by Max Boot
“Tell me how to put it in,” McNamara said.
“I don’t think any Americans out there at the moment can report this to you,” Lansdale replied.
McNamara then took out an eraser and began to erase the “X factor.” “No, leave it in there,” Lansdale said.
He then spent a week trying to figure out how to provide the numbers that McNamara wanted. He suggested that U.S. troops working with Vietnamese forces in the field answer questions such as “What was the villages’ attitude towards the Vietnamese troops?”; “What is attitude of Vietnamese troops towards civilians at check points on the highway?”; and “What are the feelings of [Vietnamese] troops at being in military service? Proud to be in uniform? Indifferent? . . . Homesick?”12 His work ultimately led to the Hamlet Evaluation System, a systematic way to judge whether each Vietnamese village was dominated by the government or by the Vietcong. But Lansdale knew all too well that such figures were inherently subjective and prone to manipulation. He pleaded with McNamara: “You’re going to fool yourself if you get all of these figures added up, because they won’t tell you how we’re doing in this war.”
Lansdale’s deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel V. Wilson, recalled seeing McNamara’s eyes “glaze over” as Lansdale kept lecturing him about the X Factor. Wilson tried to get Lansdale’s attention by nudging him with a knee but Lansdale “just kept going strong,” uncharacteristically oblivious to the impression he was making. “He was turning McNamara off,” Wilson said, “but waxing more and more enthusiastic, speaking more rapidly.”13
From then on, McNamara had little time for Lansdale. With a bitter laugh, Lansdale later remembered McNamara’s reaction to his contributions: “He asked me to please not bother him anymore. He used to say, ‘Thank you, I’ve got something else to do now.’ ”14 When McNamara needed something from Lansdale’s office, he would call Sam Wilson. “Things were simply broken between Lansdale and McNamara,” Wilson said.15
McNamara was later to lament that no one in the administration knew much about Vietnam—“we found ourselves setting policy for a region that was terra incognita. Worse, our government lacked experts for us to consult to compensate for our ignorance.” Lansdale was, he grudgingly admitted, the only “Pentagon officer with counterinsurgency experience in the region,” but McNamara denigrated him as hardly comparable to Soviet experts such as Charles “Chip” Bohlen and George Kennan. “Lansdale,” he sniffed, “was relatively junior and lacked broad geopolitical experience.”16 Actually Lansdale was eight years older than McNamara himself, who was forty-four in 1961, and he had been working in Asia since 1945.
One suspects that McNamara’s problem with Lansdale was not that he lacked broad experience but that he lacked McNamara’s own misguided passion for reducing the complex problems of war and peace into easily solvable and greatly deceptive mathematical equations. Lansdale’s mishandling of the prickly secretary of defense—his tendency to drone on a little too long and a little too stridently—compounded the problem. In his attempts to influence American leaders, Lansdale lacked the deft touch he displayed in dealing with foreign leaders.
That would turn out to be an increasingly serious stumbling block for Lansdale because McNamara was fast becoming the most forceful and powerful member of the Kennedy cabinet, next to Attorney General Robert Kennedy himself. McNamara’s influence, as much as Dean Rusk’s, led to Lansdale’s precipitous fall from grace in the first half of 1961: he went from being the president’s favorite counterinsurgency expert and the front-runner to become the next ambassador to South Vietnam to being “practically without voice” as the situation continued to worsen.
BY SEPTEMBER 1961, the number of Vietcong attacks had nearly tripled, to 450 a month from 150 a month earlier in the year. In the early morning hours of September 18, insurgents overran Phuoc Thanh, a provincial capital only fifty-five miles from Saigon, beheaded the provincial governor, and slipped away into the jungle before government troops arrived.17 In response, Ngo Dinh Diem asked that the United States not only support a further buildup of the South Vietnamese army but also sign a bilateral defense treaty committing the United States to South Vietnam’s defense. Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs circulated plans, over the opposition of the State Department, to insert U.S. combat troops primarily to protect South Vietnam’s borders against Communist incursions.
