Transcript of 176-10030-10085.pdf

================================================== Page 1 ================================================== 176-10030-10085] 2025 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992 JFK Asassination System Date: 5/5/2016 Identification Fom Agency Infomation AGENCY : NARA RECORD NUMBER : 176-10030-10085 RECORD SERIES ORAL HISTORY INTER VIEWS AGENCY FILE NUMER - Document Inforation ORIGINA TOR CITIZEN FROM: TO TTLE : ORAL HISTORY WITH EDWARD LANSDALE BY DENNIS OBRIEN DATE : 07/11/1970 PAGES : 123 SUBJECTS BA Y OF PIGS DOCUMENT TYPE TRANSCRIPT CLASSIFCA TION Not Marked RESTRICTIONS Open in Full CURRENT STATUS Redact DATE OF LASTREVEW : 06/05/1998 OPENNNG CRITERIA COMMNTS : Pages 3-21 and 28-34 talk about the of Pages 96 and 98 have been sanitized. Pigs: Bay ================================================== Page 2 ================================================== Slnititeo 6n.99 .+/ "o8 Oral History Interview with EDilled 8 Lansdale July 1l, 1970 Alexandria, Virginia By Dennis J 0 ' Brien For the John F Kennedy Library 0' BRIEN: I think a logical place to begin in anything like this is just. simply .with the question; when did you' first meet President Kennedy , or Senator Kennedy, if you met him before he was President? LANSDALE: I don't recall meeting him before he was I Presidento: The first was ~belteve, the first Saturday following the inauguration, whatever date that was I was called into a meeting in the White House by (Robert s,] McNamara _ It was a meeting on a report that I had written for (Dwight )] Eisenhower It was sort of ax I'm not sure Llicv) meetingn" actually; on). ================================================== Page 3 ================================================== -2- a+ that It wasANSC [National Security Council] meeting)but it was comparable to that with the personnel that were- attending. There were several Secretaries: Defense , State; and his National Security people were tnere. Gul 0' Brien: Bid with McNamara and [Roswell Lgj er~ , wembers of the incoming administra- tion, before they actually assumed office? LANSDALE: Just before, that a day or SO before _ I'd been in Vietnam for a brief visit and back just before the inaugural, maybe two or three days , and at that time both McNanara and Gilpatric were in Defense getting briefed for their new jobs . I met them at that time_ The outgoing peputy Secretary of Defense asked me to start working with Gilpatric) and So I #c Koow Gilpatric rather than McNamara) , CJanes H] 0 ' BRIEN: This i9g Douglas _ LANSDALE: Douglas, Jim' Douglaso(James_HDouglag] 0' BRIEN: How is Douglas to work with)While you re with him? Is he a pretty sympathetic person? LANSDALE: Yes, very much SO , very much so0 He was the one, actually , Who wrote the orders and back- G;- is) got got ================================================== Page 4 ================================================== ~3- 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 ianding on his part tnat because my views weren t always zopular in other parts of the governmento I gathered that there was some opposition to my going out) and he insisted on 'it. 0;}' BRIEN: I' like to come back to that_ I wonder if we could go on to talk about one: f the major problems) which is Cuba _ When is the first time that you hear about the of Pigs invagion; not the of Pigs , but the plans- '6 00 LANSDALE: Sometime in the fall of #+xty I think that I heard of It about the first time that it was brought wp to the iCe?policy group of the Eisenhower administration. I was the Deputy/Assistant to the Secretary of Defense} at the 'time; for Special Operations and usea to accompany the Deputy Secretary} wbo was a Ann & member of the inte rpolicy group to most 0f Bay Bay ================================================== Page 5 ================================================== the meetings that tx: kd. When Allen Dulles (TtienW 7 Dulles S.c raised the notion to ^^O the -Senet& group 1 was present at the meeting as an 'Nssist: 0 BRIEN; What is the : inking about it at that time? What kind of operation is 30 it basically a guerilla operation at this point? LANSDALE: Initially)it was. Initially_ was very differ- from ent Ehanythe way it turned out. It was based on a premise that people in Cuba were very tat_zany unhappy with Castro administration and the way it was turning 'away from the initial revolutionary objectives and the capture of the revolutionary movement by the Communist which surprised many of the supporters of Castro as a guerilla and as { revolutionary action_ Sot the: thought was to back a number Je> Of Cubans who efther had been supporters of Castro or were very unhappy , Ivere still resident in Cuba , and to cause some overturn at the time _ The change of towards the of Pigs gradua_ thing evolved fairly_ Arresid, and apparently there was a planning group CIA (Central ,It the^ trly Party) Bay plan and ================================================== Page 6 ================================================== ~5- Intelligence Agency] who were working on this initial plan who started thinking in military invasion terms _ I suspect that they were doing that because some of the Cuban' military_ and military' typesTAthat is)Very militant , X:. Ls were coming. out of Cuba as ' reiugees)and they suddenly saw a windfall of man power and started thinking in other terms of use of: them. Butl thtg ehange" was the changed towards the of Pigs X wat W4j Joii8 ) was well under way in the innef circle thinking '0f CIA by December of very defi- nitely so _ 0 BRIEN: Whho were some of the inner circle people at L gourecall? this pointy (Fiese {7a ingez, 8coirge ?7 , Oerien: Ne ~Crica~rs M,] Gissell was_ LANSRA 0 LANSDALE: Let'8 seee 49 Oh Dick Bissell {(Richara-M: Blsseld was the overall chief of the group . BRIEN = Tracy Barnes, was he in' it at that time? but LANSDALE: Tracy was an assistant to ^ Hov E4 0 Adually dtaikd Tracy _ ^ went in the planningA I have my doubts that he- was, 0 ' BRIEN: How about Willia %roe (Eeikim-V-Brog plan Bay thing) '60) golly-A ning" aotuaioc 8res ================================================== Page 7 ================================================== ~6- LANSDALE: He was one of a_ planning group who were planning the operation, but he wasn 't 8 chief , and I can't recall the. guy' s nane offhand. BRIEN: Oh well maybe when oY?HE the transcript back) ILANSDALE:Maybe {00 RiEn; you can - How about from some of the other {4 3 places 53 C) Mann, I E3; LANSDALE:` :es;, but initially it was all CIA borrowed some military personnel to with early 671 the planning earkier-but were people who had been attached to CIA for temporary duty on other matters, and they hadn t come in initially for this Specific planning- In December _ when the planning had .obviously started coming in with a beach landing and so On , the way it turned out, I urged at that point to' get military planning in on the thing. I was worrying about it_ As a matter of fact, Allen Dulles brought his planners to a policy meeting, a policy group meeting, and were explaining the conceptoend my questioning was such.that Allen Dulles pleaded Sith me not to spoil the at an early get Aary They _ help they they plan ================================================== Page 8 ================================================== ~7- stage . I remember General (Lyman L,) 0 Lemnitzer wzs sitting in the meeting M He was chairman of the JCS (Joint' Chiefs of Staff] at the timeA and he backed" up my urging then to get some r? tary planning in on thato: After tr Zenlt among our of that, and then the JCS set Up_ 2 special section to plan &long with the contral Intelligence) Agency on that_ And who the hell headed that? 0 ' BRIEN This is in the Eisenhower administration_ LANSDALE: This is all back in 1960 , This was still in Q sh8 early planning stage8) 'This was before training or anything like that was forward_ Wmen the JCS into the act, I asked to be disassociated with the project. I ~was rather locke4 critical of the concept, and it W062 just too clusy and overt] and a poor-planed Zea283 Aksy) BRIEN: Allot of people have knowledge of by the end of the Eisenhower administration? LANSDAEE: I don t Jnow how widespread it was _ There were executives that were knowledgeable, there was a small group in the JCS that was Poi:: ~ie yet put got 8ox'& Jovernment this Jkrou3haut key ================================================== Page 9 ================================================== ~8- knowledgeable, and there was a planning group at CIA, but I don t think it went beyond that_ I don t know now far it was known, but I thought it was rather closely held. 0 ' BRIEN: You don t kncw whether the presidertial candi- dates at all, do LANSDALE: Yev ~y were _ There was a_ very definites 110 , wait a minuted the candidates , no, I don't think were _ As a matter of factyit it was in still in a rather nebulous stage @EA Shifting over in 283 Novenbero I think somebody told me, if,I recall correctly that the concept 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 j4st t0- it was held two or three people the CIA at the tIme . At-leest, the rest of us certainly didn t know it. I forget exactly.when I first heard it, but it would be possibiy October, but it might have even been November , by the time I heard about it_ As I say , I heard. about it when it was surfaced with the inner circle. of our administration executives _ you?' they Iqit ================================================== Page 10 ================================================== 9 BRIEN: Well, I suppose you had some conversations with Dulles and . with Bissell and some Of these people about it. LANSDALE: Yes _ 0 ' BRIEN: What' s their feeling? You already discussed _ering you to sort of bold your criticism, LANSDALE: Well, Bissell definitely felt the same waye Bissell was a very hard;working, intensepperson, @N almost high-strung type of individual He became rather impatient with my questioning of the_ chanjcdcncept when it took place: I +aou3lt #hat Znitially, if they had the correct personnel% and 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 9' did #e CIA have tb2 Americans who could work with such a situation? I just-didn't know Yes) of any, but I was assured that there were such Americanso but I'm not certain that there were 0 ' BRTEN: Did you' question the kind of intelligence that was coming out about Cuba and the expected reaction Of Cubans- to an invasion_ Tand the R ================================================== Page 11 ================================================== -lo- reaction to Castro In general? LANSDALE: Just in very general terms _ ;I didn't have enough concrete and specific information myself thab 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. ~Sol I had no real way of determining the accuracy or inaccuracy of it_ Sone Of the adjectives used in describing this in briefings uS alerted me a little bit. 0 8 It just sounded too much iikea sales job on a viewpoint. I'd question .that, whether that was an accurate thing, so. this is about as far as I went . 0 BRIEN; How does a guy, like Douglas react? Do you recall? LANSDALE: Well, he approved of the plan) so he and the others at the policy level approved of going ahead with it, and.developing it. I was his advisor on this Zhat was my staff job) and I told hin to be certain to the JCS to give it a real hard scrutiny and to come x98 did thing? get ================================================== Page 12 ================================================== -ll- up with details of whether it 'could succeed or not. That was my last advisory role with him. I was taken Off advising on the project after that, actually by my own request because I was apparently causing too much trouble and -cKs of progress. 0'BRIEN : 5 tie reaction of the Joint Chiefs , people like Lemnitzer, towards this? Is there an institutioral rivalry or bureaucratic rivalry here in their minds? LANSDALE: Somewhat, somewhato It was a little bit as though, well, somebody' s going to be playing Scouts) so this isn t really rivalry_ They had: a difficult time taking this really seri Later, I know , when the JCS ard ousl8: in on 'the actual planning of this,they became much more serious. on it because they had a share of it. 0 ' BRIEN: Well, do you involved in the informing of McNamara" and Gilpatric about this? Do you any way 0f sensing what their reactions are on first being informed? LANSDALE; No . They had apparently know by the tine I Boy got get get ================================================== Page 13 ================================================== -12- and met I didn't; get in on thato The one indwtabave person a view of their reactions whofenke Y8 would probably be Bill (williaz4_ ~Bulaya who I know at the time was discussing this with them _ 0 BRIEN: Did you have Dundy &nd- his 2; that point? LANSDALE: Tnis was a little out of Bundy' $ field. He was always trying to figure out what the chances were, the percentages of win or losso 0,.6/} He was and I hadn t know the final on this thing)and Bundy did, and he asked me what I thought . I told gelkije the JCS guarantees something) you can it 10 percent lower than that and go along with I'n not sure that they know a clandestine operation, but they'd Sure know a military landing, whether it would succeed Or not. Given some of the shade 't unknows in this thing, A gay that? by 10 percent h1 and: g0 along with.the figure _ Well) apparently they had 'given it a high chance of success, the JCS had because Bundy said, you mean it's going to succeed then?" I said, Well, I them)^ Bundy) Yeso plan lowu him, maybc StalteA ito Wkt) "well) ================================================== Page 14 ================================================== -13- S6 don't know I gathered that be felt it would succeed. 0 ' BRIEN: Well then you are pretty much Qut of touch #am Hx Poc+ +at oU battle it with it until it actually comes You LANI bal: Thep's ricnto 0&ryew: didn't get any of the changes- in the plans there at SeptemLe Srmerny--itu LANSDALE: No _ I left at around the .first of December '60. I really didn t follow it from then ono D des 0 ' BRIEN: St anyone come to you from the Agency_ or from State, Y or 1r6 the white House as far as that goes,and atterpt to seek an indepen- dent judgenent on your backoround avA cll)mn fnecel LANSDALE: No 0' BRIEN: How about the noise level on this? Obviously re out of it, but is there much talk about it that is sort of filtering dow In Defense the people that are around you that really have no need to know and direct involvenent? LANSDALE: I wasn t aware . Of it. There might nave been, but I have no knowledge of that_ 0' BRIEN: When kth2 zhing the actually begins and the landing has taken place, do you come Off)A into 2ll? partoztll you A7 operation& ================================================== Page 15 ================================================== -14- into it again at that point at any time? LANSDALE: No _ 0 ' BRIEN; You do become involved in Cuban affairs at a later time . LANSDALE: Later, yes . 0' BRIEN: When 0: ;} 0 you. have ` any- ti- Wiif the (Maxwell) Taylor ccmmitteet wa;c mekcs & infmity abbut &? LANSDALE: I met with then onc e and they weren t interested with the of They were interested in# in the decision-making process bfAmaking Ycf policy, and asked me if I had any ideas on how better the President could be served in the policy decisions and arriving at them _ The thing was right at that moment , McNamara had previously asked me for the same thing) and I had 'come wp with a proposal for him which he put to Kennedy. I just told them Weii I had some ideas but I bad given then to somebody else) and I was skeptical of the boss anyhowo &nd this was on putting together task forces The Kennedy administration had elininated; a bureaucratic boongdoggling thing Bay Pigso ================================================== Page 16 ================================================== -15- Rand _ what the hell was that called? 