The Book of Honor (34 page)

Gabriel's entry into the Agency was intense and exhausting. For eighteen weeks he trained at Camp Perry, taking courses in indoctrination and tradecraft. From there, Gabriel elected to go to Panama and the jungle warfare school, where he learned such arts as knife-throwing, tracking, and living off the land.

Later he was one of twelve Agency recruits sent to mountainous Camp Hale in Colorado for cold weather survival training. Then came three more months studying parachute rigging at Arizona's Marana Air Base, where he was a contemporary of John Merriman's. Denny was packing a parachute on a long table when the news came over the radio that John F. Kennedy had been shot.

A year later he was in Vietnam. Twice he was involved in minor plane crashes. While in Vietnam, he received the Vietnamese Medal of Honor from Vice-President Nguyen Cao Ky. From Vietnam, Gabriel was assigned to Laos. Like Maloney and Deuel, he trained and organized the indigenous peoples to resist the Communists and to monitor and disrupt any convoys of men or matériel moving along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Denny Gabriel had begun in the Agency's Ground Branch but eventually switched to aviation. His missions remain classified to this day.

What is known is that for nearly a year in the early sixties, he worked with the Nagas, a tribe indigenous to northern India along the Tibetan border. There he trained the Nagas for cross-border operations against the Chinese, part of the Agency's effort in support of Tibetan independence. He was also active in helping the Nagas bury caches of provisions, arms, and radios for later use against the Chinese. He might also have taken part in an Agency program to smuggle nuclear detection systems across the border. When Gabriel returned from the Tibetan border, he brought back a couple of six-foot-long native spears, the grips wrapped in fur. And he returned with one less tooth—pulled by a Punjabi dentist without benefit of anesthesia.

For much of the late 1960s Gabriel was based in Thailand and affiliated with Air America. So far from the States, he could only read and wonder what was becoming of his homeland—the assassination of Martin Luther King, the race riots, the demonstrations against the war. The year 1969 was an annus mirabilis—former CIA director Allen Dulles died, the secret war in Laos was a secret no more, and a massacre by U.S. troops of some 450 villagers at a hamlet called My Lai was making the news. When American astronauts set foot on the moon on July 21, 1969, Gabriel had his ear pressed to a shortwave radio in Bangkok.

Throughout those years his father did what he could to keep him apprised of events at home, routinely sending him American magazines as well as care packages of gourmet foodstuffs, including one of Gabriel's favorites, Lebanese goat cheese, though it often spoiled en route. But the life of a covert officer was taking its toll. Gabriel was working seven days a week and was constantly on the move. U.S. policy in the region was also galling to him, as he watched his fellow Agency officers and American troops risk their lives while the U.S. government waffled on its commitment to the war and pursued seemingly contradictory policies of pacification, war-making, and distribution of relief.

In October 1968 he wrote: “I have had it in the East. When I leave here this time I will never come back. If I do it again it will be to the Middle East. I have finally got this part of the world and this stuff out of my system. The Middle East should prove interesting and right up my alley. Anyway, that's for the future.”

In December he wrote his father: “I am getting a little weary of this. It will be almost eight years when I finish here (13 months) and plan to stay in the States awhile and relax.” From Bangkok in June 1969 he wrote: “When I finish here I should be in the states a couple of years before I go again. And when I go it's going to be where I want or no place. Since 1962 I have been around the world many times, now I am going to be selective.”

His entire career within the Agency remains shrouded in secrecy. But in addition to his covert missions in the Far East, he is known to have taken part in ultrasensitive missions in the Mideast, calling upon his skills as both an Arabist and a paramilitary officer. Evidence of one such mission may be found today in a California safe-deposit box. There is stored more than a mere token of appreciation from one beneficiary of Gabriel's efforts.

In 1964 Gabriel was presented a one-of-a-kind Rolex watch from the ruler of Jordan, King Hussein. Gabriel had trained and set up an elite corps of bodyguards and officers to protect the king at a time of great peril to him. The watch, 18-karat gold, is studded with diamonds and the face is adorned with the king's crest. On the back, in Arabic, are inscribed the words “Deepest Gratitude.” Gabriel's brother, Ron, has kept the watch in the safe-deposit box. One day he will give it to Gabriel's son, Sean, now twenty-seven.