President Kennedy was not sure what to do, and he could not devote his full attention to Vietnam. East German and Soviet forces had begun erecting the Berlin Wall in the early morning hours of August 13, 1961, to stop the hemorrhaging of refugees to the West. The Communists were threatening to force American troops out of the city altogether—a threat that Kennedy vowed to resist with force if necessary. While World War III was looming in Berlin, Kennedy decided on October 11 to send a team of trusted advisers to Saigon to recommend a way forward in Vietnam. The mission would include Edward Lansdale, and it would be led by two of the president’s favorites—Maxwell Taylor and Walt Whitman Rostow.
Kennedy had summoned Taylor, a former Army chief of staff, out of retirement in April 1961 to study the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation and had kept him in the White House as an all-purpose troubleshooter. Described by a fawning journalist as “an aloof, handsome man with cool china blue eyes, a knack for sketching a problem in broad perspective, and a talent for hammering out explicit courses of action,”18 Taylor was not only a decorated combat veteran who had jumped into France at the head of the 101st Airborne Division on the eve of D-Day; he was also fluent in four foreign languages and capable of citing Virgil, Polybius, Caesar, or Clausewitz in casual conversation.19 He was, in short, JFK’s kind of general. But he was not as attuned to the demands of counterinsurgency as the president might have imagined. Taylor had written a book called The Uncertain Trumpet to argue that the military had to prepare for “limited wars” rather than only World War III, but, as Lansdale had discovered during his battles with the Army in the late 1950s over giving the counterinsurgency mission to the Special Forces, Taylor did not advocate civic action and psychological warfare as Lansdale did. Instead, he seemed to believe that guerrillas could be defeated with the same kind of fire-and-maneuver tactics that his paratroopers had employed in the liberation of Europe.
A former professor of economic history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rostow was more attuned to the softer side of counterinsurgency. His 1960 magnum opus, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, argued that economic growth was ineluctably leading the world in a liberal democratic, rather than a Marxist, direction and that it was in America’s interest to help developing nations reach the “takeoff” stage. He was already working with Lansdale on a small National Security Council task force to formulate a “U.S. Strategy To Deal With ‘Wars of National Liberation’ ”; their work would soon lead to, among other things, the creation of a high-level committee called the Special Group (Counterinsurgency), chaired by General Taylor and designed to focus bureaucratic attention on the “deterrence and countering of guerrilla warfare.”20 But, while he advocated Lansdale-style civic action, Rostow was also a firm believer in the efficacy of airpower. As an OSS officer in London, he had helped pick targets for the U.S. bombing campaign against Germany, and he would later be nicknamed Air Marshal Rostow for the enthusiasm with which he recommended bombing North Vietnam.21 He would never be mistaken, however, for a cigar-chomping militarist in the mold of General Curtis LeMay. Even those who disagreed with Rostow had to admit that he was a “warm human being.”22 A veteran of the Johnson administration was to call him “a sheep in wolf’s clothing.”23
By contrast, Taylor was more of a “loner” and “not a conciliator.”24 Lansdale got along well with the amiable Rostow but not with Taylor, who reminded him of his old nemesis Lightning Joe Collins—“the two of them were remarkably alike in their mastery of the fleeting smile, their pose of clean-cut all-American boy with graying hair, gentlemanly diction, and cold-blooded arrogance with subordina
tes in private.”25
The Taylor-Rostow mission took off on an Air Force executive jet, a Boeing 707, from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington on October 15, 1961. Taylor, dressed in a yellow shirt and blue sweater, and Rostow, in gray sweater and open collar, called the eighteen group members up to the front cabin.26 Taylor then drew a line under the first four names and announced that everyone above the line would be going on protocol visits to meet Ngo Dinh Diem and other senior officials, while everyone below the line would not. Brigadier General Lansdale’s name was just below this line.27
While the group was flying to Vietnam, Taylor demanded that everyone write out “a list of the things you think you’re qualified to look into.” Lansdale gave him a long list of his interests and his contacts in Vietnam. Taylor ignored what he had written and assigned him to come up with a detailed plan to erect a high-tech barrier—a fence with electronic sensors—to prevent Communist infiltration of South Vietnam from Laos and Cambodia. “That’s not my subject,” Lansdale protested. “I’m not good at that.” Taylor wasn’t listening.28 When the delegation arrived in Saigon on October 18, 1961, Lansdale went over to the Military Advisory Assistance Group and told them, “You guys are good at figuring it out. This is going to cost us several billion dollars. Tell me how many billions and I’ll report it in.”29 (MAAG duly came up with a proposal, the first stage of which involved defoliating more than eight hundred miles of jungle at a cost of $3.5 million.)30
As soon as he heard that Lansdale was back, Diem sent an aide to bring him to the presidential palace for a talk—the last one the two men would ever have. Taylor was busy briefing the press, so Lansdale told Rostow that he was going to the palace “to see an old friend.” The big question on Diem’s mind was whether he should request U.S. troops. Lansdale recalled asking him, “Have you reached that point in your affairs now that you’re going to need that to stay alive?”
