Thomas Anthony Dooley III

Dooley's principal biographer, James Fisher, wrote that he "tried never to forget what this man's toil and suffering meant to untold people of all backgrounds...that his spirit endures in acts of charity and mercy performed across the world by those he touched." Nearly four years after his death, The New York Times wrote that his work was "more active than it was even at the time of his death." Dr. Verne Chaney, a surgeon who worked with him, founded the Dooley Intermed International – Medical Aid Around the World, an organization that provides medical equipment, supplies, personnel and financial support for the improvement of health services in underdeveloped countries. Betty Tisdale, who met him and was inspired by his work, founded H.A.L.O.(Helping And Loving Orphans). Just prior to the fall of Vietnam, she orchestrated the evacuation and adoption of 219 Vietnamese orphans to homes in the US. Today, Betty Tisdale and H.A.L.O. continue his work around the world, with people of all religions, to help orphans and at-risk children not only in Vietnam, but also in Mexico, Colombia, Indonesia and Afghanistan. Teresa Gallagher, a volunteer who worked with him, along with his brother, Malcolm, established The Dr Tom Dooley Foundation that is dedicated to delivering medical care to people of the Third World; Dr. Jerry Brown, a 2013 graduate of an affiliated program in Cameroon was among the "Ebola Fighters" named as the Time Person of the Year for 2014. And Dr. Davida Coady, an activist pediatrician, who was also inspired by Dooley, devoted herself to caring for impoverished people in Africa, Central America, Asia; she was involved in the famine relief efforts in Biafra, the hunting down of the last smallpox cases in India, and the rebuilding of medical infrastructure in Nicaragua. The Dr Tom Dooley Foundation has an endowed scholarship at the St. Louis University Medical School called the Dr. Tom Dooley Memorial Scholarship Program and is intended "to inspire students to follow the footsteps of Dr. Tom Dooley...in caring for thousands of refugees in Southeast Asia."

Dooley founded the Medical International Cooperation Organization (MEDICO) under the auspices of which he built hospitals at Nam Tha, Muong Sing (five miles south of the Chinese border), and Ban Houei Sa. The plan for MEDICO was that it would build, stock, supply, and train staff for small hospitals; after 16 months, MEDICO planned to turn over these hospitals to the host country's government. During this same time period, he wrote two books, The Edge of Tomorrow and The Night They Burned the Mountain, about his experience in Laos, including further descriptions of atrocities he said were committed by communist soldiers. In the latter book, he voiced strong political opinions about the Laotian crisis of 1960, defending the right-wing coup led by "one of his closest friends," Phoumi Nosavan. He also wrote that the rigging of elections "cut through the red tape and kibbosh you get involved with in Asia," asserting that "Democracy, as championed in the US, does not translate well into Lao...Not yet."

In 1959, Dooley returned to the United States for cancer treatment. He agreed to Fred W. Friendly's request that his melanoma surgery be the subject of a CBS News documentary. On April 21, 1960, Biography of a Cancer was broadcast; it was hosted by Howard K. Smith, and included the surgery and an interview with him. In response to Smith's suggestion that his attitude toward his cancer was "blithe", he replied: "I'm scared to death of this thing becoming maudlin; I'm scared to death of somebody saying 'a clutching, agonizing sort of a thing'...I don't want anyone to get sloppy over this; I don't like anything that says 'a dying doctor's anguish bit'; that's stupid." He proceeded to say that he agreed to the televising of his surgery to help reduce American ignorance and fear of cancer, and so that he could promote Medico. After the surgery was performed, he described it candidly and revealed that his prognosis was bad; he died less than a year later.

MEDICO depended primarily upon volunteers and private donations; by 1960 over 2000 physicians had applied to serve as volunteers, and new teams for medical assistance were established in Haiti, Cambodia, and Afghanistan. According to Ted Hesburgh, Dooley refused Dwight D. Eisenhower's offer to use government funds to assist in his work. Eisenhower did, however, personally fundraise for MEDICO. After Dooley died, funds for MEDICO dried up and it was taken over by CARE.

A 1959 Gallup Poll named Dooley the 7th most admired man in the world according to the American public. But thereafter, his legacy became intertwined with the political controversy surrounding the Vietnam War. As a result, writers continue to struggle with the doctor's record of philanthropy and the later American war in Southeast Asia.

After leaving the Navy, Dooley and three former Navy corpsmen established a hospital near Luang Namtha, Laos, with the sponsorship of the International Rescue Committee. At this time, the International Rescue Committee had a secret working relationship with the CIA in Southeast Asia, coordinated by Joseph Buttinger. In an article entitled "Why I'm A Jungle Medic," printed in Think magazine, June 1958, he said they chose Laos because the country, with 3,000,000 people, had only one "bonafide" doctor. He explained to the Laotian Minister of Health that he wished to work in an area near the Chinese border because "there are sick people there and furthermore people who had been flooded with potent draughts of anti-Western propaganda from Red China."

