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

by Max Boot

Harvey ran this troubled, and troubling, operation once he became the CIA’s representative to Mongoose and the head of the CIA’s Task Force W, charged with overthrowing Castro. (The W—Harvey’s choice—was in honor of William Walker, an American adventurer who had ruled Nicaragua in 1856–57.)63 But Harvey did not tell Lansdale what he was up to. Everything was on a strictly “need to know” basis, and Harvey did not think that Lansdale, as an outsider, needed to know. When Lansdale tried to get information, the CIA man turned “monosyllabic”—“I got yes and no types of answers and very brief ones,” Lansdale said.64 All Harvey would tell him was “Everything’s under control.” In frustration, Lansdale would say to Harvey, “I’m not the enemy. You can talk to me.” Once, when Lansdale was talking with Harvey and a phone call came in, Harvey began talking on the phone in code. “After a while I caught on and realized he was talking about me,” Lansdale said. “The son of a bitch.”65 Such was the cult of secrecy that Harvey was mortified when Lansdale sent around a Mongoose policy paper that, among other options, listed the “liquidation of leaders.” This was done in response to a suggestion made