“So you think I shouldn’t ask?” Diem asked.
No, Lansdale said, just tell the truth—do you need troops or not? Diem couldn’t make up his mind. Ngo Dinh Nhu was sitting in on this meeting, and when Lansdale tried to press the issue he broke in to answer.
“I’m asking your brother these questions, not you,” Lansdale snapped. He was dismayed to see the extent to which Diem now deferred to Nhu on pivotal decisions.
Finally the brothers decided they didn’t need U.S. troops. “Well stay with that then,” Lansdale advised.31
While the world was transfixed by the continuing standoff between the superpowers in Berlin, the White House group spent seven whirlwind days in Vietnam—“a maelstrom of official calls, briefings, discussions, and visits to the field,” Taylor was to write.32 One day was spent visiting the DMZ, another day overflying the Mekong Delta to see the effects of recent flooding, the worst in decades, which had destroyed crops, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and exacerbated “a collapse of national morale.”33 The group left Saigon on October 25, 1961, and retreated to Baguio, the summer capital of the Philippines, to write their report amid the cool mountain breezes.
Taylor was to explain, “Personally, I had no enthusiasm for the thought of using U.S. Army forces in ground combat in this guerrilla war. . . . On the other hand, there was a pressing need to do something to restore Vietnamese morale and to shore up confidence in the United States.”34 As a compromise, Taylor and Rostow proposed the introduction of six thousand to eight thousand U.S. combat troops under the guise of flood relief.35 While Taylor did not envision U.S. troops clearing “the jungles and forests of Viet Cong guerrillas,” he did foresee the possibility of their being thrown into action “against large, formed guerrilla bands which have abandoned the forests for attacks on major targets.” And if this was insufficient to save South Vietnam, Taylor noted, in a separate “eyes only” cable to the president, bombing North Vietnam was always an option; he claimed that Hanoi “is extremely vulnerable to conventional bombing.”36
Lansdale was not entirely averse to the introduction of more American troops per se—certainly not as averse as he later said he was. He was willing to send a “ ‘hard core’ of combat forces” to buttress military units focused on civic action missions such as building roads and improving public health.37 But Lansdale never advocated bombing the North, nor did he envision U.S. troops fighting North Vietnamese formations as directly as Taylor did. In his report, Lansdale warned that “just adding more of many things, as we are doing at present, doesn’t appear to provide the answer we are seeking.” To “spark a complete psychological change in Vietnam’s situation, give the Vietnamese the hope of winning, and take the initiative away from the Communists,” he advocated sending more American advisers “as helpers, not as orderers.”38
The members of the Taylor-Rostow mission presented their findings to the president at the White House on November 3, 1961, as the Berlin Crisis was approaching a peaceful end.39 Kennedy turned down the proposal to send troops to Vietnam under the guise of flood relief. He told Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “The troops will march in; the bands will play; the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send more troops. It’s like taking a drink. The effect wears off, and you have to take another.”40 But Kennedy did approve a substantial enlargement of the advisory effort, as recommended by Taylor and Rostow. By the end of 1963, there would be sixteen thousand U.S. advisers in South Vietnam, up from only 685 when he assumed office. In February 1962, the lower-level Military Assistance Advisory Group would be expanded into the U.S. Military Assistance Command—Vietnam (MACV), led by a four-star general, initially Paul Harkins, a protégé of George S. Patton’s. American advisers would now be embedded with all South Vietnamese army units down to battalion level, while American-flown aircraft would provide air support to the South Vietnamese army.
