The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Edward Lansdale.md

created	updated	title	aliases	tags	category	summary	born	died	location	relations
2026-05-15	2026-10-14	Edward Lansdale	Edward Geary Lansdale Edward G. Lansdale Edward Lansdale Ed Lansdale E. G. Lansdale Lansdale	Person CIA Military Philippines Vietnam AntiCastro OSS Counterinsurgency OperationMongoose SaigonMilitaryMission Huk ChurchCommittee Assassination	Intelligence & Government	Edward Lansdale was an Air Force officer whose Philippine counterinsurgency work, Saigon mission and Operation Mongoose role made him a central figure in covert action against Vietnam and Cuba.	1908-02-06	1987-02-23	Washington, D.C.	type with role start end fn employed_by Office of Strategic Services intelligence officer 1942 1945 2 type with role start end fn employed_by United States Air Force officer 1947 1963-10-31 2 type with role start end fn partner_of Ramon Magsaysay U.S. adviser to the Philippine defense secretary and later president 1950 1953 4 type with role start end fn head_of Saigon Military Mission chief 1954-06-01 1956 7 type with role start end fn partner_of Ngo Dinh Diem U.S. adviser to Diem 1954 1956 15 type with role start fn reported_to Robert Kennedy wrote to the Attorney General on the Cuba project 1961-11-30 27 type with role start end fn head_of Operation Mongoose chief of operations 1961-11-30 1962-11 28 type with role start end fn reported_to Maxwell Taylor Special Group (Augmented) chairman 1961-11-30 1962-11 29 type with reverse role start end fn reported_to William Harvey true CIA project officer for Operation Mongoose 1962 1962 30 type with role start end fn participant_in Operation NORTHWOODS requested pretexts for military intervention through the Mongoose interagency group 1962-03-06 1962-03-13 44 type with reverse fn investigated Church Committee true 29 type with role start end fn reported_to Ellsworth Bunker assistant to the ambassador, U.S. Mission to South Vietnam 1967 1968 2 type with reverse role start end fn appointed Henry Cabot Lodge true special assistant to the ambassador, later senior liaison officer 1965-08 1968 55

Edward Geary Lansdale (1908-1987) was an United States Air Force officer and intelligence operative whose counterinsurgency work in the Philippines and Vietnam shaped American counterinsurgency doctrine, and who served as chief of operations of Operation Mongoose, the Kennedy administration's covert program against Fidel Castro, from November 1961 until the program was suspended after the Cuban Missile Crisis.¹

Early career

Lansdale was born in Detroit on February 6, 1908. He served with the Office of Strategic Services from 1942 to 1945, was promoted to lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1943, and served in military intelligence for the duration of the war.² From 1945 to 1948 he was chief of an intelligence division and extended his stay in the Philippines at AFWESPAC and PHILRYCOM, where he helped the Philippine Army rebuild its intelligence services. He was commissioned a captain in the Air Force in 1947 with the temporary rank of major, taught at the Strategic Intelligence School at Lowry Air Force Base, Colorado, in 1948, and received a temporary promotion to lieutenant colonel in 1949.²

Fletcher Prouty wrote in 1992 that Lansdale entered the OSS soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor and later said that he had left it to serve in army intelligence, and that in November 1949 Lansdale was brought into the Office of Policy Coordination, the covert action office directed by Frank Wisner, who had headed the OSS section in Romania during the war. Prouty wrote that Lansdale worked there under Col. Richard G. Stilwell in the planning staff of the Far East division.³

Philippines, 1950 to 1953

Lansdale arrived in the Philippines in 1950 as an Air Force officer attached to the Central Intelligence Agency during the Hukbalahap insurgency, an armed communist-led peasant rebellion that threatened the Manila government.¹ His transfer to the Joint United States Military Advisory Group came at the request of President Elpidio Quirino, to advise the Philippine Army's intelligence services in the campaign against the Huks, and he received a temporary promotion to colonel in 1951.² The Army's history of the campaign places Lansdale's first meeting with Ramon Magsaysay at a reception at Fort Myer, where Magsaysay had just been named Philippine defense secretary. The study says that Magsaysay then asked President Quirino to request Lansdale's assignment to JUSMAG, and that Lansdale arrived with his assistant, Maj. Charles T. R. Bohannan.⁴

