[3][4] After his father's death, his mother married Jacques de Thier, the Belgian Ambassador to Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Although he held brief journalistic positions at The Hollywood Reporter and the Worcester Telegram during this period, he was still a member (albeit a reluctant one) of the French nobility.
From 1955 to 1957, he was conscripted into the French Army amid the Algerian War, initially serving as a second lieutenant with the Senegalese Tirailleurs of the Colonial Infantry and then as a propaganda officer.
He subsequently wrote in frank detail of his brutalizing experiences while on active service in the bled (Algerian countryside) and of the atrocities committed by both sides during the Battle of Algiers.
Morgan wrote biographies of William S. Burroughs, Jay Lovestone, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.