MovieChat Forums > The Quiet American (2003) Discussion > Read about Edward Lansdale, the real 'Py...

Read about Edward Lansdale, the real 'Pyle'

posted 18 years ago by woodway77
10 replies | jump to latest

For some interesting information, people may want to read about the historical figure who was the inspiration for Pyle, General Edward Lansdale. He was a career Army > Air Force officer who worked for the CIA and the State Department. He helped President Ramon Magsaysay of the Philippines defeat the communist-backed Huk rebels, and attempted to assist President Ngo Dinh Diem to establish a representative democracy in Vietnam. Unfortunately he was thwarted in his Vietnam venture by competing bureaucratic interests in State, Defense, CIA, etc.. An excellent biography of Lansdale is "Unquiet American" by Cecil B. Currey.

[–] robbo88 18 years ago

Although many people believe Pyle was based on Lansdale, Greene has been quoted, denying that Pyle was based on Lansdale, yet Greene did comment on how he "never had the misfortune to meet Lansdale".

[–] TruthWinsOut 17 years ago

Lansdale was also identified as being in Dallas at the time of the Kennedy assassination. People can draw their own conclusions why he was there.

[–] williamahearn 17 years ago

Oh? Who identified him? The same nitwits who identified two of the so-called tramps as E. Howard Hunt and Harrelson? Get a life. Jeez, Louise, haven't you figured out yet that you've been manipulated by the conspiracy community?

William
www.williamahearn.com

[–] ranmel 16 years ago

No, no...the tramps were E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, get your conspiracies straight!

[–] taggerez 15 years ago

No, they were not.

[–] Carts 16 years ago

Maybe you are the "Nitwit" and just trying to manipulate people

Lansdale was identified by many including L Fletcher Prouty, www.prouty.org, also see "Edward Lansdale: Unquiet American" by Jon Nashel - he confirms the identification but suggests maybe Lansdale was there to "help" JFK.

Lansdale was involved in many crimes in the name of American colonialism as a CIA operative under Air Force cover.

For more information about Lansdale, watch Stone's "JFK" or for another angle see "Executive Action" with Burt Lanscaster.

He was not the role model, read "Quiet American" omnibus with notes by John Clark Pratt

http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-American-Viking-Critical-Library/dp/014024350X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214196103&sr=8-4

As for William Hearn, this post offsets his manipulation

[–] Tsunoba 16 years ago

Huh.

I wasn't actually expecting to find the answer on here, but I thought I'd try anyway.

Thanks for answering one of the questions on my midterm. XD

[–] The_Dying_Flutchman 16 years ago

The point of all of it is the CIA is incapable of pulling dead gerbils out of anyone's ass. Ask a sailor.

Nothing is more beautiful than nothing.

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Tchoutoye 10 years ago

Most books and online info about Lansdale is blatant CIA propaganda, including his wikipedia page. Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty's 1992 book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy is the best source on Lansdale. Prouty is no random tinfoil hat nutjob. He was the Pentagon's chief of special operations in the early 1960s. Prouty basically blames Lansdale's destabilization campaign for the following war between the US and Vietnam.

Some really good quotes from Prouty's book and other background on Lansdale on this website: www.whokilledjfk.net/richard_helmscia.htm

Colonel Lansdale went to Vietnam and established the Saigon Military Mission (SMM), chiefly a CIA covert warfare office, and immediately set about destabilizing the country as a pretext for increased U.S. involvement. The SMM's damage to the meager existing order in Vietnam was incalculable. By midsummer more men had joined the SMM, and its mission was broadened. Its members were teaching "paramilitary" tactics - today called "terrorism" and doing all they could to promote the movement of hundreds of thousands of "Catholic" Vietnamese from the north with promises of safety, food, land, and freedom in the south and with threats that they would be massacred by the Communists of North Vietnam and China if they stayed in the north.

This movement of Catholics - or natives whom the SMM called "Catholics" - from the northern provinces of Vietnam to the south, under the provisions of the Geneva agreement, became the most important activity of the Saigon Military Mission and one of the root causes of the Vietnam War.