The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

by Max Boot

Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge expected Lansdale to orchestrate these various agencies in order to get “an effective political-social program moving in Viet Nam.” But Lansdale was authorized to act only in an “advisory capacity.” He would have no power to compel compliance—the same problem that had handicapped him during Operation Mongoose. Somehow, he was supposed to find a way of “tactfully and persuasively braiding together the separate economic, social, information, military, and other programs as necessary.”1 The problem was that all of the American agencies that Lansdale was supposed to “braid together” had far more money, manpower, and mandates than his Senior Liaison Office had, and they were all headed by strong-willed personalities who were not inclined to cede him an inch. It was, in the words of Bert Fraleigh of USAID, “a relatively small pond filled with many large sharks gobbling up or chasing the pilot fish. Cabot [Lodge] is like the ponderous but happy porpoise in all this and can’t tell the fish apart even with a program.”