0 ' BRIEN: OCB? [Operations Coordinating Boardja LANSDALE: Yes, the I pointed out that the one good about it was that the principals met for lunchoand I said.the of ;tls fr #ke But to &3+ E?2 i Xho are talking to {G are held responsible by him for' managing men, money , and material and SO on, who can understend the problem well enough around the lunch table to have one secretary or deputy secretary, or under secretary t V avd $0 O,Waa say , well, we ' 1l take care of that 418Aa T~ good "Of doing businesso ad with the president ' s own pational gecurity man sitting in on it, going back and telling bim this is going to happen for these reasons, why , it was a good control. mechanism_ So essentially all I tola the Taylor people and told McNamara In my paper was that this function had been' eliminated;along with cutting out &lot of dead wood, and there was some live vood+t 'fow' about restoring the live wood ? This essentially was what my proposition was with the task force CS OCBO thing Tcs? bicds) way i ================================================== Page 17 ================================================== of getting the people most_ concerned With something? who could operate for the president, and having then together and help form the policy, get the president S approval, and were the same ones who Ic couldAst: immediately. _.Uc to create another big ~ieaucratic thing. And of course, after they first tried this, it rapidly started becoming a big bureaucratic thing. The task forces that were later set Wp were' just staffs Sitting;in different buildings _ It was almost like OCB again, not quite; but it 92 out of hand _ Anytime you tryfto change the government around) it seems to come right back 2uq4o'BREN: Yes havc at Gfdo^ in form again and close ranks on FB But that kab Lansoa #al was allAI did with the Taylor group Inciden- tally; in that inquiry into the . Cuban bit was the first time that I met QRobert FJ Bobby Kennedy . For sone reason or other; I didn't connect him personally With the pictures of nRatnot ) him and so on, on and I wondered what the 0 ToVo < Iqysa youngster was doing sitting in the meeting -16_ get they big got dene 1 Lwc and ================================================== Page 18 ================================================== -17- talking SO much _ 0 BRIEN : Was he pretty tough LANSDALE: Well; he wesn t tough . He was the most ineter- ested of anyone in the room there of what I would say on things and plague Me with many questions _ 0 ' BR IEN : How were his questions ? Weg he feirly naivo about the problems ? LANSDALE : Nor) thig was on frebiomg quegtiong of how" the govornment would operete at a decigion level) and they weren t naive at. ell_ Ho had 8 very good understanding. He was very much concerned' about his brothers getting good servic0 in the 9 wey of information and full detailg c alterna- tiveg and 90 on , on a policy decision 0 ' BR IEN : Well, if-you, you-know; in that period right after the' Bey.of Pigs--of course Jou haa a lot of contacts and friendshipg in other placeg LANSDALE: Yes. 0'BRiEN: outgide the Pentegon _ What kind of an impac t ^ de 8+4?the Bay Of Pigg have , let ' 9 say over in the and State Department , and in Defense) and in the white Hous0 ? avd Agencya ================================================== Page 19 ================================================== 418- LANSDALE ; It was 8 traumatic- experience et levels #ro-Gnc- the government . I think it affected Pregident Kennedy more than any other thing. It wes almost 8 taboo gubjectozf you were going in to do business: and to en approv: jo3cthi:r ~cver even hinted Such Yic ~iban effeir. It wes an iutengegly sore sub ject among all of thege people . I felt that elmost 4ll of the key @xecutives in the administration mugt have dreamt about it at night or 9 Ome- thing) and during the deytime working hourg they` just 9 avmn didn 't even want' contemplate it. And ye t they wer0 honest' enough people that they kew they had to face up and look et it and; would do 90, but it wa8 an extremely emotionel gub ject with them, ery much 90 BRIEN: Well, in termg of the Agency, there ' 9 a numbor of programg and of course)involvements_ in 2 operationg that they have Do you 900 any shift in, these , any attempt on the part of the Defense Department to move into gome' Of these area8 which they felt were traditionally theirs top 9ingle get to ================================================== Page 20 ================================================== -19- rather than the Agency. I guess whet I'm trjing to 9&y can you see any decline in the fgrnot influence the Agency decisiong ? LANSDALE ; Yes, I think SO , I'm not cortain that it wes vell_ the military 4s guch . It might have been the enA 1 Zk0 McNamara pers A1S encouragement of gome of the militery who were gomewhat interested but wouldn t really heve expressed the interest unlesg ware directly and: there alweys had been 9Ome feeling of unease- ,S1 think would be the best word to describe ith-among the military about type % any clandegtine operationg . felt that once. it over into guerrilla type of operationg or anything that would involve a militery gub ject, tRet it woula be far better to let the military 09tablighment 0f the 0.8 _ handle .it , 9 But thet would b0 sort of a dinner-codtail party type of 0 gambit on their part rether than sitting ana planning and 90 on 0f "We must greb SOme Of ti ," Kven though &mong thengalves tbey talked that wey . They didn t express "it in terms of their attendance at policy councils or Bven in 19, onallyA they agked) They got ================================================== Page 21 ================================================== ~2o- telks wi th like the Socretary of' pafenge or the civilian executive 9ide of Defenge . 4*on this, I think that McNamara himgelf probably lvc&Q ) gtarted thinking initielly that thig weg a military operation and just to be more efficiont end effective) the military should take over such things _ I imegine that he talked that way Llo to some of the mi litary people %ie? were geeing him from the a8_ the Chiefs , and from the intelligence comuni the' military intelligence community. I know that DIA: [Defense Intelligence Agency] its great gtart under McNamara)and I feel almogt certain, I've got a strong hunch, that the of Pigs and the mi greading of the temper of the people in Cuba geve McNamara greet impetus in getting thet up initially. i Sog , ectuelly wasn'& a militery ambition to g0t up 4 rival intelligence egency to Hb6h&" CIA) though thore had boen tremendoug rivalry between the military service intelligence egencies and the CIA and had been right along from the initiation of CIA originally. But thig was gort of 8 buginegg rivalry) and it waszi t people JCS , ty, got Bay ================================================== Page 22 ================================================== ~21- gort of dealing with them, of categories of work , and where the boundary lineg of who did what on the ana , thig 19 where their jealougies and' emotions and everything would COme up over almogt ni tpicking of boundary lines of who would do what It wasn t a thing of we '11 do it and you go out of business%that feeling hadn t come up_ but Ubery aftor the Bay of Pig8, the DIA and it8 creation, a iot of the people in that who were civilian Dafenge Department omployees, had an 1 "We can do e better job than CIA, 1} and in 8 much wider field than the service intelligence agencies nhave done . BRIEN : Are there enough skilled and competent people eround, in the univergities and the military, to' gtaff &ll the intelligence egencies: the NSA (National Security Agency]_ DIA, CIA) end organi- zetions? Are there enough or' ere these at ? operationg just simply too LANSDALE: Ihae47ar They might be too The need to know things 19 a :very elastic bit. I'm certain that the chief executive of the .United States, thingo all)" empioyees dea, Nd Peopierc Msint bib8 big. ================================================== Page 23 ================================================== -22- in whose name these works are accomplighed, would have no idea that he woula ever degire to kow some 0f the thingg that they're Working on very discover whole buildings and all sorts of equipment busilly accumulating fects vould sey , I c&n 't 3c8 ~0#tes: ever needing to Iow 9 Ome cf '27 zot he would hegitate) gi ven the world todey &nd tne technological advanc08 and everything, it'8 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 '9 very difficult to gey who ther got too bigan egtablishment or not. 'BR IEN : D You ever take. this question or i9 thig question BvBr raised in the adminigtration by cfvilian in DOD [Department of Defenge] or tho White' Houge, with you? LANSDALE: Not with Me No - My theme on overgeas operationg wag reiterated enough 90 thet it weg known by alunt 8 number of peoplep and I alwazs felt tat it weg more efficient and effective to have 8 very small group working' and to choose them with very hardb-gou thato youv% up, peopie ================================================== Page 24 ================================================== -23- great gelectivity and go for 8 handful of highly qualified people rether than a large group Of Americans charging overseas gomeplace . Thig went for intelligence 8s well &9 diplomatic and other economic work ) &nd 80 on , I uged to point out the embassi0g--for example , behind the Iron Curtain--that would get de Ljimated by being 'TNT& and 80 ono in Eestern Europe ) = for example) it would happeno t t %ould wind up with an embag s&dor and two or three people left in an embag Sy) and their work would increase in quality_ and their represen U.8. interestg woula seem to improve tremendously when that would heppen _ 0 'BRIEN : Deg the fect: that you this reputation, 6f meinly_ out tho writingg of guys like [Eugene ] Burdick and Graham Greene, does this affect you in any wey in your .reletiong wi th' the bureau- crecy? LANSDALE : Yos _ It made life rather difficult. Wi th much of the work I had to do in Washington, I camn0 back from 8 lot of operations abroed and went wp into policy-forming levels in ting get #ut ================================================== Page 25 ================================================== ~24- Washington almost imme di ately) &nd into facing people who were very sensitive on my pregence abroad initially. Since I didn't just stick in a reguler military category but would get over into their own gub ject matter, this ma de them very uncomfortableo ena I can understand it.while it happened )but it was carried to @ too great an emotional length At times I would suggest certain individuels be sent to look into a situation in a given country and would arrange their transportation and 80 078 I would backing throughout the 0.S . government for this thinge and have an individual approved by the Secretary of State as well as De fense and up at the White House and S0 but would set up a means of communic ating back 90 that WB would reports back. Thore wsould be timeg. when these individuals would show up in. coun- and the first time they sent 8 messag6 to me) the ambas sador woula esk them kindly to leave the country, to ge t out of there) just because of my name I X83 apparently the enery to some , 'of these ond get on , get trya uaj^ ================================================== Page 26 ================================================== -25- people _ One of my egistants was traveling between Thailand end Saigon) &nd there was 8 coup going on in Saigon at the timeoen his plane) which was Air France) 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 another flight out of Phnom Penh _ Fe asked this lad of mine where he ' worked, and he said, MI In the Pentagon /" I 3 he was 8 civilian employee--and he mentioned that he worked for me and the ettacha got al1 excited, called the ambassador, and he wes given two hours to come out of the country: Laughter] All he was doing was looking for & place to sleep at nighto S0 it bec ame very = motional and very silly, ana detrimental to 9 the 0.S _ For example,. once in Indonesia, in mee ting our folks around the embas sy in Djakarte, I had spotted an assistant army attache} who was the one Americen) along with one 0f the economic mission guys--there were put get ================================================== Page 27 ================================================== ~26- two Americans who were not only best known by the Indonesians but were respected, ana 'there was a affection thereg &2 I Have told i( the ambass ador at the time , afterwards 9 make real use of these people 2 the Indonesians believe them ) and there S some antipathy towards the U.S.= but they make an exception these twooana they = re just invaluableg -but the army man was extremely close to the general staff of the Indonesian army I went on some visits to memberg at their homes of the Indonesian and this lad who was tall and blond-- a Nordic. type, if you will--would go in and the small brown Indonesians (weuz Z and their Wze| families _welcome him like 8_ 1ong lost uncle or brother or 9Ome thing. The children would run up and jump in his arms and climb 0ll-over him, and he wag Unclo something" to them: Ago later; when the Soviets start moving in SAMo [gurface-to-air mi 9sle] missile sites into Indonesia and the U.8 . needed to know what. sort of antiaircraft armaments weregoing our embassy couldn't the answers to ito Lj Gsnral staff inz 9 get ================================================== Page 28 ================================================== -27- I suggested that we_ the stete; Defense sponsorship and send this one fellow who 73e a lieutenantzcolonel over and just let him stey a week or '90 . He ' & go right in and talk to his old friends ) and they' d probably tell him what the Soviets were up to_ He arrived there} the Indone sian general sites took him out &nd, showed him these and . esked him what he thought of them and s0 on the first day he was there _ That night he M back) &nid _ wrote out 8 radio message _ Y and asked the ambes sador to send it to me) &t which point our ambass.ador told him to leave the countryos Eibwer P] BR IEN : Now this was Jones ? LANS DALE : That was Jones , ye80 And he said, let me put thet in the message0' 80 I just€ aSked the Department of State, &" let Joneg Iow that you re spongoring this guy , too,. end there might be s Ome more things that he finds out that need to know as much a8 1) jo we do . So they .told Jones 55 sit back get staff 8+ght89 got nwellx please Jou just ================================================== Page 29 ================================================== -28 - and let him do that_ We have some won derful' American9) and this wa s what I wes tring to do);wZs to find out which Americ&ns have not only: our interests et heart but were enough interested in foreign cos'o: t0 re 60 un derstand and have :2 really woula be serving the best interests of other countries: in things _ I'd far rather 3e2 one man in 0n some thing like that than send a whole team in with-all gorts of things_ and sort of aggrevate' a ndt~ situation than do S Ome thing rather simple _ 0 BR IEN = Almost sensitivi treining LANS DALE : AtSDAIZ; Inci dentally, elong these lines , I've . got 8 good story for your account . BR IEN : Great . LANSDALE : About the time of the Cuban Yisgile grisis, McNamera came back from a meeting at the White House one ana asked me to provide the means for President Kenne dy to talk to the Cuban people on Tqv How the hell did I know how to do that ? He 'told me _he+-he wanted to do it within the next twenty-four ge t ty day nra ================================================== Page 30 ================================================== -29- hours Well, it didn t happen _ I guspected that it, would take Zonger than that; I don 't know how You intrude on a T stationg broadcas and the people in the 5o country to go imediatelyito their sets and watch a program . I called scientists in from all over the 0.8., who were electronic whizzes on thig type of a subject , and our intelligence people and everybody else I could think of to get Some information DM Q together ii a real crash basis , CIA couldn't give me details) 6x technical details_ on any of the TaVa stations in Havanga}? and elsewhere - One of the Defense civilian scientists--and I tw's AL can t think" of his name offhand; East European nme--left the room and C amn0 back ten minutes later and 'provided 8ll the. technical infor- mati to the great amazement of everybody there _ And I said, Where the hell did you get that?Yend he said, "Well, I went out to the corridor in the Pentagon where we were having the meeting; wt in one of the phone booths there;' and I called a_ friend of mine 4 7, ting get TaVx on) ================================================== Page 31 ================================================== 30- down in Havana who operates a TIvrstation and asked him. He gave me al1 dope) and I. just wrote it down - # So thig i9 the way we the information for it. The intrusion of the !XvY space never took place, but We the me&ns together ana some airborne ITv % transmitters . It was developed finally by the 6o. #titb Nevy) &nd the project--I varasked 4+ %o put on 8 sort of: sled S0 that it could be picked up and changed over from one aircreft to another, or used elsewhereZgater when WB started the elv broadcasts in Vietnam, this Navy equip- w*' ) ment that was initially intended to let i 'UI 0 Presi dent Kenne talk to the Cubans was the broadcast equipment that was used from the Loxc air--flying in t}a aircraft--in Saigon ) dowe to initiate l_ 'broadcast{rin Saigon in 1965. BR IEN : didn 't it C Ome off? LANSDALE : It took uS too . long to figure ways of getting in on the. theme and finding a channel and t finding 8 way of getting people the8 do that . 