14

POWs ON OUR MIND

At the while we were on the hunt for Yellow Rain, we were on the lookout for POW’s.

The anything goes Bangkok bars, where anyone could buy almost anything, were the favorite hangouts and the most likely places to find expats. A seedy bar did not let us down this time either, when we met the contact who was to open doors for us. Zabitosky, on the prowl for local bimbos, was in a smoky bar in Bangkok one night when an American Indian, Rob (“Mingo,” aka “Crazy Horse”) Applegate, a former Air Force sergeant who had spent much of the previous year in northeast Thailand, a few kilometers from the Thai border, approached him.

“I hear you are searching for POWs,” said Mingo, tall, swarthy and who, with sharp Indian features, never did mince words. This gung-ho, if off-center loner and self-styled soldier-for-hire later smashed a flower vase against Zabitosky’s skull during one of what was to become too many brawls between SOF members at our Chiang Rai safehouse, or penthouse, in Bangkok.

As Coyne put it, “The Indian Mingo was a crazy mother. At one point he knocked Zabitosky into the fireplace when he came down from Liberty City and wanted to know where all the food and gear they were promised was. Zabitosky was, well, feeling no pain at the time and was with a young waitress he had brought home. Apparently his answers did not satisfy Crazy Horse. I just remember thinking, ‘Holy Cow, this is one tough SOB. He just punched a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient into the flaming hot fireplace!’“

“A U.S. embassy official in Thailand gave me information that live POW sightings have been made both in Bangkok and up north in Chiang Rai,” Mingo claimed in that smoky bar. “The U.S. government won’t pay for the information. But my Lao contacts will love to give you the information if you are willing to help them.”

“Help” and “love” in Thai, or Vietnamese for that matter, as we had learned during the war in Nam, translates into “Pay dollars, Sucker.”

So that is how we recruited “Mountain Man” Mingo Applegate and his cohorts, Messrs. Buni and Tor, who provided intros to the two alleged eyewitnesses to the target, the Muong Sai POW camp supposedly containing American POW’s.

A few days later, Zabitosky, Mingo and Coyne flew to Chiang Rai in northeastern Thailand to meet up with Mingo’s resistance contacts. After checking into the Wiang Inn Hotel, the SOFers were introduced to a Mr. “T,” who represented himself as the Chief of Staff of the Lao United Liberation Front (LULF), and a Mr. “B,” his deputy. “T” headed up the medical section of a refugee camp and “B” was employed as an instructor in a secondary school in Chiang Rai.

“T” claimed that there was overwhelming evidence of a POW/MIA presence. Coincidentally, two recently released prisoners of a communist re-education camp at Muong Sai, Laos, had returned to Thailand where, through the grapevine, they related stories of seeing Caucasian prisoners during their respective confinements.

The team interviewed the two informants on the spot: a Hmong we referred to as “LP,” and a Lao, “TS.” Their separate accounts were amazingly similar in regard to the information concerning the camp layout.

The Lao claimed that while being taken to a building for interrogation, he saw two roundeyes, both in their late 30s, being escorted to another building within the compound. The Hmong sightings involved two Americans working on an aircraft on the adjoining airstrip. Neither, however, was able to give any clues as to the identities of the Caucasians.

DATE OF INTERVIEW:

16 June 1981; Name: “LP”—a Hmong; Age: 32

“I was taken to Muong Sai on 30 March 1981 where I stayed for 21 days until about the 24th of April. I had been charged with murder of a village headman and was arrested with two others. I am headman of the Hmong resistance and was born in the village of Sang Num Om in Laos.

“Pathet Lao troops accompanied me to Muong Sai. We were awakened at 0600 hours each morning and then cleaned our room. There were about 20 others with me.

“On or about 9 April, I saw two Americans. The first was tall with a beard and less than 50 years of age. He wore dark pants and shirt but had no shoes or hat. The second man was shorter and heavier with no beard. Again, he wore dark pants and shirt and had no shoes or hat.

“Both men were guarded by two Pathet Lao soldiers armed with AK-47s. I was about 10 feet away from the Americans as they walked by on their way out of the camp.

