Colonel
Edward Lansdale, chief of the CIA's Saigon Military Mission, meets with
Ngo Dinh Diem after the CIA entered Vietnam in 1954 to help the
pro-Western Vietnamese wage political-psychological warfare. (Douglas
Pike Photo Collection, The Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech Univ.)
He was, for some, the genius cowboy who sometimes
skirts the rules to achieve the just goals of Western democracy; for
others, the embodiment of an arrogant foreign policy gone dangerously
wrong.
A bit miffed at his last-minute orders to proceed directly from the
Philippines to Vietnam, with no time to return home to Washington to
prepare for his new covert mission or visit his family, Colonel Edward
Lansdale flew into Saigon in the rattling bucket seat of an amphibian
aircraft from the 31st Air-Sea Rescue Squadron. It was the first
available flight out of Clark Air Force Base to Saigon, and the crewmen
agreed to take him if he didn't mind the extra flight time while they
performed their patrol over the South China Sea. It was June 1, 1954,
and as he sipped coffee from a paper cup he thought about what lay
ahead. He'd heard about the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and knew that
the French and Viet Minh were working out a peace settlement in Geneva,
but beyond that, his knowledge about the country was slim.
It was at a meeting convened in the Pentagon six months earlier to
discuss Vietnam that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had turned to
Lansdale and told him, "We're going to send you over there," to which
Lansdale replied, "Not to help the French!" No, he was reassured, he
would help the Vietnamese put down the Communist-dominated Viet Minh in
Indochina. Allen Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
joined with his brother in backing Lansdale to serve as the founder and
chief of the CIA's Saigon Military Mission (SSM), which was to quietly
enter Vietnam and help the pro-Western Vietnamese wage
political-psychological warfare.
The CIA was willing to give Lansdale, a San Francisco advertising
executive before World War II, great latitude based on his success in
black operations in the Philippines from 1950-53. A U.S. Army officer
who transferred his commission to the Air Force after the war, he had
helped the Philippine army put down the Hukbalahap (Huk) rebellion.
Philippine Communists formed the guerrilla group originally to fight the
Japanese in World War II. After Huk efforts to participate in the
postwar government were rebuffed and a reportedly fraudulent election
took place in 1949, the Huks began their guerrilla war to overthrow the
U.S.-backed government. In waging war against the Huks, Lansdale wielded
a wide array of counterinsurgency and psywar tools, some playing upon
Filipino superstitions. One such successful unconventional tactic
exploited villagers' belief in vampires, another on ghosts of dead Huks.
In Lansdale's "Eye of God" campaign, suspected guerrillas living in a
village were targets of psywar teams that surreptitiously painted a
menacing eye on a wall facing the suspect's hut. Although most notorious
for these types of psywar operations, it was primarily Lansdale's
application of advertising principles and media manipulation that led to
the honest election of Ramon Magsaysay as president in 1953.
But Vietnam was a different country with much different problems.
Nevertheless, during his first two years there, Colonel Lansdale
would solidify his top position in the pantheon of shadowy American
psychological and unconventional warriors. He would become for some the
prototype of the genius cowboy who sometimes skirts the rules to achieve
the just goals of Western democracy; for others the embodiment of an
arrogant foreign policy gone dangerously wrong in Southeast Asia. In
either case, the "Chief," as reports on his exploits referred to
Lansdale, had an enormous impact on Vietnam in the pivotal months that
followed the stinging defeat of the French, setting the stage for the
deadly drama that would play out in the turbulent two decades to come.
After Landing at Tan Son Nhut air base in Saigon, Lansdale hitched a
ride into the heart of the city to the home of Lt. Gen. John W. "Iron
Mike" O'Daniel, who was the post chief of the Military Assistance
Advisory Group (MAAG) in Saigon. The MAAG had been established in 1950
by President Harry Truman to work with French forces in Indochina.
Lansdale's selection as the man to run paramilitary and political
operations against the Viet Minh in Indochina shouldn't have come as
too
much of a surprise to the dapper 46-year-old, however. After all, he
had served the previous year as a psychological warfare adviser on an
evaluation team tour of French Indochina, headed by General O'Daniel.
