THOUGH Viet Nam has been his specialty since 1961, Sir Robert Thompson was never influential with either John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson. It was Richard Nixon who embraced his views wholeheartedlymost likely because they coincide with his own.
Suave, controlled and bearing a striking resemblance to the late actor Herbert Marshall, the Cambridge-educated Thompson, 53, was knighted for devising the strategy that ultimately defeated local Chinese Communist terrorists in Malaya in the 1950s. He was then Britain's secretary for defense of the Federation of Malaya; later (1961-65), he served as head of the...