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The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

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Brain Graft

After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the task of turning

the old colonial entities of Annam and Cochin China

into a country called the Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam,

as it was popularly known during the twenty years of its

brief existence, fell to the creative genius of Edward Lansdale.

This was a plum assignment for the harmonica-playing, homespun

hero of American counterinsurgency. To create a nation

where none had previously existed was like Picasso facing a

blank canvas. Lansdale would have to employ all the skills of

modern salesmanship he had learned while launching new

products at his San Francisco ad agency.

Lansdale had been handling accounts for Wells Fargo Bank,

Union Trust, Nescafé, Italian Swiss Colony Wine, and Levi

Strauss (he designed their first national campaign to sell blue

jeans across the United States) when the Japanese attacked

Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He enlisted, at the age of

thirty-five, as a lieutenant in the army’s Military Intelligence

Service in San Francisco. Working for William J. “Wild Bill”

Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the

75

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