The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War (72 page)

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Authors: Christopher Robbins

Tags: #Vietnam War, #Vietnamese Conflict, #Laos, #Military, #1961-1975, #History

BOOK: The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War
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  1. Details of the road-building project first revealed in a dispatch from the New China News Agency on January. 13,1962. The agreement with North Vietnam was signed on March 10, 1962. Arthur Dommen,
    Conflict in Laos
    , pp. 229-30. Road work expanded in 1968, ibid. p. 284.
  2. Henry Kissinger,
    Years of Upheaval
    (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), pp. 58-59.
  3. Revelations 13:18.
  4. Quoted in Isaacson and Thomas,
    Wise Men
    , p. 618.
  5. Editorial in Nhan Dan, official newspaper of the North Vietnamese Communist Party, on Geneva Agreement, July 24, 1962. Quoted in Gareth Porter, ed.,
    Vietnam: A History in Documents
    (New York: Earl M. Coleman Enterprises, 1979), p. 232.
  6. Blaufarb,
    Counterinsurgency Era
    , p. 157.
  7. Ralph McGehee,
    Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA
    (New York: Sheridan Square, 1983), pp. 83-84.
  8. Hague Conference: Harry G. Summers, Jr.,
    On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War
    (Novate, Calif.: Presidio, 1982), pp. 106-107.
  9. Curtis E. LeMay (with MacKinley Kantor),
    Mission with LeMay: My Story
    (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), p. 565. The most recent biography of LeMay,
    Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay
    (New York: Crown, 1986), by Thomas Coffey, claims that the general never uttered the remark, but that it somehow slipped into his ghosted biography and LeMay failed to catch the phrase in reading the manuscript. Maybe he failed to catch it because it so completely encapsulated his views on air power.
  10. Quoted in Charles A. Stevenson,
    The End of Nowhere: American Policy Toward Laos Since 1965
    (Boston: Beacon, 1972), p. 180.
  11. William Sullivan,
    Obbligato: Notes on a Foreign Service Career
    (New York and London: Norton, 1984), p. 21.
  12. Ibid. p. 21.
  13. Ibid. p. 13.
  14. General William Westmoreland,
    A Soldier Reports
    (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), p. 92.
  15. Sullivan,
    Obbligato
    , pp. 211-13.
  16. Stevenson,
    The End of Nowhere
    , p. 217.
  17. Westmoreland,
    A Soldier Reports
    , p. 238.
  18. Air Force desire for jets: Robert Komer, ‘Was Failure Inevitable?’ W. Scott Thompson and D. D. Frizzel, eds., in
    The Lessons of Vietnam
    (New York: Crane Russak, 1977), p. 269.
  19. Sullivan’s Air Force organized at Nakhon Phanom airport, Thailand, April 8, 1967. Redesignated as Special Operations Wing, August 1,1968.
  20. Roger Trinquier,
    Les Maquis d’Indochine
    1952-1954 (Paris: Sociéte de Production Littéraire, 1976), pp. 180.
  21. The 316th was among the first five 10,000-man divisions created in 1950 from small guerrilla groups that had already evolved into battalions and regiments. (The 312th, also used in Laos, was another.) It was to the political commissars of the 316th that General Giap, a French history professor and member of the Indochinese Communist Party since 1930, presented his plan to defeat the French. ‘The enemy will pass slowly from the offensive to the defensive. The
    Blitzkrieg
    will transform itself into a war of long duration. Thus, the enemy will be caught in a dilemma: he has to drag out the war in order to win it and does not possess, on the other hand, the psychological and political means to fight a long drawn-out war.’ Exactly the same political and military philosophy was employed against the Americans. Fall,
    Street Without
    Joy,
    p. 34.
  22. Project 404: Secret Air Commando briefing, declassified December 31,1980.
  23. U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on U.S. Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, Kingdom of Laos, Hearings, October 1969.
  24. United States Air Force,
    Search and Rescue in Southeast Asia
    (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1980), p. 48.
  25. Official History of the United States Air Force in Southeast Asia
    (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), p. 121.
  26. USAF,
    Search and Rescue in Southeast Asia
    , pp. 48-49.
  27. The Washington Post
    , June 14,1964.
  28. Pentagon Papers
    , Gravel ed., vol. 3, p. 264.
  29. Ibid. vol. 3, pp. 253-54.
  30. Senate Armed Services Committee Hearings, July 22, 1971, p. 4289.
  31. Symington’s outrage: Thomas Powers,
    The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA
    (New York: Knopf, 1979), pp. 178-79.
  32. Ibid. p. 163.
  33. Colby,
    Honorable
    Men: My
    Life
    in the CIA, p. 202.
  34. David Atlee Phillips, The Night
    Watch
    (New York: Atheneum, 1976), p. 37.
  35. Col. Robert Tyrrell, USAF Oral History Program, inter-view of Tyrrell by Lt. Col. Robert G. Zimmerman, May 12, 1975, Seattle, Washington, p. 58.
  36. Blaufarb’s liberalism: William P. Bundy in preface to Blaufarb,
    Counterinsurgency Era
    .
  37. Douglas Blaufarb, letter to author, September 1985.
  38. Blaufarb,
    Counterinsurgency Era
    , p. xvi.
  39. Anthony Posepny, conversation with author, Bangkok, Thailand, February 1984. Talking to Poe was like being in the presence of a large grizzly bear who might pull off one’s head at any moment - especially as he had just slammed the author’s previous book,
    Air America
    , down onto the bar after looking himself up in the index: ‘That’s all goddam classified!’ Despite his fearsome reputation, which includes a much-advertised detestation of writers, Tony Poe proved to be amusing and rather endearing. He even signed the author’s book.
