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Maj. Gen. John Okay. Singlaub, who waged clandestine warfare for the U.S. Military and the C.I.A. from the World Struggle II years to Vietnam, then retired from the army beneath stress after repeatedly criticizing President Jimmy Carter’s nationwide safety insurance policies, died on Saturday. He was 100 and had been residing in Franklin, Tenn.
The Particular Forces Affiliation chapter in Tampa, Fla., a corporation of veterans who had waged covert warfare, stated that Normal Singlaub’s spouse, Joan, had notified a fellow member of the group, Billy Waugh, of his demise.
Normal Singlaub skilled resistance fighters in German-occupied France and rescued Allied prisoners of struggle held by the Japanese throughout World Struggle II. He performed intelligence operations throughout the Chinese language Civil Struggle and within the Korean Struggle whereas assigned to the C.I.A., and he commanded secret Military forays into North Vietnam and impartial Laos and Cambodia throughout the Sixties to ambush Communist troops.
A sturdy 5-foot-7 with an everlasting army brush haircut, Normal Singlaub appeared match for fight lengthy after his final struggle. He was “the type of man you’d wish to have in your aspect in a barroom brawl,” Pat Murphy, an acquaintance and the writer of The Arizona Republic, instructed The New York Instances in 1986.
His quite a few decorations included the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Benefit and the Purple Coronary heart.
However for all his army feats, Normal Singlaub’s profession ended over problems with grand technique.
Mr. Carter eliminated him because the army’s chief of workers in South Korea in Could 1977 after he instructed a Washington Publish reporter that the president’s plan to withdraw American troops there might result in one other North Korean invasion.
Normal Singlaub later maintained that his remarks have been off the file, an assertion disputed by The Publish. However Mr. Carter was outraged at what he perceived as a problem to civilian authority.
His order recalling Normal Singlaub from Korea was the primary motion of its sort since President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur because the Pacific commander when he advocated extending the Korean Struggle into China.
After being reassigned to Fort McPherson in Georgia, Normal Singlaub criticized the Carter administration’s army insurance policies once more in April 1978, at a chat earlier than R.O.T.C. cadets at Georgia Tech. He referred to as Mr. Carter’s choice to not produce a neutron bomb “ridiculous” and “militarily unsound,” and criticized the administration’s efforts to relinquish management of the Panama Canal.
The Military ordered him to report back to the Pentagon instantly, asserting a day later that it had accepted his request to retire.
Within the Eighties, Normal Singlaub performed a serious function in elevating funds and arranging arms purchases for the Nicaraguan rebels referred to as contras, who have been battling the leftist Sandinista authorities. He solicited contributions from non-public sources for meals, clothes and medication, and traveled to South Korea and Taiwan to hunt army assist for the contras from these international locations.
Normal Singlaub testified earlier than Congress in Could 1987 throughout its inquiry into the Iran-contra affair — the Reagan administration’s secret sale of arms to Iran with diversion of a few of the proceeds to the Nicaraguan rebels, regardless of a congressional ban on such assist.
Normal Singlaub instructed Congress that Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, whereas a Nationwide Safety Council workers aide, had accepted of his being extremely seen in his assist for the contras. The purpose, Normal Singlaub testified, was to take public consideration away from the key authorities program. Colonel North was finally convicted of obstructing Congress, destroying official paperwork and accepting an unlawful present, however the convictions have been later overturned and dismissed as a part of an immunity deal.
Normal Singlaub, who acted as a non-public citizen in serving to the contras, was by no means accused of wrongdoing within the investigation. However in his 1991 memoir, “Hazardous Responsibility,” written with Malcolm McConnell, he bristled at what he thought-about the defaming of his character.
“For a decade I’d been smeared as a right-wing fanatic, even a crypto-fascist, by some members of the media,” he wrote. “I’d all the time discovered this ironic, contemplating the truth that I used to be one among a handful of American troopers who had risked torture and execution by each German and Japanese fascists whereas serving behind enemy strains in Europe and the Far East.”
John Kirk Singlaub was born on July 10, 1921, in Independence, Calif., and developed an curiosity in turning into an Military officer whereas at Van Nuys Excessive College within the Los Angeles space.
He joined the Military throughout his senior yr on the College of California, Los Angeles, and was commissioned as a lieutenant in January 1943. He volunteered to switch to a parachute regiment, the place his coaching — and French research at U.C.L.A. — made him a beautiful recruit for the Military’s Workplace of Strategic Companies, the forerunner of the C.I.A. He parachuted into central France in August 1944 because the chief of a three-man Jedburgh staff, the code identify for the O.S.S. models linking up with the French Resistance.
William Casey, his case officer and later the director of central intelligence within the Reagan administration, had provided cyanide tablets to his Jedburgh staff, so members might shortly commit suicide in the event that they have been captured. “No sir, I don’t intend to be captured,” Normal Singlaub instructed him, as he later recalled in his memoir.
The Jedburgh staff taught resistance fighters methods to ambush German troops and sabotage their gear, a part of an effort to delay a German response to the Allied invasion of southern France in August 1944, two months after the D-Day marketing campaign in Normandy.
Quickly after Japan surrendered in August 1945, Normal Singlaub led a parachute staff that rescued emaciated and brutalized Australian and Dutch prisoners of struggle held by the Japanese on China’s Hainan Island earlier than they may very well be executed.
Normal Singlaub was assigned to the C.I.A. throughout the Chinese language Civil Struggle, serving throughout the late Nineteen Forties in Manchuria, the place he aided the Nationalist military dealing with Communist forces.
He was deputy station chief of the C.I.A. in South Korea throughout the Korean Struggle, then turned a Common Military battalion commander. He was wounded in motion and acquired a Silver Star for gallantry.
Throughout the Vietnam Struggle, Normal Singlaub commanded the army’s Research and Observations Group, a obscure identify for an unconventional warfare unit that carried out ambushes and sabotage and used soiled tips to attempt to stem the movement of Communist troops and provides into South Vietnam alongside the Ho Chi Minh Path.
In retirement, he headed two anti-Communist organizations, the World Anti-Communist League and its American affiliate, the USA Council for World Freedom.
Normal Singlaub had three kids, Elisabeth D’Antoni, John O. Singlaub and Mary Ann Singlaub from his first marriage, to Mary (Osborne) Singlaub, which resulted in divorce. Other than his spouse, Joan, a listing of survivors was not instantly obtainable.
Normal Singlaub usually took walks via Arlington Nationwide Cemetery to “replicate on the battles of my very own life.”
He was very a lot the outdated soldier. “Sitting down on the hillside within the morning solar, I really feel a well-recognized coolness,” he wrote in his memoir. “I attain down and untangle my Military canine tags.”
A long time after he joined the Military throughout World Struggle II, the tags remained round his neck, “symbolic of my dedication.”
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