“I was told by friends that more than 20 Americans are held prisoners at Muong Sai along with at least one Thai prisoner.

“The camp where Americans are kept may be called Nado or Nadoo which is known to be a large jail for criminals and high-ranking enemy officers.”

DATE OF INTERVIEW:

16 June 1981 ; Name: “TS”—a Lao; Age: 3

“I was a prisoner in Muong Sai until six months ago. During 1972—73, I worked in Laos under General Vang Pao at his headquarters at Long Tieng. The Pathet Lao felt I needed to be re-educated so they sent me to the prison for five years from 1975 until January 1, 1981. My job was to cut wood. I was released because I had finished the re-indoctrination program.

“On December 26, 1980, I saw two Americans sitting in a truck with about seven Laotian soldiers also in the truck. They were on the way to the airfield where the Americans worked on planes.

“One of the Americans was blond, less than 40 years old, had no beard and wore dark yellow clothes, the shirt having long sleeves. The other man had dark hair and a beard. I could not tell his age.’’

After several hours spent debriefing each informant, we decided that there was at least some hope that their accounts were accurate, even if the stories contained circumstantial information at best.

We realized that with our limited resources, mounting a raid based on these intriguing but unconfirmed reports would be stupid. It would be foolhardy for us to storm into the camp unless we could be certain that we could affect the safe release and return of all POWs in the compound.

Then, while we were debating back and forth the probability of success of the mission, Mingo, sensing our hesitation, trotted out another Laotian, “Ko Long,” an engineer who was supposedly tight with the Pathet Lao governor at, of course, Muong Sai.

Mingo’s sidekicks, Tor and Buni, swore this guy was legit. They said Ko could arrange a mass jailbreak should I decide to pay and play along. Ko’s buddy, the governor, see, would get his Pathet Lao buddies to ice the NVA guards, then grab the American prisoners, pile ‘em into trucks, drive at breakneck, bone-wracking speed to the banks of the Mekong to an agreed upon meeting point, then send them across one at a time as I simultaneously launched bags full of $20,000 U.S. greenbacks for each vetted POW

Movie plots don’t get that wild.

A summary of his interrogation follows:

DATE OF INTERVIEW:

17 June 1981 ; Name: “Ko”—a Lao; Age: 43; Occupation: Engineer
“I have known the governor of the province in which the POW camp is located for five years and last spoke to him 10 days ago for about 30 minutes. I feel quite certain that for $200,000 U.S., my friend will consider using the Pathet Lao military under his command to rescue by force the 10 to 14 American POWs at Muong Sai. There are approximately 100 Vietnamese at the camp but they will be killed when the camp is attacked. They will use commandeered trucks to drive the 140 kilometers to Pak Bang that will take about two to three hours. When we arrive, it will be necessary to be met at the Thai-Lao border by a representative of yours who would exchange the money for the Americans. Naturally, all involved must be guaranteed political asylum in the United States.”

We gave “Ko” instructions to report on the Vietnamese unit designations and strengths at Muong Sai, along with trying to obtain the governor’s files on any American hostages or at least their names. “Ko” stated he would depart for Laos on 22 June and return with the information on 4 or 5 July.

If “Ko” was not speaking with a forked tongue, all we had to do was concentrate on working out the details for the exchange, i.e., money to pay for POWs. First, though, we needed the names of the POWs, and once we had the names, we could contact Admiral Paulson who had promised to provide questions that only aircrew members would know the answers to. Paulson was putting his ass on the line as he was going to provide us with highly classified info. Besides, we did not have security clearances. We sure as hell weren’t going to pay $200,000 for dirt-bag deserters or dope-heads posing as U.S. POWs.

I again rolled the dice, even though Buni & friend were not exactly batting a thousand: We were still without confirmation from Muong Sai, and receipt of the “Yellow Rain” artillery round and grenade we had heard about was “delayed.” However, we figured, all bases should be covered. Thus, with the first $500 installment of SOFdough, Ko Long, codenamed “Brave One,” set out through the wilds of Laos to follow up on the buy-out possibilities.

