William Harvey King and Edward Lansdale

Lansdale with CIA Director Allen Dulles and United States Air Force Chief of Staff General Nathan F. Twining and CIA Deputy Director Lieutenant General Charles P. Cabell at the Pentagon in 1955.

Is it interesting that William Harvey King, who had been in charge of Operation Mongoose, and who was effectively sacked by John McCone after he had the mother of all bust-ups with RFK, was then sent to Rome to build up the Italian component of Operation Gladio?

Edward Lansdale is not altogether uninteresting either. In early 1961 he became the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, and he briefed Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on the nature of the war in Vietnam. He showed McNamara examples of primitive homemade Viet Cong weaponry, and explained that the war was more a political war than military. He said “It doesn’t take weapons and uniforms and lots of food to win. It takes ideas and ideals.” After 10 minutes McNamara abruptly ended the briefing with the words "Is that all?"

Also in 1961, Lansdale helped to publicize the story of Father Nguyễn Lạc Hoá, the "fighting priest" who had organized a crack militia, the Sea Swallows, from his village of anticommunist Chinese Catholic exiles. Lansdale recruited John M. Deutch to his first job in government, working as one of Robert McNamara's "Whiz Kids". Deutch would go on to become the Director of Central Intelligence for the CIA.

In October 1961 President Kennedy sent Lansdale on a fact-finding mission to Vietnam headed by General Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow.

In an early 1962 conversation between Lansdale and McNamara, he reportedly told McNamara, who was trying to develop a list of metrics to allow him to scientifically follow the progress of the war, that he needed to add an 'x-factor'; McNamara wrote that down on his list in pencil and asked what it was. Lansdale told him it was the feelings of the common rural Vietnamese people. McNamara then erased it and sarcastically told Lansdale that he could not measure it.

Rufus Phillips had a confrontation with former Ambassador to South Vietnam Frederick Nolting in late September or early October 1963, following the Krulak–Mendenhall mission:

He [Nolting] had been surprised by what I had said at the first meeting at the White House and thought my opinions that we were losing the war unwarranted. I didn’t think I had gone that far. He said, “You just ruined it.” I replied, “No, you ruined it by not getting Lansdale out there when it would have done some good.” We glared at each other for a moment. He had clearly not understood that I wanted to save Diem but also to tell the truth about Vietnamese reality. Afterward I felt a sense of regret. He had tried mightily to do the right thing, yet he had not understood his personal limitations or those imposed by the formality of his position [i.e., the fact that the South Vietnamese for cultural reasons would not tell the truth about their difficulties unless it was done in private informal settings with Americans whom they had developed a personal level of trust]. 

 

[Rufus Phillips, Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned]

According to Daniel Ellsberg, Lansdale was ordered in late September or early October 1963 to McNamara's office. The two went to McNamara's limo and drove to the White House and met with President Kennedy. Kennedy wanted to send him to Vietnam due to his ability to reason with Diệm, but he wanted to know if Lansdale would support removing Diệm from office if it became necessary. Lansdale said no, that Diệm was his friend (Lansdale also believed that replacing Diệm would lead to disaster). Kennedy seemed to understand and didn't show any disappointment, but in the limo McNamara was furious: “You don’t talk to the president of the United States that way. When he asks you to do something, you don’t tell him you won’t do it.” Lansdale was ordered to retire from the Air Force by the end of October. During Lansdale's 31 October 1963 retirement reception Defense Secretary McNamara walked through the room and never looked at Lansdale.

Diệm would be assassinated the next day.

Watchmen (1986)

The X-Files: The Shape of the Conspiracy - Part Four: Cancer and Contagion

If the Japanese and the French got their moments in the limelight in Season Three, in Season Four it's the Russians' turn. It feels logical then, rather than overdue, when in 'Tunguska' and 'Terma' the series pays due homage with more than adequate care and attention both to the heritage of Cold War paranoia on conspiracist lore and to the Tunguska mystery in ET mythology. And of course diplomats and sneering congressmen are also in on the Conspiracy. (Immigration officials, alas, are just hapless, clumsy oafs.) The Conspiracy's abuse and murder of oldies feels just as real (and in its own way just as horrifying) as its abuse and murder of unborn children: at either end of life, the cold bleak "ethics" of modern medicine are similarly threatening and frightening.