Working with Magsaysay, Lansdale developed an approach to counterinsurgency that emphasized political reform over military force: redressing peasant grievances, creating a professional and less corrupt military, civic action programs, and psychological operations rather than indiscriminate repression.¹ The Huk insurgency was effectively ended by 1953. Magsaysay's election as president in 1953, which Lansdale helped engineer, was seen at the time as validating the approach: a popular anti-communist leader defeating insurgency and corruption at once.¹ The approach became the basis for American counterinsurgency doctrine and for Lansdale's later assignments.¹

The Army's study describes the psychological warfare that ran alongside the patrols. Scout-Ranger units distributed propaganda leaflets covertly in areas the guerrillas considered secure, and the most successful was called "The Eye," which left each finder uncertain how far his territory had been penetrated. The study also describes altered cartridges, with dynamite in place of powder, planted in Huk weapon caches, so that a guerrilla could not tell whether his supply had been tampered with by a government agent.⁵ In his memoir Lansdale wrote that one combat psywar squad planted stories among the residents of a town of an asuang, a vampire, living on the hill where the Huks were based, then ambushed a Huk patrol, snatched its last man and "punctured his neck with two holes, vampire-fashion." He described a second technique, the "eye of God," which he had heard of from the siege of Caen and from spotter-aircraft and loudspeaker-tank teams in Europe during World War II: exact intelligence on individual enemy soldiers was broadcast by loudspeaker so that each "couldn't hide from an all-seeing eye."⁶

Saigon Military Mission, 1954 to 1956

In 1953 Lansdale was a member of Lt. Gen. John W. O'Daniel's mission to the French forces in Indochina, as an adviser on special counter-guerrilla operations.² He arrived in Saigon on June 1, 1954, about seven weeks before the Geneva Agreements of July 21, 1954 ended the First Indochina War. He headed the Saigon Military Mission (SMM), an American team that the mission's own report says was born at a Washington policy meeting early in 1954.⁷ The report gives the team's broad mission as paramilitary operations against the enemy and political-psychological warfare.⁸ O'Daniel and the embassy chargé Robert McClintock had arranged Lansdale's appointment as assistant air attaché, and secret communications with Washington ran through the Saigon station of the CIA.⁹

The report, which the Pentagon Papers reprinted as Document 95, describes a black propaganda strike that the team engineered in Hanoi before the Viet Minh took the city: leaflets signed by the Viet Minh gave residents instructions for the takeover, including items on property and money. A later leaflet, attributed to the Viet Minh Resistance Committee, was prepared for the transport of southern Viet Minh to the North under the Geneva agreement. The report also records that the idea for Operation Brotherhood, a program of volunteer medical teams for South Vietnam, was born at an SMM conference in 1954, and that the chief suggested Donald R. Heath call a U.S. meeting to plan a single Vietnamese refugee agency under a commissioner appointed by Diem.¹⁰

The report records that Ngo Dinh Diem arrived in Saigon on July 7, 1954, and that Diem made an agreement with General Trinh Minh The, leader of some 3,000 Cao Dai dissidents near Tay Ninh, to give him financial support in return for armed support to the government if needed.¹⁰ Some 900,000 civilians exercised their option under Article 14(d) of the armistice to move from the North to the South, among them more than 600,000 Catholics, an estimated 65 percent of North Vietnam's Catholics.¹¹ The northern team under Maj. Lucien Conein supervised the refugee flow for the Hanoi airlift organized by the French as part of its cover duties.¹² In September 1954 the team attempted to destroy the modern presses of the largest printing establishment in the north, which intended to remain in Hanoi and do business with the Viet Minh; Viet Minh security agents had already moved into the plant.¹³ In its last days in Hanoi, before the city was evacuated on October 9, 1954, the team contaminated the oil supply of the bus company for a gradual wreckage of engines and took the first actions for delayed sabotage of the railroad, working with a CIA special technical team in Japan.¹⁴ Lansdale developed a personal relationship with Diem and provided the political counsel that helped Diem survive the turbulent 1954 to 1956 period.¹ The team also worked to stabilize Diem's government against challenges from the Binh Xuyen criminal organization and dissident military factions. The Pentagon's study says that in 1955 and 1956 Lansdale "was a key figure in installing and establishing Diem as President of South Vietnam."¹⁵

