneen» mtnennanian aR Lanne att eat aiden eo rat nine amet taco e+ Bon ern te tds nanan Edt, viene one Sy teat ours ommmbs am = * ce nee ete AE TF NRE -117- them plane side, and these people from the © presidency said, "President Diem wants you -to come to dinner tonight@" and I said, "Well, thy fund O° I better cheek “oa my boss on this. "Taylor was | busy, but I grebbed Rostow who wasn't talking at the moment and told him, end he said, "Go. ahead. az soft said, "wendy 7 wasn't even on ed the protocol, and everything. I don't care about going up to these protocol meetings ' 7 anyhow, tms I went in and saw Diem),whose * 2 question was, "What's this mission doing here? What are’ you all up to?" I said, "Why don't you wait, and they'1l be in here to have a ——- meeting with you tomorrow,and you'll find “A . out." And then it became very personal. We just started talking over, jhes two old friends QO- witth=him, and I had dinner with him. Anna he “brought 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, wee on the floor next to his uncles the President be. . Z ssid, ‘ A ’ who was busity eating dinner--you con't point this ny t hi ims2T didn't know how big a spring this e. a
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE --118- thing had on it, whether it would take his. Po rkagnt head off or not. FEserertren} I jexa him bo shoot it up into the ventilating fan in the ceiling. We spent dinner ,actually, taking rat . parachutes and things out of the ventilating fans,and the kid and I were climbing up A. — , i: ‘a ladder'to get these things out of the thing in the palace. This was very different from an officiel protocol meeting. Yas Se 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 o& sat next to himy and when IdaskeS Diem a question, his brother would. answer ite 2 and ~ [id have to tell him I wasn't asking him the Oo . . questiond’ I was asking his brother. A very 7, strange relationship at the timeg aid 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 ia what- .ever subject he was talking edout. It'd go on for hours--details on it, waich fascinated ; A
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: ~119- me but used to bore other people. But he Y . did know his countryy and its history,which , A he would give at the drop of a hat.: This . evening in '61, seeing him, he was very hesitant in his talk end hadn't--it was ar . mental hazard something physical as well as, or something) I felt. fy evidence of ray Did-he-govinve that later? A . o No. There was j-mentally, people were telling ‘me that his brother had ‘taken over in the & Sst . the Ese a dominence onAthing. year followings . But this was a man that wasn't as sure of himself as he had been when I had seen him less than a year before. And there had been one assasSination attempt only, but the big one had taken place ‘before I saw him in January or December of '60--the attack on _ the palace and so on. So it hadn't been an outside, physical happening like that that had caused the change. Was he a spiritualist at all? - cL No, no. He wasn't superstitious. wo He “ was a very rational sort of a person--pragmsatic. i
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: O'BRIEN: - -120- Well when you geb back, you talk to President Kennedy and Robert Kermeay/ and John McCone es IT understand, in a rether private meeting. What happened here? ‘Well, this wes,when I came back, I met the “Aw. President. I went in with ‘Taylor and Rostow--— | all oflis | dia who - were out on the mission--and | awd ' he thanked us all very mache 2 and as we were, he asked me to stay behind and talk to hims ok that was when he asked me to perform this other service for him,)which was initially to A think about it)and if I came up with some : va ©. ideas, why to put them down, ci+~-briefly-- “a . Gf “ on paper and give them to him.” 4nd I said, yee oe "Well, do you want,to forget about Vietnam for the time being )because T haven't written a . " . . my report yet about Vietnam." He said, "Yes, ; Coa this other takes priority over itj,so I didn't even finish writing my reports on what tT had seen in Vietnam at the time. I went immediately into this other work. Well, about that time, there's at least some “\ thinking in terms of miomos that are going j to the President a2dous the only way to save Vietnam A eee a a NR EE ANE SETS A SE TP EROS tt
say “Fe, LANSDALE: -l2l1- is with a rather substantial commitment of U.S. troops. Is that... .@ | Yes; there was some. Now where... . Em, there was some, and I can't remember just where it was coming from. This was one of the things, that Diem asked me when I saw him. He asked’ me if he should ask for U.S. troops, and I said, "Do you need them?" He saia, | asked rou a question," and I said, "Well, I'm ‘asking you, a very legitimate question on this thing eh I said,"Are you ready to admit that. you have so lost control of your] situation that you can't cope with it here?" And I said, "You'd have to do that before you ever turn around and ask for American troops in here." And he said, "No, we can still handle things, ij “ end you've answered my question, so apparently <— he didn't ask. " there heve been some Tin gure) CH conversations, going on -E'm-Sure. with some of Thess . the Americans before'that, would be my guess on this thing Mcause he didn't say, "What Wot o— do you think OL ja mesien veseTenthens anything , ot “should I ask -?" which was sort of like somebody had recommended this 2t some point,and I A cee ae ne Oe ep
ee meme oe cae aceon Ab NE O'BRIEN: . LANSDALE: a -122- don't think it would have been completely in Ow Ba’ a Vaeenamese context. Neth, do you get eny of this thinking when you | get back? Any contingency planning or thinking ~ ue . about the building ,of troop levels to a more substantial level-maybe linked with the settling ‘of the Leotian question first? There might have been, and I might have known - some of it. I can't recall now of anyg, it's someplace in the back of my head there were some things like that going on. JI 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 Y and working on some things. My staff would get in and out of some of these other things, and I used to shove them in to take my place in meetings and so ong axd I as oniy ther just get very quick briefings on them, but they were essentially supporting whatever McNamara and Gilpatric were doings so I'd just have them _go in and report directly anc work with them directly.
O'BRIEN: LANSDALE: Bowl! O'BRIEN: ~123-= lo were Yose whe Yosh. Who were the people, on you staff at that voint? : o : —_ ey Well, let's see?p One of them was Sam Wilson, ’ sO ; “A uhdse’ now a brigadier general in the army fo A Jack Bowles: was a Navy Captain who went: down to serve with the JCS afterwards and.is now “with Standard Oil and working out of Singapore. _. do tik And I had five or six < people Like that, but those were my two princi $x’ ones. Well, this is about ready to run out, and we! ve A Se covered ee Quite a we /