Thanks for the New Yorker article, I’m able to read all of it and will do so.

In short, I think America’s use of the first nuclear weapons told the world’s ruling classes that in a general nuclear war they too would die. Small proxy wars became the norm in America’s effort to make the world safe for American investors.

[en.m.wikipedia.org]

And more from that wiki:
“ In 1981, Patti stated that Julia Child, who had worked at the OSS in 1945, had allegedly submitted his position papers on Vietnam to appropriate authorities, but the way in which he had found them upon his retirement was exactly as she had sent them, and they had never been opened or read”

History stranger than fiction.

Ho Chi Minh and Thomas Jefferson.

[thehistoryreader.com]

@WilliamCharles From there fast forward to Graham Greene’s The Quiet American as reasonably captured by the movie starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. It is kinda vague, if memory serves, if Greene was side-eying the exploits of Ed Lansdale who helped fight the Filipino Huk rebellion (vampires?), spent relevant quality time in Vietnam, and then proceeded into Operation Mongoose.

@WilliamCharles Interesting, I had heard this but had not seen the information published. Thanks,