I was thrilled with the preliminary findings of the interviews. I decided it was time to go to Thailand myself to scope out the territory and try to figure out what was fact and what was rumor. I arranged for further and more in-depth interviews with our sources in Chiang Rai.

Once there, after two days of discussions, I decided that SOFs financial backing would be thrown behind “T’s” organization if it could assist in our POW/MIA mission. We got wind that the leadership of the LULF, who were expecting us to arm them for the revolution after they led us to the POWs, was getting restless because we had not provided them with any funds for the operational base inside Laos.

They threatened to attack the POW camp on their own, hoping to free two or three of the POWs that they then planned to ransom to the U.S. They said they would use the money to fund further operations against the communists.

They made it clear that it was do-or-die time for the mission—either I fund a LULF base inside Laos, or they would launch a half-assed attack on the camp which would, even if successful, jeopardize the POWs. But there were a lot of “ifs.” If in fact the POWs were there. If we had a base, it would provide a facility to train a Lao resistance unit which we would use to provide us with security when the money/POW exchange was made at the border — if it was made.

Two hundred thousand dollars in U.S. greenbacks in my hot little hands in the wild ass jungle of the Thai-Lao border meant that I was going to need a company or two of friendly guns. After all, here one could purchase a “hit man” for $10, and a raw gut-wrenching bottle of bad Mekong whiskey thrown in to boot.

Granted, we could purchase automatic weapons on the black market, but trying to purchase and carry a large quantity of M-l6s or AK-47s would undoubtedly irk Thai officialdom, who would in return give us free room and board in the local gray bar hotel.

Reason kicked in. We decided that we would limit our support of the LULF camp to assistance in the design and construction of Liberty City, and the purchase of uniforms, building supplies, tools, boots, webbed gear and food—but no weapons or ammunition.

ROUND-EYE SPIES

Back in Bangkok, before finding a location for the camp and beginning construction of Liberty City, Zabitosky, Jim Coyne and Tom Reisinger, whom I had stationed there full time, had been on hold for several weeks at the zero-star Nana Hotel in Bangkok awaiting back-channel clearances to get our armed reconnaissance off square one.

“The Nana was a palace compared to the hotel that General “Heinie” Aderholt got us,” Jim Morris, another SOF Special Forces vet who took three AK rounds in Nam, who also joined the team before going to Lebanon, said. “Heinie” had a Thai friend who owned a run-down dump that catered to Pakistanis. Every time you walked into the lobby, it was like walking into a Paki armpit that hadn’t seen a bar of soap in a couple of weeks. We were interested in saving money, but this was too much.

That meant that TR, Coyne and Zab were hanging around with a lot of dead time in Bangkok, which triggered a lot of rumors of undercover CIA agents and high hopes of making some quick bucks by the indigenous irregulars signing up for Liberty City. The hype about the CIA round eyes went viral as the weeks and months rolled by.

My protest, “Really guys, we’re not CIA!” went nowhere with the gung-ho Doubting Thomas locals. They did not buy the story that some lone crusader, or maniac, would cough up the dough to launch such a costly mission without the support or anointment of Uncle Sam.

The expenses were piling up, and raising $200,000 for the POW exchange would be quite a feat. I needed to try to recruit potential contributors. We heard a lot of flag waving and emotional ranting from several donors who offered to kick in big bucks, but such offers were just hype. The one that still gives me heartburn was from future presidential candidate H. Ross Perot.

George Petire, a former SOG operator in Nam, worked for Perot. He arranged for a meeting between us and the billionaire, or so he thought. Two SOFers and I, at SOF expense, hopped a flight to Dallas believing that Perot would be eager to see us after he had given some song and dance about wanting to bring the POWs back home.

Once we arrived, rather than being welcomed into Perot’s den, we were ushered off to his Number Two who blew us off, muttering that without “concrete evidence” Mr. Perot would not be endorsing any checks. I should have taken a lesson from the ruthless businessman who had no doubt been fleeced in previous POW efforts, but at the time, I was highly irked because the blowhard bastard had not told me about the “concrete evidence” requirement before I wasted our time and my money.

