The Indianapolis Star -Saturday, June 27, 1998

ESPIONAGE EXPLOITS OF "THE FOX"

The Winking Fox: Twenty-two Years in Military Intelligence

Author: René Défourneaux - Publisher: Indiana Creative Arts

Review by: David R. Richards

Parachuting alone into Nazi-occupied France in World war II to help organize and train French resistance fighters was the beginning of René Défourneaux's career in Military intelligence. He showed great bravery in this and many later exploits. Défourneaux who lives in Indianapolis, came to the United States from his native France shortly before World War II with his mother and sister. They joined his father who had emigrated years earlier. He entered the U.S. Army in 1943. He showed immediate talent and was sent to London in 1944 for training as a saboteur and guerrilla organizer. He was taught how to blow up bridges, destroy locomotives and communicate by radio using Morse code. He also learned how to handle plastic explosives. He was working for OSS, the Offices of Strategic Services, the precursor of CIA. His book of memoirs, The Winking Fox, Twenty-two Years in Military Intelligence, is full of adventures that span most countries in Southeast Asia: it describes travels in dangerous airplanes, secret assignments that lasted for weeks and brushes with the heads of the opium trade in Laos. He says with a touch of humor about parachuting into enemy territory: "The night jumps were safer because you did not know when you hit the ground. As a result one would be more relaxed and less apt to break a bone." After the liberation of Paris, he was transferred to Asia, where he parachuted with a team into Japanese-held French Indochina in July 1945 to support Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyên Giap, who later became General Giap, in their guerrilla operations against the Japanese. In one of the strange ironies of intelligence work the American team helped put in power Ho Chi Minh and Giap, who years later became the mortal enemy of the United States in the Vietnam War. Ho Chi Minh, previously associated with the French Communist Party and indoctrinated by the Soviets in Hong Kong, had created the Indochina Communist Party. It was dangerous work. A price was placed on Défourneaux's head by the French who were angry that the Americans had handed over French Indochina to Ho Chi Minh in 1945. "Even when I returned to the U.S., I received ominous warnings cautioning me not to return to France," the author says. During years of work in Southeast Asia, Défourneaux, now 77, trained hundreds of people in clandestine operations including French Nationals, who worked secretly in North Vietnam, and Cambodians and Laotians. He ended his career in Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis and retired with the rank of Major after 22 years of military service. He was clearly disillusioned by some of his experiences. He was highly critical of the military intelligence organization based in the Pentagon for which he worked. He admits: " As I reached the end of my military career I sensed that intelligence and counterintelligence had become expendable." But despite these setbacks, this book reveals a man of great courage, large resources of energy and intelligence, and a person devoted to the ideals of democracy and the defeat of Nazism and fascism. The book is worth reading for the exciting exploits it describes. More than that, for any college student interested in following a career with the CIA, or other intelligence work the book should be read carefully. Because of his ability to overcome adversity, or just his good luck, Défourneaux's associates called him "The Fox". He didn't take the description seriously, so he dubbed himself "The Winking Fox."

Richards, President of Euro-Link Public Relation and Marketing Co. resides in Zionsville. By permission of the Indianapolis Star