Carleton B. Swift Jr. was a

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...

seaman,

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...

(OSS) officer, and

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

officer between 1941 and 1974. Swift played a subordinate role to

Archimedes Patti Archimedes Leonidas Attilio Patti (July 21, 1913 – April 23, 1998) was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army and an Office of Strategic Services officer who headed operations in Kunming and Hanoi in 1945. Patti is known for having ...

as part of the OSS team that met with Ho Chi Minh in September, 1945.

Early life

Carleton Byron Swift Jr. was born on 4 July 1919 in

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

, and studied engineering at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

where he graduated in 1941. He was the son of Carleton Byron Swift and his wife, Lila Leonard. His father was a member of the Swift meat-packing family.

Career

World War II

After serving time in the Navy he joined the OSS and was sent to China where he was based in

Kunming Kunming (; ), also known as Yunnan-Fu, is the capital and largest city of Yunnan province, China. It is the political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province as well as the seat of the provincial government. The headquar ...

and monitored Japanese shipping.Interview with Carleton Swift, 1981, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/vietnam-9dc948-interview-with-carleton-swift He was later assigned to monitor the situation in what would become

North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...

and after the

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...

he traveled with

and

Jean Sainteny Jean Sainteny or Jean Roger (29 May 1907, in Vésinet – 25 February 1978) was a French politician who was sent to Vietnam after the end of the Second World War in order to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces and to attempt to re-annex V ...

to Hanoi. His and Patti's mission was to assist in the repatriation of allied prisoners of war which the U.S. government was concerned the Japanese might hurt following the

and secondly to gather intelligence. During their time in Hanoi the OSS officers and their team met with

Ho Chi Minh (: ; born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as ('Uncle Hồ'), also known as ('President Hồ'), (' Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as Prime ...

and although Swift did not speak French as Patti did he also met with Ho Chi Minh on at least one occasion. Swift denied that the U.S. could have been significant in creating the

Viet Minh The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...

because the OSS had never had more than three 12-14 man commando teams operating in

Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...

. Swift and Patti both left Hanoi at the end of September, 1945 after the French alleged that the Americans had been fomenting a revolution there.

Work at the CIA

Swift served with the

in Seoul, Baghdad, Tokyo, London and The Hague before retiring in 1974.

Family

Swift was married and divorced three times and had six children.

Death

Swift died on January 24, 2012, at his home in Washington.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swift, Carleton B Jr United States Navy officers 1919 births 2012 deaths People of the Office of Strategic Services People of the Central Intelligence Agency Military personnel from Portland, Oregon Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni American military personnel of World War II