By 7 July the Thai officials finally approved the construction of Liberty City. Once our ticket to action, “Mr. Dieng,” a Thai Border Security operative and our liaison to host country intelligence, showed up, we set about tackling the logistical nightmare of feeding, clothing, equipping and training upwards of the first 90 “enlistees” who had drifted into the campsite. More and more were trickling in every week. Why the Thais “authorized” our operation still falls into the category of unsolved mysteries. We all had our theories, but Coyne’s rang as the most likely.

“I believe the Thais were content to allow Liberty City to operate as long as they knew about it and trusted what we were doing. It was in Laos, not Thailand, and beyond the Kuomintang (KMT) picket, so the Thais had nothing to lose from an intel collection standpoint. The Thais’ request to close down Liberty City coincided with the on-the-cover SOF revelation of it’s existence—then it was no longer plausible to deny knowledge of Liberty City and may have spurred the Thais to have us shut it down,” Coyne said.

The team could not operate from Bangkok, hundreds of klicks and damn near a 12-hour drive away from the Laotian border in northern Thailand. So we decided that we would set up a safe house in Chaing Rai, just south of the Laotian border where we had interviewed our informants.

Zabitosky, who was running the show, said, “Since we need a secure training camp, I want Reisinger and Mingo to go with me into Laos just over the Thai border and select a site. Coyne, you go back to Bangkok and complete any stories Robert K. Brown wants done, hang loose and be our contact man. We’ll set up a safe house here in Chiang Rai and coordinate things in this area using runners to go back and forth between here and our training base in Laos.”

With roving correspondent Coyne down in Bangkok, updating and putting the final touches on articles for the magazine, and me shuttling between the continental U.S. (CONUS), South America, Thailand and the Republic of South Africa (dabbling in big game hunting), Zab and TR held down the fort.

The locals watched closely the flurry of activity around the Chiang Rai safe house. No wonder—we found after leasing the place that it had previously been used as a safe house by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)!

Rumors began to fly that Zabitosky and TR were actually DEA agents arranging a bust on a well-known local narcotics kingpin.

As if TR and Zabitosky did not have enough problems, their numero uno problem became a nasty newly received rumor via our Lao intel net, specifically “T,” that a Thai narcotics kingpin had selected two specific heads, Zab and TR’s to roll: Those attached to the farangs (foreigners) residing in the mansion on Utrakit Road whom he fingered as being new sheriffs in town.

When the boys voiced concern about their impending death, I told them, “Hell, you guys should be paying me! A lotta people would shell out thousands to be where you are right now! Catch ya in a few days. Out.”

After “T” reported rumors that the two round eyes were on the drug-syndicate hit list, they put out the word to the locals that drug busts were not in their job descriptions. “T” was successful in his efforts to dispel the rumors, and the hit contract was lifted. A week later a messenger delivered word of their reprieve via messenger to the front door with an apology.

In Chiang Rai, the boys decided that playing cloak and dagger would only serve to attract even more gratuitous attention from already-suspicious neighbors. To add to the intrigue, the two often left for several-day periods to supervise construction of our base in the clouds, Liberty City. During their time spent in town, over meals or while browsing through shops, they let slip their cover: merely journalists interested in churning out magazine pieces on off-the-beaten-path tourist getaways.

LIBERTY CITY

The team refocused on our primary mission at the moment: infiltrating into Laos to the desolate village of Muong Sai, some 160 kilometers distant from our FOB ‘81, or “Liberty City,” where our agents had placed four Americans only several months before.

After an all-night stay at the safe house, Zabitosky, Mingo and TR, along with eleven LULF troops, began the brutal trek into Laos, splashing through rice paddies, up gently rising slopes and then up the rain-slicked rocky trails for the last nine miles into Laos. Most of the walking was up 60-degree inclines with only slight respites from the agonizing climb.

