puts it, “more on illuminating the workings of the regime than on helping it against its adversaries.”74 For the CIA station, “normal” intelligence gathering meant recruiting a member of Diem’s housekeeping staff to steal trash from his wastebaskets. By contrast, when Lansdale wanted to know something, he went straight to Diem or another official and asked—and more often than not he learned more than traditional spies, with their elaborate tradecraft, ever did.