Krycek's back, and his and Mulder's special relationship is just as hot and spicy as ever. And just to up the phwoar factor, both Mulder and Skinner get shirtless scenes. And which way Krycek swings politically (and Mother Russia with him) is also up for grabs. Far-Right? Far-Left? In post-Soviet Russia there's not very much difference, so it's a neat shout-out both to the enigmatic Russian reality (perfectly reflected in the political confusion of post-Trump America, where politics is more likely to be a matter of race than ideology) and to the conspiranoid mentality that can recast a communist like Lee Harvey Oswald as the stooge of a "fascist" Deep State.

Meanwhile, back in the bleak world of dark, semi-deserted hospitals, it's confirmed (in 'Memento Mori') that rogue clones are still actively trying to sabotage the Project. Indeed, the "rebel colonists" subplot has arguably been in the works since Season One, with an internal resistance to the Syndicate's plans has been implicit all the way through: after all, if it hadn't been for individual flunkies of the Syndicate having crises of conscience (whether consciously or not!) there would never have been a Deep Throat, nor any other leaks for Mulder to work on.

In 'Tempus Fugit' and 'Max' though, we see the other side of the Syndicate - in other words the military themselves who actually carry out (without question, of course!) the cover-ups, the salvaging of crashed UFOs, and indeed covert warfare against the alien colonists. Implicitly, all this is being done under the umbrella of MJ12, and there's no sign of Garnet or the Smoking Man and his friends here. And in fact things are more exciting without them. We're invited to believe that these are soldiers (or airmen, in this case) not so much only obeying orders as relentlessly following protocols that were laid out more than a generation ago. If civilians get in the way, that's just too bad.

And interestingly enough it works because it feels as if this is The X-Files going back its roots, before the big baddies suddenly became a bunch of fat and/or old men in suits sitting around in their posh club and making only vaguely cryptic comments about what's going on with all the menace and dread of a tea party at the Ritz. Scott Garrett (aka 'Moustache Man' to fans) is genuinely scary precisely because he is just a government functionary, and of course that he ends up being abducted himself is a reminder that in The X-Files there are conspiracies within conspiracies... which of course would eventually give birth to the "Rebel Colonists" subplot in the following season. 

We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.

The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.

Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r

— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025

These people have lost the plot completely.

The EU is rescuing the American Deep State

No sooner have they got the money together to get their online newsfeed up and running again than Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are peddling conspiracy theories about Donald Trump and, er, the government of Serbia.

RFE/RL was of course the old CIA propaganda broadcaster during the Cold War. Did it do "a good job" encouraging the people of Russia to stand up to communism? I'll let others be the judge of that - except to say that trying to persuade people to swap socialism for liberalism is obviously something of a fool's errand, both practically and ideologically.

Now of course though we're through the looking glass. After the Cold War, the Deep State effectively went into business for itself, except that it was still selling "liberal" capitalism and what in Britain is effectively Blairite "centrist dad" politics. And even after Trump tried to clip its wings, drain the swamp, shine a light into the darkness, and so on... it turned out that the only thing he could do was try to "de-fund" it.

And look how that turned out! The worst sort of "blowback"!

But then that is the sort of problem you can expect to run into when you only have two political parties, one of which is completely evil, and one of which only cares about money.

[H/T: Last 3xit]

Steve Sailer writes ...

[D]uring the recent “racial reckoning,” many Americans seemed utterly ignorant for purposes of public policy discussion of two fundamental facts of American sociology: that blacks tend to commit more serious crimes per capita and that they average lower in intelligence.

And yet, absolutely nothing suggested that they had forgotten these unfortunate realities when it came to their own private lives. White urbanite liberals in 2020 didn’t suddenly move to low-rent neighborhoods because they realized that their fears of crime were just a racist delusion, nor did they enroll their children in low-test-score schools because only racists think that the racial makeup of a school affects how fast the teachers can cover the material.

During the mostly peaceful George Floyd protests, metropolitans instead tended to move to small towns and suburbs, reversing the urbanization trend of the lower-crime early 2000s.