IN THAILAND: A CLOAK-AND-DAGGER REUNION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP89G00643R001000100012-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 7, 2011
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: November 23, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07 CIA-RDP89G00643R001000100012-2
TO:
Compt
D/Ex Staff .
SUSPENSE
VG SLIT
INFO
STAT
Exec ive retary
3 Dec .87
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 J Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP89GO0643R001000100012-2
OFFICERS
President: Geoffrey MI. Jones
Vice Presidents: Ray S. Cline
Emilio 0 Daddario
Regional VPs: Peter Karlow
Western USA
Richard Dunlop
Central USA
Eddwin J. Pulzell. Jr.
Southeast USA
Patrick Dolan
Europe
Secretary: Edward F. Boughton
t Treasurer. William Duff
Asst. Secretary
James R. Weldon
Asst. Treasurer
William J. Morgan, Jr.
EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE
Bruce Anderson
Carole G. Bird
Raymond L. Brittenham
John A. Bross
Peter D. Cini
Mon. William E. Colby
Max Corvo
Aline Griffith de Romanones
William J. Hood
Lawrence R. Houston
John Howley
Rev. Blahostav S. Hruby
Henry B. Hyde
Edward Hymofl
Albert E. Jolis
Kathleen A. Kearns
Hon. Francis L. Kellogg
Albert G. Lanier
Leonard P. Laundergan
Elizabeth P. McIntosh
Bonnie Ursin Moran
Dr. William J. Morgan
Hon. Julian M. Niemczyk
Lt. Gen. William W. Quinn
Harry A Rositzke
Peter M. F. Sichel
Emily C. Stone
Kay Sugahara
John Weitz
DONOVAN AWARD
COMMITTEE
Mon. John A. Hlatnik
Raymond L. Brittenham
Joseph R. Coolidge
Patrick Dolan
Henry B. Hyde
Hon. Clark MacGregor
Turner H. McBaine
Elizabeth McIntosh
James St. Lawrence O'Toole
MEMBERSHIP
COMMITTEE
Franklin Cantield,Chairman
( Carl F. Eifler
Elizabeth P. McIntosh
STATRobert Macnair Morgan
VETERANS OF OSS
40th FLOOR
30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10112
[phone] ? Telex: 127429
November 23, 1987
President and Board of Trustees
Colby College
Waterville, Maine 04901
It was brought to my attention that in the November 15th
Sunday edition of the New York Times the faculty of your
college has voted to ban recruiting students for the Central
Intelligence Agency.
We former proven practitioners of intelligence operations
so helpful to the winning of World War II, are most amazed
that the faculty of such a grand old American college as Colby
should be so innocent, naive or unable to understand that if
we do not have a modern secret intelligence agency, we might
as well give up the struggle and decide Western civilization
is too-effete to protect itself against our enemies. The
-reasons reported as given by your faculty for the ban are so
false they need no refutation; your faculty is simply misinformed.
In the dangerous world in which we live, clandestine as
well as overt intelligence is a harsh necessity, and the need
of our best brains in this effort is vital.
We exhort you, therefore, to take a firm stand against this
inane action of your faculty and permit the CIA to interest your
best intellects in the furtherance of intelligence activities,
without which the United States will never be able to meet on
equal terms the secret agencies of other nations, some of which
represent a pestilence that crawls in the darkness. Colby owes
this to America -- and certainly some of its students seem to
think so.
Yours truly,
Geo rdy M. T . ones
President
GMTJ/gl /
cc: Hon. William H. Webster V
Director
Central Intelligence Agency
Execubu- Registry
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP89G00643R001000100012-2
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP89G00643R001000100012-2
OFFICERS
President: Geoffrey M.T. Jones
Vice Presidents: Ray S. Cline
Emilio O. Daddario
Regional VPs: Peter Karlow
Western USA
Richard Dunlop
Central USA
Eddwin J. Putzell, Jr.
Southeast USA
Patrick Dolan
Europe
Secretary: Edward F. Boughton
Treasurer. William Duff
Asst. Secretary
James R. Weldon
Asst. Treasurer.
