by Ted Gup
So flamboyant a life was now masked in the cover language provided by the Agency. Those responsible for concealing Freedman’s Agency identity and the identities of the other three men disseminated a mix of fact and falsehood. It was said the three survivors had been State Department security officers. Doubtful. Their names were never released. Nor was the nature of their mission. The mine was described as of Russian origin, an older model. How long it had been there was anyone’s guess. Later it was whispered at the CIA and Delta that Freedman had been warned not to take that road, that it was not safe. And yet he chose to take it anyway. Maybe it was true, maybe not. It just seemed to fit into the myth that was already taking shape around Larry Freedman.
The day after Freedman was killed a battalion of marines entered Bardera and prepared to distribute food to the thousands of starving Somalis who gathered about. They would later spend Christmas Eve on the airstrip that Freedman had been assigned to.
Most of the marines had no inkling who Freedman was, but one senior officer did attempt to express his appreciation and debt to him. Lieutenant General R. B. Johnston of the Combined Task Force Somalia sat down and typed a letter addressed “To the Larry Freedman Family.”
“There are many young Marines and Soldiers who can take credit for the early success of our operation in Somalia,” he wrote. “But there are also a number of very special people like Larry who made the most significant contribution by performing missions that gave us the highest possible guarantee that our troops could enter the major relief centers safely. I cannot underscore how important was the performance of Larry and his fellow team members. They courageously put themselves in harm’s way and took personal risks on behalf of our entire force . . . I know I speak for every man and woman in uniform here in Somalia in expressing to Larry’s family our deepest sympathy.”
The letter was dated December 24, 1992. That was the day Freedman’s name was released to the press. At the CIA in Langley his colleagues were reeling from the loss. No one was more devastated than the woman Freedman had hoped to spend the rest of his life with.
But if December 24 was a day of mourning for some at Langley, it was a day of celebration for others. That very day, President George Bush, former head of the CIA, granted pardons to three Agency officials— Duane Clarridge, Alan Fiers, and Clare George—for their role in the Iran-Contra scandal. Bush had effectively put an end to further inquiries into the affair. That was just fine with the CIA.
On December 29, 1992, Freedman’s funeral was held at the Fort Myer Chapel at Arlington National Cemetery. Even before the funeral got under way, Colonel Sanford Dresin, the officiating chaplain and a rabbi, assembled the family for a ritualistic rending of black cloth, a Jewish custom symbolic of grief and remembrance. But there was no black cloth to be found in the chapel and no pins with which to fasten it. So the rabbi had to make do with black construction paper which was torn into strips and attached to lapels with paper clips. Freedman, he observed, was an expert in resourcefulness and would have appreciated such field expediency.
Those who gathered in the chapel might just as well have come from a series of diverse Hollywood sets. Senior government officials arrived by limousine. From Langley came representatives of the Agency’s clandestine service, men and women in black suits and silvered sunglasses. From Fort Bragg came beefy Special Forces types—Green Berets and Delta Force. Bikers from who knows where arrived on Harleys and Nortons. From Philadelphia came the old gang from the days at the Pit.
One of those was Petey Altman. He and his pals slowly walked behind the gleaming black caisson drawn by six white stallions as it made its way through the twisting paths of Arlington carrying Freedman’s coffin. It came to a stop at the corner of Patton and Eisenhower where Freedman was to be buried. Four of the horses were mounted by soldiers, two were riderless, and one bore reversed boots in the stirrups, for the one who had brought them all together and was not here.
It was a cold Tuesday that threatened rain. Freedman’s flag-draped coffin was protected by a plastic sheet. His family took their places in velvet-draped chairs as the rabbi, under shelter of a canopy, began the graveside service.
Freedman would have liked this. In a way, his final cover story— that he was a “civilian employee of the Defense Department”—was closer to the truth than even the Agency knew. Yes, he was CIA, but he had never seen himself as an Agency man. He was a soldier and he was going out that way.
