Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
Presidential approval. Following on the spot discussions with US and Vietnamese officials he will forward to the Director of the Task Force specific recommendations for action in support of the attached program.
This appears to have been the high point of Lansdale's role in Vietnam policy. Lansdale by this time had already sent (with Gilpatric's approval) messages requesting various people to meet him in Saigon, May 5. This is from a memorandum he sent to Richard Bissell, then still a Deputy Director of the CIA, requesting the services of one of his colleagues from the 1955–1956 experience in Vietnam:
I realize Redick is comnmitted to an important job in Laos and that this is a difficult time in that trouble spot. I do feel, however, that we may yet save Vietnam and that our best effort should be put into it.
Redick, in my opinion, is now so much a part of the uninhibited communications between President Diem and myself that it goes far beyond the question of having an interpreter. His particular facility for appreciating my meaning in words and the thoughts of Diem in return is practically indispensable to me in the role I am assigned in seeing President Kennedy's goal for Vietnam. 9/
But none of this was to be. Present files contain a thermofax of McNamara's copy of the mamorandum Gilpatric sent to the President. In McNamara's handwriting the words (Lansdale) "will proceed to Vietnam immediately" are changed to "will proceed to Vietnam when requested by the Ambassador." As we will see below, when the Task Force Report was redrafted the next week, Lansdale's key role disappears entirely, at the request of the State Department, but presumably with the concurrence of the White House.
IV. KENNEDY'S APRIL 29 DECISIONS
Although our record is not clear, it appears that the cover memorandum was sent to the President as Gilpatric had signed it, and that McNamara's correction reflected a decision made after the paper went to the President, rather than a change in the language of the memo. In any event, at a meeting on April 29, President Kennedy approved only the quite limited military proposals of the draft report it transmitted. Decisions were deferred on the balance of the paper, which now included an annex Issued April 28 on much more substantial additional military aid believed required by the situation in Lao&. The military measures approved during this first go-around were:
(1) Increase the MAAG as necessary to insure the effective implementation of the military portion of the program including the training of a 20,000-man addition to the present GVN armed
