One reporter's odyssey tracking his uncle's legacy in Laos
Lou Connick was a charming humanitarian who ran aid programs in Indochina in the 1970s – and moonlighted for the CIA. Just how far did he go in fighting communism?
from the April 22, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
But he was well connected – his contemporaries at Yale University founded what would become the CIA – and he seemed to realize, especially toward the end of his life, that he'd had a front row seat on some fascinating history: Even before his time in Southeast Asia, he'd stormed the beaches as a marine at Iwo Jima.
How deeply Lou was involved behind the scenes in the clandestine anticommunist effort was tough to tell. He only began talking openly about the CIA late in life and by then was nonchalant about it. "I'd get this call in a deep voice, 'Your laundry is ready,' " he once said, describing an information exchange. When he reached a secluded spot, a man waited to talk to him about students organizing.
I tried to learn more in the village of Muang Kham, north of Luang Prabang. I found Boonthong Lamsekong, the round-faced village chief and an old acquaintance of Lou's. At one point, while sitting on the cool tile floor of his house, Mr. Lamsekong said, "You know, Connick, he had many jobs. He taught at a military school in Thailand, too." That's the first I'd heard of that. Then he gave a toothy grin and said, "We don't know all his jobs." I straightened up. "Do you know the CIA?" I asked.
"I've heard of it," he said. "But I don't know about it." He looked away toward his TV and flipped channels.
Lou's visible record, in stacks of photo albums in Old Lyme, showed a charm offensive unleashed on Laos – images of school dedications and village welcome ceremonies and Lou beaming at all of them. "I think he wanted to prove to everyone that as an American he wasn't as bad as they thought," says Howard Phengsomphon, Lou's radio man at the USAID in Luang Prabang, who now lives in West Hartford, Conn.
Mr. Phengsomphon says that an increasingly hot war in the early 1970s meant USAID had to use friendly Laotian government troops to secure the villages they worked in. Meanwhile, the US was unloading its aerial blitz in the East, ostensibly targeting Pathet Lao bases and North Vietnamese supply routes but hitting civilians at the same time.
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