Only the stone that Teresa had picked was, perhaps, at variance with what he would have wanted. Instead of one of the simple white stones the government provides and that dot the verdant hills in dizzying numbers, she selected a block of jet-black granite. She had her reasons. When she had gone to look at markers, she noticed that the men cutting the stones were Harley bikers. She took this as a sign that they were meant to inscribe her husband’s headstone. On it is a Star of David, a Green Beret, and a paratrooper’s wings. Inscribed are the words:
Lawrence N. Freedman
Sergeant Major
April 13, 1941—Dec. 23, 1992
“The Life of the Dead is Placed in the
Memory of the Living.”
The day after the funeral, on the afternoon of December 30, 1992, a memorial service for Freedman was held in the John F. Kennedy Memorial Chapel at Fort Bragg. There Brigadier General Richard Potter gave the eulogy to a chapel spilling over with Freedman’s friends from Delta and other Special Forces detachments, as well as those second-generation combatants he had trained. General Potter cited a passage from Isaiah to explain what he called Freedman’s “warrior ethic,” his willingness to serve wherever, whenever:
And I heard the voice of the Lord say “Who shall I
send and who will go for us?” and I answered,
“Here I am, send me.”
Years later, in retirement, General Potter mused over the fuss shown over Freedman’s passing and the interest of an inquiring journalist. “I will tell you that wherever Larry is in Valhalla up there with all the other warriors, he would probably be laughing that we are having this conversation.”
Remembering Larry Freedman would take many forms:
In Buundo, Ethiopia, a bridge built by U.S. troops that supported tons of food for the starving bears his name. On a steel plate, in white paint, is stenciled “Lawrence R. Freedman Bridge.” Never mind that his middle initial was “N” not “R.”
In Keystone, South Dakota, just below Mount Rushmore, is a small wooden plaque that reads, “In Memory of Larry Freedman.” It is affixed to a picnic shelter where Freedman often escaped the August heat on his annual pilgrimage to the Sturgis motorcycle rally.
In Fayetteville, North Carolina, in the Special Forces Memorial Plaza, his name appears on a plaque dedicated to those who died in the Somalia campaign, though here the CIA’s cover story became entangled in yet another cover story. He is listed as an employee of the State Department, not the Pentagon.
And not far away, in the JFK Special Forces Museum, is a small stage named for him: the Larry “Superjew” Freedman Theater, a fitting tribute to a man with a keen sense of theater.
But it was the Agency’s memorial service to Freedman the morning of January 5, 1993, that his family remembers best. The CIA assembled Freedman’s colleagues and family in “the Bubble,” the auditorium across from the headquarters building. Just inside the entrance was a life-sized portrait of Freedman set upon an easel. The room was filled with covert operatives and Agency brass. Even Colin Powell was there. Director Bob Gates spoke briefly, and then one of Freedman’s colleagues offered a few remarks about the friend he missed:
“He was blessed with a sense of street savvy, which numbered Larry in that small handful whom, without hesitation, you can trust with covering your six o’clock when you walked into the woodline on a tactical mission . . . Pick a continent, pick a decade, Larry was there . . .”
Moments later the lights were lowered, Bette Midler’s rendition of “The Wind Beneath My Wings” was pl
ayed, and from floor to ceiling was projected a giant picture of Freedman against the left wall. It was a touch of drama Freedman could only have applauded.
Three days after the ceremony, on January 8, 1993, President George Bush, fresh from a trip to Somalia, visited Langley and addressed CIA employees. Langley was a special place for Bush and he could count on receiving a warm welcome there. It was not so with many of his successors. These were troubled times for the Agency.
“Last November,” Bush told them, “when Bob [Gates] became director, I noted that the men and women of the intelligence community faced a new mission in a dramatically different world . . . I wish all of you could have been with me on this visit to Somalia. It was very moving. And we are doing the right thing.” It was to be a pep talk designed to inspire the Agency personnel at a time when there was an increasing chorus of voices questioning the need for a CIA in a post–Cold War environment.
“The dangers that we face are real,” Bush told them. “I still get emotionally convinced of that when I see the stars out in the hall of this building . . . So I came to say thank you.” No reference was made to Freedman. Not long after, a nameless star was added to the wall and to the Book of Honor.
