In early September 1963, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric told Lansdale that McNamara was thinking of phasing out his Special Operations office. A few days later, Lansdale wrote an anguished and only recently declassified reply: “I assume that the underlying reason for my being appointed as Assistant to the Secretary of Defense was to help the U.S. to achieve some solid victories in the cold war. If this assumption is correct, then, unhappily, I have not succeeded.” Lansdale was upset not only that he was cut out of the loop on Vietnam but also that, the Green Berets aside, his
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