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

by Max Boot

Saigon had been infiltrated by more than four thousand Vietcong guerrillas in civilian clothes indistinguishable from the general population, hiding their weapons inside shipments of firewood, rice, and tomatoes. In the predawn darkness of January 31, they fanned out to attack the government radio station, the South Vietnamese military headquarters, the presidential palace, the U.S. embassy, and other targets. Their objective was to hold these locations for forty-eight hours until Main Force reinforcements could arrive in the city. At the six-story U.S. embassy on Thong Nhut (Reunification) Boulevard, completed only three months earlier, nineteen sappers wearing black pajamas and red armbands and armed with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, and satchel charges managed to blast their way inside the perimeter, although they failed to penetrate the chancellery building itself. By morning, all the attackers had been killed or captured.