4L:o 16he9, got got Mat ucjo dy why out ================================================== Page 32 ================================================== L 31- It took uS tpen_ 9 twelve days to do it)and the time for them to do it had passed over) &nd the Russiars stood dow in the interim, 90 the need had pessed _ 0 ' BR IEN : (Weli how do you c ome back into. yell, maybev perhaps we ought: to pursue this whole business of coun terinsurgency first. It sort of become S the with the Kennedy admin - istration, doe sn ' t it? LANSDALE : Yes _ 0 BR IEN : How do you see that? I was in the Marine fftres Corps in the late S0+9) and there was 8 good deal 'of 'guerrilla and counterguerrilla training that wes going and it become s a part of the new administration Who are the principgel proponents of this, outgide of yourself? NDo you have any conversations, say , with Bobby-- well, don ' t really see Bobby `Gntil after Aprilo But do You have any conversations with the president, let' s say , meeting with him LANSDALE : NO , no) I didn t0 I don t know who talked to him about this_ When he came in office, this was already one of his themeso Where he picked thing on , You ================================================== Page 33 ================================================== 32 - that up originally, I don t know_ I was rather surprised--he seemea to have seen copies of lectures ana other things that given on the subject who had passea those to him and who had talkea to him about I just don't know_ 0 BRIEN ; Let' s ;say' let' s take a person like Max Taylor . Do you have anything in the way of conversations with Max Taylor in the late: fifties? LANSDALE: No 'BRIEN: How about the rest of the Joint Chiefs? LANSDALE : No _ Taylor was opposea to this type of thingo 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 askea him to do it 0 BRIEN: That ' s what I was wondering about , Taylor' s role in this whole thing. He is opposed 0 LANSDALE : We1l, he was the one that 77 in the very early Kat f,ves it; ================================================== Page 34 ================================================== 733- formation of the: Special Forces in the Army-- he was Chief of staff of the Army at the time J ana took one look at these American troops in green berets ana said, "Take that God damn silly 'm1 headgear off or "Take that--that' s it. No r ra lly touh 5 9 geeen berets, and he out-0f the thing- He wasn t too happy with a special unit of that nature. But at the time, it was He went along with the concept that it was a wartime outfitZthat somebody woula have to go ana jump in and work with- gquerrillas Again, this is a rivalry type of a So. there wou ldn 't be another oss [Office of Strategic Services] ~thee3? be a CIA or something doing it, but this)afterlll)is: part of the modern military function So let' s make it military So he went: that far on the thing_ But that was a concept--%you have a regular force fighting battle)and someplace iack of. the enemy. lines) you '& want to blow up bridges ana *uledthet only thing) Would ================================================== Page 35 ================================================== -34- gather information and SO on to support your tactical forcej? g0 wvel why not have somebody in working and fomenting trouble back there for the enemy , but connected with 79 the forces Now the concept of peoples war- ~-HapLs;Tunj] i fare FrOw is ushed; | We've seen ehem in Vietnam:_ and elsewhere Really wasn t something that' he or others understood at all, that almost Wbue_ Lz all of uS Gpeak-See -guerrtlla or counter-guer- rilla, and that people like gpecial forces might well,' having learned guerilla operations, woa]& #hen be qualified to start coping with them would understana the importance of political basis for operations and political goals and behavior and the psychological part 9 of the operations 0 This really wasn t in any of their thinking because _ as witnessed in Korea, we went ana sort of had a small Worla War II in Korea And in Vietnam later, we went inZagain with Taylor as the ambassador , but axl ================================================== Page 36 ================================================== -35 - having quite a bit of an advisory role with #2 0 Otr military comanders out there_ ana influence wJjL with was fighting another Korea in Vietnam wy more or less, There Ivas some changes in tactics X but was more use of helicopters just for: verti- cal enve lopment catkerz +xan 5tSt instead of Strt moving guys along the ground with the thing. BRIEN: Why don t they come to an understanding? [ba-rking] LANSDABE --m- ure- that s" going to"make_a:good_broadcast= for-You;-argood-tape. _ 0 BRIEN: `_A-diversion at-least. LANSDALE : I m completely baffled bY that. I just don ' t know . BRIEN: Don t they read? LANSDALE : They speak the words) and particularly when they were talking with President Kennedy_ they picked up the words and enthusiasm ana responded , but woula show by what they did that they didn ' t understand what they were szying It' s some- thing that, of course, I have been trying to ~4 them) +C^ ================================================== Page 37 ================================================== -36- do something about all along . I've never understood what it was} I've always felt that I was too inarticulate or hadn t founa a way of doing: things for myself, but there have' been SO many other exponents of this thing--not just Americans, but of many coun tries) who have written rather good books on the subject and on parts of that you '& by nbw surely think that we Americans would produce top leaderslwith some understanding 0f some- [Vo Nj-yen] thing that Mao [sedeung] andnGiap and others m have gotten every page down ~tkrough the rank' ana file to understand. Ccounterinsurqency] 0 BRIEN: Well, in the formation of the CI, group--it was designed; as I understana it; primarily as a kina of educational group for topflevel 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 0f executives, of which Taylor was. a part . itA ================================================== Page 38 ================================================== 0 BRIEN: This is Mongoose , isn t it? LANSDALE : Yes _ This was a national security' group of top executives- close to the president, with the undersecretary of State, and the deputy secretary of Defense_ ana So on ana the national security advisoro & Taylor sat in on those meetings after he got his CI group going . But_ Y in forming the CI group iniatially, Taylor was starting to do some studies for Kennedy) and Kennedy had asked me to help him. 'So I put my staff in the Pentagon at Taylor S disposal_ Initially, in Kennedy' s presence , I offered to put together a study for Taylor on resources in the United States ana among our alliesffor such things--not allies as much as friends of the. Unitedstates in many countries--and this was done with Exm? CIA ana some of the military services and: the intelli- gence part of State_ They had a little working group) and we had severalsessions in my office ~37 - ================================================== Page 39 ================================================== -38 - and put together some rough first papers for Taylor to start his thinking for the formel president . Then when Taylor 82Recea his. group) I wasn t invited in on ana 1 didn ' t attend. 0 BRIEN: Sure got any insight . ciii 12, right after the formation of that group) and early--it was in May or June--_ dispatched sote teams to go around Latin America to survey the ability of various nations to respond to Castro-type guerrilla activity. LANSDALE : Yes , yes. BRIEN: Did 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 haa been worrying about places like Coldmbia an several 'other Latin American countries close to the Panama Canal and haa urged that this be looked into) on some of the specific things that were being done there IS encouraged+1816 the Colombians start civic action it) they you had ================================================== Page 40 ================================================== -39- in dealing with some of the dissident areas ana 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, ana individuals in these countries might talk to to: get information_ on what was happening. 0 BRIEN: We ll . are Iyou in Colambia in the Kennedy administration at all as LANSDALE : No . No , the most I did was_-I went to Venezuefa 4f during the Kennedy administration and Bolivia, NO . by that time folks were highly sensitive about my showing up in "foreign countries-- that is)Americans, not foreigners--and I really wasn"' t permitted, or I was stopped really at policy levels from going back into Vietnam or the Phillippines_ or anyplace in Asia. I begged to be permittea to go down ana take a look in Latin America Gilpatric wds dk 6 0 #t #sk LAe _ # dcisim ho&: kaci hde- BEGIN SIDE II TAPE I ef Vznisula) 0 BRIEN: Bid you get to any other countres? they )and Outsik ================================================== Page 41 ================================================== ~4O- LANSDALE : Well, Bolivia_ In Bolivia, I wag interested in particulerly the Bolivian Air Forc0 ' 8 work of "getting up a public school gystem over in the eagtern slopeg of the Andes -- down in the and in the very sparge settlements _ They ware really the one governmental group' that could around places _ They were very enthusies tically setting up one-room school houses down there and flying in teachers and bringing 3 Ome education in there) VJA; which I thought was 8 great project, andAencouraging #Tken> them_ ^ Yhile I wes in Bolivie, I gotinvolved wi th the resettlement of. indians from the Altiplano over onto the eastern slopes into S Ome new communi ties in which the whole Bolivien government wag involvedo8ria the V.8 . Economic Mission was working with them; and the Bolivian militery wag gupporting it with trucks Sonlc and with people going in But this wa 9 8 very exci egriculturel-community-type of & project of moving people out where they' d have an Bconomic chance at life Y and also 8 chanc0 to ow land. It was changing the social jungies get ting) ================================================== Page 42 ================================================== ~4l- Vs~J structure considerably for the lowest clas 9 in Bolivie, and with the armed forceg doing it. This, again was the very first Vigit. S^ In Venezuala, I had come up with some ways of gafeguarding our own interestg in Vene zu) Lle SGhis ch ere not 0il produc but we % ave steel mills dowm there and 8 number of things; but: I did this as much for the Venezuglan Defense Ministry as I dia for the United States at the time They were concerned. BRIEN: What are' your relations with the people involved in the school in Panama' which gpreads a lot of this 8ht gospel of civic action among the mili Are your relationg with thog0 people pretty good? LANSDALE: It wes . They had picked up a lot of my meteriel from earlier time9, in the form atd IUAns #t of zenv-Ozd lec- I hed written on these sub jects. Whllen they set up the school, I talked with them on the program of ingtruction that they were going to gtip give . The first adoption of any of these principles was in only tion) tary? tureg^ ================================================== Page 43 ================================================== ~42- Guatemala) and it worked very well there for 8 time The Letin Americans bec ame quite enthusiagtic) though egain jealousies come in_ Thej thought the Guatemalans were boasting too much about it. So when I wes told thet problem) I 88id, Wezl, them to emulate and try 'end :beat them and get a healthy rivalry )) going, which 19 what happened ac tually. 0 ' BRIEN: I suspec t [Fulton] Freeman 19 there 8s ambas S - ador in Colembi= 8 when You 're there--no, Freeman was in Colkmbia. LANSDALE : Yes, he weg in Colmbia_ 0 'BR IEN I can ' t think of the guy who wes in Vene zuela tbat was unbassador. LANSDALE : be was from Arizona' and was 8 journalist. 0 BriEN ; Not LHauric M.J Banbaxlm LAv s DALE : No = 0 BRIEN : Well, how is ne to de&l with and do you 8 chance to se0 [Romulo] Betancourt or any of the political leadersz LANSDALE: Yes, I sw political leaderg there . I had five dayg in Venezugle, and I think I two hours' sleep al1 the time I was there . I [c. Allan st 3t] found our ambassador therez at the time very L~J # wrk Wji #i0 open-minded, I wrote a report, coming back get g0t got 36o 9144 ================================================== Page 44 ================================================== -43- from Venezuzla afterward, and gubmitted itp~ by the time I got to Weghington _ It went up to Pregident Kennedy_ 98 well 48 Dean Rusk, and some of Rusk' s staff imme diately wired the ambas sadoroad it was one of thege? "You don' t want to this, do you , " and they said I'd 28 Ome out with a .report on Venezuale) &nd here were the main points of my, recommendations &nd Jome findings _ Ee was just there five days . He couldn't posgible have found out enough to come to thes0 conclusi isn't that right?" Bless hbis heert, the ambas sador c am6 back and seid, in effect, 'm` &maz0d that he found out that much, and the recommendationg are sound, and we ' & discussed this before he left) and We r0 working with them already . "_ You don' t have, to be in 9 place long. very For example_ We had 8 pretty large Americ an comuni down there who themselves were practically government U.S. Steel and &ll our 0il companies and S0 on . There was very little relationship between the Americ&n buy ons, "I ty big ================================================== Page 45 ================================================== -44- buginess community and the U.S_ Embes_ 04 I,had urged that they meet maybe once 8 week Yey or once & month--tbe Americ&n executives and the Ambagsador and several members of his steff and have lunch together rether frequently and discuss mutuel problems beceuse the 0.S. firms down there had very large security 9taffs], (zney were very close' to the police type of forceg, the constebulery down there} and te+ the embassy woula ba very well informed from this) e8 well 48 pessing some of+ais information back to these people; end everybody would by it. Well, this doesn 't take very long to_ In talking to the vice presidenti &f Sf"v.s Steel operationg aown there , 4 4n8 gay, "One thing you would change if you hed the power--what would it be?" and he ' d tell You gomething like thig, Jazkhnwh 90 _ 9 it wes rather 0 49y to come up with t218 #at thinga. 0 'BRIEN: Did you find them fairly kowledgeable and enlightened' about some of the things that You were very 9yd gain "You' unz ================================================== Page 46 ================================================== ~45- LANSDALE: Very much very much 32 0 ' BRIEN : Like rural 0conomic de and agricul- tural developmento_E LANSDALE: Particul_ the 0il companies) and I wes surprised. Standard [Oil Company]0f-New-Jersey} showed me what it wes doing because the rigg out in Lake Maracaibo were getting blown and their pipelines were getting blown uP; by saboteurs C oming in who were really epert. I found out later thet they were affiliated with communists in Colembia and had come o. overcthey were really experts at explosives , and they weren 't: the s tudent type `of revolu- tionaries and s0 on , who also were pregent 4 in Venezuele . But} in seeing what" they we r0 doing; it went far beyond 8 company paternalism T1ey type of 8 thing for' employeesothat ,started cradit systems with: farm groups and houging projects for_people living in the vicinity ploit- of thoir employoes-_not theff; emplojees 90 much) who also gained 8 great deal out of this _ And' then U.S . Steel, in pushing its developments 90 , so@ velopment?_ erly 4p,2 ================================================== Page 47 ================================================== -46- wey down to the south_ He-probably wouldn!t do -it;- he''a chow the -wire-in-two' here : 0 'BR IEN: Oh my God._-It!s-8 wonder-he-hasn-t-electri cuted himsel?[Laughter] LANSDAIE Yeal.