With Mingo remaining behind to oversee things after they chose the site, Zabitosky and TR flew back to Bangkok to meet me and brief me on our A-Team site location. All was agreed upon, and Zabitosky and TR left to supervise construction of Liberty City. Due to possible security problems involving the Thais, Zabitosky recommended that the site’s location be moved several kilometers farther into Laos from the original choice. Some of our troops had reconned the area, and its higher ground coupled with its panoramic view of the Mekong River made it a strategic site.

The “old boy” network in Bangkok and up-country also helped us procure the material just as it had helped us with the troops. We were given the OK to hump the supplies into Laos. Our go-to guy, a Mr. Dieng, who was no doubt with Thai intelligence, had secured road clearances enabling free access to and from our Liberty City training site for transport of non-lethal materiel.

TR called then-SOF Managing Editor Jim Graves, who wired $18k in greenbacks to a Bangkok bank within 72 hours. It was the first of what was to be far too many more wire transfers.

The team set about purchasing construction supplies for the camp, clearing ground, digging trenches and building bunkers. Zabitosky and TR shuttled back and forth to Chiang Rai while Mingo remained on-site at Liberty City to supervise construction.

Anticipating a worst-case scenario such as an air strike, the team threw bunkers together as fast as possible and explored a nearby cave complex. FOB 81 was a virtual A-camp minus the claymores and concertina, inside communist Laos. Far from being a symbolic gesture toward publicizing the POW/MIA issue or ink-generating Hollywood-style hype for Soldier of Fortune, the outpost, constructed under the on-site supervision of former U.S. Army Special Forces personnel, was a bona fide launch site for a planned armed foray to the Muong Sai prison camp.

I VISIT SOF’S “A” CAMP

Once it was done, time came for me to check out the camp that I had paid for. Tom Reisinger and I were going up to the base in Laos to meet up with Coyne, Zabitosky and troops of the LULF working with us at the base.

We stopped in the mud clearing near a small village of 30 huts on stilts, greeted by curious locals trying to get a peek at the two farangs and two Laotian guides who had come to their village just as the other two farangs had done the week before, armed only with cameras and tape recorders. As the villagers watched and chatted quietly at a distance, our Lao host showed up to join us and we headed toward Laos, some seven kilometers away across the rice fields, and up into the mountains.

The LULF supplied the Lao guides who picked us up in the village at various times. The LULF was established in May 1981, in response to deteriorating economic, social and political conditions within Laos. It hoped to resist further occupation of Laos by Vietnam, and establish a free, independent Laotian state in northwestern Laos. The number of people in the LULF was difficult to estimate—total armed strength was allegedly about 4,000. And I emphasize the word “alleged.”

Individual units, although widely dispersed over northwest Laos, were under one command, and came from the hill tribes most common to the region: Hmong, Lao Tung, Lahu, Yao, Liu and Lao. Many of the cadres were veterans of the clandestine war waged by the United States in Laos against the North Vietnamese in the 1950s and 1960s. The ranks were rou-tinely trained, armed and equipped by the People’s Republic of China at Szemao in Yunan Province.

General Vang Pao and his contacts gave us the names and introductions to Laotian resistance representatives in Thailand who arranged for the guided trip over the border to a LULF camp. After a hasty briefing outside the village, the LULF guide led us toward the hills.

The villagers stared at us as we headed into their villages armed with cameras and recorders. For the villagers, SOF was a ray of hope.

Although TR had made the trek before, he was in a world of hurt as much as I was. Yuppie-style jogging along the Boulder creek and trails as we did daily in Colorado had us thinking that we were totally buff. Did we ever fool ourselves.

All the jogging and macho working out in the office gym had hardly come close to preparing us for this straight-up mountain trek. We were hurting big time as we sucked in oxygen. Only Mingo, the wiry Indian in good enough shape for trekking across the globe, and several years our junior, was keeping pace with our 110-pound escorts. Mingo got great pleasure out of showing up out-of-shape, ex-Special Forces veterans. More than once we yelled for the guide, who was walking point, to slow down, but all we got was a ration of shit about not being in shape. I could only reply, “You’ve been here playing games for a year asshole; we’ve only just arrived.”

