Major General John Kirk Singlaub (July 10, 1921 – January 29, 2022) was a major general in the United States Army, founding member of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a highly decorated officer in the former Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In 1977, Singlaub was relieved from his position as Chief of Staff of U.S. forces in South Korea after criticizing President Jimmy Carter's proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula in an interview with the Washington Post. Less than a year later, Singlaub was forced to retire after publicly questioning President Carter's national security policies. In 1979, Singlaub founded the Western Goals Foundation, a private intelligence network that was implicated for supplying weapons to the Contras during the Iran–Contra affair. Singlaub contributed to several books and wrote an autobiography. Biography Singlaub was born in Independence, California, on July 10, 1921. After graduating from Van Nuys High School in 1939, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, but abandoned his studies in 1943 to begin military service. (In 1958 he completed the Bachelor of Arts in political science at UCLA.) With the United States entering World War II, Singlaub joined the U.S. Army and commissioned as a second lieutenant on January 14, 1943. Deployed to Europe for special operations, Singlaub was dropped behind German lines in France in August 1944, as part of Operation Jedburgh. As a member of a three-member team (codenamed "JAMES"), he worked with Maquis groups that swelled the ranks of the French Resistance after D-Day. In 1945, Singlaub was redeployed to the Pacific. On August 27, before the formal Japanese surrender, he parachuted onto Hainan Island, China, commanding an eight-member team, to arrange the evacuation of US, Australian and Dutch prisoners of war being held there. Singlaub demanded proper food and medical care for the POWs, who the Japanese were still treating as prisoners. Singlaub headed CIA operations in postwar Manchuria during the Chinese Communist revolution, led troops in the Korean War, managed the secret war along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the Kingdom of Laos and Vietnam, worked with the Contras in Nicaragua, and Afghan resistance during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He graduated from the Army Command and General Staff College in 1954 and the Air War College in 1960. Because of the increasing use of helicopters in Special Forces operations, he decided to attend flight school at Fort