The report describes the mission's part in the dispute between Diem and the army chief of staff, General Nguyen Van Hinh, who had selected October 26, 1954 for an attack on the presidential palace. The mission invited two of Hinh's officers to the Philippines on the pretext of an official trip, and the report states that the attack did not take place. Ambassador J. Lawton Collins, who arrived on November 8, applied pressure on Hinh, and Hinh left for Paris on November 29.¹⁶ In the Philippines the mission built up Freedom Company, a non-profit Philippine corporation backed by President Magsaysay to supply Filipinos experienced in fighting the Huks, and the United States backed a small Freedom Company training camp in a hidden valley on the Clark Air Base reservation.¹⁷ In January 1955 the mission borrowed Magsaysay's senior aide, Col. Napoleon Valeriano, to reorganize the Presidential Guard Battalion for Diem.¹⁸

The report also describes an almanac for popular sale in the northern cities, for which Vietnamese astrologers were hired to write predictions of disasters for certain Viet Minh leaders and undertakings and of unity in the south, work the report says was "based on our concept of the use of astrology for psywar in Southeast Asia." Copies were shipped by air to Haiphong and smuggled into Viet Minh territory.¹⁸ On January 11, 1955 Collins announced Lansdale's transfer from the ambassador's staff to the Training Relations and Instruction Mission under O'Daniel, to head its National Security division, with authority to coordinate all U.S. agencies in Vietnam in that work.¹⁸

Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American (1955) drew partly on Lansdale's activities and persona in Vietnam, and Greene's portrayal is decidedly unflattering.¹⁹ William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's The Ugly American (1958) featured Colonel Edwin Hillandale, a more sympathetic character. Mary McGrory wrote in a Washington Star article on Lodge's second Saigon mission that Lansdale was widely regarded as the prototype of the harmonica-playing Colonel Hillandale of that novel.²⁰

Diem and the Pentagon, 1955 to 1961

Lansdale went to the office of the Secretary of Defense in Washington in 1957 as deputy assistant secretary for special operations, served on the staff of the President's Committee on Military Assistance (the Draper Committee) in 1959, and received a temporary promotion to brigadier general in 1960.² In 1961 he held special operations posts in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. A letter of January 30, 1961 styles him the deputy assistant for special operations, and a memorandum of June 26, 1961 styles him the assistant for special operations.²¹²² The Defense Department's Vietnam study identifies him as Brigadier General Edward G. Lansdale of the Office of Special Operations in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, abbreviated OSO/OSD.²³

Lansdale's January 1961 report on Vietnam, submitted after a visit to Saigon, argued that the United States had to keep supporting Diem, and the Defense Department study notes that memoirs by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Roger Hilsman describe the report as shocking the president about conditions in Vietnam.²³ A letter Lansdale wrote to Diem on January 30, 1961 is in the Lansdale Papers at the Hoover Institution.²¹

The Defense study says Lansdale served as executive officer of the task force that Roswell Gilpatric organized to review Vietnam, and that he proposed the task force be given a continuing, dominant role in managing the Vietnamese enterprise.²³ In October 1961 he met Ngo Dinh Nhu in Saigon and reported the conversation to Maxwell Taylor, the president's military representative.²⁴

Operation Mongoose, 1961 to 1962

After the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, the Kennedy administration renewed covert efforts against Castro. At a White House meeting on November 3, 1961 President John F. Kennedy authorized a new program. Robert Kennedy's handwritten notes of the meeting list "Lansdale (the Ugly American)" among those present, record that Robert Kennedy assigned Lansdale to survey the situation in Cuba, and describe the aim of stirring things up on the island with espionage, sabotage and general disorder, run by Cubans themselves.²⁵

On November 28, 1961 Lansdale wrote to Gen. Samuel T. Williams that a "crash project" from his superior had taken him away from the follow-through on the Taylor group's reports. The published volume identifies the project as a Cuba effort that Attorney General Kennedy had asked him to take up.²⁶ On November 30, 1961 he sent Robert Kennedy a memorandum on the "day of decision" for the project, arguing that the intelligence estimate circulated against it was inadequate on the internal situation.²⁷ A later program review states that the November 30 directive set the goal of the program and named Lansdale as chief of operations, with operational lieutenants from Department of State, Defense and the CIA.²⁸