--It!s not yours , it' s-some' of-mine _ 0LBRIEN: -Well;-Ii not__worried about that Wiras; these_gort-of-wires " can-be- replaced:=: I'm . not sure ebout yours- LANSDALE: Worse tnan-rets _ Jo; 04BRIEN: Well;-he '9 e ~spirited -animal-end €8 .can 't belp-adniring-thatz LAXS DALE: ~Yeah: 7 Well,. one of the stories on Kennedy I'd Jike to` put in wes : On my reporte from Vietnam in the very early days of - just before he was inaugurated) and he read it apparently right efter the inaugural-~one of the reports wag a little 9id0 piece that I did' on 8 village in' South Vie tnam inhabited by some Chinese refugeeg that: President Ngo Dnh [#gu Bunk] Diem bad located down in the midgt of 8 communist-held territory, and I wes very [Int-rvito] ================================================== Page 48 ================================================== -47- impresged by themzara just 88 an example of what; humang will do in such a situation, I'd written' it up and turned ,in 8 separate report on it. And , &bout the It wes still January) '61, ebout ten deys after the inaugural) my telephone in the Pentegon rangrana this voice tbat sounded like Breidaha Kennedy ' s told me it was Pregident Kennedy talking) &nd he hed read this report of mine and wanted me to' have it published in the ` Seturday Evening 0 U Jimc Post. I was wondering which joker in the Pentagon TOtEnox was imitating.this Harvard, Messachusetts accent and was putting So me on and I seid, "Yes, Yes , yes . I I then hed my secretary check over at the White House) and gure enough , it had been President Kennedy, 90 I ned: to then g0 promiged to do it erd figuring out I didn't know how to S ome thing in the Saturdey Evening_Post, but quickly found out how) and they published thig thing efterwards a9 a report that the Rregident' wanted published in their megezine _ aheadz71'd get ================================================== Page 49 ================================================== -48 - 0 ' BR IEN: We:li-thet; You had taken_ ~of courgez you a hed that interest in Vietnam and Leos , You talked to 8 lot of people, 88 I under- 'in stand, about Laos and Vietnam the incoming administration Did you have eny intent or Pyypose in mind outside 0f jugt explaining the wey that it was ? LANSDALE: Thet was principally my intent. The firgt meeting I bad with McNemare, all he wanted to t do: was have me tell him about Vietnam, and this was essentially what most 0f the incoming 8 dministrative officials when they' d telk d0 - to me would want me 'explain what was heppening and what the ituation was Thig essenti ally was how and why I felt on those subject9, but my thesis right 4long on thig wag to help the people in the countries to + help themgelveg rather than go in and do things for them. It was mostly Ion the nuts 9 and bolts On how You gO about doing this and the individualg you '& pick to do it and how you 'd select them and please Jet' s have highest quelity and fewer people doing these 8286 to^ ================================================== Page 50 ================================================== -49- thingg _ 0 'BRIEN : Well, You have some successeg and failures in--I guess mogtly failureg in the last of the Eigenhower edministrati ono-I 'm thinking in terms of Leos Laos is the imme diate problem in 1961_ How do' you re spond to S Ome of these people who are in policyzmaking rositions at that time.? I'a like to Jour feeling for thenb people like [Walther:] Robertson Zin the State @epartment; ~Rkopla Robenteon and [J. Grahan] Parsons ; John Irwin in the Defense; and on;the Agency gide, people like Desmond] Fitzgerald_ How do see LANSDALE : You haeve named a group of people , al1 of whom are friends of mine) and We were very friendly, and I hed worked with 8 number of them for enough yearg 80 that wB more or 10s9 under- stood each other and, could teke ghortcuts in conversations ana So on 411 of those Jou 2iwaYs '7 ta /ks named ~ad-+-alked"wi th me expressed 9imilar beliefs to mine) s0 it wes very easy in talking to them, and there were others in the get they ================================================== Page 51 ================================================== ~50- Eisenhower administration _ Now this wesn 't trua throughout the a dministration et ell, but there_ was 8 considerable group of people who were in verious executive slots just down the second and third level who had been through the 0l[ Interruption] 0 BRIEN : Well, Laos,&g I understand it with the of +h& 9o= @ aid thet ' s going in there_Ahet-it really does in. 9 Ome weys teer up the economy of the country. Now, how do you look on the training of the Laotian army in late./9 ~ '59, 1 60-- s ome of the activities of the Agency in Laos) 48 well as the army and through the PEO [Programg Evaluation Office] office and things like this ? Is this the kind of thingayou envision in termg of--I hate to use the term "nation building"_-helping 8 country to help its0lf, in}helping people to help themselves ? LANSDALE Yeg , 49 long 93 in the mo dern worla the leaders of the country will think in terms of 89 lerge 8 military establishment as they can afford in 8 country. And they do this without any advice from anybody. This is just a natural) Impct 19) 60--& jt ================================================== Page 52 ================================================== ~51- 9elf-preservation type of an impulse on thoir pert_ Then my thought 1s : They will be 'doing this _ Then let'g make the military establish- ment serve the country in a much bigger- way than merely toting guns `around and guarding borders _ It'8 ugually the organization that is nationwi and there might not be any other organizetion thet '9 nationwide in the country, such as agricultures even the 8 dministrative structure that ugually come 9 44~ under department or ministry of the Interior won 't really have the manpower , the c omuni- cations) and s0 forth) that the: military forces do given that, why not then the military to start doing congtructive things eround and meking fuli u490 Of the menpower thet you have anyhow Heve them be military mon as the very first requisite of #hec this, but) given there ! s still energy 87 4 U; that^ and personnel involved in that who have 4 lot of man-hours left over that could do other 2xd essenti this is what I was trying to the American edvisory misgions de) So, get good things0 ally; get ================================================== Page 53 ================================================== -52- to do--not only the military advisory mi 99i0n9) but when other esencie8 woula in and be working on these things , to themselveg bec ome interested in the militery doing guch things , and aiding .and abetting, including aconomic 0 pro jects and educational work: and S0 on 0 ' BRIEN : Well,in' thig Leotian deterioration thet takes place , JGTkrow the competing people there-- Ndsnvan Phoumi (Vongbienit] and Sou vannal Phouma and all--how do you read that in 1960 just prior to the administration coming in? Doyoi: How do You see Phoumi ; how do you se0 Souvannah Phouma, a8 people? First of all; heve You met them at any time 2 LANSDALE : Yes, yes, Ye8 , I didn 't know them well at 8ll I' met them & usually at formal gatheringg of on6 kind or another _ The main thing that I saw in Laog In the . way of political gtability ac tually stemmed out of the king of Laos this wes the only unifying political force that existed there in the minds of al1 of the various Leo leaders whom I'd met. So when the others started splitting &d opposing one another, I get ================================================== Page 54 ================================================== -53- 2.0 had ,already felt that our best bet was to turn to the king and force him +8-_Or; not force; but to encourage himito taking the leadership role that would be the one thing ecceptable to all these leeders . Ingtead of that, wB were starting to become pepts-in2, L ourselves there and playing off one guy against another, and Americans aren 't at thet game We have many Americans' who think they but thig) I think; is a little too foreiz* to Our nadureo end we fell in love with the factions and ar-+ 4o Inz; peoplex almos t unconscious of the fact that wB were aoing that _ The paretroop leader there 0 BRIEN : Kong La ? LANSDALE: who kicked over 9 revolt)had spent the night before his coup with 8 group of American friends , and there wagn 't 8 demn one of them that knew that he was going to have a coup in the morning. This type of 4 thing] I just found. inconceivable People get nervous' and sort of ebsent-minded about what ' s happening at the time when they T0 planning an action Partis good are , ~YsYoar& ================================================== Page 55 ================================================== -54- like that the next morning) and somebody there @ong the Americans should heve been gensitive enough to heve seid, "Well, erent Jou feeling " Y well pr eomething, 3or-..01; and had gotten s Ome feeling on it. But this sort of getting in bed with people` soc i end gaying, He ' g 4 f%'4 A 148 4 1i a good: fellow and "he ! s my friend, and excusing '0 everything i8 a common blindness) and this had worried me in Laos quite 8 bit BR IEN : Well, I the impression from_reading' of thig period/ that there, really iS some lack of coordination in the various efforts that W are there;^ Zotherbords, the ambass & dor i9 not completely privy to what the Agency is doing) &nd the Agency 1s not completely privy to what DOD i9 doing through the PEO office. Do you get that feeling? Maybe in regard CJak:n F_ to the Parsons - Irwin-Reilly mission that goes out there, do You any feeling Dver Hk at 4l1? LANDSALE : Yes, I'm trying to recall We hit 8 crisig at that point) end the group that went out-:Persons was on home leave) &nd We bad a get get ================================================== Page 56 ================================================== -55- meeting in the Pentegon in the secretary of Pefenses office and there were a mob of people There were/--I can ' t te recell now what 'prompted the mee ting) i but thora was 8 crisis of 8 Ome sort in Laog _ And the JCS geve a briefing, that ' 8 right , 8s part of' the thing)and it was on the Pathet Lao positi ) and they suddenly discovered that there were passes over the mounteins that hed some importance to the Ho Chi Minh trail, and this great discovery was being lectured on at thig meeting. Axe et the; time, the Secretary of Defenge--I b#XW8 think, I Jc_ that mi ght have been [Thomas;] Gates [n } et the time;~might have been, but whoever it was L asked if I had a coment to make ) end I seid, "Take e look at that map that the JCS wes showing ug of Pathet Leo and the other situe-t tions on the thing" and I 8aid,"it shoula tell everybady here just one thing. You 've is an ambassador whoz on home leave he doegn t belong here} Che belongs out in Vientiana right this ezc the rest of thereo qui- oning wonder; herea? got momento ================================================== Page 57 ================================================== -56- you who are asking questiong ought to have people out there with him who would tell You immediately and take 8 first-hand look _ IF And-tho ' &- I remember Irwin weg picked h right on' the spot to g0 immedi and, 9aid 11 , to me on the 'side, "You and your big mouthg goziiow- [Laughter] 0 ' BRIEN: Well;, did you get involved in any of the mee tings on Leos-after the Kennedy edminis- tration come 8 and some of the jockeying that goes around?. LANSDALE: Some of them, yes . I can ' t quite recall which meetings they were at the time I was in on S Ome of the questions of the support of Mxos, the Mavss the guerrilla force8 _ L' BR IEN : Well) ker dia you 800 in, terms of 8 9trategy for the aree? @here '8--8& 89 I read it, there tnare seems to ba some varioug stretegies Aproposed; one 19 05#youzkaol going down the full roed behind Phoumi and supporting Phoumi _ and anothor is the panbandle strategy--I've never been able to te' understand what the pan - handle strategy was--that _->ci=-kcow; ringS ately} in, qui ================================================== Page 58 ================================================== -57 - a bell- LANSDALE : Enje-yeab--wel17+buy my memory ign 't too good on this thing. There wes some talk at the time ~there 'g high coun across theBolovens Plateau and S0 forth down in the sou and there was talk et the time that being the do inant and what WB should dojues to make use _ of that and the high ground in Vie tnam end S0 acros: into Thailand, and ensure that thet state stajd in noncommunist hands #* 0 ' BRIEN : Well, there 9 also suggested in the Laotian crisis 8s early as 1961, the use of strategic bombing on supply routes) and even) a8 I understand it to` Hanoi, as early as that amA interdictinj_ 410+++n€ some of the supply lineg , as well 88 the suggestion thet subgequently In 1962 do0s become 8 reality the dropping of the SEATO [Southeast Asie Treaty Organization] wl ) &ll42 plan five ) 88 I understand itA How did you feel about the Laotian crisig et that point) in terms of a strategy or a direc tion %t which should work ? try AOf th, area) on , ================================================== Page 59 ================================================== -58 - LANSDALE: Well, I had wanted the Laotians to defend their country) end I wes ell for the work Meos 9 wi th the Macists ana 90 on of doing it_ Once it left that &nd started involving Vietnamese or on bombing or anything else , I felt that the cost of saving some real estat;e would be too high to ever engage okwoko in)^ And on the boibing, I felt that' as long 'f a8 you had 4ll of the communication with the people meang in the hands of le aders such 88 in North Vietnam and then Hanoi where 7 this wes pughing, that anything overt such 83 aerial 'bombing that would then permit them to 4s0 that: as a unifying force psychologically with the people would be ded wrong _ I used to remind them of what [Winston] Churchill had 'done {with the German bombing of Britain) && ijust on redio with the. peopleo here Were leaders with complete access to radio ana working with the people) and it would have 8 reverse effect, 83 far as trying to the ambitions and aims and s0 forth of the North Ler€) Vietnemese , who after all)the guys organi ow~ 48 , and Mclil] communist nd stop zing ================================================== Page 60 ================================================== ~59- the Pathet' Leo end pushing on into the area felt that more could be done with the armed forces of Leos themselves in making them more able to stand up for themselves and defend their country. But if it couldn I couldn't see an intervention of any sort in there _ Morally, we 'd have been on 8 moral ground then to turn around and start using some international morel pres sure through the pre 89 and 80 forth,to sort of sheme the. North Vie tname se out of their attempts . I'm 8 great believer in exposing things to bring such pregsure 0 BR IEN : Well) how do" you see the relationship of Vie tnam and Laos at that point, or do you? LANSDALE : Oh , Je8 . The passes and the Hobhi Minh trail in bringing thingg down wag one of the key things on this _ But again, there: wes even talk at the time of taking Vietneme S0 troops in there) e 4~secretlyZand u8ing them up to try and stop that, and I was opposed to thatlol didn 't went to 8ee intervention like that from tne outside G I 't) ================================================== Page 61 ================================================== 5 60- BR IEN : Well, when does gome of the covert activity, interms 0f. the use of some of the - Mixtaa "ards Jerds- in interdicting those supply lineg in Laos Jou_kioll from Vietnam start? Is that going on in the late Eisenhower acministretion_ or does it begin in the Kenne dy administration? LANSDALE : I think it wes the Kennedy administrati there had been 8 little 'of it)or there had been talk of it)in the Eisenhower administration. There hed been thoughts along that line the Vietneme ge leaders 21o55],.15637 end I remember President Diem' s brother wert +o=_ in hig older brother;_went into Laos Ezse about '55 or maybe ' '56) &nd had come up with 8 s.cheme very similer to that at the time _ He nad talked about the mountain people of Leog being ekin to tho mountain peeple of Vie tnam and wouldn 'tlit be good to 9ome of our mountein people in with them and together they could be trained. 