This was the bureaucratic equivalent of a suicide note, and it duly produced the expected result. On September 30, 1963, Lansdale received notice that his office was being eliminated. “The mice finally gnawed through the work and got my office ‘disestablished,’ ” Lansdale wrote to Colonel Ed Black, an army friend in Saigon.36 Lansdale elected to retire effective October 31, 1963. His hair was still thick, his brush mustache still dark, his posture still military erect. He was just fifty-five years old and still vigorous,