Lansdale's observations, recorded in several memoranda on the nature of
Asiatic insurgencies, dissected the Communists' successful tactics, and
underscored the French and American lack of fluency regarding
counterinsurgency.
"There is general conviction that the Viet Minh has 'national spirit'
on its side and that the Franco-Vietnamese forces do not," Lansdale
wrote in one memorandum. "This is the result of successful
psychological-political warfare by the Viet Minh. There has been no
effective psychological warfare by the Franco-Vietnamese forces to
expose this as a myth." Lansdale was intent on understanding, and
applying, the psychological aspects of warfare against Communists. In
Indochina, he aimed to use black propaganda and urge the French and
their Vietnamese allies to seize the initiative in countering the Viet
Minh's hold over the people.
In Saigon, Lansdale took on the cover of an assistant air attaché at
the U.S. Embassy, an arrangement that allowed him to work with both the
ambassador, Donald Heath, and General O'Daniel's MAAG. When Lansdale
announced himself at the embassy, however, the diplomatic staff was
indignant; the SMM was not the only CIA operation in town. A regular CIA
station, responsible for traditional intelligence and spying, also
existed, separate from Lansdale's unit. The station chief, Emmett
McCarthy, considered Lansdale to be an amateur. McCarthy insisted on
control of all secret communications with Washington, and Lansdale had
to comply because he had no independent communications channel. An
intense rivalry developed. Eventually, after Lansdale quietly complained
to Secretary of State Dulles about him, a more amicable station chief,
John Anderton, replaced McCarthy.
For the first month after arriving in Saigon, Colonel Lansdale was
the entire SMM staff. Then on July 1, Major Lucien Conein, an
experienced covert operator who had been in the OSS and who had jumped
into Vietnam to help guerrilla forces fight the Japanese during World
War II, joined Lansdale's team.
But the Chief faced some daunting challenges. Since Ho Chi Minh
proclaimed the Independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September
1945, the xenophobic Vietnamese had only two choices: Support Ho's Viet
Minh republic or their French colonial masters. Addressing this, the
French had created a partially autonomous government, called the State
of Vietnam, headed by the aging playboy emperor Bao Dai. Although it had
a governing body called the Chamber of Deputies, none of its members
had any real constituency. Most Vietnamese hated the French and felt
little loyalty to Bao Dai, who lived in France.
As the Geneva negotiations, which had convened in early May
coinciding with the fall of Dien Bien Phu, progressed, the State of
Vietnam's French and American backers scrambled to shore up its
legitimacy and capability. Ngo Dinh Diem, a well-known Catholic,
anti-Communist nationalist residing in Europe, was appointed by Bao
Dai—with U.S. support—as prime minister on June 16.
Good First Impressions with Diem
The day after Diem's arrival in Saigon on June 25, Lansdale paid a
visit and presented the new prime minister with an unofficial,
"personal" paper full of actions he could take to handle the rapidly
changing situation in his country. The Chief's ideas included immediate
steps to integrate all non-Communists military and paramilitary forces
into a national army, encouragement of nationalist groups to participate
in the political process and the institution of agrarian and economic
reforms to make the government more responsive and effective. As his
aide translated the letter to the prime minister, Lansdale recalled,
"Diem listened intently, asked some searching questions, thanked me for
my thoughtfulness, folded up the paper, and put it in his pocket." Thus,
as he had done with the Philippine leader Magsaysay, Lansdale quickly
gained Diem's trust and became his closest American confidant.
But how could he assist Diem in setting up a unified nationalist
government in the south when none of the hundreds of sects, with their
clandestine organizations, competing ideologies and armed camps, were
interested in supporting a new government? Lansdale knew that Diem
initially controlled virtually nothing and needed to quickly solidify
his grip on power and improve the functioning of his government.
Realizing that the army was the strongest and the only unifying factor
in bringing a nationalist government to Vietnam, Lansdale set to work,
conferring with officials such as Defense Minister Phan Huy Quat and
General Nguyen Van Hinh, chief of staff of the Vietnamese National Army.
