Edward Lansdale

Edward Geary Lansdale (February 6, 1908 – February 23, 1987) was a United States Air Force officer until retiring in 1963 as a major general before continuing his work with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Lansdale was a pioneer in clandestine operations and psychological warfare. In the early 1950s, Lansdale played a significant role in suppressing the Hukbalahap rebellion in the Philippines. In 1954, he moved to Saigon and started the Saigon Military Mission, a covert intelligence operation that was created to sow dissension in North Vietnam. Lansdale believed the United States could win guerrilla wars by studying the enemy's psychology, an approach that notionally won the approval of the presidential administrations of both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson but largely would not be implemented due to bureaucratic opposition.

Early life

Lansdale was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 6, 1908, and later raised in Los Angeles. He was the second of four sons of Sarah Frances (née Philips; 1881–1954) and Henry Lansdale (1883–1959). Lansdale attended school in Michigan, New York, and California before attending the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he earned his way largely by writing for newspapers and magazines. Lansdale struggled in learning foreign languages while at UCLA and told a biographer he retained almost nothing except Spanish curse words and French phrases he had memorized in kindergarten. Lansdale's difficulty in meeting the foreign language requirement for his degree and his lack of an obvious career path prompted him to drop out of UCLA several credits short of graduation. He later moved on to better-paying work in advertising in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Lansdale pursued a career in advertising. He worked for Silverwood's, a men's clothing retail firm. In his counter-insurgency efforts later on, he would apply principles and concepts that he had learned while he worked in the advertising industry.

Career

Philippines

Lansdale entered the U.S. Army in 1941 and served with both the Military Intelligence Service and Office of Strategic Services during World War II, ultimately being promoted to major. He extended his tour to remain in the Philippines until 1948, helping the Philippine Army rebuild its intelligence services and resolve the cases of large numbers of prisoners of war. With most of Lansdale's prior United States Army intelligence officer experience being with US Army Air Forces units, he transferred to the US Air Force and was commissioned as a captain when it was established as an independent service in 1947. After leaving the Philippines in 1948, he served as an instructor at the Strategic Intelligence School at Lowry Air Force Base, Colorado, where he received a temporary promotion to lieutenant colonel in 1949.

In 1950, President Elpidio Quirino personally requested that Lansdale be transferred to the Joint US Military Assistance Group, Philippines, to assist the intelligence services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in combating the Hukbalahap rebellion. Lansdale was an early practitioner of psychological warfare. Adopting a tactic previously used in the Philippines by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, Lansdale spread rumors that aswangs, blood-sucking demons in Philippine folklore, were loose in the jungle. His men then captured an enemy soldier and drained the blood from his body, leaving the corpse where it could be seen and making the Hukbalahap flee the region. Lansdale also arranged for US military support to Philippine efforts in defeating the Kamlon rebellion in Sulu.

Lansdale became friends with Ramon Magsaysay, then the secretary of national defense, and with his help, Magsaysay eventually became President of the Philippines on December 30, 1953. Lansdale is said to have run Magsaysay's campaign for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1953 Philippine general election. Lansdale helped the Philippine Armed Forces develop psychological operations, civic actions, and the rehabilitation of Hukbalahap prisoners.

Vietnam

1950s

thumb|left|247px|Lansdale with [[Director of Central Intelligence|CIA Director Allen Dulles and United States Air Force Chief of Staff General Nathan F. Twining and CIA Deputy Director Lieutenant General Charles P. Cabell at the Pentagon in 1955.]]

After the end of the left-wing Huk insurgency in the Philippines and after building support for Magsaysay's presidency, CIA director Allen Dulles instructed Lansdale to "do what you did in the Philippines [in Vietnam]. Lansdale had previously been a member of General John W. O'Daniel's mission to Indochina in 1953, acting as an advisor to French forces on special counter-guerrilla operations against the Viet Minh. From 1954 to 1957, he was stationed in Saigon as the head of the Saigon Military Mission. Lansdale was ordered to retire from the Air Force by the end of October. During Lansdale's 31 October 1963 retirement reception Defense Secretary McNamara walked through the room and never looked at Lansdale. Diệm would be assassinated the next day.

From 1965 to 1968, he was back in Vietnam where he worked in the United States Embassy, Saigon, with the rank of minister. The scope of his delegated authority was vague, however, and he was bureaucratically marginalized and frustrated.

Lansdale during this time served in Vietnam with a young Daniel Ellsberg who would work in the U.S. Embassy there. Also during this time Lucien Conein would get drunk in Saigon with Lansdale; Lansdale said of Conein, "He tearfully asked me to forgive him for the Diệm action."

Anti-Castro campaign

From 1957 to 1963, Lansdale worked for the Department of Defense in Washington, serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Operations, Staff Member of the President's Committee on Military Assistance, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations. During the early 1960s, he was chiefly involved in clandestine efforts to topple the government of Cuba, including proposals to assassinate Fidel Castro. Much of this work was under the aegis of "Operation Mongoose," which was the operational name for the CIA plan to topple Castro's government.

Encouraged by the successes that he had in the Philippines with psychological operations, Lansdale drafted a number of proposals along similar lines for Cuba. One suggestion, originated in October 1962, suggested firing “star shells from a submarine to illuminate the Havana area" at night on 2 November, All Soul's Day, in order "to gain extra impact from Cuban superstitions." Simultaneously, he suggested spreading "rumor inside Cuba, about portents signifying the downfall of the regime and the growing strength of the resistance."

Retirement

thumb|Grave at Arlington National Cemetery

His 1972 memoir, In the Midst of Wars. An American's Mission to Southeast Asia, covered his time in the Philippines and Vietnam up to December 1956.

In 1975 he was called before the Church Committee to testify on plots to kill Castro.

Lansdale's biography, The Unquiet American, was written by Cecil Currey and published in 1988; the title refers to the common, but incorrect, belief that the eponymous character in Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American was based on Lansdale. According to Norman Sherry's authorized biography of Greene, Lansdale did not officially enter the Vietnam arena until 1954, while Greene wrote his book in 1952 after departing Vietnam. It is more likely that he was the inspiration for the character Colonel Hillandale in Eugene Burdick's and William Lederer's joint novel The Ugly American published in 1958.

Many of Lansdale's private papers and effects were destroyed in a fire at his McLean home in 1972. In 1981, Lansdale donated most of his remaining papers to Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

JFK film

In Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK, the "General Y" shown as organizing the assassination of President Kennedy was unmistakably Lansdale. Historian Max Boot was highly critical of the General Y story:

Personal life

Lansdale died of a heart ailment in his sleep on February 23, 1987. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was twice married and had two sons from his first marriage.

Works

Books

Correspondence

Memo to Wesley R. Fishel (Sep. 6, 1955).
Memo to Wesley R. Fishel (Dec. 19, 1954).
Letter to Wesley R. Fishel (May 1, 1961).

References

Footnotes

Citations

Sources

External links

Official Air Force Biography
Gibney, James. "The Ugly American" . Review of Edward Lansdale's Cold War by Jonathan Nashel. The New York Times, January 15, 2006.
Marc D. Bernstein, History.net, Ed Lansdale's Black Warfare in 1950s Vietnam
Imperial War Museum Interview