Edward Lansdale

Edward Lansdale was a United States Air Force major general who spent much of his career on assignment to the Central Intelligence Agency. He is best known as the key advisor to Ramon Magsaysay, initially secretary of defense and then president of the Phillipines, where the Hukbalahap insurgency was successfully ended.

In 1954, Lansdale was in the original CIA team to Vietnam, the Saigon Military Mission. While influential at first, and seen originally as the key counterinsurgency expert in the country, he gradually lost his role and was essentially out of the decision loop by the time of the Kennedy Administration.