Word: phao
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...best daily newspaper in Thailand is edited by a wiry, wearily patient American named Darrell Berrigan. An expatriate newsman and longtime resident of Bangkok. Berrigan got his newspaper last year through an orientally inscrutable tactic-he wrote a magazine article charging that Thailand's chief cop, General Phao Sriyanond, was also Thailand's biggest opium smuggler. General Phao was impressed. With characteristic Thai logic, he apparently reasoned that any newsman intimate enough with the country's boatmen, taxi drivers, prostitutes and businessmen to put together such a report would make an ideal editor. Phao hired Berrigan...
...Phao was unceremoniously kicked out of the country in 1957. But before he left, he thoughtfully put aside funds-things are like that in Thailand-for Berrigan to keep going until he could scrape together enough money to buy control of the World for himself. Today Berrigan is such a national institution that diplomats phone him openly for guidance, and Thai officials consult him on politics- foreign and domestic. What is more, by his wit and wits, Editor Berrigan has turned his World into one of the genuinely cultured pearls of the East...
...covered General Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers and General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's campaigns, filed some good I-was-there stories on the British retreat from Burma. Quitting U.P. in 1945, Berrigan freelanced around the Far East (Saturday Evening Post, New York Times) until he met General Phao and the World in Bangkok...
...Resign." One of the first orders directed General Phao, who had been forced to resign as police chief the week before, to surrender himself. Phao heard the order at home, went first to a nearby Chinese bar for two quick bracers, then to Sarit's headquarters. Along the way, Phao unbuckled his police automatic and chucked it into the viscid, green waters of a Bangkok canal. Sarit gave him two choices: leave the country or become a Buddhist monk. Phao chose to leave for Switzerland, where he can count his money. He had not been exiled, said a Foreign...
...change in Thailand might prove one for the better-for Thailand as well as for its SEATO allies, including the U.S. Pibul had often been embarrassingly pro-U.S. in his public statements (though his personal newspapers were bitterly anti-American), and because both he and General Phao were personally unpopular with Thailanders, the U.S. has in recent months been sharing their odium. While the new government was settling in, U.S. diplomats would themselves have a welcome chance to start afresh...