Meantime we would sigh with relief at the sight of a Hmong village coming into view. The naked kids, animals and curious villagers watched with amusement as we dragged ass into the village headman’s house for a welcome break. The syrupy sweet tea so common in Asia revived my sagging energy. After an hour’s break, we would head off again.

Hours seemed like days, until finally we arrived at a Thai outpost, a “Shangri-La” set upon a mountaintop we had sighted through a surreal field of clouds. Our prearranged hosts greeted us warmly, and after more sweet tea we departed on the last leg of our forced march.

Curious villagers on their way to the Thai rice fields scattered quietly out of our path as our small group passed. Jim Coyne, who had paved the way for my visit, had warned me about the grueling nine-hour trip, but his warnings, which I dismissed, were coming back to haunt me as I hiked straight up in the back-busting trek which was worse than the killer technical climb I made up Mount Rainier in 1966.

Our wiry little Hmong guides, with legs like coiled steel springs, literally jogged up the steep trails, carrying all our gear without difficulty as we grunted and panted behind them, trying to keep up. We crossed the last deep stream and kept climbing. After another hour of straight-up climbing, we stopped for a 15-minute break and looked up at the increasingly rugged hills. By the third hour we had to stop every 25 meters so that we would not keel over.

To our right, two klicks off the trail, was a CPT (Communist Party Thailand) redoubt, under daily pressure from the Thai Air Force and Border Patrol Police, but we were told that it was not a problem. The CPT wanted to join with the Lao resistance to fight the Vietnamese!

KMT (Kuomintang) soldiers, stationed in strategic locations, glared at us suspiciously. When the Chinese communists drove Chiang Kai-shek out of China in 1949, portions of his army retreated southwestward into Laos, Thailand and Burma. The KMT forces were used by the Thais in some places as border pickets. They provided border security where it would be impractical, or impossible, to garrison regular Thai troops. In return, the KMT was provided limited support, resupply and medical evacuation capabilities.

The KMT guards looked us up and down but never threatened us. Anxious to see any form of life in this Godforsaken country, they offered us cloudy home-made, sweet spiced-ginger whiskey from a gallon jug. We rudely grabbed the welcome brew. The local proverb, “The more Mekong whiskey you drink, the more languages you speak,” made a lot of sense just then.

Crossing the Laotian “border fence,” a single strand of rusty barbed wire, into the eerie, wild, lawless hills was a creepy, anti-climactic non-event. The whiskey had worn off and my head was pounding. My legs were numb from endless miles of slipping and falling down in the mud after a downpour; grasping for a tree branch then grasping for the next so as not to go sliding backwards down the steep slopes.

TR and our wiry legged guides were only alive because I needed both of them. Besides, I did not have the energy to waste TR with his annoying chant, “Time flies when you are having fun.” Its funny how such statements can stick in your mind for years. I eased the pain by fantasizing about filling out the pink slips for those sitting back at the office who called the treks into Laos “boy scout hikes.”

But we had to make it another klick in the dusk to get to the camp at the mountain elevation of 5,000 feet.

Coyne had given the LULF heads up that I was making the journey to meet the anxious freedom fighters who would not give up until they had their independent Laos. Word had spread fast, and several tribal leaders and chiefs were waiting for me when I arrived. They were standing at attention beneath the Soldier of Fortune “Death to Tyrants” banner flapping there in the hills of Laos.

“I swear, with your appearance, the sun came out for the first time in weeks,” Coyne said.

The LULF troops raised their flag, the ancient symbol of Laos: three white elephants co-mingled on a field of red. The tribesmen were convinced we were representing the U.S. government and nothing we could say would disabuse them of this belief.

From dawn until nightfall, we had been humping straight up the mountains in the constant mist and fog, but we were far too achy and tired to sleep. As one man who had been to Laos many times before told us, “If you sleep in Laos, you should always be half awake.”

