The first intimations of how things were about to change, and not for the better, came shortly after Lansdale’s departure, when the new chief of the CIA’s Far East Division, Al Ulmer, visited Saigon to announce “that the era of free-wheeling improvisation was over, and that the CIA in Saigon would begin operating like a normal station, with more emphasis on intelligence collection.”73 The next CIA chief of station, Nicholas Natsios, who took over in the spring of 1957, concentrated, as an in-house history
