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

by Max Boot

It is hardly a surprise, then, that Allen Dulles was inclined to support Lansdale as much as he did Kim Roosevelt and other swashbuckling covert-action specialists. He loved to take favorite field officers to the White House and introduce them to Eisenhower, saying, with a twinkle in his eye, “Mr. President, here’s my best man!”44 Intensifying a post-1945 shift in the exercise of American influence—quite a change from prewar days, when the United States did not even have a civilian intelligence agency—the Eisenhower administration did not cavil at using covert operatives to manipulate foreign elections. But even Dulles cautioned Lansdale that he had to “realize the delicacy of his position” and “conduct himself with extreme discretion.”