The answer can be found in the history of the OSS, which gave Lansdale his start in intelligence work. The ethos of the OSS, as we have seen, was “Woe to the officer who turned down a project because, on its face, it seemed ridiculous,” and that was Lansdale’s motto too. His deputy Sam Wilson recalled that Lansdale “was always coming up with outlandish ideas. He would release them like clay pigeons, and they’d systematically get shot down. One of them would sprout wings and fly away and be a real pigeon.”43 But while Lansdale dreamed up a few madcap schemes for Mongoose, he was hardly the only
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