Lansdale became an unofficial adviser to Captain Pham Xuan Giai, head
of the 5th Bureau (G-5), the psychological warfare department of the
Vietnamese army general staff, and immediately set about to establish a
school to train the Vietnamese troops in psywar as well as to enhance
their image among the Vietnamese people.
Lansdale fervently believed it was necessary for Diem's government to
appeal directly to the Vietnamese population, and he planned to employ
classic psywar tactics to enhance those efforts. "If the Viet Minh have
sold the idea of being anti-French, the Vietnamese can sell the idea of
being anti-Chinese and prove that the Viet Minh are controlled by
Chinese," he had written in a memorandum. Lansdale was convinced that
the Viet Minh had waged a successful psychological campaign by
word-of-mouth, and he was determined to counteract it through the use of
his own word-of-mouth rumors, black leaflets and other psywar methods.
The colonel also believed that he would be able to convert many of the
Vietnamese who had fought with the Viet Minh against the French but who
didn't necessarily want to be Communist—they just wanted French rule to
end.
Meanwhile, at the Geneva Conference, the French and the Communists
finally reached an accommodation on July 21, 1954. With the effective
cease-fire date of August 11, the U.S. military personnel ceiling was to
be frozen at its existing number. Lansdale had to scramble to beat the
deadline to beef up his SMM. Word quickly went out and 17 additional CIA
officers were recruited, including Army Lt. Col. Gordon Jorgenson as
Lansdale's second-in-command. Many of these recruits held rank in the
U.S. military as well as the CIA and had experience in paramilitary and
clandestine intelligence operations, but, as Lansdale grumbled, none
besides him had served in psywar operations.
"I still had no office, but I had been assigned a small bungalow on
Rue Miche near the heart of town the week before," Lansdale wrote in his
autobiography. "Gathering my newcomers at the bungalow, I described the
situation to them. They were to be trainers in counter guerrilla
warfare, but the French had yet to give permission for U.S. training of
the Vietnamese in subjects known by the team. They would have to be
patient and wait."
The Chief split his staff in half and put Conein in charge of the SMM
team sent north, which would temporarily operate out of Hanoi with two
objectives: develop a paramilitary organization that would be in place
once the Viet Minh took over; and sabotage the Communist government. The
southern team based in Saigon focused on trying to help Diem establish a
stable government.
In addition to the cease-fire, the Geneva Accords stipulated that
there was to be a phased disengagement of the French Union and Viet Minh
forces, and the 17th Parallel was established as a dividing point; the
Viet Minh would regroup north of the line, and the French forces would
regroup in the south. With the French departure, the State of Vietnam
was to become fully independent. After a period of two years, a unified
national election would be held in 1956 that would determine the
governance of all of Vietnam, north and south. Ho Chi Minh was confident
he could win in such an election, but the French and Americans believed
that Geneva's two-year window would give them the time needed to build a
viable nation in the south that could win over enough of the Vietnamese
to elect a Diem-led government—one that would be open to U.S.
influence.
The Geneva Accords' Article 8 was key to achieving that goal. It
declared that for a period of 300 days everyone in Vietnam could freely
decide "in which zone he wishes to live." Lansdale saw this as a
"Geneva-given" chance for large numbers of Vietnamese to move from the
north before the Communists took over. He hoped to be able to influence 2
million to migrate to the south, giving Diem the upper hand in the
Geneva-mandated 1956 vote.
Rumors, Black Leaflets & Fortune Tellers
To effect his scheme for persuading northerners to move south,
Lansdale needed to convince them that their living conditions would soon
deteriorate under Communist rule. Working closely with the U.S.
Information Service, Lansdale's team began a disinformation campaign
wherein Vietnamese G-5 soldiers dressed in civilian clothes were sent
north to local marketplaces to spread a rumor that the Viet Minh had
made a deal to allow Chinese troops into the north again, and that those
troops were terrorizing the Vietnamese, raping women and stealing. To
help sell the idea, villagers were reminded of how Chinese troops had
behaved after World War II and were so frightened that many of them
packed up and moved south. The rumors were so convincing that Lansdale
reportedly received a query from officials in Washington, asking him if
there was any credence to the report that two Chinese regular divisions
were in north Vietnam.