0 BRIEN : Yes, well, re in Vietnam in the middle of the fifties ) &nd then you go beck in 1960 in the late Eisenhower administration Whnat ' s on by: top get Jou ================================================== Page 62 ================================================== -61- changed , or has anything? LANSDALE : Oh , a great deal _ Excuse me [Interruption] 0 BRIEN: What changes. do you fina? LANSDALE: Well, the main change was in a growing isola- tion from reality of the constituency of the President of Vietnamo a repression of_ you might say) a loyal opposition or a noncommunist Kim opposition to then in political termso 7ec2 uc professionally some among the military that waz taking the Vietnamese military apart from their .people more than it had been when I had left) because I had gotten them working very OY +he closely with a number of 223 projectso ana a growing isolation of the American embassy _ in particular)but including some of the American agenc ies from the Vietnamese officialdon_ and taking a very strange form of concentrating on gossip essentially--gossip as much as fact--about; ohy_whatthe_hell-s- theword-Im_tzyies_to_think-of, 04 misdeeds Lk Fxtke ================================================== Page 63 ================================================== -62 - ana so forth public officials or people connected with the regime in Vietnam so that the information-gathering process = of the United States there was devoting an exorbitant amount of time on sort of nitpicking Iw on the people that Ivere in power Fhe rela- tionships) such as the ambassador with the president of the country) the ambassador woula go into details of malfafSance in office ana So forth, or mishandling of funds by the Vietnamese on an internal matter , ana the president would have to correct him and say) you con t have all the and the ambass- ador would say , I do } too. This to me was poor _ I felt that we had some Americans Ehat were close enough to the top officials of the Vietnamese who weren' t present in the country always) who should be brought there and told, Look we under- stana these guys are doing something wrong. Viztsws_ bY, facts) 11 ` ; res) Very wko ================================================== Page 64 ================================================== -63- Can go in ana get them to start doing things right)as a friend of theirs?" I6 than going ana trying to scold them and something and getting the back up of people, ana they'& figure "Well, these 'damn nosey Americans only got half the facts, and since don t understand us that the hell with them We aren t going to do what they wanto" I just felt that we weren t playing a very Wise ballgame there at the time. on the American side_ also felt that Dien was paying too much attention to similar types of his own people, his in tun) intelligence people. were cirgztum telling him what the Americans were doing too damn much or were bringing in alarming news about his own subjects--ana particularly political oppositionists--and)I: suspect)manufacturing cases against them so that they could take actionsoara he in was getting too much You rather they well) VI whOi turn) ================================================== Page 65 ================================================== -64- secondhand from people) and this tendea to isolate him more since his main intelli- gence officer was his [Ngo Dinh} who was an ambitious person too, I felt that it was a poor arrangement on the Vietnamese 9 side. I personally urged Diem at the time to get in touch with some . of his opposition ar Fat which point he asked me where I had been at certain times of the day during my visit and I said, I was talking to your oppos and I'm not going to tell You iho it was Or: where I was , but just the mere fact that you know that shows that you were having me trailea aroundoana gou know I ' m a friend of your country and I m trying to help all of succeea here, ana you happen to be the elected leader) ana you jolly well better start reflecting what your people desireo &x if .you spend your time and money and efforts and: so forth watching In"x brother} thereo ition) s ) you ================================================== Page 66 ================================================== -65- . a guy like me , I 'm sure You re doing: a lot more for someone else you really suspecto and= BRIEN: How would he react to some thing like this? LANSDALE: Listen, I was told by 3 number of people that I was about the only one that really' ever talkea to him in this manner, ana he would a at the time= one of the people most critical 0f him was his vice_ 3 ! president, and I went over and saw the vice president, whose name was [Nguyen Ngoc] Tho , ana Tho immediately started ttelling me that the president had spies all over his office and in his staffoana as he was telling me this, one of the clerks was serving us tea, ana I said, this guy one of the president' s )) spies? and he said, "Probably, I think so . [Laughter] Maybe he ' 11 go back and report tim ) l( this one_ I said When was the last time you two talked to each Well, it had listeno Is other?) ================================================== Page 67 ================================================== -64- secondhand from peoplex and this tended to isolate him more Since his main intelli- gence officer was his brother, [Ngo Dinh] who was an ambitious person too, I felt that it was a poor arrangement ' on the Vietnamese 9 side _ I personally urged Diem at the time to get in touch with some . of his' opposition at ~at which point he asked me where I had been at certain times of the during my visit and I said, I was talking to your opposition ana I'm not; going to tell you who_ it was or where I was, but just the mere fact that you know that shows that you were having me trailed aroundoana gou know I 'm a friena of your country' 8 ) and I'm trying to help all of you succeed here, ana you happen to' be the elected leader ana you jolly well better start reflecting what your people desireo 8F if You spend your time and money ana efforts and: so forth watching In" day thereo ================================================== Page 68 ================================================== 265 - a guy like me . I 'm sure. you re doing: a lot more for someone else you really suspecto and= BRIEN: How would he react to something like this? LANSDALE: Listen, I was told by a number of people that I was about the only one that really: ever talked to him in this manner , ana he would ar 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 , ana Tho immediately started telling me that the president had spies all over his office ana in his ana as he was telling me this, one 6f the clerks was serving us tea) and I said, Is this guy one of the president ' s 'b and he said, "Probably , I chink So _ [Laughter). Maybe he 11 go back and report t kim ) (( this one _ I said When was the last time you two talked to each Well,it had listeno staffo spies?" other?) ================================================== Page 69 ================================================== -66_ been monthso go I, back to Diem ) and I jumped I said; You 've got a vice-president who ve made responsible for ali the economic development of the country) and I know that you consider that impor You haven" t talkea to him for a iong time_ hc'4 and I forcea hin to tell me when done it lasteso I said, We 11, up the telephone ~ and call him over here your first free time and sit down and have a long talk with 11 him& So he dia ito He picked up _ the phone ana I got the two of them together againo He was really out of toucho He promised me at the time to get in touch with some of eke hia political oppositiono he swore up and down (( well , he wasn t oppressing anyoneo ana I saia, 0u don t know what your own police are 11 and .I gave him the list of names of then; people who were in prison who had been arrested at midnight ana pulled out of their homes and "verT , himo You very tanto Xould pick You aoingz ================================================== Page 70 ================================================== -67- So and he promised. to look into their cases immediately and do something about And I said, I've gotten this from people in the opposition to You) but I 'ietker don t know you gotten any reports _ He said he' & never heard of these cases , ana I think he was telling the truth_ He had no reason to dissemble with me at all on these things . 0 BRIEN: Well) why is this? Is it the development of ; Ak an independent bureaucracy, or is snere a2 degree of' U.S. influence ons let' s say,the Nhu inte lligence, Knew? . LANSDALE: There was probably some I think that time the Vietnamese intelligence was way beyona any control by U.S _ 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 _ Ana I initially, he was really trying to serve his ono ito who^ Q2r 1 ve^ by intelligence; suspectx ================================================== Page 71 ================================================== -68- brother) and he was doing it by trying to get the good3 on _ everybody working for his brother throughout the government and anybody opposea to his brother0 aa the intelligence people,Picking it discovered that if 'they brought in bad news about some guy that the brother dian t like, he ' & pay them ana believe it. So I' m sure that there was a lot of manufactured evidence in the intelligence take that was coming Zna I don ' t think the Americans were screening any of that type of information because it went right into the palace) and there was a big room behind the president ' s office that had many files ana was the main personnel_ dossier type of file place _ BRIEN: Well_ you re critical of the MAAG [Military Assistance Advisory Group] operation there_ ftu? What ' s wrong with it) in the late 553Ls3 LANSDALE : Well,. I felt that MAG under 'hanging" '16 san #tLa [[Samuel T.] williams in the late 750Ls was up)t ino ================================================== Page 72 ================================================== -69- alunusually well-run American military operation _ There were some unusual things being done that made it SO . One of. them was one of the best ideas I've ever bumped into_ General Willians brolght over the chief of staff of the Vietnamese army whenever the American advisors who at that time were out in the countryside,but at fairly high leve and were running #"e training camps more than advising on opera- tions or anything _ when they woula come in once a month for a weekena in Saigon, Williams would get the Vietnamese Chief of Staff to cone in ana talk to them _ The Vietnamese Chief of Staff at that time was General [Tran Van] Don Don was quite diplomatic,but had a way of being candia in his remarks and not having them hurt too much na +nes when they were tola. He would leave out So on , but he woula tell tnese Anericans what 1s YJut ~1L ================================================== Page 73 ================================================== -70- their Vietnamese counterparts in the Viet- namese army and s0 forth thought of them ana their work 'ana their advice, and the reactions throughout the armed forces to themj This was the one part of the monthly gatherings with Americans arouna that everybody would stop dozing off or thinking of something else ana woula sit up and pay attention because were the subject 0f the talk,of course_ This was a very healthy thing. sce where - 0 BEIEN: Yes, I 'can feelit 2 wcld b2 0 LANSDALE : bzause even though it was tough diplo_ matically, the most sordid truth wowid _ # %to hardest facts;_would come out in cehe;e Ana then Williams himself had been in Vietnam 'a enough time by then--I forget how ` long; it may be three years at the time_ four years--so that when he movea arouna the Vietnamese army, it wasn ' t only just the top staff officers and commanders who would be I with him, but I noticed in a visit there--I they iong ML: ================================================== Page 74 ================================================== -71- L think it was 59--that sergeants ana junior lieutenants and so "on woula come up ana taik to and I'& moved in close enough to eavesdrop on some of the conversations and these were personal problems _ family problems_ and financial problems ana sO forth that individuals hadoana. this was a very unusual 9 relationship for an American to have _ And since the American was also running our advisory effort toa, I just figured that this constant feeding and contact with the echelons of Vietnamese military that were down below the big wheels was again a very healthy influence that was constantly at work with him_ So that he would know .very well what 9 was going on in places Some of these problems-_ personal problems--would actually involve the military work that was going forwara, people griping that something was wrong ana So ono ana they were doing this out 0f a himg Yw-zho-tt; friendship} ================================================== Page 75 ================================================== -72- ana hesas not to tell on their bosses or anything; but usually personal worries ana concern .that Wastaxi or something going aa wrong woula Rffect them _ Later they moved in an educator--a military educator-- {Paul D. ] #arkins, ana. 0 BRIEN: Well, [Lt. Gen Lionel:C.] McGarr comes in there before that; doesn t he? LANSDALE : McGarr It was McGarr , yes, you re right . It was_ before Harkins McGarr _ And McGarr built, Up a staff to work on_ counter insurgency and probably put together the best staff #t studies on counter-insurgency /han any American military men have ever done _ BRIEN: Is Ehat right? LANSDALE : He got American military men who had been guerrilla leaders in the Philippines for example) in Worla War II) and in Burma ana so on ana in Europe, ana s~ ched most of his work over into compiling ( How to Do manuals, but I ve never seen the finished it" ================================================== Page 76 ================================================== -73- products. I saw them working on it at the time , ana all I know is they had tremendous stacks of papers with the results of their cyped-out work' ana were putiing it together And the interpretation of this "2s apparently,a- to start' 'increasing staff an American military personnel to handle whatever Wiatever was coming up out of this whole process_ The feeling was wS that there should be closer Amefican supervision 0f what was happening units) out :in Eun-ice which meant;*21+ you 'd put down your Americans at lower echelons ana then get a separate reporting system on back feeding in the research process of the Americans initially more than anything else _ It wasn 't for control; it was just for information that would go into fields of studyoarra this Je?4 &d Ari eriean to a proliferation of ahmilitary presence that was intended sort of for the education of Americans I think) more than 2nything but of course didn ' t work out that way. You elsex ================================================== Page 77 ================================================== -74- some red-blooded American boys in uniform out someplace) and they re going to start doing other things 2s well. In collecting information (( kck) they couldn t help but tell a guy , Well,Aif you didn t do it this way and did it the other 11 way, it woula work ana so on It Was a very human. thing that started work and #c~ 2s this happened we started building up our advisory effort more ana more_ 0 BRIEN: Well) in the meantime) while this is going on the' insurgency S building up_ isn ' t it? LANSDALE : Yes _ 0 BRIEN: Just what is the condition of the coun try_ side thzt' s different from when you re there in the middle fffties 15676 and when you go back in Ialo/ LANSDALE : Oh _ there were guerrillaAbY an- enemy which there hadn t been in the period from Geneva on up to the time I left in the end of You could drive roads at night and so forth Put better) ingo Gpenatios '560 ================================================== Page 78 ================================================== 5 75- and not be worrying about guerrillas. There were isolatea incidents of violence, but. were very minor--it would be about { what you '& expect in any crime rate goingo-the fact that former Vieths_-guerrillas were the guys pulling the trigger didn t matter too much as far as the overall crime rate went. It was in a nature of minor G terrorism was going on By my next visits later in the #b0-& there were areas '0f guerrilla bands at work with roads that were 5 unsafe ana SO on +A areas that were unsafe, with great . problems of police posts being attacked ana with their families being wiped out in small massacre type of things , though the type ana degree_ of violence had increased a great deal. By the ena of 60-~when I got ato there rn Christmas of '60--there were fair Y size' enemy, Vietcong units operating and dominating areasb it had escalated considerably: by then - they will countrya" #t 47 ================================================== Page 79 ================================================== -76- BRIEN: Is this terrorism Fampaign on the local officials as serious as some of the people have written} about-it? LANSDALE: Oh, yes_ BRIEN: Do you ever get aniy feeling about the number of people? I've heard all kinds of estimates. LANSDALE : No , I've [Stephen T.] Hosmer S study there: on Yat ) and I haven ' t read it yet. I just got that from him. I imagine he ' s a figure in there_ The last figure k I remember on it was--in about 66-Wzarolott fty JloustaL 40, 803 or some thing BRIEN: Forty thousand , That many? LANSDALE : Yes . These were officials not: their families or anything_ But these were viilage officials_ ana district officials] and sort of federal government officials_ BRIEN : Well) what do you see happen as a result of this #erability + in terms of Diem to just sigply govern in_ those Ai< abilety years? Is tnebvalueto govern deteriorating? got got aruun ing ================================================== Page 80 ================================================== 77 - LANSDALE : Yes: In some ways it was _ Initially? he was unwilling to delegate any authority M at all ana he had the tendency to try ana do everything himself. If' the problem came up in agriculture, he would be the guy to; do all the paper: work and the deciding rather than his Minister of Agriculture ana So on He had gotten over that to a very large extent so he had learned to be more the administrator ana executive later on)as far as putting some authority in the 5 hands of others. But at the same time _ he also seemed to have lost some of his critical 89 some of the things that were going wrong,' of not being able to see it: He was getting around the . country and visiting) but. not as much anymore because of the security problems _ He had been shot at several. times) SO that ne had a larger and larger security guara around him all the time)which meant that . when he went in and talked to people, #a thiigi_ latero faculty) ================================================== Page 81 ================================================== ~78- they were very much aware of plain_clothes policemen , secret service types all arouna him, and othersj that were screening out people) SO that the dialogue between the president and the people became thinner and G thinner) and less and less meaningful_ So' while he was. on paper: becoming a better executive, he was, in: terms of being the national leader, was being less effective a11 the time because he haa no means of measuring what was true and what wasn' t what was wsu'g worth doing and wasn 't, and what was work It0 ana what Nas; 't8 It was a considerable G impairment of his critical faculty. This was one of the reasons I was urging him to start dialogues with his political opposition even if it startea at opposite poles and led to tremendous emotional clashesottrat would be some means for dialogue to take place that would have been useful to him, particularly if he had invited them into a W:C jost there ================================================== Page 82 ================================================== -79- meal ox someth and had some way of fattening the most emotional irritations that woula take place) just how-trre? people Leis seened polite at the so the content lu 0 of what hac to say woula be something st that he: wasn t gettingielsewise_ 0 BRIEN: Yes, well, as I understand it)the Vecg [viet Cong] make a great deal of headway in those years on the basis of the land system - LANSDALE : That was one of them . 