Tommy Dooley entered United States Naval service while attending undergraduate courses at the College of Notre Dame. After receiving a Doctorate in Medicine from the Saint Louis University School of Medicine, he entered active duty.

Pre-Vietnam War & the CIA

Lieutenant Colonel Edward Lansdale of the Saigon CIA unit recruited Dooley while he assigned to the medical detail of Vietnamese refugee camps. Dooley’s anti-communist book, Deliver Us from Evil, was a propaganda tool used to support United States intervention in the region. It was while on a promotional book tour in the U.S. that Dooley was investigated for homosexual activities leading to his resignation from the Navy in 1956.

Sponsored by the International Rescue Committee, Dooley founded the Medical International Cooperation Organization building a series of medical facilities in Laos. For his humanitarian efforts he held the esteem of a nation as well as the Catholic Church, capturing the heart of the American public with his writings on this hitherto mysterious region of Indochina.