The Book of Honor (53 page)

Central Intelligence Headquarters, Langley, Virginia, February 15, 1965. Valeria S. Merriman receiving the Intelligence Star from Lieutenant General Marshall S. Carter, deputy director of Central Intelligence.
(Courtesy of Jon Merriman)

Arthur “Mal” Maloney, a gritty and much-decorated veteran of the Normandy campaign, in his retirement at Hilton Head, South Carolina. A severe wound that forced him out of the military led him to the CIA. His son, Mike, would follow in his footsteps as a crack CIA paramilitary officer until his death in Laos. Arthur Maloney would never recover from the loss.
(Courtesy of Michael
Maloney, Arthur Maloney's grandson)

Art Maloney in battle fatigues during the fight to liberate France in World War II. A graduate of West Point, he was a soldier's soldier until a severe wound cut short his career and drove him to seek employment with the CIA.
(Courtesy of Michael Maloney)

Mike Maloney and wife Adrienne shown at their wedding in 1963. Two years later he would be killed in a helicopter crash in Laos while on a CIA mission. He left behind a one-year-old son and another in utero. More than thirty years later the CIA still ignored his widow's repeated requests that her husband's name be added to the Book of Honor in place of a nameless star.
(Courtesy of
Michael Maloney)

Mike Maloney, wife Adrienne, and eleven-month-old son Michael in Virginia in the summer of 1965— just before Mike received CIA orders to ship out to Thailand for eventual assignment to the Agency's secret war in Laos.
(Courtesy of Michael Maloney)

Mike Maloney in the summer of 1962 learning to be a paratrooper, as was his father before him. A second-generation CIA officer, he was determined to make his father, Arthur Maloney, proud of him.
(Courtesy of Michael Maloney)

Wallace Deuel, a veteran newsman, OSS adviser, and senior CIA staffer, behind his beloved Underwood typewriter. By temperament he was a wordsmith, not a man of action. His son Mike was a covert field officer and paramilitary specialist killed in the Agency's not-so-secret war in Laos in 1965.
(Courtesy of Peter Deuel)

RIGHT: Mike Deuel fording a river in Laos. A covert CIA operative, he was working under cover of the Agency for International Development when he was killed in a helicopter crash in 1965. His Agency connection was kept a secret for more than three decades.
(Courtesy of Peter Deuel)

LEFT: The wedding of Mike and Judy Deuel in Bangkok, Thailand, on October 30, 1964. “Things are a little too good to last,” he wrote his parents. He was right.
(Courtesy of Peter Deuel)

BOTTOM: Mike Deuel, one of the Agency's most gung-ho and promising young case officers. His superiors considered him headstrong, but a mission placed in his hands was considered as good as done. In Laos, his secret campaigns against the Communists were counted among the CIA's most successful.
(Courtesy of Peter Deuel)

LEFT: Harlan Westrell, retired CIA chief of counterintelligence in the Office of Security, holds a photo of Hugh Redmond. For a time, Westrell found himself overseeing the Agency's handling of the case and working to assure Redmond's mother, Ruth, that the CIA had not forgotten about her son.
(Courtesy of the author)