Gregory C Lavin

Chasing Ed

In Chasing Ed: Was Major General Edward G. Lansdale the Mastermind of the JFK Assassination?, Greg Lavin "follows the money" in conjunction with the politics of the time to reveal Ed Lansdale's alleged involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Chasing Ed details author Greg Lavin's experiences with Ed Lansdale. Lavin studied Ed in graduate school at Cornell, met him in 1973, and kept in contact with him until Ed died in 1987. Letters from their correspondence can be found in the appendix of this book. Throughout their close acquaintance, Lavin repeatedly questioned Ed on a number of issues, focusing mainly on his use of finances to build modern Asian states. Ed built governments in the Philippines and South Vietnam and introduced the concept of "counter insurgency" in dealing with unfriendly Communist nations. After Ed died, Lavin discovered that as an OSS agent in World War II in the Philippines, Ed had discovered $1.2 trillion in gold, platinum, and gems taken from the Chinese by the Japanese. President Truman declared the cache a "state secret," and Ed and the intelligence community were granted control of the funds free from Congressional oversight. As Ed's career progressed in the Pentagon, he became a general officer and expert in "special operations" including assassinations. Such particularly sensitive matters required maintaining ongoing "mythologies" to hide the truth behind the operations. Lavin reveals that Ed had sufficient resources to "buy off" inconvenient opponents and could lay false stories to continue sidestepping responsibility for one particular assassination-that of President John F. Kennedy.