For some, Freedman’s death remains a dark tragedy. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, his widow, Teresa, has created a kind of unseen shrine to him. She has kept his heavy black Harley-Davidson jacket with fringe sleeves as well as the dress uniform she had pressed in the belief that he could be buried in it. That was before she was told the coffin could not be opened. Behind the headboard of their king-sized bed are boxes and boxes of medals and memorabilia—Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart, pins and service ribbons, the otoscope of a medic, a piece of a gun, an old buck knife, dog tags from Vietnam, a Star of David, and a sterling-silver “Chi,” Hebrew for “life.” Here, too, hidden away, is the palm-sized gold medallion that reads, “Central Intelligence Agency For Valor: Lawrence N. Freedman 1992.” It was awarded by CIA Director Robert Gates only eight days after Freedman’s death. But it took three years before the Agency would consent to send the medal to Freedman’s widow. It is an honor that even now she is not to put on display.
But if there are those who are still in mourning, there are others who find such solemnity ill-suited to one as lusty and vital as Larry Freedman. It seemed somehow fitting when his sister, Sylvia, and his rowdy friends from Philadelphia decided to throw a party in Larry’s memory. It was a raucous evening. As the video camera rolled, each friend outdid the other with outrageous stories of Freedman. In the background was a huge cake with the name Gus on it and a life-sized portrait in icing of Freedman, complete with his rakish smile and the desperado’s mustache. No one dared cut a slice anywhere near his face. To this day, it remains in a Philadelphia freezer.
Sylvia still can’t quite bring herself to believe that her brother is dead, only that he is not coming back. “My great fantasy,” she says, “is that he went off to be James Bond and just didn’t know how to leave us.”
Afterword
Nine months have passed since The Book of Honor was published. In that time, much has happened, both to the families of the nameless stars and to the Agency itself. Publication provided a long-awaited lifting of the veil of secrecy, a chance for family members to revisit the events and, in some cases, to learn what really happened and to finally speak openly of both their grief and their pride. The book was the product of the families’ collective courage in defying the CIA’s edict of silence. It is only right, then, that they should finally be able to talk openly about their experiences.
Among those deeply affected was Losue Hagler. She is the sister of Bud Petty, who died in 1989 attempting to resupply Jonas Savimbi, Angola’s rebel leader. The CIA, after a decade of ignoring her inquiries, invited her to attend the annual memorial service. It also promised to at last answer questions about her brother’s death. But first she was required to pledge that she would not disclose whatever was revealed to her. This she reluctantly did. In the end, the Agency told her nothing new.
For the children of the nameless stars, the book provided the first credible account of what happened to their lost parents. Debbie Spessard’s two sons, Jarad and Jason, were five and seven respectively when their father, James, was killed in the same mission that claimed Bud Petty’s life. Now they are teenagers. She called them into a room, sat them down, and had them read the chapter on their father. Then they talked about James Spessard’s life and death, what they had learned, and what it meant to them.
I was also contacted by someone on behalf of Paul Weinberg, a lifelong friend of Larry Freedman, who was killed in Somalia in 1992. Weinberg had been of inestimable help in coming to understand Larry Freedman. I was asked to provide an advance copy of the book though the release date for publication was only a week away. Weinberg was dying of cancer. Unfortunately, he passed away only days later.
No meeting moved me more than that with Val Merriman. She was the widow of John Merriman, who was shot down over the Congo in 1964. For decades she had been lied to, told her husband died painlessly in a Puerto Rican hospital after receiving the best of medical attention. Nothing in the Agency’s account was true. Val Merriman, together with her son Jon, met me at a book signing in Washington and presented me with a dozen long-stemmed red roses. “My family loves you,” she said.
Nor will I forget what transpired in the minutes prior to the taping of ABC’s Good Morning America, which did a segment on the book. The network had flown a dozen family members of the nameless stars to New York from around the country. Before taping, the families mingled outside a Manhattan restaurant. They were meeting for the first time. There were widows and sisters and brothers and nephews. Each had assumed that they alone had suffered the crushing effects of secrecy that had come to define their lives. Now they were no longer alone.