In the mid-seventies Gabriel lived in McLean, Virginia, with his wife and son. He would frequently disappear on month-long TDYs—temporary duties—overseas, particularly in the Mideast and Central America. He became increasingly active in training other paramilitary officers. More than once he declined senior administrative positions, knowing that a desk job was not for him.

But if he had had a mind to, he could easily have retired at forty to a life of comparative ease. With a personal real estate portfolio worth $2 million to $3 million, he had no financial motivation for continuing a career as a covert operative, though those who worked with him had no idea either of his rarefied background or of his own financial position. He continued to take pride in being as gutsy as anyone the Agency could put in the field. He was never an ideologue, but he remained a stickler for individual freedom and hostile to any foreign power he viewed as a threat to personal liberty. It was as simple as that.

The night Gabriel died he left on his desk a résumé rife with the fictions and inventions of a covert operative. His bogus cover ID said he was a civilian employee of “The Department of the Air Force, Service and Support Group, Detachment Eight, AFESPA, Bolling Air Force Base.” He listed himself as a “GS-13 Operations Officer.” Also among his possessions was a bogus business card from Jim Rhyne.

Dennis Gabriel is buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California, space 4, lot 2713, beside his father. On his gravestone are listed the dates of birth, July 14, 1939, and death, July 13, 1978. He died one day shy of his thirty-ninth birthday. At the funeral on July 19 Ron Gabriel offered a few brief thoughts on behalf of Denny, who was both his brother and his closest friend. “Please remember his loyalty and gentleness to his family,” he said. “His quiet service to country . . . God bless us as He did him and make the living worthy of the dead.”

From the North Carolina crash site, Special Forces officers had followed the trail of blood deep into the cornfields. There, buried beneath a heap of cornhusks was a man, broken and twisted. His name was Alexander MacPherson, and he was swiftly medevaced by helicopter first to an army hospital and later to Cape Fear Hospital in Fayetteville. For five days MacPherson lay in a coma. When he came to, he found himself lying naked on a hospital bed, a large light overhead, and two massive tubes, each as big as a garden hose, coming out of his chest. The ribs on the right side of his chest had been smashed, the broken bones driven back out through his lungs. His legs were scarred and bruised, his skull fractured. His arms were laid out flat, his hands sandbagged on either side to prevent the slightest movement.

He had no idea where he was or what had happened to him. From the tubes that went in and out of him he surmised that he had been shot. “Oh my God,” he thought to himself, “you mean I've got to go back to that place again?” “That place.” What place was that? he wondered, through a mind-numbing fog of sedatives. He felt little pain. That would come later.

This man lying in the bed was an enigma for the hospital staff. It was not clear what was keeping him alive. And whenever he spoke, he spoke in flawless German. The hospital brought in a German nurse to tend to him.

MacPherson would remain a mystery patient. At five feet eight and 180 pounds, he was in remarkably robust physical condition for a man of forty-eight—the product of a lifetime of mountain-climbing and an unwavering daily regimen of swimming and hiking. But then, the doctors and nurses had no idea what sort of man they were dealing with—the ultimate CIA paramilitary officer.

Within a few short months MacPherson—or Mac, as he was known—would be back in an airplane parachuting again, many high-risk missions still ahead of him.

There are few major hot spots where MacPherson had not been. To a long succession of CIA heads, among them Dick Helms, William Colby, Bill Casey, and Stansfield Turner, he had been viewed as one of the Agency's most reliable operatives. Paratrooper and rigger, anti-Communist and counterterrorist, he had worked behind enemy lines on at least three continents over the course of as many decades. In his North Carolina home are photos, plaques, and medals from a career spent under cover. Not the least of these is a citation, with accompanying gold medallion, that reads:

“The United States of America, To All Who Shall See These Presents, Greeting. This is to certify that the President of the United States of America authorized by Act of Congress has awarded the Airmen's Medal to Alexander MacPherson United States Air Force For Heroism Republic of Panama on 20 of August 1964. Given under my hand in the city of Washington this 29th day of April, 1965.”

