[1] Trained as an economist, Lacy joined the State Department in 1944 [2] or in 1946, after working at the War Production Board and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
[1] In 1950, while serving as the chief of Philippines and South Asian affairs, he met with Bishop Ngô Đình Thục and Cardinal Francis Spellman to discuss Catholicism in the State of Vietnam, a policy the State Department would later support,[3] which would later come to fruition in the policies of Thục's brother, Ngô Đình Diệm, as head of South Vietnam.
On March 15, 1955, he was nominated as ambassador to Korea, to succeed Ellis O. Briggs; previously, he had served as deputy chief of mission in Manila for several years.
[12] Thus besieged on all sides, Lacy soon began his early departure as ambassador to Korea: on October 15, President Eisenhower accepted his resignation due to "ill health",[13] a contrived excuse.
[1] By establishing a means of meeting and exhibition, exchanges also lead to the Kitchen Debate between Nikita Khrushchev, then the Premier of the Soviet Union, and Richard Nixon, in 1959.