Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 1 (V2)

by C. R. Ryder

  Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison

  Air Force Intelligence Officer

  Defense Intelligence Agency

  With the invasion of Kuwait on the second of August we had gone to twelve hour shifts gathering intel. We were trying to keep everything secret, but the press was already on us by the number of pizzas we were having delivered late at night. I had to hand it to those reporters. It was a brilliant use of soft intel.

  At the start of the second week we were all getting pretty burnt out. When I came into work that evening things were jumping. I thought the word had been given and the deployment had started. I gathered slides from my team members and brought them to the commander.

  “Shelve them.” Colonel Stevens said.

  “What?” My first thought was that we had done a bad job.

  “We are off of Iraq. For now. Get me everything you have on Vietnam.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Vietnam. We had a war there twenty years ago.” He said with an unusually sharp tone. He was obviously under pressure from above.

  “It just threw me for a loop. I don’t know if we have anything.”

  “Find something.”

  I looked through our files and other than some information about their armed forces we had very little.

  The reinvention of the wheel had begun.

  Lieutenant Colonel Paul Adams

  State Department

  Washington D.C.

  My job was military liaison to the state department. It was a kush and highly sought job and there were only a handful of officers chosen every year to do it. It involved giving input on anything military related to state department officials to help them make decisions and develop policy.

  Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait the first week of August. It was dominating the news. There were wars in the Middle East and Africa all the time, but this was a big deal. Kuwait was a friend and the free world wondered about if the oil supply would be safe. Sides and players changed so much that people hardly took notice.

  They brought me into a meeting that morning expecting that I would be talking about Iraq again. I had made myself intimate with our capabilities and theirs so I could at least answer most questions with an air of authority. The civilians were a little taken aback if a military man did not know every detail of the armed forces. I guess they figured we studied foreign armies at night while they were at home watching sports with their kids.

  “Give us some background on the Vietnam Prisoner of War situation?”

  Well they had found a way to outflank me yet again. I decided then and there that I was done with that job and advancing my career. I couldn’t wait to get back in a cockpit. I could die happy retiring as some lieutenant colonel in charge of some flying squadron somewhere.

  “I really don’t know, but I can find out for you.” I would become more and more comfortable with that statement in the coming days.

  That got me an ugly pinched face from the GS.

  “You just got a national holiday dedicated to POW/MIAs and you don’t know anything about it?” His tone was a little disrespectful.

  “I respect the sacrifices of those men, but I have never been a POW or an MIA and I have never met one personally. What would you like to know?”

  “Are there any left alive?”

  This time I gave him an ugly face. How the hell should I know?

  Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison

  Air Force Intelligence Officer

  Defense Intelligence Agency

  I often wondered in those days leading up to the second Vietnam War what the President’s mood when he got the word. The President had spent a year in the Hanoi Hilton and he got elected on the basis of his war record. His opponent had challenged his competence for the presidency based on his time there. They said he suffered from PTSD.

  The late night talk shows used to joke about him invading Vietnam again. It had all seemed so funny. No one took it seriously. I was starting to wonder if the comics’ monologues were just a posting of the dark part of our collective conscious. It was like reattacking Vietnam had been on the back of our minds all along.

  I had four people on leave and two others deployed to Germany. For my investigation team I had my enlisted workhorse Luciano, two fellow intel officers, Carter and Johnson as well as two civilians named Dave Ellington and Dave Smith who went by the two Daves.

  My team was pulled into a briefing right before lunch. I guess somebody wanted to let us know that we were not just chasing our tails. We came back a little stunned. They had hard physical evidence of living POWs, or at least living since the end of the war.

  A package had been given to the embassy in Thailand that contained a human skull as well as hair and blood samples from other MIAs. There were photographs and letters to their families as well as confessions.

  The only glaring omission was a map of where to find them.

  The briefing was given by a full bird named Carter from state that I did not recognize. When it was over he asked for questions. It was an unspoken rule in the military not to ask questions at the end of a briefing and if you did you had better make it a good one. One of my troops, Luciano, asked if all of the physical evidence could have been frozen or stored in some other way. The question through the Colonel for a loop and it was not well received.

  After the data on the POWs reached his office he became a different man. It pissed him off. I know it did.

  “Can you imagine what would happen if the American public got a hold of this?” Luciano said when we got back to the office. “I could picture a bunch of hippies turned yuppies marching on Washington. You’d be able to see the smoke from space.”

  After the brief I gathered everyone at DIA for the operation brief. They were all career intel officers and NCOs. DIA was not their first assignment. Experience was one of our advantages. Unfortunately, they were all pretty exhausted from the build up for the Kuwait invasion. Now I had to ask more of them.

  Much more.

  “Here is a list of the people we are going to interview initially. They may lead to other sources of information and we will follow them appropriately.” I told them. “Here are your assignments.”