William J. Morgan, Jr.
EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE
Bruce Anderson
Carole G. Bird
Raymond L. Brittenham
John A. Bross
Peter D. Cini
Hon. William E. Colby
Max Corvo
Aline Griffith de Romanones
William J. Hood
Lawrence R. Houston
John Howley
Rev. Blahoslav S. Hruby
Henry B. Hyde
Edward Hymoff
Albert E. Jolis
Kathleen A. Kearns
Hon. Francis L. Kellogg
Albert G. Lanier
Leonard P. Laundergan
Elizabeth P. McIntosh
Bonnie Ursin Moran
Dr: William J. Morgan
Hon. Julian M. Niemczyk
It. Gen. William W. Ouinn
Harry A Rosltzke
Peter M. F. Sichel
Emily C. Stone
Kay Sugahara
John Weitz
DONOVAN AWARD
COMMITTEE
Hon. Owen McGivern, Chairman
Hon. John A. Blatnik
Raymond L. Brittenham
Joseph R. Coolidge
Patrick Dolan
Henry B. Hyde
Hon. Clark MacGregor
Turner H. McBaine
Elizabeth McIntosh
James St. Lawrence O'Toole
Edwin J. Putzelt, Jr.
MEMBERSHIP
COMMITTEE
Franklin Canfield,Chairman
Carl F. Effler
Elizabeth P. McIntosh
Robert Macnair Morgan
VETERANS OF OSS
40th FLOOR
30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10112
[phone] ? Telex: 127429
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP89G00643R001000100012-2
Scene
In Thailand: A Cloak-and-Dagger Reunion
T hey were members of that dwindling
band that Franklin D. Roosevelt once
called "my secret army," now unarmed,
and far from secret anymore. Almost all
were in their late 60s and early 70s, no
longer lean and flat-stomached as they
were in those World War II days of dan-
ger and glory. But whatever their physical
condition, the visiting band of Americans
had great stories of derring-do to tell and
a wonderful place to tell them: Bangkok's
Saranrom Palace, a 105-year-old stately
structure that serves as Thailand's For-
eign Ministry. Last month the palace was
the site of a special reunion dinner for
71. a former U.S. Navy colonel from
Washington who boasted a new artificial
hip joint. Devlin was in Burma during the
war with oss Detachment 101, which won
the U.S. Presidential Unit Citation for its
guerrilla activities against the Japanese.
He added, looking down at his Brooks
Brothers seersucker suit. "Now we're just
old boys."
But very special Old Boys, not to
mention Old Girls. The members of the
oss group had each anted up at least
510.000 for a week-long visit to Thailand
that included the Free Thai commemora-
tion. oss get-togethers have been annual
j .:
Recalling days of danger and glory: OSS vets and spouses at Bangkok's Grand Palace
some 70 members of the fabled Office of
Strategic Services, precursor of the mod-
ern CIA, a handful of whose members had
fought to free Thailand from its wartime
Japanese occupiers.
There was William Pye, for example. a
balding, semiretired Massachusetts busi-
nessman who now works in real estate.
During the war Pye, now 68. trained the
first Thai natives who joined the oss from
the Free Thai Movement, the anti-Japa-
nese resistance. He led the group overland
from China's Yunnan province into Thai-
land, where they reported Japanese troop
movements and pinpointed targets for Al-
lied bombers flying from India.
Along with Pye was Francis Loet-
terle, 69. a retired executive from Arizo-
na. Loetterle jumped behind Japanese
lines into Thailand in 1945 as leader of a
second team of resistance fighters to make
the leap. The entire first team of partisans -
was spotted by the occupiers and shot out
of the sky. "We were civilians who joined
the oss to do a job," said Francis Devlin,
events in the U.S. and Europe, but this
was the first of its kind held in Asia.