For others, the past months have not brought peace. The family of Matthew Gannon, together with the families of other victims of the bombing of Pan AM 103, endured a second kind of horror as two Libyan defendants were brought to trial in the Netherlands. The consensus of court observers was that the CIA had profoundly bungled the investigation, built its argument upon an informant of highly dubious character, and, in so doing, jeopardized the entire case. It was not only the CIA’s witness whose credibility was shaken. So too was the Agency’s. In the end, one of the Libyans was convicted of mass murder, the other walked.
In the weeks and months prior to and following publication of the book, the CIA inscribed into its own Book of Honor the names of several of those anonymous stars identified in my book. Among these were Mike Deuel, Wayne McNulty, Ray Seaborg, and John W. Kearns. They had perished in Vietnam or Laos decades earlier.
But the CIA did not undergo any fundamental reexamination of its culture of secrecy. Nor did I expect it to. Officially, the CIA maintained its silence about my book. When reporters asked about it, Agency spokesmen replied with the usual mantra, “We will neither confirm nor deny . . .”
Though the book was on the Washington Post Bestseller List and was a frequent topic of conversation among Agency employees, it was not to be sold within the CIA’s own store. There, the shelves are lined with books that have been vetted by the CIA or are deemed to promote its interests. It is as if by keeping my book from its shelves the Agency could ignore the truth of the stories contained therein and the tragedies it chronicled. That capacity to embrace fiction over fact, to adopt a kind of see-no-evil mentality, is not without precedent at the CIA.
Since publication, seven more stars have been added to the Agency’s Book of Honor, four of them nameless. Two of the named stars belong to Norman A. Schwartz and Robert C. Snoddy. The two were killed on November 29, 1952, on a mission to snatch from Mainland China an operative named Li Chun-ying. The Chinese lay in wait ready to foil the attempt. Snoddy and Schwartz were killed as the plane came in. They were buried on the spot.
The families were told the plane went down in the Sea of Japan. Two decades passed
before the incident was even acknowledged. In July 2000, three months after the CIA’s memorial service, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, Schwartz’s hometown, dedicated a simple limestone bench in a park as a place to meditate upon his loss and that of others. A brass plaque reads: IN COMMEMORATION OF PILOT NORMAN A. SCHWARTZ, WHO GAVE HIS LIFE FOR THE PRESERVATION OF PEACE, AND IN RECOGNITION OF ALL MEN AND WOMEN WHO SERVED IN THE COLD WAR (1945–1991). Relatives of Schwartz are pressing the Chinese to return the airman’s remains. Also on board that same aircraft had been two young CIA operatives, John Downey and Richard Fecteau. They would spend two decades in a Chinese prison.
But even as the CIA’s Book of Honor belatedly closes the chapter on the Cold War, it reflects the perils faced by today’s clandestine operatives. Among the anonymous stars recently added to that tome are fresh victims of terrorism.
How long will they too remain faceless? Half a century later, the identity of the first star—the star that represents Douglas Seymour Mackiernan, gunned down in Tibet in 1950—remains a state secret. So too do the identities of Barbara Robbins, Hugh Redmond, John Peterson, Raymond Rayner, Ivan King, Dennis Gabriel, Matt Gannon, Larry Freedman, Fred Woodruff, the victims of the 1983 Beirut Bombing and the 1989 Angola operation. As of this writing, there are seventy-seven stars in the CIA’s Book of Honor. Thirty-five have no name.
By the end of 2000, the CIA seemed largely immune to the sort of tough congressional scrutiny that alone may hold it accountable. It had survived a series of disturbing fiascoes—the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, the targeting of a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, the bungling of the investigation of John Deutch’s security violations, the failure to spot India’s impending nuclear test, the mishandling of the Pan Am 103 probe. And still, Director CIA George Tenet and his agency appeared to enjoy the support of both the outgoing Clinton administration and the incoming Bush administration.
