Saigon Mission Foreign operative lucien Conein
LUCIEN EMILE CONEIN
He was a born to unwed parents and first registered under his mother surname but eventually his father L. X. Conein acknowledged the child. Lucien’s father died five years later and his mother Estelle arranged for him to live in the United States with strict relatives in Kansas. Despite his mother’s intentions, Lucien was known to associate with other youths that had wild reputations and dropped out of high school. Conein later worked as a printer and eventually joined the 137th Infantry Regiment of the Kansas National Guard. He returned to France during WWII to join its Army in the course of nineteen forty and served in an antitank battery group but was forced to escape the country when it fell to German forces.
The next year Lucien Conein joined the US Army to receive multiple promotions and became a US citizen. Amid nineteen forty-three he was assigned to an officer training regiment at the US Army’s base within Fort Benning and enlisted with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Following his clandestine and paramilitary training at multiple OSS bases Conein went to the United Kingdom for additional warfare education at the British Special Intelligence School. He was among the Jedburgh forces dropped into France amidst nineteen forty four to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Nazis. Whilst one year later Conein transferred to OSS Detachment 202 and was training irregular forces within Asia to lead attacks targeting Japanese forces. Following WWII he received the Bronze Star for service yet despite his successful military background one superior noted Lucien was reckless and evaded official policies.
Conein would further develop his network of contacts within Asia following the war and when the OSS became defunct he was transferred to its new incarnation the Strategic Services Unit (SSU). One of his SSU assignments was to marry an influential French woman he prior had undertaken a relationship with after France was liberated but they divorced less than two years following. He was used by the SSU’s later incarnation the Central Intelligence Group and finally joined the Central Intelligence Agency during the late nineteen forties. When the following decade began Conein was stationed in Germany undertaking Agency operations as the Chief of Nuremberg Operation Base. Conein was transferred to headquarters briefly however officials noted that administrative duties were not his forte and reassigned Lucien to the Saigon Military Mission to conduct paramilitary operations in Vietnam amongst nineteen fifty-four.
L. Conein Amidst The Ninteeen Eighties
Fellow Saigon Mission operative and Agency employee Rufus Phillips noted that Conein possessed contacts that reached into the Vietnamese French social circles. Lucien associated with old Corsican sources, North Vietnamese emigres, and made new relationships with members of the French and Vietnamese armies. Two years following he temporarily left the Agency to undertake required training with the US Army after over a decade of assignments with the OSS, SSU, CIG, and CIA. He would advise the US Army’s assistant chief of staff for intelligence at the end of the nineteen fifties and gain the notice of Edward Lansdale who became a later influential Agency leader.
Upon Conein’s retirement from the US Army and return to CIA during nineteen sixty-one he was sent to advise Saigon Chief of Station William Colby under military cover. In the course of nineteen sixty-three he collaborated with revolutionary generals in Saigon that overthrew Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem. He later served in additional local missions and was present for the overthrow of successive Vietnamese regimes. By nineteen sixty-eight, Conein left official service but would later attempt to use his former contacts to aid in a planned illegal sale of weapons to rebel groups abroad.