0 BRIEN: Well;what. As I understana it)there' s some rub: between the U.S . in this regard ana Diem about putting through some land reform which would cure some of the rural cultural problems that the French had sort of createa, as I understand, from Yet-knuw the Vietnamese moving into the country. LANSDALE : Yes , yes_ 0 BRIEN: Well, how do You see that? Axe You pushing Kiw for this sort of thinge at Xot ? k kol LANSDALE : Yes _ Actually} we-=eve Sce very sound lana ing) Jawfenir3 by _ Otst time?" Wbuyl they Pcint _ ================================================== Page 83 ================================================== -80 - reform measures on the books ana had issued decrees on them that were good. As usual' the diffeeulty %s,when you get a piece of legislation or somethingplis then implementing it correctly) and I was pushing him mostly on implementing his measures Now the lana reform workex that Diem approved ana used as the basis for his acrees came Erom Wolf Ladejinsky ( 2nd Wolf) was- when he left U.S. employment, E Waj actually employed by Diem as his advisor on 41k2 subject, and Wolf was getting over and having breakfast with Diem quite a bit. Wolf is a very articulate_ personable type of a guy )and there was great' deal of affectionate friendship between the two so that Wolf, who is a champion of reforms ana of helping the man on the lana, had full access to this guy and haa a way of doing 4 things . Ana I felt that the Ma in thing that needed doing was demonstrating to President Diem_ who was sympatnetic towards this, of where a ." meno ================================================== Page 84 ================================================== -81- things weren t going right and changing some of . the inner workings of 'thing instead of just falting him on intent. And his intent Ivas very sound , very good. I think he was ignorant of some of these things 9 going; wrong . I felt that we should have bornelaown on the matters in which he was ignorant and tried to get some changes there ana make these things work because certainly landlords and others were circumventing the law of the lana that Diem thought *was operatinger when he circumventea it, he was doing it for good reasons of his own which was again open to education by somebody 9 of but he was moving in people whom he could trust;-who were refugees--into farm communities ana distributing lana to then for security reasons and political reasons and so on , and then dictating what they would grow ana so onoscause he ' & just figure, Mell, in the national economy we need this +bsz himo ================================================== Page 85 ================================================== -82 - type of fiber grown or this type of crop or some and the iand will produce it up there and S they should do that. So] he of was only circumventing the lawAfor the greater good, in his own mina, his own extent. 0 BRIEN: This centralization: brings about a reaction) though; doesn t it? LANSDALE : Yes _ TAPE II SIDE I LANSDALE : You asked about the falling out between Ledejinsky and Diem _ I know there was something of that nature, but what it consisted of, or I don t know. I remember that the American ambassador T- BRIEN: 0 E woula: have been [Elbridge] Durbrow? LANSDALE: Durbrow was minaful of the fact that Egdejansky was having breakfast with Diem ana was close to him, and in a rather general Lalejinsky to bring up. thoughts of corruption?" in A: ^ thing; Sort just why , akzl N4 way) ================================================== Page 86 ================================================== ~83- the government and subjects beyond anything like lana reform. And I suspect that Ladejinsky had' started getting .very political in his talk)as a result of th with' Diem , and that Diem had resented it. But beyond this; . there was a very deep affection between the two. When I was there in 59 or 60 _ Igdejinsky had wanted to go someplace; I forget where it was. I know one `0f the places was Indonesia) but there was another coun- he wanted to go to)and Diem hadn t wanted him to and krsuggested that he attena a con ference--I think in Latin Americaszza finally, they had agreed between the two of them) ana Iddejinsky had te gone on to :do these other thingsathat_ taken 4 sort of a sabbatical leave to do that. But this was a very personal thing between two and it was two friends rather than a presicent ana his consultant working. I know Eiaejinsky is very sentimental about is) Zand try hed go9 kol men ) ================================================== Page 87 ================================================== -84- Diem as a man , ana I know that Diem recipro- cated this very much. There was a point where the rational thought would' end) and_ the feelings 'o€ affection ana so forth would come over) ana say, Well, even if that is true ana everything, I stiil like the I ana want to help ana SO ong ana this existea between the t'o. SoY they might have differed on some things ana perhaps on carrying out land reform exactly the way: #at Wolf wanted, but the two men kept seeing each other all the time ana he had ample opportunity to work on that. #ats BRIEN: teer the suggestions1s made sometimes i< that the Vietnamese military hag not been trainea for the kina of war ana the kina of insurgency that they did encounter in 1960-61/--they had not been properly trained for that before. Is there any validity in this at all? hin) guyx ================================================== Page 88 ================================================== -85- LANSDALE :_ Oh y08)^ They were being trained 8c tually to meet the challenge that the Vietname se and Americ &n officials_ foresaw, and they were thinking thet-thi3--and incidentelly, the French General [Paul] before he left: wes thinking the same way-- just in terms of contigency planningo they saw a lot of artil- lery and armor being gi ven the North Vietnamese army . b3irz given that information, they saw any attack 'or military trouble in Vietnam 89 consisting of di visions of North Vie tname s0 wi.th 8 lot of artillery and ermor coming across the border _ So they built up an ermy to meet the foreseeable thing that was heppeninge that they thought might happen - Instead of this) of course, it was more .of the s ame ola story @gained' there were many of the officers in the Vie tname 80 armea forces who had formerly been' guerrillas themselveg , who had formerly Mik9 had been Viet Rer in the old' deys of fighting the French, who had broken with the domunists and wanted no pert of the Cormunists and were ver gincere, petriotic Nationalists_ But Suc 0 top Ely So, ================================================== Page 89 ================================================== ~B7 since they had haa 54 this former affiliation and hed teken their bagic militery training with the enemy , S0 to' speak, they never quite hed the S ae stature among their fellow officers in the Vietnamese army for example as greduates of the Vie tnamese Military Academy and the others` coming right out of high school and S0 on So as 8 result , the officers corps who were Iowledgeable #KH of how to counter what was happening were kept at fairly junior grade8 , end: in the late {f6 the highest any of them that I ever knew # about was rank of Majoro end they hed to take orders from Colonels and S0 forth who hed served under the French in very much the 8 &m0 type of a conventional military organi- ztion 43 the Amoric ans had 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 9 of the need. The initiel meeting of the #heok More wes thought to be a police problem then en ermy problem, and there wes 8_ lot of work got put ================================================== Page 90 ================================================== 87 - on tryirg to equip and train the national police to cope wi th eia we Americang did that through our economic misgion and through Michigari Stete University had 8 group helping on eaministration there _ They recruited some very 'good police officials from the 0.S . who were quite used to deeling with urban crime problems in the U.8 _ Well, you. can 't teke a man who 19 very at precinct work in Detroit, Michigan or Brninghan, Alabeme or some thing) &nd move him out to an Asian C ountry where his problem is/: Wat do you do when 8 company of guerrillas C OmeS in and ambusheg youripolice: stetion? A completely foreign type of 8 thingo g0 that we had wAs police ecvisors were insigting on 4ll policemen being armcEed with nothing Iore than) say , & 38-caliber revolver, with the Y: $, policemen saying, "Yaakz; but people are shooting at us with rifleg, and wB need rifles or some thing like that to shoo: back at them, or how about gub-machine guns or sone--we neec I3?8 fire power_ Ii Well, it was foreign it0 good thet ================================================== Page 91 ================================================== -88_ to them - So there was a mixup on 8 number of things on this coping With the ingurgency thet wes growing)Znot' only the conventional formation of the Vietnamese army but of a conventional urban police formation of the police_ And yet , throughout the systens there were meny individuels who Inew better, and who knew how to' cope with it, and who were continually begging, "Give us 8 chance to da it S Ome other way . " 0 ' BRIEN : Well, in terms of thege we were talking about 8 little earlier--the late Eisenhower people, like Fi and Irwin and Parsons_- po they conceive of the kind of insurgency at #t Poi+t ) that' g developing in South Vietnam or are they LANSDALE: Fairly well. Feirly well They were more aware of, or had more understanding of) the needs than dia some of the folkg that werg coming in sort of brand new to the problem or who had been steeped in a fer more conventional approach' to the problem were some of our military leaders at the time _ But , 9s I remerked eerlier, thege were personal therex people tzgerald9 Jas ================================================== Page 92 ================================================== -89- friends of mine) and when I'd talk to them and tell them my views , there wes alwayg sympathy for them)90 I might have mistaken thet for understanding and 90 .ono and even that wes rare enough So that I felt that, Interruption] EG 0 BR IEN : Eow long: is the manuscript? LANSDALE: Ho ho. I went through first ~the publishers wanted me to tell ,anpthertords, just write 88 much 89 I coula for later editingo #y and seid this is the wey people do it. So very I wound up with really three ofuraeli;? long books) and gince I wag writing one not too long book , why I wound: up with 8 tremendously I Yocm long manuscript _ Aid urged #he:i;that I could We eld cut it down to two books) end publish it as two different things , and the gubject metter would have permitted me They still went just one book , 80 I am now going back with editor's notes and with my own notes ana trying to . 9 Ielte started off initially with 8 cut-and-peste job, but I discovered I couldn do thet and retain the proper nerrative and Bntri-3 on she Y0-5 I wound up having ell; t i:-4t thing) ================================================== Page 93 ================================================== 90- to rewrite almost of al1 0f it, and recast it, and retell it in 8 somewhat different form. uixa I'm about half- way through that, but it'11 be 8 feir_gize book even S0 . 0 BRIEN: Wet that 'g good3-mainly on the Philippines and the early period in Vietnam? LANSDALE : Umhmm _ 0 BR IEN : Cood, you kow that '8 really LANSDALE: Well, there ! 9 reely one period in Vietnam that isn't known too well) and most historians heve passed over it and the ones who haven t have been championing a cause) &nd their work is quite suspect . Some of the French were sort of agents C provoceteurs at the time and they are more or less justifying what they did],and leaving out important parts of it_ 0 'BRIEN : How about the Fronch journalist [Jean] Lacouture ? Whet do You think of his' work? Is it Lacouture thet' s done the thing on Ho [Chi Minh] ? Yun LANSDALE: Yazk, I'm trying to remember_ I think that '9 who it was _ Well, most of the French writings about Ho and Some of the explanationg in big ================================================== Page 94 ================================================== -91- officiel documents of the French, trying to explain him end 80 on,by friends , I found very interestingberd I had no wey of judgging reelly on it Zthere was 8_ trenendoug sympathy and 80 forth being expressed) and then 8 very - M strong ettempt. to work out an ac- comodetion with him afterwards) withahin, by the French And &gain, 8 highly emotional sensitivity to any interference wZs what Were trying to and they saw almost enything 88 interference So what 19 written by. tkem, I read mindful of their sengitivitieg. at the time end whet they re trying to prevent onybody ever believing that would be opposite at 2ll)or some thing different et and it was just amezing. The French press was screaming that I was starting World War III in Vietnam in '55 0 ' BR IEN : Mind if. I this on tape--well, it is on tape , I'm I didn't realize it wa8 going. LANSDALE: simply because I think there was a feeling by the French colonialists in Indochina of not wanting to give wp the French presence there3" ~in they do) least@ get sorryo ================================================== Page 95 ================================================== 92- and it'9 8 human unders tandable type of 8 thing. They haa been there end. asgocieted there, and SOmB of them had spent their entire liveg there , 2nd here they were heving to up 8Ome thingy€-s Swi 88 journalist once 'explained it to ne It wes like 8 man giving up his mi gtress end seeing some guy in a big car driving by in the streetoand even though he 'd given Br up, he 'd just he hetes that ause he the mistress allegedly with material means such 8s an automobile and maybe a fur coat and 80 on) &nd ke isn't the man that the former guy was _ 9 so some of this' feeling wes very prevalent thereb and for SOme reason or other I happened to guddenly become the foc&l point of it through my nae or 9ome thing;( Qrnothe S0 that went to great lengbds of charging me with all sorts 0f things that I was doing: I was out sect 0 buying up the loyalties of set fosrso? with mi llions of dollars end things that would be hard to prove that I wasn t, mind you , except 623 to say, "Look, I didn 't have a million Ti dollars to buy anything with . And they'd give he(d, well) sey) guylkec: got 9 they ================================================== Page 96 ================================================== -93- say , "Well, the U.S. government did) end you w1 were & gecret egent for them and 390 on. It was very herd to disprove SOme of theirjtelk I( V 9 and 98y, Well, thet just ign 't 90 Except once in 8 Ihile . they' d really .wild .&nd claim I wes down--I wakked in on 8_ briefing) for example with French officerg telling hew S Ome Americ &n visitors from Washington-/253+ down et that very moment I was trying to buy off 8 sect leader, and very nei vely, with a suitcase. full 8f moneJoea I didn 't :kow 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 gid, Well, pleese keep on with your briefinglI want to kow wherther the " It Wcy guy killed Me or not _ Crazy. Now thege ~kiss were very re spongible French officiels and the fact that I'a be miles away from the scene of some of these things never stopped the dami circulation of these stories _ I don't know how you ever stop that stuff. 