Perhaps no single Thai was more hos-
pitable than.the host at the Foreign Min-
istry's recepl{od and commemorative din-
ner. Foreign Minister Siddhi Savetsila. A
small, wiry man, Siddhi. 68. is also the
Thai air chief marshal. But he is proudest
of all that after Pearl Harbor. while a stu-
dent at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, he joined the Free Thai
Movement. Siddhi came back to his
homeland in 1945 as an OSS agent to lo-
cate Allied prisoners of war. As the minis-
ter told his guests in a voice trembling
with emotion. "I always look back with
pride to my time with the OSS."
So did all those present at the gather-
ing, an unlikely crew of former corporate
executives, engineers and bankers. Their
days of hard action were far behind-
-most said -they-had-given-up -sportslike_
squash and tennis in favor of more medi-
tative rounds of golf-but memories were
still fresh and spirits exuberant. "If we
hadn't dropped the atom bomb, we were
ready to go into the soft underbelly of the
Japanese in Thailand, Indochina and Sin-
gapore," declared Willis Bird, 78, a retired
business consultant from Pennsylvania.
Bird is confined to a wheelchair but still
looks willing, if given the command, to try
that invasion anyway.
Not all the oss alums served in Thai-
land. or even in Asia, for that matter.
More than half fought and schemed in
Europe and arranged espionage missions
with Tito's Yugoslav Partisans, the
French Maquis and the Italian resistance.
But all felt equally comfortable basking in
the recognition of the feats performed by
their comrades-in-arms in Thailand.
"When you belong to the oss fraternity,"
says Geoffrey M.T. Jones, a debonaire,
mustachioed former television producer,
"there is an immediate congenial inter-
change." Jones should know. A cloak-
and-dagger man who parachuted behind
the lines into France, he is full-time presi-
dent of the Veterans of oss, a voluntary
organization founded in 1947 that now
claims a worldwide membership of more
than 1.000.
The gala dinner at the Thai Foreign
Ministry was a Cinderella affair: black-tie
dress. ball gowns, vintage wines, warm
speeches. But another rare honor awaited
the vd1s: an audience with King Bhumibol
Adulyadej, the constitutional monarch,
who usually offers such meetings only to
visiting heads of state. The King met the
oss vets at Chitrlada Palace, the massive
Victorian-style royal residence. In a ses-
sion of almost an hour. Bhumibol ex-
pressed his gratitude for the OSS and its
exploits in his kingdom.
When not hobnobbing with royalty,
the former spooks behaved like any other
tourists. They shopped in the watery Riv-
er City and gawked at the three-spired
Grand Palace, the gold-roofed edifice
that is a re-creation of the splendors of
the old Siamese capital, Ayutthaya,
which was sacked by the Burmese in
1767. On their last day in Thailand, the
vets visited the legendary bridge on the
Kwai River that was built on the backs of
Allied prisoners of war. The OSS alumni
laid a wreath in memory of the Pows who
died in the effort.
Back at Bangkok's Oriental Hotel,
the oldsters gabbed away a final evening
on the banks of the Chao Phraya, the
River of Kings, which flows through the
heart of Bangkok. "If I had to launch an
operation to blow up a bridge, I'd use one
of those rice boats out there to get to the
target," said Jones, pointing at a low-
-slung-craft that floated slowly by. There
was no war, no bridge, no operation. But
there was still a bit of fire left in the war-
riors from oss. -By Dean &-11s/8&Vkok
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP89GO0643R001000100012-2
BANGKOK POST TUESDAY P1OVEMBER 3, 1987,
friend$tip
reunion of
-
ON A stormy night more than d2
years ago , Flrande Loetterle pars- .
chuted into Thailand where under - r - .
the noses of the Japanese army he .
and his small team trained some
300 "Free Thai" in sabotage, street
fighting and jungle warfare during
the closing months of World War D
Last week the 69-year-old retired
business executive was reunited
with a number of his surviving
"students" as well as fellow Amen-
can secret agents, guerrillas and
propagandists who made up an au-
dacrous, decorated, sometimes con-
troversial spy outfit known as the
Office of Strategic Services.
by
Dents Gray
The one-time operatives, some
slow of step or walking with the aid
of canes, called each other by their
code names, carried tags of tong
disbanded units' and reminisced
about clever intelligence gambits,
costly blunders and life - and not
infrequently death - behind Japa-
nese lines.