The Church Committee records that Kennedy appointed General Maxwell Taylor chairman of the Special Group (Augmented), and that Robert Kennedy played an active role in the program, a role unrelated to his position as attorney general.²⁹ Lansdale was designated chief of operations. The committee also records that William Harvey was put in charge of the CIA's Task Force W in late 1961 or early 1962, a unit that employed approximately 400 people at CIA headquarters and its Miami station.²⁹ Harvey's memorandum to Lansdale of July 24, 1962 stated that as of July 23, 477 CIA staff personnel were devoting full time to the effort.³⁰

Lansdale's review of the first phase, dated July 25, 1962, reported that recruitment of third-country nationals and the start of Cuban collection nets had made Operation Mongoose "numerically the largest U.S. intelligence agent effort inside a Communist state."³¹ Taylor's memorandum to the president of August 17, 1962 described the program as generating the largest intelligence effort directed at any Soviet Bloc country.³² Sabotage was part of the plan. On October 8, 1962 Harvey asked Lansdale to put before the Special Group a request for policy approval to sabotage Cuban-owned vessels "wherever and whenever secure access to them can be attained," normally in non-Bloc ports.³³ Operations targeted Cuban economic infrastructure through sabotage, developed internal resistance networks, and maintained assassination planning tracks through Harvey's ZR RIFLE program.³⁴ At its peak the JM-WAVE station in Miami had more than 3,000 Cuban exile agents on its payroll. Lansdale's relationship with Harvey was persistently antagonistic. Harvey believed that Robert Kennedy's direct involvement compromised the operation's security, and Lansdale regarded Harvey's insubordination and alcoholism as operational liabilities.³⁴ Mongoose was the largest CIA covert action program since the Korean War.

Planning tasks were set in January 1962. On January 18 Lansdale assigned 32 tasks to the participating agencies.³⁵ In a memorandum of January 20 to the members of the Caribbean Survey Group he wrote that "we are in a combat situation" in which "we have been given full command."³⁶ On January 19 he added Task 33, a plan to incapacitate Cuban sugar workers during the harvest by chemical means. Lansdale testified that the agents were nonlethal and meant to keep workers away from the fields for 24 to 48 hours. The task was approved for planning with a notation that it required a policy determination, and after a study showed it unfeasible it was cancelled without reaching the Special Group.³⁷ A January 26 memorandum asked State and Defense for an early determination of when the United States might use military force in the Cuba project.³⁸

The committee describes Lansdale's six-phase schedule as one that the Special Group did not approve for implementation, and reports that only its first, intelligence-collection phase was approved for January through August 1962. The March 14, 1962 guidelines stated that "During this period, General Lansdale will continue as Chief of Operations, calling directly on the participating departments and agencies for support and implementation of agreed tasks."³⁹

Parrott, an assistant to the president's military representative, testified before the Church Committee in 1975 about a plan for removing Castro that he attributed to Lansdale. In Parrott's account, the plan consisted of spreading word that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent and that Christ was against Castro, with an American submarine to surface off Cuba and send up starshells as the sign. Parrott said that somebody dubbed the plan "Elimination by Illumination."⁴⁰⁴¹

Lansdale testified in 1975 that "touchdown play," a phrase in his memoranda, was a breezy way of referring to a Cuban revolt to overthrow the regime, and the committee reports that the examples in his January 1962 memorandum contained no indication of assassination.³⁷

On February 20, 1962 Lansdale detailed a six-phase schedule designed to culminate in October 1962 with "open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime." For its "Resistance" phase he listed "attacks on the cadre of the regime, including key leaders," with the notation that "Gangster elements might provide the best recruitment potential for actions against police G-2 officials" and that chemical warfare agents should be fully considered. Lansdale testified that the "actions" and "attack" in that component meant killing. He testified that early in the program he had suggested to working-level representatives of the participating agencies that they contact "criminal elements" for intelligence and for "possible actions against the police structure" in Cuba, and he conceded that his proposal to recruit gangster elements for attacks on "key leaders" contemplated the targeted killing of individuals.⁴² On January 30, 1962 Craig forwarded to Lansdale a concept called Operation Bounty, a system of financial rewards for killing or delivering alive known Communists, with leaflets listing rewards from $5,000 for an informer to $100,000 for government officials and a reward of 2 cents for Castro. Lansdale testified that the figure was designed to denigrate Castro and that he tabled the concept, which he never brought before the Special Group (Augmented).⁴³