Building on the successful rumor campaign, the SMM started printing
and covertly distributing "black leaflets" that were purportedly from
the Viet Minh. These leaflets gave instructions to citizens on how they
should conduct themselves when the Viet Minh takeover of Hanoi occurred
in October. Included in the disinformation was the Viet Minh's program
for "monetary reform." The leaflet ignited anxiety that gained momentum
among the populace.
Within two days of the leaflet's distribution, the Viet Minh currency
reportedly fell to half its previous value. At the same time, the
number of North Vietnamese registering to emigrate south tripled. The
Viet Minh leadership, which quickly understood what was happening, took
to the airwaves to denounce the bogus leaflets. But, as a testament to
the effectiveness of the ruse, many Viet Minh and their supporters were
convinced that the Communists' radio denunciations themselves were
actually a psychological warfare trick undertaken by the French.
With this one black leaflet, Lansdale's team was able to sabotage the
Viet Minh currency and subvert Viet Minh population-control efforts. It
also managed to throw rank and file Viet Minh cadre into a state of
confusion and disarray—just weeks before they were to assume control of
Hanoi.
Another extremely effective SMM project aimed at convincing
northerners to migrate capitalized on the widespread Vietnamese belief
in astrology and superstition, and leveraged Lansdale's background in
communications and advertising. Noting the popularity of soothsayers
among the general populace and an absence of any publication that
carried their predictions, he struck on the idea of printing an almanac
of predictions for 1955 from well-known astrologers and noted
fortunetellers. His team sought out and paid leading Vietnamese
astrologers to make predictions about coming disasters that would
transpire coincident with the Viet Minh takeover of northern Vietnam.
While the almanac predicted prosperity for those in the south, it
foretold of hardship and calamity in the north, including bloody
reprisals against villagers resisting Viet Minh economic and agrarian
reforms. These almanacs were smuggled deep into Viet Minh territory, and
to enhance their credibility, they were offered for sale rather than
distributed for free. As Lansdale predicted, they were then passed along
throughout the north, and the almanac proved to be an especially big
seller in the main refugee port of Haiphong. Indeed, the almanac proved
to be so popular among the Vietnamese that it had a second printing and
turned a profit, which Lansdale used to subsidize his other operations.
Knowing firsthand the power of the press, Lansdale sought to destroy
the largest printing presses in Hanoi, and in September the northern SMM
team raced to the site, only to find that the Viet Minh had already
placed security guards at the plant.
In an effort to destabilize the north's infrastructure, Conein's
people in Hanoi attempted to sabotage the transportation
systems—contaminating the oil supply of the city's bus company and
taking initial action to impair of the north's railroad system. Lansdale
also wanted to sabotage the north's power and water plants, and its
harbors and bridges, but the U.S. adherence to the Geneva Accords
prevented such action. Nonetheless, the team did compile detailed notes
to use for future paramilitary operations against those potential
targets. Conein's team left Hanoi along with the last French troops to
depart the city on October 9, 1954.
To discourage northward migration from the south, the SMM concocted
another black leaflet, purporting to originate with the Viet Minh
Resistance Committee, that was distributed in southern Viet Minh zones
by Vietnamese National Army soldiers disguised as civilians. It
helpfully informed people heading to northern Vietnam that "they would
be kept safe below decks from imperialist air and submarine attacks."
The missive also instructed refugees to bring warm clothing with them.
The "warm clothing" reference was then carefully coupled with a
word–of–mouth rumor campaign that Viet Minh were being sent into China
to work as railroad laborers. Lansdale wanted Viet Minh supporters to
remain south of the 17th Parallel voluntarily so they could be
"re-educated later." He also hoped—by getting their families to
resist—to stop the abduction of other young men to the north by the Viet
Minh.
The vast majority of the Vietnamese Catholics lived in the north, and
many of them required little convincing to move south for a new start
under the anti-Communist Catholic Diem. But Lansdale was taking no
chances. For those on the fence, the SMM spread rumors that Catholics
would be arrested and executed in the north, and that even "the Blessed
Virgin Mary had gone south."
