Swift played a subordinate role to Archimedes Patti as part of the OSS team that met with Ho Chi Minh in September, 1945.
Carleton Byron Swift Jr. was born on 4 July 1919 in Portland, Oregon, and studied engineering at Harvard where he graduated in 1941.
[2] He was later assigned to monitor the situation in what would become North Vietnam and after the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki he traveled with Archimedes Patti and Jean Sainteny to Hanoi.
[2] His and Patti's mission was to assist in the repatriation of allied prisoners of war which the U.S. government was concerned the Japanese might hurt following the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and secondly to gather intelligence.
[2] Swift denied that the U.S. could have been significant in creating the Viet Minh because the OSS had never had more than three 12-14 man commando teams operating in Indochina.