101500 CIA Figure Lobbies for Secret Warriors' Widows
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 15, 2000
Page A16 

   A legendary CIA operative is leading a lobbying campaign in the Senate for
approval of legislation that would enable the widows of Laotian and Hmong soldiers
who died fighting a secret CIA-directed war in Laos to take U.S. citizenship exams
with the aid of translators.
   Lawrence Devlin, who directed the secret war as CIA station chief in Laos from
1967 to 1970, said the bill became necessary after the Immigration and Naturalization
Service ruled that war widows were not covered under a law that provides translation
services to all Lao and Hmong veterans and their family members.
   "I think [their husbands] paid in blood--over 10,000 were killed," said Devlin.
   "My argument is, if it weren't for the [Lao and Hmong veterans], we'd have another
10,000 to 15,000 [American] names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial," he said.
   He noted that most Hmong veterans had no education. The Hmong language, he said,
was not even a written language until 1950.
   Devlin and Philip Smith, Washington representative of Lao Veterans of America,
lobbied successfully in May for passage of the Hmong Veterans Naturalization Act of
2000, designed to enable 45,000 Hmong and Lao veterans to become U.S. citizens by
allowing them to take the citizenship exam with the assistance of translators.
   The bill extending that benefit to the war widows passed the House unanimously
last month but is stuck in the Senate. An aide to Sen. Paul D. Wellstone (D-Minn.),
the bill's chief sponsor, blamed Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) for placing a hold on
the bill so he could trade it for consideration of other legislation late in the
session. An aide to Hatch denied the charge and said there is no hold.
   Failure to pass the bill before Congress adjourns for the Nov. 7 election could
deny translation benefits to the Lao and Hmong widows for months.
   Devlin, who spent last week making phone calls in an attempt to break the logjam,
served as CIA station chief in Laos at the heart of the secret war but is best known
for his activities and clout in Congo, later renamed Zaire.
   As station chief in Leopoldville in 1960, Devlin was given a poison kit made by a
CIA scientist and told to assassinate leftist Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Devlin
later told Senate investigators that he considered the assassination plot "a pretty
wild scheme" and did not carry it out.
   Devlin played a key clandestine role in events surrounding a coup that brought
Mobutu Sese Seko to power in 1965. After retiring from the CIA in 1974, Devlin
maintained his close contacts to Mobutu's government and became the chief
representative in Zaire of Maurice Templesman, a New York diamond and metals
businessman and close companion of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

© 2000 The Washington Post
http://washingtonpost.com:80/wp-dyn/articles/A9910-2000Oct14.html