Our superman hosts, who probably never slept, awakened us in the “guest suite” as soon as we dozed off in feverish sleep, bringing us tea before the foggy sunup with smiles in response to our groans and moans. These men made that trek constantly without a whimper, some of them daily, down and up for needed supplies or to relay information. Finally with daybreak, I could see the camp I had funded and the lay of the land. The “cooks” offered us the traditional stomach-ripping bowl of boiled rice covered with hot red peppers for breakfast.

I could see the camp more clearly in the daylight. It was built of bamboo and thatch and it sat on high ground above the Mekong River. Zigzag trenches linked defensive bunkers built to ring the compound in case the communist Pathet Lao decided to foreclose on our lease.

It reminded the group of us, all Nam vets, of some of the Special Forces “A” camps in Nam. The four or five hootchs (small thatched huts) in the main area were all dug into the ground with dirt banked up against the sides. Log bunkers were placed with good fields of fire and heavily fortified with dirt and rock.

An estimated 20 people lived within the main area, while other LULF troops scattered in nearby sites in the mountains. The troops had a miscellany of weapons: M-2 carbines, a few M-16s, the rest AK-47s or Chinese Model 56s, but all of them were well-oiled and maintained. Ammunition and magazines were in short supply. Many men had only one or two mag-azines full of ammunition with an additional few rounds loose in their pockets.

The Vietnamese had a nearby garrison of approximately 200 men, 12 klicks away, but they kept to themselves. When the team first got to the camp, they were told how the easternmost LULF outpost had surprised a six-man Vietnamese recon team a quarter klick away the previous week. But the Vietnamese, once they realized they’d been spotted, faded away into the tall grass because the villagers had been spreading the rumor that there were four battalions at the camp. It’s funny how rumors would fly through those hills devoid of cyber space and electronics. When the LULF troops went to investigate further, they found skid marks all the way down the hill where the Vietnamese had tried to break their rapid retreat with their heels.

The LULF troops spoke virtually no English, and the interpreter they provided didn’t speak much better. The tough little warriors did not have much military training, but they had a common enemy, the Vietnamese who occupied their homeland, and they wanted blood. What held them back was the shortage of enough weapons and ammo to make their fight a success. They mainly engaged when surprised by the bad guys on the trails or in the villages where they went to resupply themselves.

Occasionally, a runner would charge in with news that a 20-man Pathet Lao patrol was going from village-to-village about two klicks below the camp asking questions about the farangs. The camp would immediately go on alert. Earlier, one courier ran into the camp from the lowest outpost that was closest to the patrol: six of the Pathet Lao had pistols, four had binoculars, one a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (RPG-2), and the rest AKs.

The first training we provided our people consisted of basic hand and arm signals, and a straight-from-the-textbook version of a squad-size immediate-action breaking contact drill.

Some of the men had been to China for training, but the training didn’t amount to much, although the Chinese had provided equipment and uniforms, including brand new Type-56s (AKs) and a basic load of stick grenades. Each small squad was also issued an RPG-2 and as many rockets as they could carry. Uniforms and webbed gear were basic Chinese-issue green with leg wrappings that looked no different than the uniforms of the Pathet Lao or Vietnamese in Laos, who wore the same soft, short-billed cap as the Chinese, but with a shiny black brim and trim.

DIA JOINS THE SEARCH—HALF-ASSED

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had been collecting various reports of American POWs allegedly sighted throughout Vietnam and Laos. A report of the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs, issued several months after Admiral Paulson gave me the go-ahead and our mission was in full force in Southeast Asia, summed up some of SOF’s activities:

“On 30 July, 1981, Admiral Paulson requested the appropriate DIA element to research the Lao resistance forces to help answer the question . . . as to whether it may be more profitable (strictly in terms of accounting for U.S. MIAs) for the U.S. to deal with the Lao resistance forces or attempt to continue to secure a full accounting from the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR).”

The assessment was also to consider the possibility of penetration by Lao or Vietnamese hostile intelligence services or even allied resistance groups such as those under former South Vietnamese Army Colonel Vo Dai Ton. DIA favored two major resistance groups: the Hmong in northern Laos and the Lao People’s United National Liberation Front headed by Phoumi Nosovan.