Lansdale had argued in favor of letting military advisers participate in combat. “It would make all the difference in the effectiveness of their relationship to the Vietnamese,” he argued; “comrades are listened to, when they share the risk.”41 His advice was taken, and before long U.S. Air Force crews were flying attack missions in the guise of training Vietnamese crewmen who were simply along for the ride—not quite what Lansdale envisioned, but the natural consequence of allowing gung-ho Americans eager for combat to get into the thick of the action.42 The Taylor-Rostow mission subsequently would be seen as a major step toward the American armed forces’ entering the Vietnam War as a full-fledged combatant.
THE TAYLOR-ROSTOW task force put forward one additional idea that the president did not implement: a recommendation that Edward Lansdale be sent to Saigon as an adviser to Diem. South Vietnam’s president had personally made this request to Maxwell Taylor. On the cable sent back to Washington reporting the request, some unidentified State Department official wrote in the margin, “No. No. NO!” 43
The diplomats did soften their opposition a bit a few weeks afterward, in late November 1961, when they found Diem still reluctant to implement the governmental changes they advocated, including giving the United States a significant say in South Vietnamese decision-making. Diem saw that as a return to colonialism, this time under the Americans rather than the French.44 At that point, State suggested, just as Elbridge Durbrow had done in 1960, that Lansdale go to Saigon “and, presumably, clobber [Diem] from up close.”45 At least that was how Lansdale interpreted the request, which he adamantly rejected.
“Rather than just ‘hold Diem’s hand,’ apparently they want me to accept the hospitality of a friend whom I respect and then follow orders to threaten him with penalties from that close-in position, simply because he doesn’t comply with every wish of some Americans who remain foreign to the scene,” he wrote angrily to McNamara and Gilpatric. “The Communists in Vietnam can be defeated, but this isn’t the way to do it.”46
In his own eyes, and those of his friends, Lansdale was taking a stand on principle in a way that few other government officials would ever dare to do. In the
eyes of Lansdale’s many internal critics, his position—go on his terms or not at all—was simply more evidence that he was an uncontrollable prima donna.
Walt Rostow, who at the end of 1961 was moving to the State Department to take over policy planning, tried one last time before he left the White House to persuade the president to post Lansdale to Saigon. It is “crucial,” he wrote to Kennedy on December 6, 1961, “that we free Ed Lansdale from his present assignment and get him out to the field in an appropriate position. He is a unique national asset in the Saigon setting.”47 Once again, however, Kennedy did not act. McGeorge Bundy later explained that the president “was relatively sympathetic to Lansdale. Lansdale was temperamentally somewhat his kind of person. I don’t think, on the other hand, that he felt so strongly about it that he wanted to push it against strong opposition from either the military or the diplomatic bureaucracy.”48
In his memoir, published a decade later, after tens of thousands of bodybags had come home, Rostow was to lament the failure to find a role for Lansdale in Saigon: “It is by no means certain Lansdale could have altered the tragic course on which Diem was launched; but he represented a kind of last chance.”49 With that chance lost, the abyss was looming nearer.
23
“Worms of the World Unite”
Let’s get the hell on with it. The President wants some action, right now.
—ROBERT F. KENNEDY
THE origins of Edward Lansdale’s next assignment could be found in the calamitous events of April 17, 1961. In the early morning hours, an armada of six cargo ships appeared off the southern coast of Cuba. They had been chartered by the CIA and filled with fourteen hundred Cuban exiles trained and armed by the CIA. (The trainers had included one of Lansdale’s old friends, the former Philippine army officer Napoleon Valeriano.) The mission of Brigade 2506 was nothing less than to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro, the strongman who had seized power on January 1, 1959, and had steadily moved closer to the Soviet bloc. The liberation of Cuba was supposed to begin with a landing at the Bahia de Cochinos—in English, the Bay of Pigs—a scenic site of turquoise waters, white sand beaches, and mangroves that Castro was hoping to develop into a tourist destination.