In the end, the SMM efforts contributed to a massive flow of
northerners to the south. An estimated 900,000 sought transport to the
south, which in turn led to a huge refugee problem as thousands of
registrants flooded the Haiphong port for passage. This situation
provided Lansdale another prime opportunity to get international
publicity and support. Ultimately, several nations volunteered to
provide assistance and, along with ships of the U.S. Seventh Fleet,
transported refugees south in "Operation Passage to Freedom."
In return, only about 90,000 people left southern Vietnam for the
north. Even so, the SMM took advantage of the northbound refugee flow to
facilitate infiltration of Vietnamese agents who had been trained for
future operations against the Hanoi government. The movements of the
paramilitary teams and their supplies were made under the pretense of
working with refugees. While Lansdale's SMM was successful in smuggling
men and supplies from Saigon to sites in the north, these Vietnamese
paramilitary groups actually achieved very little.
As the Chief saw it, this massive influx to the south would have a
material effect on the Geneva-mandated Vietnam-wide plebiscite specified
for the summer of 1956. Ultimately, while Lansdale fell short of the 2
million he hoped for, the transfer served to bring the populations of
northern and southern Vietnam into closer balance, at about 12 million
apiece.
Diem Solidifies His Grip
Knowing his most important mission was to solidify Diem's grip on
power and improve the functioning of his government, Lansdale worked
diligently to coerce and bribe many of Diem's southern opponents into at
least tacit support for the new south Vietnamese leader. He thwarted a
plan by the Vietnamese National Army's chief of staff to launch a coup
against Diem, and he made significant cash payments to several leaders
of the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao sects to buy their support. The powerful Binh
Xuyen criminal organization, which, with Bao Dai's consent, controlled
much of Saigon, proved the most difficult to deal with. Lansdale played a
leading role in influencing key Cao Dai General Trinh Minh The into
realigning with Diem after The had temporarily thrown his weight behind
the Binh Xuyen in March 1955. With The's support, Diem sent the army
into the Cholon area of Saigon in April to brutally crush the sect.
As Diem's support and power in the south grew and solidified, he was
emboldened to undermine and erode Bao Dai's political standing, and to
make known his refusal to countenance the Geneva-mandated all-Vietnam
election in 1956 that would likely pit himself against Ho Chi Minh.
Lansdale was encouraging Diem that his prospects in such an election
were good, and Western allies were hopeful that it would be the Viet
Minh that would pull out of the accord, but Diem had other ideas.
On the anniversary of his installation as prime minister in July,
Diem announced his intention to hold a referendum in October to
determine the future of the country in the south. A week later,
declaring a free and fair election with Communist participation
impossible, Diem proclaimed, "We will not be tied down by the [Geneva]
treaty that was signed against the wishes of the Vietnamese people."
France-based Bao Dai objected and ultimately removed Diem from his
government, but was rendered impotent in Diem's campaign against him. In
early October, Diem announced the referendum, with himself and Bao Dai
facing each other in the election, would take place October 23.
Hoping for an outcome similar to Magsaysay's in the Philippines—a
widely recognized fair election—Lansdale told Diem he would likely win
overwhelmingly and that he should avoid rigging the vote. But that was
not to be the case, and in an election fraught with intimidation and
ballot stuffing, Diem emerged victorious with more than 98 percent of
the vote. He was, however, thereafter viewed by many as morally
compromised and corrupt.
While the United States had little choice but to accept and support
Diem, even Lansdale's immense efforts could not, in the long run,
maintain American support for the leader in whom so much was invested.
Diem would stand as America's imperfect anti-Communist mainstay in
Saigon until his overthrow and assassination in November 1963—green
lighted by the Kennedy administration.
Without the assistance of Lansdale and the black operations of his
CIA team, Diem's success in achieving power and giving birth to the
Republic of South Vietnam would have been highly unlikely.
Lansdale remained in Vietnam until the end of 1956, but would return
in the 1960s as a major general. He was one of the first Americans to
recognize the truly unconventional nature of the war in Vietnam, and his
expertise in applied psychological warfare would not be matched by any
other American officer. Edward Lansdale's SMM operation in Vietnam only
became known to the public with the release of the Pentagon Papers and
the declassification of other confidential Pentagon documents in 1971.