  I handed out folders with labels like retired DIA, POW HUNTER, RECONAISSANCE OFFICE, SIGNALS and ARVN REFUGEE.

  “Here is a list of the standard interview questions. Ask more questions as you see fit, but make sure you at least ask these.”

  The questions I had come up with during the Thailand Box brief.

  “We are working closely with state on this. Most of the individuals you are interviewing have been vetted and their contact information is up to date according to the FBI. Take lots of notes and get tape if you can. Tell them whatever you think you think you should, but under no circumstances tell them about the Thailand Box. As always be sure to hold on to your receipts while you are on the road. If you run into any trouble call home.”

  I was keeping Carter local in case I needed a hand compiling or needed someone else with some rank to send to the Pentagon or State. The two Daves were manning the office and doing research here while secretly keeping our Kuwait plans warm on the back burner. Luciano and James I put out on the road in the states. Johnson was our only bachelor so I was sending him to Thailand.

  “Questions?” I asked knowing there would not be any.

  There were none.

  Lieutenant Colonel Paul Adams

  State Department

  Washington D.C.

  This was the first time I had been to the United Nations on business. There would be an official meeting about Iraq with the cameras rolling in a few hours. The politicians were already practicing their sound bites and getting makeup applied in the big room.

  Judging by the little room deep inside the building were four state department GS’s and myself found ourselves this is where things really happened. The fourteen men in this room were the ones who made it happen. I had no idea why I was here.

  “We would
like to discuss Kuwait.”

  “We want to talk about Vietnam.”

  “The United Nations feels that your issues with the Vietnamese are an internal matter.”

  “You know why countries ignore the Geneva Convention? Because no one enforces it.”

  This took the man aback. I think he was expecting a short meeting. Since I did not have a speaking role I kept my mouth shut.

  “Hussein’s move puts world energy reserves in danger. His invasion of Kuwait was a success. If he should turn his army toward Saudi Arabia he would control most of the world’s oil. With that kind of capital and a near peer military I would think that the United States would take this threat seriously.”

  “The United States does take the situation in Kuwait seriously. Unfortunately we lost our last war. It will be difficult to summon the political will to get ourselves involved in another armed conflict given the last one. These recent discoveries of POWs still being held give our voting population the feeling that Vietnam is unresolved.”

  “Are you saying that the United States will not support the liberation of Kuwait?”

  “That is not what I am saying at all.”

  This German looked like he wanted to take a swing at someone. I did not even realize what the ambassador had said.

  “What I am saying is that all of NATO has no interest in supporting the liberation of Kuwait.”

  It got really quiet. I think I forgot to breath.

  It looked like these guys would be taking out into the parking lot for a fist fight.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “We would feel prepared to move European forces forward to protect the Saudi oil if we could receive support in getting our POWs back.”

  “The UN has already given you a blank check on economic embargoes of Vietnam.”

  “We are worried, given our past experience with Vietnam that this may go beyond that.”

  “You want us to turn a blind eye to armed intervention? Out of the question. You say that you cannot get the political will to protect Saudi, but you think you can get public opinion to support further involvement in Vietnam?”

  “We don’t want you to turn a blind eye. We want your full support.”

  Go USA! I had a rock hard erection and I wanted to tie an American flag on the end of it.

  Awesome!

  Technical Sergeant Tony Luciano

  Air Force Operations Intelligence Specialist

  Waco, Texas

  I interviewed retired Major Scott Eisenhower, formerly of Stony Beach, at his home. What drove a man like Eisenhower to give up the warm waters of Hawaii for the dry tumbleweeds of Texas was clear the moment I entered his home. To say there was a western motif would have been an understatement. We conducted the interview in his den with a portrait of John Wayne hovering over us on the wall.

  “How many MIAs are you aware of?”

  “How many? That easy. The answer is 2,477. Are you sure that is what you are asking?”

  “There are that many?” I wrote it down. Hard numbers were always great when putting together briefs and often the hardest things to come by.

  “Not really. I was with the DIA from 1984 until 1987. In June of 1983 a division of the Defense Intelligence Agency was assigned personnel and offices to collect information about MIAs and evaluate it. Later in 1986, on the recommendation of Director of DIA LTG Leonard Perroots himself the division was built up and moved to Hickam and the STONY BEACH GROUP was established.”

  “Stony Beach comes up a lot in our records. Can you tell me about it?”

  “Well all of this really started a decade after America's withdrawal from Vietnam when our last President declared that the recovery of the 2,477 American soldiers still Missing in Action would be a national priority. There was already a Congressional Task Force on POW/MIAs in Southeast Asia formed in 1977, and in the late seventies and early eighties Congress introduced more than 100 bills and resolutions aimed at resolving the issue. Celebrities took up the cause. There were public awareness campaigns as well as books, movies and fund-raisers. It became self-perpetuating. The less that was known, the wilder the stories became. Like the Bermuda Triangle or Bigfoot.”

