In the wake of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in1954, three Americans came together in a clandestine alliance that would play a major role in establishing Vietnam as an important arena in the Cold-War contest for hearts and minds. The three were Edward Lansdale, the legendary CIA officer who had engineered the defeat of the Communist Huk rebellion in the Philippines; William Lederer, a Navy captain who, along with Eugene Burdick, would go on to coauthor "The Ugly American"; and Thomas Dooley, a Navy doctor who first rose to prominence with a book titled "Deliver Us from Evil" and who would later found Medico. Drawing on primary source material, this monograph establishes the extent of their alliance and their shared commitment to a non-military solution in Vietnam. A native of New Castle, Delaware, Edward F. Palm served in Vietnam as an enlisted man with the Marine Corps' Combined Action Program. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation on the moral vision of selected Vietnam novels and has since published and presented on various aspects of American culture as well as imaginative representations of the American experience in Vietnam. Returning to the Marine Corps in later life, Palm became an officer and taught military affairs at the University of California, Berkeley, and English at the United States Naval Academy before retiring as a major in 1993. He went on to serve as a tenured professor and division chair at Glenville State College (in West Virginia) and has held dean appointments at Maryville University of St. Louis and Olympic College, in Bremerton, Washington. He has also taught full-time online for Strayer University. Now fully retired, Palm devotes his time to photography and writing, including a regular opinion column for his local newspaper, the Kitsap Sun. He now makes his home in Bremerton, Washington.