Lansdale, Edward Geary

Lansdale, Edward Geary (1908–87) U.S. intelligence officer, general, and Cold War counterinsurgency specialist, born in Detroit, Michigan. His dual career began in World War II when he worked simultaneously for the civilian Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Army intelligence. After the war, the air force (to which he had transferred) loaned him to the Office of Policy Coordination, a highly secret interagency espionage group that became part of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1952. Although he was never an employee of the CIA, Lansdale often worked on its behalf using the cover of an air force officer. During the early decades of the Cold War , he became legendary for identifying and funding effective noncommunist alternative leaders. He engineered psychological warfare operations in North Vietnam (1954–55) and channeled U.S. support to the new Republic of South Vietnam and its president. Under President John F. Kennedy, Lansdale was put in charge of Operation Mongoose, which involved attempts to eliminate Fidel Castro and disrupt the economy of Communist Cuba. Lansdale was retired from active duty, a major general, in 1963.

Lansdale became so mythologized as a secret warrior that he formed the prototype for two fictional characters: Alden Pyle in Graham Greene's The Quiet American (1955) and Col. Edwin B. Hillandale in William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick's The Ugly American (1958).