0 ' BRIEN : Yez; well how about people like Bernard Fall_ and Patty Hirzj gd' their writings ? Are they '0 DPv] #Sney get about Was 4bat ================================================== Page 97 ================================================== -94~. LANSDALE: Well, they re very sqund, very gound= Fall' 8 beckground, 89 was Honey' S , wag out of intelligence Or information collection units i~ 9 870their different countries_ Fell'g initial writings were all out of 8_ French army historical gec tig" &nd I bad to tell him one time Ita read 8 Ome of his work originelly by the original eu thor. But it was a deteiled military history of operations thet he 'd delved ed I don t mow, I doubt that it was intentional plagarigm on hig part. He w2s probably rushing getting 8_ book published for ac ademic credits 'end 90 on And Honey_ the s ame way with British ' intelligence)who were quite active in Indochina during the French deys _ sidlivi But it was -9ome of the stories end heppeningg wBre Almost incredible {hel-+~ Some of the French journelists were politically sik( partisan _ They had connections with the Comjunist Party or sympethies wi th them of 8 Ome gort . And Ho had been one of the founderg of the French Communist Party, 80 Yat there was elways a cultural or comrade feeling of some gort era wen the Ug intoo through; a Jugt ship thered ================================================== Page 98 ================================================== 5 95- Americans started showing up on the scene there wes very peterelistic feeling of_ "Well, these are our people these Vie tnames0 or Khnur 9 or Lao, 2nd you keep' your cotton-picking fingers 0ff 0f them" type of 8 thing that went to very greet lengths 9_- Yolatile emotions erupting on this type of a thing. I remember one of the journelists, John Beret; published 8 newspaper in Saigon and wrote 8 lot of the early propagande for i? individuals.in the French armyo,&nd had sort adventurer types emong them . He then went to' Pnohm Penh where he. started 8 weekly newspaper and sterted also wri ting speeches for CNero &m_ Sihanoukognd the next thing I kew , Sihenouk was ~accuging me of plotting to murder him or asgnsginate I hean t 03en)been near ~ve1e Cambodia) 8nd I hadn 't thought of Sihanouk when this happened. The governor of Siem who had been very close to Sihenouk before-_ and Siem Reap i9 where Angkor Wek end the historical ruins are-- suddenly died ) &nd the gtory sterted seeping out a_ little bit wiih Sibanouk charging that this governor, whose Mic 02 _ Tey himo Reep ================================================== Page 99 ================================================== L 96- tw name wa3 Dapchhwe and I were in" 8 conspiracy to murder him end take over the government of C ambodia _ And it didn 't do any thaet I hed nover met 7k end never had any dealings with and Cambodia wes wey outside my beiliwicko but this 1s the story that ' 9 gone on and: on and on 0 ' BR IEN : Well, there was 8 little bit of truth to that, wegn 't there? "gone involvement of CIA: Dsf ChhwnzYzso LANSDALE: Well, he wes a national leader and ec tually had formed the political groupings initielly that supported Sihanouk and gave him hig political power~-he was the organizer; he was the chief political lieutenant of Sihanouk - And then apparently, he felt that Sihanouk was going and he wanted to get the government back into reflec more the will of the people _ How far he got, I don 't knowo }ut this was really some thing that was foreign to ma at the time _ I 'got sent back into Cambodia afterwards , from Washington, with various. military agsistance groups Y or 6 economic groupg presidential commigsions_ good Chmwx him, Yoehe sour) ting Qp-Q ================================================== Page 100 ================================================== -97 - and S0 ena each time they' d have_ Pnohm iust W-IlJAx Penh on the thing_ ) I'd^sey, "WeLd better check the embes sy there MI Back would come word that No , Sihenouk was afraid thet if I were 8_ member of the perty, I would be going in to murder him_ I actually went in one time; and the chief of of Pnohm Penb met our party--along with the foreign minister end S0 on--at plane when we came 2x& the Chief of Police walked right i nert to me) and he said, "I'm your liason man from nu c10" _ 927 I seid, "You 're keeping a eye on I ellright. I'm not going to murder your boss; I have 20 ide& of doing that_ Mi [Laughter] That 19 9 strange _ And then Sihanouk made 8 movie-- about '65, '66--in which he played the dommanderi o "oZ Hoyal Naval Intelligence foiling a greet American SpY , who happened to heve my name and was 8 role played by SOme prince frcnchmd~ maf who: wes visiting thereo I was out to overthrow the lingdomobut of course our .boy hero thweriea ie Lgly Arericen and won the girl, Ko was the daughter of the Brezilian ono police sil downo it'9 knowj me , end ================================================== Page 101 ================================================== ambessador or gome thing. Some French played the role : I'va been trying to get 8 print of that or some way of seeing thet moviea-I'd love to see it, you mow . It sounds gre&t and. [Laughter] Yzs, 0 BR IEN : Yeeh, I hed 't heard about that : Well) that doeg bit on some thing,though) in regard to Southeast Asia. As I understand, in that chhwrincident, tbet there was an Agency involvement with him, through a guy the name of Mhsv: and the Agency does seem to heve a kind of free hand in 9Ome of these Asic~ Southeast nationso and Ilm thinking of the [ALes 1.] Pope situation in Indonesia 2s well- Can You brakes S00 any brooel? on them 8s 8 result of the change of admini stretiong__how do you react to" this sort of ectivity? LANSDALE : Well, mogt of the things that they did that had political consequences of any major 9120 et all ~end certainly . thing with Dehwo and also the Pope are taken by the Agency efter approval up at topsi go as fer -98_ gal Da p by put uide thingA only 8ed ================================================== Page 102 ================================================== 99- 88 brake s are concerned) they've had them from the beginning. However, the objectives' and the intent are approved) and notnthe means of doing it--the nuts ard bolts--which are supposedly overseen by &n ambassador. And when we down to the level of a country where: these things ere happening, then I think much dependg on the individuals / the ambassedor and the stetion chief, and how they. along, ena agein, mostly on the . Well, no) it isn 't either; it'g a fifty-fifty proposition_ We have ambagsadors who _ don 't + want to kow or vgo' are opposed all such things_ and if an order comes down to do it, very unwillingly tell the guy to go ehead , but watch it now, not too fer. A stetion then, with orders to do some thingsy will heve is 8o told the ambassador ne ~Er;t going %ut 9etfits he starts^ in things , 'end he figures,.+23 if he goes back and tells the ambassador what ' s heppening) that he' s not going to any understanding and will probably an orcer Tan hc prohibiting hin"3? doing SOme won 't ajain ) get get they chief; thiso to ^ get get thingo nd ================================================== Page 103 ================================================== -100- be eble to explein; ` Well,. if I stop doing thig, then this other thing won t work , and ) Washington wants uS to have this heppen _ Just (( The ambagsador willasay, - I don't gee .it ) thet wey. Don t do it_ So I'm sure there ere thingg tkes-&r9 happening that aren 't told for this--for operational reasonso egain, it'g 8 judgement of an individual on that thing. It' 9 not 8 policy type of 98 thing from the Agency . Yes_ BRIEN : Do You find any--in the time that you 're there in the middle fifties as well a9 when you go back in '61) &nd later involvement in Vietnam--do you find differences between the embas sies between the 0.S . embassy in, particularly, Pnohm Penh and saigon? LANSDALE: I didn t notice thet . It might heve existed, and I wouldn 't have even kow that_ 0 ' BRIEN : Well, there ' $ SOme feeling: emong people dunct involved with Cambodien relations that time , as I undergtand it , that somehow there T s en involvement on the part of the South Vietnamese in sone of the groups like the No , gnd Year ? '60 , ================================================== Page 104 ================================================== -1ol- Y-$ C I rs #bler LANSDALE : Oh , yeeh Foth the South Vietnemese and the: Tai were pleying eround with groups ingide Cambodia or wi th exile groupg: thet wanted to go back in Cembodie} end 90 end I'm not certain thet the Americans from either Thai lend or South Vietnam were fully aware of what' al1 wes going on Ana I'm not certain that the American8 or the Cambodian government people inside Cambodia knew what was going and were tending to exeggerate SOme of thig Things get blown up out of all proportion in this _ But just the fact that there wes antipathy &nd it would take this form of expre ssion ) among others' that were going on 1 don 1 t kow which people woula rather g0 in and take over and run the Thai_ 9 or the South Vietnamese loobe_ it'9 about 8"'tos g up which one weg down more 9 on the Khmcts than the other. And Diem used.to follow the predictiong of the royel fortune-teller in P nohm Penh to Sihanouk . "Apparently, they were spending a_ lot of intelligence money to find out , you know, what's ong on , Cambodie} % ================================================== Page 105 ================================================== -102 - happened in each other} gegsions ana what he wes telling the guy . Then how useful this was mind you; I don 't know 0 ' BRIEN : do You find}gagain, in pessing on to the task forcez-&nd the formation of that Vie tnam task- force in the early of the Kenne dy administration--do You find t3e sensitivity on the part of the people , the ticel appointees, to what' s going on' in South Vie tnem? Are You able to explain what you 20 telling me right now about South Vie tnam to these ` people ? LANSDALE: 0hz enly partially. They were as bemused by the mechanics of getting decisions in Washing- ton asthey were with the problem that were: emplojing the mechanic9 to solve It wag 4l1 sort of new to them and wented to do 8 job, but in order to do it, they were Ypu Scc ) suddenly working with these ins trument3 that were foreign to them here _ I think that the principf68 in the edministration were not entirely aware of thexfpeople they were deeling with in Nashington I receli;at the time, Sctc Swncrisszz Rusk was violently opposed in the depertment Well) Part poli they they gooa as9 ================================================== Page 106 ================================================== -103- over where he was by some peopleg end I noticed et times that' he wesn t aware that he was turning eround and . asking 8 guy minutes before Rusk had come in to him)wa8 6 ##muc- &llad among his comr ade8 :just; I1 This stupid jerk," end S0 which I felt was di sloyal-;behind the guy" s back , you know . I was alweys urging them to speak up in front of people and 90 end they wouldSt do it. And the T same damn thing was true '4g2128t some of the militery against McNamare, for example _ Well, the McNamara and the Rusk Jand their 41 Sc unders an& deputv Atypes of people , and assistant secretaries) were trying to cope with people that IxelAIere-instinctively oppoging and foot-dragging and 80 on) and trying to that workingogo that to get them working on 8 given problem wa3 really the thing that they were C oncerned wi thoex 9 'd sudderly sey, I 'Well, WB re going to 2) telk ebout Leos, or Vie tnam or- Israel or some thingg_Yes, Yes, Yes _ What heve You 4~0 in tbz peper? - you And they War0 whox kim) on , on , 4v{ GC) theyo get Jou got %now?) ================================================== Page 107 ================================================== -1OL- 1 Xi Jwy Q watcbing see& "Well, 1t-9cust TLve really m1 anL Is he 3'2 d done Shis homework, end-i-s-i-t-gonra come up with some thing or not?" rather than what is the reel problem here and how would I solve it if I weren 't sitting in this room in this particular group ) end 90 on . So there wes 8 Pso then working on this type of a thing which I saw very much in the task forc0 on Vietnamg U Gilpatric,I know was shocked at the reactions of some of the foreign gervice people thet 0 came in et rank of ambassador and s0 on) that were sort of the staff assistants on the 88sistant secretary end undersecretary level_ ni#o J They would start 8 Tnfaot I was sked to be sort of L-I forget what the title was ~-executive officer or 8Ome thing of it)end they asked me to chair the meetings . Well, I'd 2 no gooner open it. thon these guys woula be pegsionately explain:ng why I 'soulan t be sitting: in the chair of the: meeting, see ? 0 BR TEN : Yeeh-Yco LANS DALE : I think it shocked s ome of the Kennedy edministration people . It suddenly reveeled a meeting; ================================================== Page 108 ================================================== -105- feud &nd S0 ond En I hadn t sid it, and I personelly di dn 't care thet much, you know I'd say , "Have you al1 the hate out of your system now? Let' s go on with the 1) meeting, see Tris would ectivete it more ) but I would sey , "Well look , we really do have some problems here we 1 Ve to and if you went, I'1l meet you afterwards and 07z22 have lunch or some and you cen" spoil my lunch by telling me what a_ heel I am or some thing- But we 've got work to do Tl So then, Gilpatric or somebody would. tell me afterwards 9 "Do you think We better take you off?" yeah _ If it'8 going to 82266+, the work done _ ) itss better t0 take me off_ It'9 no fun for me to sgit up and " chair something under conditiong like this_ 90 BR IEN : Feeh Were You ever epproechea with the job 9s ambassador to Vietnam ? Yes, Ycs LANS DALE: Yoai:;_xeeh _ 0 BR TEN : Who was pushing thet ? got )of course, got get to, thing) "Well , jer ================================================== Page 109 ================================================== -106- Jk " LANSDALE : I don t know . I heerd ebout it tr3 first Seturdey after the ireugurel--I think shat'9 it. It wes very early in the administration. McNamare esked ne to come down to the Wnite" House end meet him there , ana I thought it was to brief hin on some thing. #n8 I wes working on 8 number of intelligence matters in Defenge at the timeo &3 I showed up) and he agked me to just weit outside and they were me - eting in the Cabinet ana as I said, it was essentially an NSC group _ And after 8 bit, they esked me to' come end' they had me sit opposite the pregident. And he looked at me) and he seid, "Did Dean [Rusk] tell you/ I want you to be ambas sedor to Vietnam?" I said, he didn 't mention thet. " Well, he hadn 't et ca there was (( a long, peinful silence and I figured, Well; €aes maybe he ' 9 asking me if I want to be)or )) would I accept the job _ So I finelly said, 1 ) Well it would be a great honor_ and thet was the last I ever heard of it. But I heard a U: w€ all gorts of rumors that 32 for I Weghingtong &nd-*-1-.= afterwards thet Dean Rusk room) LJ on^" "No, all6 ~t ================================================== Page 110 ================================================== -107 - wes very much opposed to it, end opposed oni the ground thet I was 8 military men and they aidn twent military people in on the 9ituation . 0 BR IEN : Feak LANSDALE: And then later I }2n met one of Rusk' s staff officers et the time , and ne wes telling me +s)F thet Rusk was figuring^ 7 he could me a job sone other place or a promotion or 8ome thing to_ me out of the wey at the timez= 6 Sert o Iepparently had become^a 'target for 8 lot of ana 53 DX g089ip and rumorsAat the time But after that) then,. they asked me--Kennedy asked me pretty Anfazsador point blank--about Durbrow) and I said, "Well, efter what you just asked me end S0 forth, I'm 8 little hesitent, but you re the President and You need the trutho g0 I'11 just tell you right now , I think he ' g a very 111 man hig ment ' 9 impaired by hig phygicel conditi ke ' 8 8 fine profesgional foreign service officer,and coula be used some_place) but don ' t keep him on in Vie tnem anymore . He ' s sick he ! g on his back .