IN THE MIDST OF WARS: AN AMERICAN'S MISSION TO SOUTHEAST ASIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100010049-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 24, 2000
• Sequence Number: 49
• Publication Date: April 1, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

Or Rele1s r _ tin, ion to early
R f S faUg pecial Committee on Indoc ina held ctober [1954] including items about
CPYRGHT
IN THE MIDST OF WARS:
An American's Mission
to Southeast Asia
by Edward Geary Lansdale
Harper & Row, 386 pp., $12.50
Reviewed by Jonathan Mirsky
CPYRG "rD" 9 April 11972 CPYRGHT
L". With the exception of the Pentagon
Papers, Edward Geary Lansdale's
memoir could have been the most valu-
able eyewitness account of the inter-
r,ationalizing of the Indochinese war.
Lansdale, a "legendary figure" even in
his own book, furnished the model for
the Ugly American who, from 1950
through 1953, "helped" Magsaysay put
down the Iluk revolution in the Philip-
pines. He then proceeded to Vietnam
where, between 1951 and 1956, he stuck
close to Ngo Dinh Diem during Diem's
first shaky years when Washington
couldn't make up its mind whom to
tap as the American alternative to I-io
Chi A1inh. Lansdale's support insured
Diem as the final choice for Our Man
in Saigon. While the book's time span
is, therefore, relatively brief, the period
it covers in the Philippines and Viet.
nam is genuinely important.
There is only one difficulty with In
the Midst of Wars: from the cover to
the final page it is permeated with lies.
That Harper & Row finds it Possible
to foist such a package of untruths on
the public-and for $12.501-several
months after the emergence of the
Pentagon Papers, and years after the
Publication of other authoritative
studies, exhibits contempt for a public
trying to understand the realities of
our engagement in Vietnam.
The lie on the jacket describes Lans-
dale merely as an OSS veteran who
spent the years after World War 11 as a
"career officer in the U.S. Air Force."
In the text Lansdale never offers any
explicit evidence to the contrary. In-
deed, on page 378-the last of the text-
he states that at the very time Diem
was being murdered in Saigon, "I had
been retired from the Air Force."
For all I know Lansdale drew his pay
from the Air Force and, as the photo.
graphs in his book attest, he certainly
Wore its uniform. This is irrelevant.
Lansdale was for years a senior opera-
tive of the Central Intelligence Agency;
on Page 244 of the Department of De-
fense edition of the Pentagon Papers,
Lansdale, two other men, and Allen
Dulles are identified a epre n n
Approved for I e`ie .,
Why is this important? B cause it ay holiday of workers upon takeover.
there is one word Lansdale uses re- The day following the distribution of
peatedly it is "help"-ancl 1 uses it hese leaflets, refugee registration
personally, simulating a Lon Ranger- ripled."
like urge to offer spoutaueo is assist-
ance. Thus, the first clay he ever saw lie refugees-Catholics, many of
Diem, ". . . the thought oc urred to whorl had collaborated with the
me that perhaps he needed 1 lp.... I rench-were settled in the South, in
voiced this to Ambassador) Bath.... onunutlities that, according to Lans-
Heath told me to go ahead. ' The in- ale, were designed to "sandwich"
ormal atmosphere contin s when Iortherners and Southerners "in a
_ansdale, upon actually meet ng Diem, ultural melting Pot that hopefully
immortalizes him as "the lert and could give each equal opportunity."
eldest of the seven dwarfs deciding Robert Scigliano, who at this time
what to do about Snow Whi e." as advising the CIA-infiltrated Michi-
Further desires to serve inf rnl Lans. an State University team on how to
tale's concern for the "masses of ' help" Diem, saw more than a melting
eople. living in North Viet am who 1 ot:
would want to ... move out cfore the
ommunists took over." Thes unfortu-
ites, too, required "help." Splitting
is "small team" of Americas s in two,
ansdale saw to it that "()no hal
cfugee work in the North."
"Major" Lucien Conein, w11o was to
lay the major role the CIA h d in the
lurder of Dieni in 1963, is ide tilled in
he secret CIA report include by the
sines and Beacon editions of the
entagon Papers (see SR, Jan 1, 1972)
s an agent "assigned to MA G [Mili-
iry Assistance Advisory Gr up] for
over purposes." The secre report
efers to Concin's refugee " elp" as
ortherners, practically all of whom are
i fugces, [have] preempted many of the
ioice posts in the Diem government....
[ lie] Diem regime has assumed the as-
t ?ct of a carpet bag government in its
sproportion of Northerners and Ccn-
alists ... and in its Catholicism.... The
uthern people do not seem to share the
a iticonununist vehemence of their Nortlt.
c -n and Central compatriots, by wvhorn
t icy are sometimes referred to as un.
m liable in the communist struggle,
[ Vliilej priests in the refugee villages hold
n formal government posts they are P..cn-
c ally the real rulers of their villages and
s rve as contacts with district and pro,
v ncial officials.
nc of his "cover duties." His cat job: raham Greene, a devout Catholic,
responsibility for developin a Para- served in 1955 after a visit to Viet.
ilitary organization in the orth, to rn, "It is Catholicism which has
e in position when the Vietnl nh took h Iped to ruin the government of Mr.
over . . . the group was to b trained iem, for his genuine piety has been
lid supported by the U.S. as atriotic e ?ploited by his American advisers
ietnamese." Conein's "helpfu " teams u til the Church is in danger of sharing
Iso attempted to sabotage Hanoi's t e unpopularity of the United States."
1 rgcst printing establishm nt and Wherever one turns in Lansdale the
'reek the local bus company. At the a counts are likely to be lies. Ile re-
eginning of 1955, still in H noi, the p its ]low Filipinos, old comrades
IA's Conein infiltrated mor agents f om the anti-Huk wars, decided to
i to the North. They "becam normal ., clp" the struggling Free South. The
itizens, carrying out everyc ay civil s ontancity of this pan-Asian gesture
ursuits, on the surface." Ag ression v rms the heart-until one learns from
ottt the North, anyone? L nsdale's own secret report to Presi-
Lansdale expresses particul r pleas- d nt Kennedy that here, too, the CIA
re with the refugee move ent to h d stage-managed the whole business.
le South. These people "oug it to be T le Eastern Construction Company
rovided with a way of rnakin a fresh tt rns out to be a CIA-controlled
art in the free South.... [ ietnam] " echanism to permit the deployment
was going to need the vigor us par- o Filipino personnel in other Asian
cipation of every citizen to make a c untries for unconventional opera-
ccess of the noncommunist part of ti ns.... Philippine Armed Forces and
e new nation before the f roposed o her governmental personnel were
lebiscite was held in 1956." ansdale 's eep-dipped' and sent abroad."
odestly claims that he "passe along" Elsewhere Lansdale makes much of
i leas on how to wage psycl ological D em's success against the various
warfare to "some nationalis s." Thes ts, Cao Dai, Ifoa Hao, and Binh
entagon Papers, however, re eal that X tyen. (At every step Diem was ad-
tic CIA "engineered a black psywar vi ed by Lansdale who, at one pathetic
strike in Hanoi: leaflets signe by the m ment, even holds the weeping Chief
g
o0pjt t-` 1 a 4tRdMI ?#'PO&}4q=gin de
 Approved For Release 2000/05/23 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000100010049-3
MISSING PAGE
ORIGINAL DOCUMENT MISSING PAGE(S):
Approved For Release 2000/05/23 : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000100010049-3