MacPherson smiles coyly when asked what mission won for him this distinction. There is nothing in the newspapers or the history books to suggest that anything of consequence happened on that day in Panama— which is exactly as MacPherson wants it. “Don't bother trying to find out anything,” he says. “You'll just be spinning your wheels. You'll never find out.”

Eight years later, in 1973, the CIA presented him with the prestigious Donovan Award—the reason for that recognition also remains a secret. And he may be the only CIA person to have twice received the Exceptional Service Medal from the Agency. What do they mean to him? “That I was there and forgot to duck,” he says, laughing. Among his memorabilia is a photo of him with President Ronald Reagan. Everywhere are clues, but none of them add up to anything that would shed light on his clandestine career.

And even after he formally retired from the Agency in 1986, he went on for another eight years to serve in a variety of sensitive positions, particularly in the Mideast gathering intelligence on terrorist organizations. Like the movie character Zelig, his presence is barely discernible in the background of many historical frames. Among the places he is known to have served are Jordan, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Tom Twetten, former head of the CIA's clandestine service, remembers him well. “He's a crazy guy,” he says. “Crazy,” as in daring beyond words. “He did some extraordinary work from time to time and in between times he was a royal pain in the ass.” Twetten encountered MacPherson in India in the late seventies, where he apparently left some Indians with the impression he was a four-star general. Later, Twetten recalls, he was instrumental in somehow stopping Palestinians from coming over the border from Syria and firing rockets into Israel. Toward the end of the Cold War he worked behind the Iron Curtain on a mission involving the cooperation of half a dozen governments. That operation is still deemed so sensitive that Twetten will not even hint at its purpose.

But even as MacPherson's career winds down, he will not acknowledge that he is or ever was with the CIA.

Little is known of his background. He was born in Chicago in 1930 or 1931 and was educated in Scotland and Germany, where he studied electrical engineering. He lived in Europe for sixteen years. Given his thick Scottish brogue, he could easily be mistaken for a native of that country. But he also speaks Spanish, French, German, and Russian, and is known to be conversant in an Eastern European tongue or two as well as Arabic. During the 1950s he served as an Air Commando with the U.S. Air Force, a precursor to the elite Special Forces. In the course of his career he has been shot at by Katyusha rockets, AK-47s, a variety of small arms, and even SA-7 missiles.

He has routinely parachuted from altitudes of thirty thousand feet and higher where sixty-below temperatures can freeze a man's eyeballs, where the slightest gap in the filling of a tooth can reduce a man to desperate agony, and where, if the joints are not scrupulously purged of gases, the jumper will exhibit symptoms associated with diver's bends.

In his world—as well as Berl King's and Denny Gabriel's—expertise and survival were never more than a hairbreadth apart. And still there was a place for luck. The crash in North Carolina was not the first such downed aircraft MacPherson is known to have crawled away from.

MacPherson knew both King and Gabriel. He had flown with them many times in the days of Air America. But in an odd way he knew very little of either man. That was how he wanted it. “I have purposefully cut myself off from these kinds of things, much as I thought these guys were really great. Even when I worked with them I really didn't try to know them too well. It would have made it tougher to do the job we were trying to do. I have made it a point of not getting to know the people I work with. It is one of the cardinal rules I have followed. When engaged in work, I operate on a need-to-know basis, not just nice-to-know.”

Today MacPherson wonders at the young stock of Agency officers coming through the ranks and worries for them. One young man, intent upon a career as a paramilitary officer, saw in MacPherson a kind of mentor and expressed an interest in accompanying him on an assignment.

“Do you think you could live in a foreign country?” MacPherson asked the young man.

“Yes,” he said boldly.

“Smile,” responded MacPherson. The young man smiled a toothy smile. “No,” persisted MacPherson, “open your mouth.” Inside, MacPherson was looking at some $20,000 worth of American orthodontic work. “Every time you open your mouth,” he said, “you will be telling people where you come from. You can still make the trip but we will have to knock out a few teeth and things like that,” he said half jokingly. “Living in a foreign country, you have to have absolutely impeccable credentials, right down to the last tooth.” Any mistake can be fatal.