Roosevelt died before the end of the war, of course. Joseph McCarthy got going with his anti-communism in early 1950. Kenneth came into his office there one morning to find that his files had been dumped all over the floor. He gave the Haskell…
The Secretary of State at that point was ill, so Undersecretary of State Edward Stettinius ran the Department. Kenneth tells how Stettinius once spoke at the same occasion as Margaret, the two of them having written books, and of how openly disgusted…
Nelson Rockefeller, the Assistant Secretary for Latin American Affairs in the State Department, managed to have his chimney opened (many of the chimneys were not in working order). One day Kenneth had occasion to go in there, and he saw a load of…
Such items as desks, chairs, rugs, and so on, were prescribed according to rank in the Department. "In the State, War, and Navy Building, which then became the State Department Building, the really posh offices for Assistant Secretaries and for…
Kenneth tells the story of the office chair caper from the 1940’s. There was a fellow named Monroe Hall, who was coming back from service in Asia but who was ordered to stay for another year because of something he had done. Eventually he returned to…
Kenneth's background on Southeast Asia led him to be convinced that these colonies were going to run their own show. They were going to fight. But the State Department didn't believe it. EY didn't believe it. Yet at the end of the war, Abbot Low…
Kenneth was the first political officer FE ever had who had lived in Southeast Asia and spoke a Southeast Asian language. Up to that time, all matters regarding Souteast Asia had been dealt with by the Europeans, and the FE had to nod their heads and…
Ken and Margaretta fled from Thailand to India when the Japanese invaded. Kenneth was here when they reached this country in early 1944, and he found Ken a job with the State Department in the research section. What Ken did was much more "sedate"…
As the war really got going, people started coming into the State Department from the field, like John Davies, Jack Service, and fellows who were cashiered later on in the McCarthy era. John Davies was fired. Service made a fool of himself by making…
Hornbeck was the political adviser on Asia to the Secretary, but he arrogated to himself the responsibility of adviser to the Secretary on anything. He once delivered to Ballantyne and Kenneth an elaborate speech, all in indirection. Kenneth told him…
Kenneth talks about the head of the Far East section of the State Department, a man nicknamed "Baldy" Ballantyne, who would stutter when he didn't know what to say and would keep stuttering until he found the word he wanted. Ballantyne gave Kenneth…
When he later worked on the Operations Coordinating Board, he often said that he had been given the best outdoor job in town. He was officially assigned to follow up on all operations to carry out U.S. policy in countries from Afghanistan to the…
Kenneth speaks of what an informal situation it was in Washington at the time. One could freewheel around the town in all the government agencies. He had his own phone book that he made up of all the people who were useful to him. So often he could…
The State Department decided to hire Kenneth because they had no one who knew anything about Thailand, and Kenneth had told them there was going to be a lot more traffic of communication on Thailand. They decided they had better keep it in the…
Kenneth continued working with Donovan in an unofficial way, though he was no longer with the OSS. He helped with the Free Thai movement and then he started drafting telegrams to Gen. Timmerman in Colombo. The response to the first of these came to…
Kenneth explains that he was the person in our government who arranged for military assistance to both Thailand and Vietnam initially, when the State Department was still in the Old Executive Office Building.
Years later, U.S. News and World Report had a "Where Are They Now?" on Jean Saintenay and Kenneth Landon, asking the question of where they were presently. CBS picked it up, and Marvin Kalb came out to the Landon's home with a big crew to tape…