Alexander MacDonald, com-
mander of an OSS unit in Thailand,
met his communications man Dil-
worth Brinton for the first time
since the war and went shopping
with his former wife Betty McIn-
tosh, who served with OSS in China
and wrote a book titled "Undercov-
er girl." Her speciality was concoct-
ing rumours, lies and fake orders to
demoralise Japanese forces.
"Frankly, Fin not big on dirty
tricks, the CIA. But ours was a
wonderful mission and without
question one of the finest experi-
ences of my life," Loetterle said. "I
was s appreciated - and am to this
da The Thais never forgot."
Indeed the 70 OSS veterans,'..
wives and widows were accorded a
welcome normally reserved for
heads of state, including an audi-
ence with His Majesty the King.
Besides forging bating personal
? ties between the Americans and
former "Free Thai," many of whom
rose to prominent positions, the
OSS is widely credited here with
helping to check postwar demands
by the British and other allies that
Thailand be treated as an enemy
nation since it had formally sided
with the Japanese.
Thailand's ambassador to Wash-
ington, Seni Pramoj, refused to pre-
sent his country's declaration of
His Majesty graciously accepted the Donovan Medal as a symbol of friendship from Geoffrey Jones. President of the Veterans c
OSS and the William J. Donovan Memorial Foundation. on the occasion of the ICng's 60th birthday. The presentation took plea
at Chitrlada Palace last Thursday. Picture by Royal courtesy.
war and began organising the anti-
Japanese resistance at home and
abroad. The top "Free Thai" OSS
agent in Thailand was a man
named Pridi Banomyong, code-
named "Ruth," who became a
prime minister in the immediate
postwar era, when several demobi-
lised OSS officers chose to remain
in Thailand.
MacDonald, who was flying to-
wards a drop zone in Thailand'
when the war ended, started the
English-language newspaper
Bangkok Post. Willis Bird, who still
lives in Bangkok, pioneered Thai-
land's stock market. Jim Thompson
revived the country's silk industry
and disappeared in the Malaysian
jungles under still mysterious cir-
cumstances in 1967.
These were among a talented
group of young men who volun-
teered to serve in an agency set up
July 11, 1941, to sprearhead Amer-
ica's intelligence effort in the war.
Led by William "Wild Bill" Dono-
van, a charismatic and freewheel-
ing officer, the OSS was blooded in
North Africa and then entered the
European theatre where it was ac-
cused by some orthodox US com-
manders of waging a "private war."
"We worked with anybody who
would help us win the war, and
they weren't all Sunday school
types," recalled Geofrey Jones, cur-
rent president of The Veterans of
the OSS. "We tried crazy things -
but some of them were successful."
OSS agents recruited Mafia
members, Roman Catholic priests
and fashion models. Jones said one
project floated was to attach fire
bomblets to bats which were to land
beneath Japanese houses. The bats
proved a homing species and re-
turned upon release to ignite the
experimental site headquarters.
But the OSS also notched major
triumphs, including the heroic op-
erations of Detachment 101 which
wreaked havoc behind Japanese
lines in Burma. It is regarded ar
the first American unit to orgamsi
local guerrillas for intelligence anc~
combat, and a forerunner of tht,
Green Berets in Vietnam.
In Vietnam, the OSS workei
with Hod Chi Minh's guerrillas -
and after victory argued witi
Washington that the United State,
should have maintained its tie.
with thelrevolutionary leader rathh
er than side with the French ii
Indochina.
The OSS was disbanded on Sep
tember 20, 1945, and while some o,
its members, like McIntosh, joiner
its succes'so'r- the Central Intelli1
gence Ag' ency - many returned tt
civilian life.
Jones said about 1,000 belong tr,;
the veterans group, and the name'
of 750 others who served with OS~
are known. The organisation hol
periodic get-togethers, but th
Bangkok "reunion of friendship;
was the first in Asia. - AP
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP89G00643R001000100012-2