it on the proto-Gringos who found the New England woods too raw and empty for their peace and filled them up with their own imported devils. Maybe it was already over for us in Indochina when Alden Pyle’s body washed up under the bridge at Dakao, his lungs all full of mud; maybe it caved in with Dien Bien Phu. But the first happened in a novel, and while the second happened on the ground it happened to the French, and Washington gave it no more substance than if Graham Greene had made it up too. Straight history, auto-revised history, history without handles, for all the books and articles and white papers, all the talk and the miles of film, something wasn’t answered, it wasn’t even asked. We were backgrounded, deep, but when the background started sliding forward not a single life was saved by the information. The thing had transmitted too much energy, it heated up too hot,hiding low under the fact-figure crossfire there was a secret history, and not a lot of people felt like running in there to bring it out.
One day in 1963 Henry Cabot Lodge was walking around the Saigon Zoo with some reporters, and a tiger pissed on him through the bars of its cage. Lodge made a joke, something like, “He who wears the pee of the tiger is assured of success in the coming year.” Maybe nothing’s so unfunny as an omen read wrong.
Some people think 1963’s a long time ago; when a dead American in the jungle was an event, a grim thrilling novelty. It was spookwar then, adventure; not exactly soldiers, not even advisors yet, but Irregulars, working in remote places under little direct authority, acting out their fantasies with more freedom than most men ever know. Years later, leftovers from that time would describe it, they’d bring in names like Gordon, Burton and Lawrence, elevated crazies of older adventures who’d burst from their tents and bungalows to rub up hard against the natives, hot on the sex-and-death trail, “lost to headquarters.” There had been Ivy League spooks who’d gone bumbling and mucking around in jeeps and beat-up Citroëns, Swedish K’s across their knees, literally picnicking along the Cambodian border, buying Chinese-made shirts and sandals and umbrellas. There’d been ethnologue spooks who loved with their brains and forced that passion on the locals, whom they’d imitate, squatting in black pajamas, jabbering in Vietnamese. There had been one man who “owned” Long An Province, a Duke of Nha Trang, hundreds of others whose authority was absolute in hamlets or hamlet complexes where they ran their ops until the wind changed and their ops got run back on them. There were spook deities, like Lou Conein, “Black Luigi,” who (they said) ran it down the middle with the VC, the GVN, the Mission and the Corsican Maf; and EdwardLandsdale himself, still there in ’67, his villa a Saigon landmark where he poured tea and whiskey for second-generation spooks who adored him, even now that his batteries were dead. There were executive spooks who’d turn up at airstrips and jungle clearings sweating like a wheel of cheese in their white suits and neckties; bureau spooks who sat on dead asses in Dalat and Qui Nhon, or out jerking off in some New Life Village; Air America spooks who could take guns or junk or any kind of death at all and make it fly; Special Forces spooks running around in a fury of skill to ice Victor Charlie.
History’s heavy attrition, tic and toc with teeth, the smarter ones saw it winding down for them on the day that Lodge first arrived in Saigon and commandeered the villa of the current CIA chief, a moment of history that seemed even sweeter when you knew that the villa had once been headquarters of the Deuxième Bureau. Officially, the complexion of the problem had changed (too many people were getting killed, for one thing), and the romance of spooking started to fall away like dead meat from a bone. As sure as heat rises, their time was over. The war passed along, this time
One day in 1963 Henry Cabot Lodge was walking around the Saigon Zoo with some reporters, and a tiger pissed on him through the bars of its cage. Lodge made a joke, something like, “He who wears the pee of the tiger is assured of success in the coming year.” Maybe nothing’s so unfunny as an omen read wrong.
Some people think 1963’s a long time ago; when a dead American in the jungle was an event, a grim thrilling novelty. It was spookwar then, adventure; not exactly soldiers, not even advisors yet, but Irregulars, working in remote places under little direct authority, acting out their fantasies with more freedom than most men ever know. Years later, leftovers from that time would describe it, they’d bring in names like Gordon, Burton and Lawrence, elevated crazies of older adventures who’d burst from their tents and bungalows to rub up hard against the natives, hot on the sex-and-death trail, “lost to headquarters.” There had been Ivy League spooks who’d gone bumbling and mucking around in jeeps and beat-up Citroëns, Swedish K’s across their knees, literally picnicking along the Cambodian border, buying Chinese-made shirts and sandals and umbrellas. There’d been ethnologue spooks who loved with their brains and forced that passion on the locals, whom they’d imitate, squatting in black pajamas, jabbering in Vietnamese. There had been one man who “owned” Long An Province, a Duke of Nha Trang, hundreds of others whose authority was absolute in hamlets or hamlet complexes where they ran their ops until the wind changed and their ops got run back on them. There were spook deities, like Lou Conein, “Black Luigi,” who (they said) ran it down the middle with the VC, the GVN, the Mission and the Corsican Maf; and EdwardLandsdale himself, still there in ’67, his villa a Saigon landmark where he poured tea and whiskey for second-generation spooks who adored him, even now that his batteries were dead. There were executive spooks who’d turn up at airstrips and jungle clearings sweating like a wheel of cheese in their white suits and neckties; bureau spooks who sat on dead asses in Dalat and Qui Nhon, or out jerking off in some New Life Village; Air America spooks who could take guns or junk or any kind of death at all and make it fly; Special Forces spooks running around in a fury of skill to ice Victor Charlie.
History’s heavy attrition, tic and toc with teeth, the smarter ones saw it winding down for them on the day that Lodge first arrived in Saigon and commandeered the villa of the current CIA chief, a moment of history that seemed even sweeter when you knew that the villa had once been headquarters of the Deuxième Bureau. Officially, the complexion of the problem had changed (too many people were getting killed, for one thing), and the romance of spooking started to fall away like dead meat from a bone. As sure as heat rises, their time was over. The war passed along, this time
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