In 1956, Dooley's book Deliver Us from Evil was released and became a best-seller, establishing him as an icon of American humanitarian and anti-communist activities abroad. His vivid accounts of communist atrocities committed on Catholic refugees appear to have been either fabricated or exaggerated. It has been alleged that Dooley was passing along descriptions of events that had been created by Landsdale and his team. In 1956, U.S. officials who were stationed in the Hanoi-Haiphong area during his tour of duty submitted a lengthy report to the U.S. Information Agency holding that Deliver Us from Evil was "not the truth" and that the accounts of Viet Minh atrocities were "nonfactual and exaggerated." However, the US government kept the report classified for nearly thirty years. James Fisher allows that the U.S. Information Agency report was "valid," but he also argues it "must be viewed with some suspicion" because they were preparing to "discredit Dooley" as "an insurance policy against a renewed outbreak of anti-internationalism."

In May 1954, the Geneva Agreements divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel north into two political zones. People north of the 17th parallel lived under the Viet Minh government, and those south of the 17th parallel lived under the government of Ngo Dinh Diem. Hanoi and Haiphong remained free zones until May 1955. In August 1954, Dooley transferred to Task Force Ninety, a unit participating in the evacuation of over 600,000 North Vietnamese known as Operation Passage to Freedom. Here he served as a French interpreter and medical officer for a Preventive Medicine Unit in Haiphong. He eventually oversaw the building and maintenance of refugee camps in Haiphong until May 1955, when the Viet Minh took over the city.

Dooley was assigned to the medical intelligence task force sponsored by the Military Advisory Assistance Group, whose leader, Lt. Gen. John W. O'Daniel, was an active ally of Ngo Dinh Diem. His official duties involved collecting samples for epidemiological work, "but his primary role was as a liaison between the refugee campaign...Operation Passage to Freedom and American reporters and politicians with an interest in Southeast Asia." In return for his work as a "spokesman", the doctor was awarded the highest presidential honor by Diem. During this period, he wrote numerous letters to his mother, many of which she shared with reporters; the letters were then printed in the local press, including the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Most of the letters exaggerated his personal contribution to the refugee work. Despite his self-promotion, he "was indefatigable in taking care of his patients." Concerning the "self-aggrandizement" aspect of his personality, he said that to be a humanitarian in the modern world "you've gotta run it like a business. You've gotta have Madison Avenue, press relations, TV, radio...and of course you get condemned for being a publicity seeker"; he argued that being able to care for 100 people per day, between 1954 and 1958, with MEDICO later treating 2,000 per day, justified this approach to humanitarianism.

Commenting on these allegations, Seth Jacobs wrote that although Dooley "may have exaggerated or fabricated", this was not done to make his book more sensational. Instead, these atrocity stories grew out of a period of immersion in the refugee drama, from September 1954 to May 1955, a period during which he drove himself so mercilessly that he went from 180 to 120 pounds, "nearly died of malarial fever, acquired four types of intestinal worms, and suffered so acutely from sleep deprivation that he frequently hallucinated." Jacobs speculated that something more than careerism or sentimentality, a "growing empathy", was motivating him, because before he had always avoided responsibility but now "he could not get enough of it": he was in charge of a network of clinics that treated up to 500 people per day; he regularly performed major surgery; he lobbied pharmaceutical companies for antibiotics; and, "in large part due to his vigilance, not a single epidemic broke out in Haiphong or on the ships leaving for Saigon."

Thomas Anthony Dooley III (January 17, 1927 – January 18, 1961) was an American physician who worked in Southeast Asia at the outset of American involvement in the Vietnam War. While serving as a physician in the United States Navy and afterwards, he became known for his humanitarian and anti-communist political activities up until his early death from cancer. After his death, the public learned that he had been recruited as an intelligence operative by the Central Intelligence Agency, and numerous descriptions of atrocities by the Viet Minh in his book Deliver Us From Evil had been fabricated.

Dooley was born January 17, 1927, in St. Louis, Missouri, and raised in a prominent Roman Catholic Irish-American household. He attended St. Roch Catholic Elementary School and St. Louis University High School; at both he was a classmate of Michael Harrington. He then went to college at the University of Notre Dame, but completed only five semesters of course work. In 1944, he enlisted as a hospital corpsman in the United States Navy, serving in a naval hospital in New York City. In 1946, he returned to Notre Dame, but left without receiving a degree. Later, in 1960, Notre Dame presented him with an honorary degree. He entered the Saint Louis University School of Medicine. When he graduated in 1953, after repeating his final year of medical school, he joined the Navy. He completed his residency at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, and then at Yokosuka, Japan. In 1954, he was assigned to the USS Montague, which was traveling to Vietnam.