  “Why?”

  “The word missing to begin with. It implies mystery instead of assumption. Did you know there are still people looking for Amelia Earhart? Is there any doubt among professional pilots that she crashed into the Pacific at this point?”

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “Then follow this: the term "MIA" is misleading. Prior to the Vietnam conflict we called missing men who were presumed dead “killed body nonrecoverable.” That is a little strong. Especially to family members when the Department of Defense cannot produce a body for the funeral. So the term missing in action was implemented. The problem with that is it suggests that the DOD has no idea what happened to the soldiers and airmen in Vietnam.”

  “We don’t?”

  “We do. At the end of hostilities, the DOD listed fewer than 800 soldiers as either prisoners of war or missing in action. Later, the DOD added servicemen to the list that were considered killed in action but whose bodies were never recovered. Most of these were Air Force and Navy pilots. In fact 81 percent of the servicemen we now classified as MIAs were pilots, many of whom were unable to eject from their aircraft before crashing into the sea or Vietnamese jungle.

  So of the estimated 2,477 MIAs, almost half, around 1,186, are known to actually been killed in action, but their bodies were not able to be recovered. I mean other pilots saw their planes crash and explode in some cases. On top of those 1,186 there are another 647 other cases a reasonable presumptive finding of death was made at the time the serviceman disappeared. Thus 1,833 of the 2,477 MIAs are presumed to be dead. You good with math?”

  He could see me trying to figure it out in my head.

  “600?” I said without confidence.

  He shook his head.

  “644 to be exact. That leaves 644 servicemen who could in theory still be alive in Vietnam. How likely are they after all these years? And if they are where are they? Vietnam ain’t that big a country.”

  I wrote all of this down. It was all gold when we started putting the slides together later.

  “Why are you asking all these questions? Have you found something?”

  “That’s classified.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” His eyes got wide and he shook his head rhythmically. “Holy shit. And you let me sit here telling you how it couldn’t be possible. I had scratched those guys all out. Now I feel like an asshole.”

  Lieutenant Colonel William Carter

  Air Force Intelligence Officer

  Defense Intelligence Agency

  Former Defense Intelligence Agency worker Henry James met me at the agency headquarters for the interview. The man was in his late sixties and was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. According to his records he had put in twenty years with the Army and then another twenty as a government service worker.

  He had seen a lot.

  “I retired in 1981 and this isn’t the first time I’ve been called in to talk about the POWs. It was every six months in the beginning. Then once a year. It has been since 1987 that anyone has spoken to me officially about the POWs. I was beginning to think that it had become history.”

  I went through the standard interview questions that Carol had given me. He listened politely and shook his head to everyone. When I was finished he took over the interview.

  “Witnesses? I’ve got all the witnesses you could ever want.”

  “Could you put us in touch with them?”

  “Of the 4,000 cases of alleged POW sightings from Vietnamese refugees since 1975, the Defense Intelligence Agency discounts almost all. Only a few hundred were actual firsthand accounts and not just hearsay and rumor. Most were secondhand accounts. Many of the supposed sightings were fabricated. Of those few hundred many of the interviewees merely said they saw a Caucasian. This does n
ot mean that Caucasian was American or a POW.”

  “What about the ones that you could not discount?”

  “We used science and due diligence. It’s not like we could send someone into Vietnam to verify their story. That’s the real catch isn’t it? So instead the DIA used polygraph exams to investigating the most credible reported sightings. Again more than half showed signs of deception or the polygraphs were inconclusive. Of the interviewees that showed no deception and whose supposed sighting was not verified to be a Russian military advisor or some other white guy there were only a handful that we would consider possible sightings.”

  “How many is a handful?”

  “Exactly that. You can count them on one hand.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but love, magic and emotional appeals aside, there is little credible evidence that any of them are still living.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison

  Air Force Intelligence Officer

  Defense Intelligence Agency

  “I’m getting nothing actionable here.” It was TSgt Luciano on the phone. He was less than positive. “All the experts are just dumping numbers and statistics on me.”

  I knew he was telling the truth. I had been through everything that the team had collected. Unfortunately we were looking to affirm the POW theory.

  “Thanks for the update. Move on to the other witnesses.”

  “I talked to Colonel Carter. We’re really bombing out here.”

  “Press on. We need something that we can take to the Pentagon and State.”

  “I’ll keep trying.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  It was just me and the two Daves in the office. I was fielding phone calls and they were compiling. Everyone else was out on the road. After the flurry of activity following the invasion of Kuwait the offices were uncomfortably quiet. It was like a house with all the children gone.

  “I read somewhere they did not release the French POWs immediately when they pulled out. If we could prove that we could establish precedent.” I told the two Daves in an attempt to strike up a conversation.