John K. Singlaub

Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, who waged clandestine warfare for the U.S. Army and the C.I.A. from the World War II years to Vietnam, then retired from the military under pressure after repeatedly criticizing President Jimmy Carter’s national security policies, died on Saturday January 29 2022. He was 100. General Singlaub trained resistance fighters in German-occupied France and rescued Allied prisoners of war held by the Japanese during World War II. He conducted intelligence operations during the Chinese Civil War and in the Korean War while assigned to the C.I.A., and he commanded secret Army forays into North Vietnam and neutral Laos and Cambodia during the 1960s to ambush Communist troops. But for all his military feats, General Singlaub’s career ended over issues of grand strategy. Carter removed him as the military’s chief of staff in South Korea in May 1977 after he told a reporter for The Washington Post that the president’s plan to withdraw American troops there could lead to another North Korean invasion. Carter's order recalling General Singlaub from Korea was the first action of its type since President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur as the Pacific commander when MacArthur advocated extending the Korean War into China. In 1978 Singlaub was forced to retire. In the 1980s, General Singlaub played a major role in raising funds and arranging arms purchases for the Nicaraguan rebels known as contras, who were battling the leftist Sandinista government. General Singlaub told Congress that Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, while a National Security Council staff aide, had approved of his being highly visible in his support for the contras. General Singlaub, who acted as a private citizen in helping the contras, was never accused of wrongdoing in the investigation. John Kirk Singlaub was born on July 10, 1921, in Independence, California. He joined the Army during his senior year at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was commissioned as a lieutenant in January 1943. He was an attractive recruit for the Army’s Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the C.I.A. He parachuted into central France in August 1944 as the leader of a three-man Jedburgh team, the code name for the O.S.S. units linking up with the French Resistance. General Singlaub had three children, Elisabeth D’Antoni, John O. Singlaub and Mary Ann Singlaub from his first marriage, to Mary (Osborne) Singlaub, which ended in divorce. Apart from his wife, Joan, a list of survivors was not immediately available.