  40. The author was beginning to consider the stories of pickled heads to be Tony Poe folklore - very effective propaganda among primitive tribesmen and enemy troops - when Raven James Baker, who had served with Poe in 1968, said he had actually seen them.
  41. Tony Pradith, Thai Special Forces commando and subsequent Air America pilot, conversation with author, Bangkok, Thailand, February 1984.
  42. Theodore Shackley,
    The Third Option: An American View of Counterinsurgency
    (New York: Reader’s Digest Press), p. xiii.
  43. Ibid. p. 72.
  44. Harry B. Rothblatt, ‘Why the Army Tried to Railroad the Green Berets,’
    True
    , March 1970. Rothblatt defended the officers when they were charged with murder, but all charges were dropped by the Secretary of the Army a few days after the lawyer threatened to call Richard Helms as a witness in the case. Quoted in Powers,
    Man Who Kept the Secrets
    , p. 334.
  45. Frank Snepp,
    Decent Interval’ An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End Toid by the CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam
    (New York: Random House, 1977), p. 13.
  46. Shackley as Western Hemisphere chief: Joseph Smith,
    Portrait of a Cold Warrior
    (New York: Putnam, 1976), pp. 11-13.
  47. Snepp,
    Decent Interval
    , p. 13.
  48. The extraordinary story of Ed Wilson is told in two books,
    The Death Merchant: The Rise and Fall of Edwin P. Wilson
    (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984) by Joseph C. Goulden and Alexander W. Raffio, and
    Manhunt: The Incredible Pursuit of a CIA Agent Turned Terrorist
    (New York: Random House, 1986) by Peter Maas. Details of the Iran-contra affair have been published in the Tower report. For an idea of the complexity of the CIA’s international network of CIA ‘cover’ companies, see the author’s book
    Air America, The Story of the CIA’s Secret Airlines
    , which indicates that the revelations of Iranscam that continued to surface during the Iran-contra Hearings in session the time of writing, is little more than business as usual.
  49. John Stockwell,
    In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story
    (New York and London: Norton, 1978), p. 136.
  50. Church Committee,
    Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders
    (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 21. Devlin goes under the alias ‘Victor Hedgman’ in the report. Powers,
    Man Who Kept the Secrets
    , p. 340, n. 40.
  51. CIA killers:
    Alleged Assassination Plots
    , p. 51.
  52. Stockwell,
    In Search of Enemies
    , p. 237.
  53. Ibid. p. 105.
  54. Alleged Assassination Plots
    , p. 51.
  55. For this view see Senate Judiciary Committee reports: Refugee and Civilian War Casualty Problems in Indo-china. Staff report. September 1970; War-Related Civilian Problems in Indochina. Pt. 2, ‘Laos and Cambodia,’ April 1971; War Victims in Indochina. May 1972; Relief and Rehabilitation of War Victims in Indochina. Pt. 3. ‘North Vietnam and Laos,’ July 1973.
  56. See Schanche,
    Mister Pop, passim
    , Blaufarb,
    Counterinsurgency Era
    , pp. 128-68.
  57. Dommen,
    Conflict in Laos
    , p. 299.
  58. U.S. Military Assistance Command; Vietnam, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff J-2, ‘Current Summary of Enemy Order of Battle in Laos,’ December 15, 1967 (declassified February 17, 1982), August 15, 1968 (declassified February 12,1982).
  59. Langer and Zasloff,
    North Vietnam and the Pathet
    Lao,
    p. 91.
  60. Rinehart was awarded the Silver Star for this mission.
  61. Conversations between Pop Buell and Vang Pao: Schanche,
    Mister Pop
    , pp. 305-07.
  62. ONCPACAF message, February 15,1969.
  63. Mike Heenan was shot down on February 18, 1969. Details from USAF accident report and Heenan and Rinehart interviews with author. Heenan received a Purple Heart. Rinehart was awarded the Silver Star, his second. The aircraft commander of the Jolly Green and the airman who was lowered into the gunfire were also awarded the Silver Star.
  64. Quoted in John Clark Pratt,
    Vietnam Voices: Perspectives on the War Years, 1941-1982
    (New York: Viking/-Penguin, 1984), p. 284.
  65. Official
    History
    of the
    USAF in Southeast Asia, p. 127.
  66. Sullivan’s views at this time are quoted in Bowers,
    Tactical Airlift
    , p. 458.
  67. John J. Bach, Jr., killed in action, April 20,1969.
  68. Don Service recommended the Thud pilots for the Silver Star.
  69. Significance of capture of medical supplies: G. McMurtrie Godley, Interview #452, Project Corona Harvest, Oral History, Air Force, Eyes Only, January 27, 1970. Declassified.
  70. Schanche,
    Mister Pop
    , p. 309.
  71. This was not a problem peculiar to Americans in Vietnam. British fighter pilots in World War II were ordered to shoot down German rescue seaplanes - and these were clearly painted white and marked with eight large red crosses. Some pilots refused to obey these specific orders as a matter of conscience. Len Deighton,
    Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain
    (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977), p. 178.
  72. Neither the author, nor researchers attached to the Biological and Medical Library at UCLA, could find any reference to
    Panis Auritas
    in any zoological encyclopedia or reference work.
  73. Official History of the USAF in Southeast Asia
    , p. 127.
  74. Polifka was awarded the Silver Star for these missions.
  75. Mike Cavanaugh was awarded the Silver Star for this mission. He lobbied to get Moonface an award for saving his life, but the Backseater was given nothing. He was killed in 1971 while flying in the backseat of an O-1 with a Raven.
  76. Bowers,
    Tactical
    Airlift,
    p. 458.
  77. Quotes from G. McMurtrie Godley are from interview with the author (unless marked otherwise), Morris, N. Y., May 22,1985.

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