Operation NORTHWOODS and the pretexts question

At a March 5, 1962 meeting chaired by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Rusk spoke of "other tracks" which might be opened for the United States to achieve its objective, and there was joking reference to a "Bay of Pigs" in, perhaps, Guatemala, as a notional clandestine action for which "they" could be blamed. On March 6, 1962 Lansdale wrote to Richard Goodwin, the deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, that General Taylor had asked him to report on these alternate "tracks" to the Special Group he chaired. He was asking the Defense representative, William H. Craig, for "a brief but precise description of pretexts which the JCS believes desirable if a decision is ultimately made to use direct military intervention," and he asked State for a companion statement.⁴⁴ A Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum of March 13, 1962, "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba," answered with a set of pretexts for military action. That plan is known as Operation NORTHWOODS.⁴⁵

Castro assassination questions, 1975

Lansdale's own account of assassination planning appeared in an Associated Press interview published by The Washington Post on May 1, 1975. He said that, acting on orders delivered through an intermediary, he developed plans for removing Castro by any means, including assassination, and that he was assigned to the project in 1962, when the United States first received intelligence that Castro was prepared to install Soviet-made missiles in Cuba.⁴⁶ He declined to name the intermediary and said it was not McGeorge Bundy but someone "much more intimate."⁴⁶ Of the project he said, "I just wanted to see if the United States had any such capabilities," and he said he was "working for the highest authority in the land." Robert McNamara objected to the description of Lansdale as his assistant in August 1962, saying "I had no personal knowledge of what he was doing."⁴⁶

The Associated Press identified Lansdale as the author of an August 1962 memorandum, then in the possession of the Rockefeller Commission 1975, which authoritative sources said gave the CIA authority to develop contingency plans for the assassination of Castro. Lansdale said he did not remember the memorandum but acknowledged that it would not have been incompatible with his assigned task. He confirmed that the phrase "something like that," used in describing the project, included the possibility of assassination.⁴⁶

The August 13, 1962 memorandum that the Church Committee quotes directed Harvey to include an option for the "liquidation of leaders" in a proposed Phase II plan. Harvey's memorandum of August 14 to Richard Helms attached Lansdale's memorandum with the words excised.⁴⁷ On August 6, 1962 Lansdale had reviewed Harvey's draft operational plan.⁴⁸ The Special Group met on August 16, 1962 and approved Lansdale's paper subject to detailed actions, and John McCone's record of the meeting notes a difference between Lansdale and the CIA over the position McCone had taken on the plan.⁴⁹

The missile crisis and the end of the program

Harvey testified before the committee that during the October 1962 crisis he ordered agent teams into Cuba to support any conventional U.S. military operation, that Robert Kennedy "took a great deal of exception" to the order, and that McCone ordered the agent operations stopped. On October 30, 1962 the Special Group ordered a halt to all sabotage operations, citing Lansdale's memorandum for the record.⁵⁰ The committee's chronology records that Operation Mongoose ended in November 1962.⁵¹ The program was formally reduced in scope after the crisis.

Harvey was appointed chief of the CIA station in Rome, effective on or about June 30, 1963.⁵² Evan Thomas wrote that Robert Kennedy had exiled Harvey to Rome.⁵³ Lansdale retired from the Air Force on October 31, 1963, was awarded a second Distinguished Service Medal for his counterinsurgency work, and became a consultant to the director of Food for Peace at the White House.²

Return to Vietnam, 1965 to 1968

Lansdale returned to Vietnam in 1965. A CIA memorandum for the record, of August 1965, summarizes a Washington meeting on his mission, attended by officials from State, including Walt Rostow, from the White House, from United States Agency for International Development and United States Information Agency, and from the CIA, including William Colby. At that meeting Lansdale described his concept of the mission as finding out what the Vietnamese thought, what they wanted and what they would do, and as unifying the efforts of the American mission.⁵⁴

Congressional remarks by Representative Claude Pepper, reprinting a Washington Post item of August 20, 1965, described Lansdale as being sent to South Vietnam as a special assistant to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.⁵⁵ The Pentagon Papers state that Lansdale "never got to Vietnam until Cabot Lodge brought him out later in 1965," despite four requests from Diem and recommendations from Cottrell, the Taylor report and William Bundy that he be sent.⁵⁶ In late August 1965 Lodge announced Lansdale's appointment as chairman of the U.S. Mission liaison group to the South Vietnamese government's CRCC.⁵⁷