& lot of the time and you need someone very alezt) %: 33wcoever it and hin = Yzso Ycu get get judgo on$0 pull 190 ================================================== Page 111 ================================================== -108_ out." And they got--Rusk ana everything, you know / J"You re off your sub ject, boy. II But I seid, "Well, Durby' 8 an old friend of and I like the guy@. &ia I gaw 9 lot of him 9 when I was in Vietnem on this brief ena I think it's 2 shame that the guy' 8 kept on there Lecause he was te 111, in bad shepe _ T And Durby never forgave me for ite it right beck to him that I had sacked him and 90 on kecause he was wildiw after but this cert ainly didn't hurt his career at 8ll, in any way , 023 even though; State put him on a make-work job after thato %ut he held the rank of ambassador wnich is 8s high as you can in the foreign service And he was 1118 he really wes 0' BR IEN : how does [Frederick E.] Nolting come into this LANSDALE : Well, Nolting came in 4s--tley app arently)es the foreign gervices rebuttel to my going on out]cf Ykeuc 0 I remember both McNamara and Gilpatric asked me about him, end I didn t know him. I "Well, I' just g0 on what 1 heve heard from mine) visito qui got thet? get Well) seid) ================================================== Page 112 ================================================== -109- other foreign gervice officers who respect him very much 1i So finally, Nolting wes-- 8 meeting was arranged with Nolting)and I liked him very much when I talked WER Fe esked me if I would give him' 9 Ome briefings on Vietnem, which I did do . Ana when I wound up the' ' end of that, I was: asked agein by McNemara, who said he wes going to tell Kennedyo end I said, "Well, this looks like a8_ very good man , ena I think it's 8 sound Ti appointment _ I I didn 't want to be , ambassedor. Jesus During the Eisenhower edministration, 4 0 wanted to meke me ambesgador QT the Philippines and I begge d them not to. I think that 9 one of the world' s worst jobs . You re stuck where you can 't do what your job is suppoged to and I knew they were going to put me in: places where I'd be up egaingt Comunist political leaders 0f some sort, working the other side And of course You aren t in thet pogition, but &llegedly You arep~8 you'de-going-t heve people running circles eround you) i , youdirnow it and coulan't lift a little finger to stop them. A& this = him) they be) 14 ================================================== Page 113 ================================================== M 110- isn't my idea of 8 spot to be in, You just belabored over thet. Civsp tz: Well, did Nolting ever try to you back to Vie tnam in an advisory position? LANSDALE: I think .90 . There were 8 number of attempts by the: Vie tname se themselves, and unfortunately) some of them werekouched in terms of wanting me to come out as ambas sador , by the Vietnamese0= but Nolting and I hed very friendly relations and I think he had proposed thet I come on out severel times_ But these things would j" ugually come to me sort of second or third hand 8x8 @ne time apparently President Kennedy had seid some thing to the JCS beceuse suddenly my relations with the Chiefs went down to legg than zero and sub end I finally asked General [Curtis E.] Lemey of the Air Force, becaus0 I'm an Air Force officer, what the trouble was And he seid; "You and your ambitions to have four sters #I I seid, "Whet ' s this again?" Apparently Kennedy had said something to the Chiefs of) what woula thay think of my being given four stars and being in charge of operetions in Vietnam? good get C'2fiEN get only ~Zero0 put ================================================== Page 114 ================================================== -111- And I didn t kow ebout it, end took it that I weg pughing nyself for it. I said St.43+5 1) egin; thet isn 't want to d0 _ So this was ebout the time tnat--no, naybe [William Westmorelend] Westy wes coming in about then it Wes around that time 0 ' BRIEN: Well)the tesk force reelly forms up the ingtructions for Nolting, doesn 't itt_ LANSDALE : Yes . 0 'BRIEN : for the next few Jears _ Just wbat kind of recOmencations come out .of that task force? LANSDALE: Well, I was only in on the very original one, which was to undertake sOme things such as changing thbe specific types of things to meet 8 situation inkhere _ One of them WB would get 8 political section that would work out better reletiong with the Vietnamese government , a political section in our embassy , and that the foreign gervice would go and search through , their own personnel for people with some real politicel savvy to get into guide rather than control cr belabor or heve confrontetions with the Vietnane ga government they A'@ 6:feC was; ================================================== Page 115 ================================================== -112 - to cerry out essentielly tical reformg _ ) and getting some of the just criticigm of the opposition considered in the governing body: Another thing wes on the police, of getting police training done 50 that they could cope with meeting enemy uni rether then doing urban police work . In this, I was begging them to at lest get to a state level constabularyaas far a8 American advisors were concerne d I wesn't certain that the U.8 . Army S militery police could cope with it, but meybe they could 8 team of them in 2r3 I was pointing out that there were constabulary officers 'and officers from othor countrieg , inc luding South Ame rica end the old Philippine constabulary, who knew the lew-and-order conditiong--quite gimilar to Vietnam _ and bring them in if they wanted 'to go international I. wes trying to_ them 1 to very realisticsa golving problens by changing the quality and the epproech thet q We had. We drew up an originel draft that went to the Pregident )out of reetings that poli ts, and get then get get ================================================== Page 116 ================================================== -113- lasted about ten deyg , at which point , et Rusk ' g insietence , the tesk force went over to state and bec &0 8 generel, reguler body there They then proceeded to rewrite our original instructions end drefts and everything) e33 both McNamara end Gilpatric gaid,-coming back from the White House; "Ed, you had better not in there _ I1 I said, "If I can help in any way , I will." They said, "Well, right for the time beine Touabet tter not 91 99 7 g0 near that group , seed Eo I ac tuelly didn 't ui get in to some of their policy formati- in 8 fairly egrly period) on the thrust of thingg 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 and third echelon type of a pulling beck 9 out of it_ But initially I wes ac tually trying to 8 quality 0.S representation in Vietnam, and 8c tually 9maller egein than it wes et the time , end to a few key things) &nd to concentrate on that and really get dd Mxk egein on ) thing) get pick ================================================== Page 117 ================================================== -lll_ to the Vietneme se coping with their own problems more effectively than they were doing- 0 'BR IEN : Yeza Well) between this time and the time [W:itw;] of the Teylor_Rostow missi 41'e you involved in Vietnam on 8 kind of regular bagis or LANSDAIE: En no _ 0ff and on I wes , but again with second- &nd: third-echelon type of problems I was seeing Gilpatric everyday and working very ~closely wi th 80 that 8 lot of times 8s things would come upy he would discuss them with me But egein, I was trying to explain who certain people were that were nemed, their backgrounds ) and their qualities, and certain events and pleces , end going to maps with him and describing terrain) and 9o whet the 9ituation really meant that was making the problem_ So I wes fairly well out of it. 9 As 8 matter of fect , I was working with some vigiting Burmese on their concepts of defense of 8 country) and G365 they brought me in with the Isreeli who had had a mis sion helping them with their defense problems in Burme - And the Zio Isreeli hed Erz turned ground to their defense = get 0n , him; Yox on;) ================================================== Page 118 ================================================== -1l5- minister and some of the others and invited {xe 4 mG ton look at t8i7 defense . system in Israel 9i was quite enthusiestic ebout going and had everything arrenged and was to leave on 8 Saturday, wnen about on 8 Wednesdey or Thursday I was eskea to g0 to Vietnem with the other I mission and 224 unfortunately had to cancel out everything and .never into see what Ijwanted to See there _ BR IEN : Well)you end up working on Sodc ~-ac tually) sal15, ~ the _s88+ng of the border tRen, don ' t you; on tnct reylor-Rostow thing? LANSDALE: Yeg _ Yes _ 0 ' BR IEN : What about thet preoccupation ? vhhere does that ide& come from is thet Rostow' s ? LANSDALE: Well, Teylor wag the one thet charged Me with it. Taylor said, "we1l_ You folks j" tkc gtarted]_ I( thig is 6 flight which Yill each of You write down S Ome of the things, you think We should look into and what you might like to' look into_ I So I gave him 8 list of Yat about twenty things/ I'd like to look into_ none of then being this) of course stuffo got Akt ================================================== Page 119 ================================================== --116- 1 suggested some other subjects for other people Ai-oz 9 on the thing and gave it to tlezi s.2 he called me back said that it was 8 very interesting list that I hed given him) end would I please work on building 8 defense or the border. And I 1) geid, #23_ what sort of 9 de fense ? He said, "Well) & system of fortificat;0nf or a wire like )) the Iron Curtain in Europe _ I seid, "Good God, you eren t going to do that , ere you?" And he said, "Well) look into it." So that Suqoosedly wesh all I wes 817233ed to do, and of #ie' I got called in_ on other things ime diately. But I wasn 't even invited along to go in and See Diem wi th him. I said, Look, these are ola friends of mine . If you! d like, Why I'll do anything I c8n byou c&n hit them high)and I'll hit them low if you went We can ')) some things done that way . He s4id, Iell, you aren 't on our protocol list) s0 You don't ) attend of these calls on the President _ We landed in Saigon, and the people from the Were #herc presidency net 274 Teylor end Rostow were over telking with reportezs who were interviewing 61 coursex get any ai& u90 ================================================== Page 120 ================================================== -117- them plene gide_ ) ' and these people from the pregidency s2id, "1 Preeident Diem wants you to come to dinner tonighto" gna I 9eid, "Well, willa 4iiF ' I better check 03 my bos s on this ' M Taylor was busy, but I grebbed Rog tow who wasn 't talking at the roment end told him) end he seid, "Go ahead. " : So I seid, "Well) I wasn 't even on w) the protocol; end everything. I don 't care about going up to these protocol meetingg 9,9 anyhowo bit I went in and saw Diem whose question "What 9 this mission doing here? what are You all up to?" I said, M don t you wait and they'1l be in here to have a meeting wi th You tomorrow and you '1l find out. MI And then it bec ame very personal _ We jugt gtarted talking over his two old friendg O 9 wtth-him, and I hed dinner with hin_ And he brought hisg nephew in_ to join u8--Nhu' 8 boy, oldegt boy--who hea a new toy migsile, like a rocket with 8 leunchero I was trying to explain to thig youngster who was squatting on the floor next to hls uncles_the Presi= dext; Is4;d, who was bueily eating you don t point #his 2t dian t know how 2 spring this was , Why gnd dinner-; hinusf big ================================================== Page 121 ================================================== -118- thing had on it, whe ther it would take his head off or not. [Bargitzr} I tat him to shoot it up into the ventilating fan in the ceiling. We spent dinner ac tuelly, teking parachuteg and things out of the ventilating fans and the kid &nd I were climbing up 8 ladder: to these things out of the thing in the ac 0 _ This was very different from an officiel protocol meeting. Yas. BR IEN : Yeai;? How is Diem at that point? LANSDALE: Ee wes 8 very changed man _ It was the first time in our talks wi th each other_ When I met him et the 'palace thet night , his brother Nhu c 9m6 in for the first time and sat next to when Ilaske3 Diem a question, his brother would answer Iid heve to tell him I wagn 't asking him the questiond; I wes asking hig brother_ A very 09 strange relationship at the time@ 2i4 I founa that he was a telker--Diem wes--and he wag very clear and concise in his stetements i~ and had too 4 gresp of details what- ever sub ject he wes talking ebout. It'd go on for hourg--Ceteils on it) which fascineted get pal_ hin end end 1t0 big ================================================== Page 122 ================================================== -119 - me but used to bbor'e other people . But he did know his country and its history)which he would give at the drop of a hat _ This evening in seeing he was very hesitant in his talk and hadn t--it was 6 S Ome thing physical 2s well as mental hazard or some I felt. BRIEN fiske-go #at that later? LANSDALE: No _ There was I-entally, people were telling me that his brother had: taken over in the tnc Year followingo a dominence on^ thing. 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 but the big one had taken place before I saw him in Januery or December of '60--the attack on the palace ana S0 on So it hadn 't been an outsi physical happening like that that had caused the change . BRIEN : Was ne a gpirituelist a t al12 LANSDALE : No; no . He wasn t superstitious_ He waS 8 very rational sort of a person--pragmatic _ 161, him, thing) Just tbic ^ only,- ae , ================================================== Page 123 ================================================== -120- BRIEN : when you back, You talk to President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and John McCone es I understand, in 8' rether private mee ting. Whet happened here ? LANSDAIE: Well) this wes when I c eme back, I met the President I went in with Taylor and Rostow-- all ofus did who were out on the mission--and he thanked us al1 very and as we were he asked me to stay behind and talk to end that wes when he asked me to perform this other service for him)which was initially to think about it)and if I came up with some ideas to put them down, Cr-briefly;+ on paper and give them to him_ And I said, "Well, do want to forget sbout Vietnam for the time being becauge I haven't written Mi my report yet about Vie tnam _ He 'seid, "Yes , C " this other takes priority over iti280 I didn' t even finish writing my reports on what I had seen in Vietnam et the time I went immediately into this other work _ 0 BRIEN about that time, there ' s at leest some thinkking in terrs of r}mos tbat ere going to the President abouf the #ey to save Vietna well) ge b 3 1va) mucho him why Mc you Well) only ================================================== Page 124 ================================================== -121- is Ivi th 8 rather substantial commitement of U.S _ troops_ Is that LANSDALE: Yes; thera was s ome Now where Hmm, there wes some) ana I cen 't remember just where it wes coming from This wag one of the that Diem asked me when I saw him. He askea' me if he should ask for U.S. troops; and I seid, "Do You need them?" He said, "I asked >ou a question, Ii and I said, "Well, I'm asking you a very legitimate question on this )) e4 I seid, II Are you ready to admit that you have S0 lost control of your/situation that you can t cope with it here ?" And I said, "You 'd nave to do that before you ever turn around and ask for American troops in here _ ti And he said, we can still handle thingsx m1 end you ve answered my question, S0 epparently 9 kA he di dn 't ask = There ke+o been some IwsLl) conversations) going on -Fz--sure with some of T: the Americans before'thatcAwould be my guess on this thing leceuse he didn t say , "what do you think of; Iszthers (1 'ghould I ask?" which wes sort 0f like sorebody tad recomenCed this at some point, and I things/ thing) "No , anything{ ================================================== Page 125 ================================================== -122- don t think it would nave been completely in tke Vietname se context _ 0 'BRIEN : ~Yeah, do any of thig thinking when You back? Any contingency planning or thinking 4'P about the building of troop levels to a more substantial level~z-maybe linked wi th the settling 'of the Leotian question first? LANSDALE : There might have been , and I might have known s ome of it. I can't recall now of #at gomeplace in the back of my head there were some things like that going on I turned. around, just took time off completely from other things and concentrated on this other problem for a time afterwards Actually, through December of that year, I was sort of holed up 9 and working on some things _ staff would get in and out of some of these other thinss and I used to shove them in to take my plece in ccull meetings and 80 294 I csn only then just very quick briefings on them, but they were es senti ally supporting whatever McNamare and Gilpatric were 20 I'd just have them g0 in and report direc anc work with tham direc - you get get it'8 enjo My ono get aoinge tly tly. ================================================== Page 126 ================================================== -123- Ycs_ wk BR IEN : Yozh Vhho were the people, on you staff at thet point? LANSDALE : Well, let' 8 see? One of them wes sam Wilson) whosd now 8 brigadier general in the ArmyJo Jack Bowles: was a Navy Geptain who went down to serve with the JCS afterwards and, is now with Standard 0il and working out of Singapore _ 4t And I had five or six people like that; but those were my two ones 0 ' BRIEN: Well) this is about ready to run out , and we 've covered e=8 0 Lrl Bowell {Time principxa lifo Quitc

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