Lucien Conein | |
|---|---|
 Lucien Conein in uniform when awarded the FrenchLegion of Honour, 3 December 1947[1] | |
| Born | (1919-11-29)November 29, 1919 |
| Died | June 3, 1998(1998-06-03) (aged 78) |
| Buried | |
| Allegiance |  France United States |
| Branch |  United States Army |
| Rank | Lieutenant colonel |
| Service number | 01 322 769[2] |
| Awards |
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| Spouses | |
Lucien Emile "Lou" Conein (/koˈniːn/ (co-NEEN)[5]) (November 19, 1919 – June 3, 1998)[6] was a French-American citizen, notedU.S. Army officer andOSS/CIA operative. Conein is best known for his instrumental role in the November 1963 coup againstNgô Đình Diệm and Diệm's assassination by serving as AmbassadorHenry Cabot Lodge Jr.'s liaison with the coup plotters.[7]
Lucien Conein was born to Lucien Xavier Conein and Estelle Elin inParis, France at the end ofWorld War I. When he was five years old, his widowed mother sent him toKansas City to live with his aunt, who had married a US soldier.[8] Conein attendedWyandotte High School inKansas City, Kansas,[9][10] dropping out after his junior year.[8]
| External videos | |
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 Extended interview with Lucien Conein (May 7, 1981). "America's Mandarin (1954-1963)" [Ep. 3]. In:Vietnam: A Television History.WGBH Media Library & Archives.OCLC 827298014. |
In or before 1939 Conein joined the 173rd Infantry Regiment of the Kansas National Guard. He then joined the French Army and made a daring escape through North Africa after theFall of France in 1940. After receiving a hero's welcome in Kansas City, he joined the U.S. Army in September 1941 and was sent to Officers Candidate School in 1943. As a native speaker of French he was asked to volunteer for theOffice of Strategic Services (OSS).[8] Conein was reported to have had a "flair for exaggeration" and his service in the French Army "was sometimes portrayed as a more romantic-sounding assignment in theFrench Foreign Legion".[11][a]
In 1944 he was ordered to help the French Resistance during the Allied landings in Normandy. He worked with theJedburghs, a group directed by the OSS and the BritishSpecial Operations Executive.
It was then that Conein began working and living with theCorsican mafia, then called Corsican Brotherhood, an ally of the Resistance. They called him "Luigi," a nickname that stuck.[12] He was quoted:
When the Sicilians put out a contract, it's usually limited to the continental United States, or maybe Canada or Mexico. But with the Corsicans, it's international. They'll go anywhere. There's an old Corsican proverb: 'If you want revenge and you act within 20 years, you're acting in haste.'[citation needed]
Conein was sent to OSS Detachment 202 in southern China in the spring of 1945. From there he led commando raids intoFrench Indochina to attack theImperial Japanese Army.[13] He was awarded theBronze Star Medal for operations conducted during this period.[2] In August 1945 he metHo Chi Minh, who he described as a “fascinating man,” andVo Nguyen Giap, who he called a “brilliant sonofabitch.” His main complaint of the Vietnamese Communists was they served him tea rather than beer.[12]
In 1945, the War Department'sStrategic Services Unit (the successor to the OSS and a predecessor to the CIA) assigned Conein to their base in Nuremberg, Germany. His main assignments involved the resettlements of defectors and agents who had outlived their usefulness, using a combination of false documents, monetary payments, bonhomie, and implied threats.[14] It was during this time that he lost part of two fingers on his right hand - he would tell most people he was injured in a secret mission, but in truth he was working on an automobile engine and his girlfriend tried to start it.[11]
In 1954, Major Conein was sent to work under CIA operative Air Force ColonelEdward Lansdale against the government of Ho Chi Minh inNorth Vietnam, at first in a propaganda campaign to persuade Southern Vietnamese not to vote for the communists and then to help with arming and training local tribesmen, called theMontagnards working under CIA station chiefWilliam Colby.[citation needed] He was housemates with fellow CIA operativeRufus Phillips, who later wrote of him:
Conein impressed me as a dangerous man, a kind of John Dillinger on our side. There was a hint of barely restrained violence about him that his alert, blue eyes under bushy eyebrows, as well as his abrupt, blustery manner and short temper, did nothing to belie...Conein could be rough as a cob or as gallant and gracious as the occasion demanded. One Sunday afternoon in 1955 he showed yet a different side, when a group of Vietnamese with children were invited over for lunch and a swim at a house we had acquired that had a pool. I was surprised to find “Lou” in the pool, lifting the children onto his shoulders and throwing them into the water, taking care never to frighten them. He was laughing, clearly enjoying it as much as they. I was struck by the direct way he related to them and by his evident pleasure. For his friends he was generous to a fault, but he had been full of ingenuity and contrariness from an early age.[15]
The historianMax Boot would describe Conein as:
...“stocky”...with a “leathery face,” “bushy eyebrows,” and limpid blue eyes who had already developed a reputation as a “wild man.” Given Conein’s boozy proclivity for mythologizing his own life, Great Gatsby style, it was difficult to know where reality ended and the legend began. A superb storyteller, especially if fueled by pear brandy, Conein himself cautioned, “Don’t believe anything I tell you; I’m an expert liar”...Lou Conein was an irrepressible character with a fondness for dark deeds and practical jokes. He had a violent temper, a drinking habit, and an eye for the ladies.[16]
Lansdale would write glowing fitness reports of Conein and repeatedly expressed his high regard for his abilities, but privately he called Conein "the Thug."[17]
During the week-longBattle of Saigon in March 1955, Conein was shaken after he had seen a family including three children killed from a mortar attack.[18]
In 1955 a bombing campaign began which targeted U.S. diplomats' vehicles and a library in Saigon. Conein discovered that the bombing was orchestrated by the French chief of staff of TRIM (a joint American-French military training group called the Training Relations Instruction Mission. The American military advisors including Conein were assigned to TRIM). Rufus Philips arrived home to find Conein slicing blocks ofC-3 plastic explosive and attachingdetonating cords to the thin slices. Philips asked if he could help, Conein put him to work making the small bombs but refused further help (Conein said “No goddamit, you didn’t see any of this, get out of here”). Conein then drove around Saigon at night with his fiancee Elyette Brochot and threw the bombs in the yards of leading French officials after lighting the fuses with his cigarette. That night also saw Vietnamese police arrest junior French officers in a jeep with explosives and a list of American targets. The bombings of American assets stopped.[19]
Conein was advised in 1956 that he could not expect further promotion in the Army unless he again commanded troops in the field. Consequently he completed a six week course forSpecial Forces officers and then commanded two battalion-equivalent detachments in the 77th Special Forces Group. He would then have a two year assignment (1959-1961) at the CIA station inTehran as an advisor to the Intelligence Directorate of the Iranian Army; he would retire from the military as a lieutenant colonel and the CIA in 1961.[20][21]
Conein would return to South Vietnam in 1961 as a CIA contractor, despite his admission that he had 'reduced' his alcohol consumption to "four shots a day."[22]Allen Ginsberg described him as "the crucial person" in the CIA's link with the Southeast Asianopium trade.[23][better source needed]
During the lead up to theNovember 1963 coup againstNgô Đình Diệm, he served as AmbassadorHenry Cabot Lodge Jr.'s liaison with the coup plotters and delivered $42,000 of cash disbursements.[7] Just days before the coup, on 25 October 1963,Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara would, despite Conein's expertise, tell President Kennedy that Conein was "an unstable Frenchman" and attempt to use his marital history to discredit him.[24] Rufus Phillips, by then a USAID official, met with Conein hours afterDiệm's assassination and described his demeanor as "ashen," "sick," and a "towering rage."[25] Conein would secretly be awarded theIntelligence Star for his liaisons with the coup leaders.[26] Years later he got drunk in Saigon with Edward Lansdale, who said “He tearfully asked me to forgive him for the Diệm action.”[27]
Lodge's successor as ambassador,Maxwell D. Taylor, had Conein recalled from the country on 2 September 1964 after mistakenly blaming Conein for the problems between him and GeneralNguyễn Khánh. Conein was then slated for an assignment in Venezuela, but was called back to Vietnam in the summer of 1965 after Lodge returned to replace Taylor.[28][29]
Daniel Ellsberg was a teammate of Conein's in the mid-1960s. He had an affair with the mistress of a Corsican gangster, which prompted the gangster to threaten to slit Ellsberg's throat. Conein went to the gangster and pleaded for Ellsberg's life. After Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, Conein regretted saving Ellsberg's life: “If I hadn’t interceded, he might have been bumped off” he wistfully said.[30][31]
Sometime in 1967 Conein drunkenly threw flowerpots from a Saigon rooftop bar. In punishment he was transferred out of Saigon to remotePhú Bổn province, which he called PhúElba.[32] The CIA ordered him to undergo a medical physical in August 1967, after which he left Vietnam.[33]
In 1968, Conein left the CIA and became a businessman in South Vietnam.[34]
In 1972, President Nixon appointed Conein as chief of covert operations for theDrug Enforcement Administration (DEA).[5] He was considered by former CIA colleagueE. Howard Hunt for the group that undertook the 1972Watergate burglary of theDemocratic National Committee. Conein toldStanley Karnow, "If I'd been involved, we'd have done it right.[6]
Conein retired from the DEA in 1984.[35]
Conspiracy theoristL. Fletcher Prouty would accuse Conein of involvement in a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, with Conein physically present in Dallas on November 22, 1963.[36]
Conein married Elyette Brochot in 1958.[21] They had three children. At the time of his death, he was survived by six sons, one daughter, 11 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.[6] His children were Laurent P. Conein, Philippe J. Conein, Caroline (Conein) Wilson (by Elyette Brochot), and Bernard Conein, Cecil Mashburn, Serge Conein, and Charles "Chip" Conein (by previous marriages).[37]
Conein died of a heart attack, aged 78, atSuburban Hospital,Bethesda, Maryland in June 1998.[6]