His 1965 post carried less operational authority than his earlier mission. A New York World Journal Tribune article of March 26, 1967 reported that Lansdale had returned to Vietnam in September 1965 with Lodge, under the unusual and rather vague title of senior liaison officer, with ministerial rank, as a member of a ten-man mission council.⁵⁸ The senior liaison office staff worked on winning support in the Vietnamese countryside, and President Lyndon B. Johnson also appointed Lansdale a minister. From 1967 to 1968 he was an assistant to Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker at the U.S. Mission in South Vietnam.² Lansdale was recalled in 1968 without the political reform he believed essential to South Vietnam's survival.¹

Lansdale died in McLean, Virginia, on February 23, 1987.²

Fletcher Prouty's claims

Col. L. Fletcher Prouty wrote about Lansdale in two publications, one placing him in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the other connecting him to the story of President Kennedy's assassination. In a 1986 article in Freedom (magazine), Prouty wrote that he and Lansdale flew to Fort Gordon, Georgia, on November 1, 1960 to collect elements of a Civil Affairs and Military Government curriculum, and that both were then assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Prouty described Lansdale as a principal proponent of what he called the "Mao doctrine" of counterinsurgency, which he wrote was introduced into the White House under the guise of a mutual security program.⁵⁹

In his 1992 book on the assassination and Vietnam, Prouty asked where the Joint Chiefs, Lansdale and Allen Dulles were when the guns sounded in the streets of Dallas. He wrote that Cuban exile groups from Louisiana and their instructors became suspects in the investigation, that many of them were later recruited into the larger program Operation Mongoose under Lansdale, and that the identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the scapegoat served as a cover story.⁶⁰

Footnotes

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1. Currey, Cecil B. Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American. Houghton Mifflin, 1988. ↩︎

2. Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Register of the Edward Geary Lansdale papers, 1910-1987, Online Archive of California, biographical chronology (born Detroit, February 6, 1908; O.S.S. 1942-1945; JUSMAG 1950; O'Daniel mission 1953; Saigon 1954-1956; Office of the Secretary of Defense 1957, 1959, 1960 and 1961; retirement October 31, 1963; senior liaison officer 1965-1967; assistant to Ambassador Bunker 1967-1968; death at McLean, Virginia, February 23, 1987). https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf6v19n8cp/ ↩︎

3. Prouty, L. Fletcher. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. Carol Publishing Group, 1992, on Lansdale's OSS service and his assignment to the Office of Policy Coordination in November 1949. https://archive.org/details/jfkciavietnamplo0000prou_r5p5 ↩︎

4. Greenberg, Lawrence M. The Hukbalahap Insurrection: A Case Study of a Successful Anti-Insurgency Operation in the Philippines, 1946-1955. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1986, section on Lansdale's JUSMAG assignment and the Magsaysay request. https://archive.org/details/hukbalahapinsurr00lawr ↩︎

5. Greenberg, The Hukbalahap Insurrection, section on psychological warfare operations of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, describing the Scout-Ranger leaflets, "The Eye," and the altered-cartridge tactic. https://archive.org/details/hukbalahapinsurr00lawr ↩︎

6. Edward Geary Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia (New York: Harper & Row, 1972; reprint, New York: Fordham University Press, 1991), pp. 72-75. https://archive.org/details/inmidstofwarsame0000lans ↩︎

7. Saigon Military Mission report, excerpted as Document 95 in The Pentagon Papers, The Senator Gravel Edition, vol. I, pp. 573-574, on the mission's origin in a Washington policy meeting and the arrival of Lansdale in Saigon on June 1, 1954. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

8. Saigon Military Mission report, Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 573-574, on the mission's broad statement of purpose. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

9. Saigon Military Mission report, Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, p. 574, on the assistant air attache cover arranged by O'Daniel and McClintock and the communications through the CIA station. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

10. Saigon Military Mission report, Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 574-579, covering the Diem arrival of July 7, 1954 (p. 575), the refugee commission proposal and Operation Brotherhood (p. 576), the black propaganda strike in Hanoi (pp. 578-579) and the Viet Minh leaflet for the southern transport (p. 579), and the Diem agreement with Trinh Minh The (p. 578). https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

11. Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 289-291, on the some 900,000 civilians who exercised their option under Article 14(d) of the armistice (pp. 289-290) and the estimated 65 percent of North Vietnam's Catholics, more than 600,000 in all, who moved south (p. 291). https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

12. Saigon Military Mission report, Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, p. 577, on the northern team's cover duties supervising the Hanoi refugee airlift. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

13. Saigon Military Mission report, Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, p. 578, on the attempt to destroy the Hanoi printing presses in September 1954. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

14. Saigon Military Mission report, Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, p. 579, on the evacuation of Hanoi on October 9, 1954, the contamination of the bus company oil supply and the delayed sabotage of the railroad. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

15. United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967, Book 2, Part IV.B.1, sections on the Lansdale report of January 1961 and the Taylor mission, quoting the Defense Department's statement that Lansdale "was a key figure in installing and establishing Diem as President of South Vietnam." DTIC ADA542557. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA542557 ↩︎

16. Saigon Military Mission report, Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 577-580, on the dispute between Diem and General Hinh, the invitation to the Philippines on October 26, 1954, the arrival of Collins on November 8 and Hinh's departure on November 29. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

17. Saigon Military Mission report, Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 580-581, on Freedom Company and the training camp on the Clark Air Base reservation. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

18. Saigon Military Mission report, Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 581-582, on the almanac, the transfer to the Training Relations and Instruction Mission and the loan of Colonel Valeriano. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit ↩︎

19. Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. Heinemann, 1955. ↩︎

20. McGrory, Mary. "'Old Asia Hand' Going Back But Highly Effective," Washington Star, undated clipping on Lodge's second mission to Vietnam. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP75-00001R000300430064-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000300430064-8 ↩︎

21. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. I, doc. 6, Letter From the Secretary of Defense's Deputy Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to President Diem, Washington, January 30, 1961. Source line: Hoover Institution, Lansdale Papers. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v01/d6 ↩︎

22. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. I, doc. 73, Memorandum From the Secretary of Defense's Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Gilpatric), Washington, June 26, 1961. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v01/d73 ↩︎

23. United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967, Department of Defense study, Book 2, Part IV.B.1, "Evolution of the War: The Kennedy Program and Commitments, 1961," sections on the Lansdale report of January 1961, the Gilpatric task force, and Brigadier General Edward G. Lansdale, OSO/OSD. DTIC ADA542557. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA542557 ↩︎

24. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. I, doc. 182, Memorandum From the Secretary of Defense's Deputy Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to the President's Military Representative (Taylor), Saigon, October 21, 1961, on Lansdale's talk with Ngo Dinh Nhu on October 19. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v01/d182 ↩︎

25. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 270, Editorial Note on the November 3, 1961 meeting, quoting Robert Kennedy's handwritten notes, which list "Lansdale (the Ugly American)." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d270 ↩︎

26. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. I, doc. 293, Letter From the Secretary of Defense's Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to General Samuel T. Williams, Washington, November 28, 1961. Source line: Hoover Institution Archives, Williams Papers. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v01/d293 ↩︎

27. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 277, Memorandum From General Edward Lansdale to Attorney General Kennedy, Washington, November 30, 1961. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d277 ↩︎

28. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 309, Program Review, Washington, March 2, 1962, entry for November 30, 1961. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d309 ↩︎

29. Church Committee (U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, S. Rept. 94-465 (1975), pp. 140-141, on Taylor's chairmanship of the Special Group (Augmented), Lansdale's appointment as chief of operations, Robert Kennedy's role, and Task Force W. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

30. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 359, Memorandum From the CIA Operations Officer for Operation Mongoose (Harvey) to the Chief of Operations (Lansdale), Washington, July 24, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d359 ↩︎

31. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 360, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), to the Special Group (Augmented), Washington, July 25, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d360 ↩︎

32. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 380, Memorandum From the President's Military Representative (Taylor) to President Kennedy, Washington, August 17, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d380 ↩︎

33. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. XI, doc. 10, Memorandum From the CIA Project Officer for Operation Mongoose (Harvey) to the Chief of Operations (Lansdale), Washington, October 8, 1962, "Sabotage of Cuban-Owned Ship." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d10 ↩︎

34. Thomas, Evan. The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA. Simon & Schuster, 1995. ↩︎

35. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 142-143, on the January 18, 1962 assignment of 32 tasks. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

36. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 293, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), to the Members of the Caribbean Survey Group, Washington, January 20, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d293 ↩︎

37. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 143, on Task 33, Lansdale's testimony of July 8, 1975 (p. 29), and Lansdale's testimony of July 8, 1975 (p. 45) on the "touchdown play." https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

38. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 297, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), Washington, January 26, 1962, "Tasks 29 and 33, Cuba Project." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d297 ↩︎

39. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 143-145, on the six-phase schedule, the approval of the first phase, and the Guidelines for Operation MONGOOSE of March 14, 1962. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

40. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 142 n. 2, quoting the testimony of Parrott, July 10, 1975, pp. 49-50. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

41. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 414, Memorandum From the Assistant to the President's Military Representative (Parrott) to the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), Washington, September 6, 1962, identifying Parrott's office. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d414 ↩︎

42. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 143-144, on the February 20, 1962 six-phase schedule and Lansdale's testimony of July 8, 1975, pp. 104-107. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

43. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 144, on Operation Bounty, citing Craig's memorandum to Lansdale of January 30, 1962 and Lansdale's testimony of July 8, 1975, p. 26. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

44. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 310, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Goodwin), Washington, March 6, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d310 ↩︎

45. Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba," memorandum to the Secretary of Defense, March 13, 1962, National Security Archive, Operation Northwoods documents. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/index.htm ↩︎

46. Martin, David C., Associated Press, "Plan to Slay Castro Tied to JFK Orders," The Washington Post, May 1, 1975. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP90-01208R000100160011-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-01208r000100160011-4 ↩︎

47. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 161-163, on Lansdale's memorandum of August 13, 1962, Harvey's memorandum to Helms of August 14, and the August 10, 1962 meeting. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

48. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 366, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), to the CIA Operations Officer (Harvey), Washington, August 6, 1962, "CIA Draft Operational Plan B+." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d366 ↩︎

49. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. X, doc. 378, Memorandum of Meeting, Washington, August 16, 1962, prepared by McCone. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d378 ↩︎

50. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 148, citing Harvey's testimony of July 11, 1975, pp. 80-81, on the agent teams and McCone's order, and citing Lansdale's memorandum for the record of October 30, 1962 on the halt. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

51. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, S. Rept. 94-465, chronology, p. 293, "November: Operation MONGOOSE ends." https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit ↩︎

52. Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum "Appointment of Mr. William K. Harvey Chief of Station, Rome, Italy," June 12, 1963. CIA reading room document 01228805. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-01228805 ↩︎

53. Thomas, Evan. The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA. Simon & Schuster, 1995. ↩︎

54. Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the record, "Lansdale Mission to Vietnam," August 1965, participants including Unger, Lansdale, Rostow, Colby and Bohannan. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP80R01580R001603420030-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80r01580r001603420030-5 ↩︎

55. Congressional Record, 89th Congress, August 1965, remarks of Rep. Claude Pepper extending remarks with a Washington Post item of August 20, 1965, on Lansdale's appointment as special assistant to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP75-00001R000300430053-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000300430053-0 ↩︎

56. Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. II, pp. 126-130, on Lansdale's arrival in Vietnam in 1965 and the four requests from Diem. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapers025197 ↩︎

57. Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., vol. II, pp. 364-366, on Lodge's announcement in late August 1965 of Lansdale as chairman of the U.S. Mission liaison group to the GVN CRCC. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapers025197 ↩︎

58. New York World Journal Tribune, March 26, 1967, on Lansdale's title and position in the U.S. Embassy. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP75-00001R000300430002-6. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000300430002-6 ↩︎

59. Prouty, L. Fletcher. "Building to the Final Confrontation: John F. Kennedy vs. the CIA," Freedom, July 1986, on the Fort Gordon trip of November 1, 1960 and the "Mao doctrine." https://archive.org/details/building-to-the-final-confrontation-john-f.-kennedy-vs.-the-cia-by-l.-fletcher-p ↩︎

60. Prouty, L. Fletcher. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. Carol Publishing Group, 1992, chapters on the Kennedy-era covert programs and on the assassination. https://archive.org/details/jfkciavietnamplo0000prou_r5p5 ↩︎