The Agency Report went on to say: “League employees and the Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC) were not the only persons searching for POW/MIA information from Laos and Thailand. Early in August 1981, staff members of Soldier of Fortune magazine contacted the Joint Casualty Resolution Center (JCRC) coincidental with SOF’s own effort to establish Camp Liberty, a base for Chinese-trained Hmong resistance forces in northern Laos. During this period, SOFhad contacts from time-to-time with the various private Americans operating in Thailand and col-lecting POW/MIA information. SOF also learned quickly that a major POW/MIA information peddler, Phoumi Nosovan, operated from the area of Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, and that he was notoriously unreliable and someone to avoid.”

We were happy to be of service to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, and flattered that they found SOF’s findings useful. But I still think they might have ponied up some funding of their own for the project rather than having it come from my own pocket.

KMT WANTS TO GET ON BOARD

Meanwhile, back in Thailand during the weeks that followed, various Lao tribal leaders, many of whom had been at odds before, held one conference after the other. Zabitosky eventually cemented together a tight coalition of tribes including the Hmong, Lao, LaoTseung and Yao.

As our band of tattered musketeers continued to beef up defenses and living quarters up at Liberty City, disturbing word arrived that several hundred Yao tribesmen from farther north wanted to hook up with us for a share of rice and beans and a crack at the North Vietnamese.

Then came news of a force of some 340 Kuomintang, which was offering back-up support for our thrust into Laos. The KMT commander was chomping at the bit to engage with the Vietnamese just across the Mekong. He promised that his guys would back us, guns ablazing, should we stumble into deep shit and need to beat feet toward the nearest friendlies.

TR, a Special Forces medic in Nam, had figured that a late-night medical house call to aid one of the KMT commander’s ailing NCOs needed to be rewarded. So payback was the promise of hundreds of armed allies just in case our activities would trigger a very large war!

I was, at the time of this most gracious but potentially costly-to-SOF offer, jetting back to the U.S. from a Chilean cesspool called Tierra del Fuego. TR knew he better squelch the offers of troops that would surely trigger an all-out war. All of this, undoubtedly on Uncle Bob’s nickel, meant that within 96 hours I’d be filling out their pink slips.

They did some fast-talking and by the time I touched down at Don Muong International Airport three days later, the offer had been graciously refused.

All this time we had heard not a word from the engineer “Ko” to whom you will recall I had given $500 for his efforts to arrange for the local governor to spring POWs, until the conniving little bastard finally slithered back in late August mouthing just four words: “Governor say not interested.” SOF was out another $500, a drop in the bucket in the whole scheme of things, but at the time this spoiled drop made a real splash. Had we been conned from the beginning? No doubt.

Because we had tens of thousands of dollars invested in Liberty City, we decided to research the feasibility of having the LULF conduct recon patrols of likely POW sites inside Laos.

Since it looked like we were there for the long run, we all got sick of no-star hotels with big cockroaches. The SOF team located a five-bedroom penthouse apartment on Soi 4S, Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok, that they set up for orchestrating the operations up north and over the border. This led to parties with the locals and dignitaries who were delighted to be invited to the SOF digs which soon became notorious for lavish bashes.

ENTER THE MISSIONARY’S SON

A few weeks into the construction of Liberty City, a renowned, highly decorated chopper pilot for the DEA, Robert Moberg, who had served several tours in Nam and as a special adviser in Laos, introduced us to William Young. Moberg had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and half a dozen other medals. He was ruggedly handsome, the quintessential tough guy, with thick features and piercing eyes through large glasses who had gone native and made his home in Asia, mainly Thailand in between trips to CONUS, China and the Sudan. Over drinks, Moberg had promised to steal us a chopper if we needed one to extract POW’s. He bragged about Young’s extensive background in and around “The Golden Triangle.” Young’s family had been missionaries and he wove tales of hazardous horseback sojourns for God through hell-raising Kuomintang Chinese bastions.

1949 Burma, where Young was born, was as deadly as 1880 Tombstone. Moberg boasted of Young’s contacts with local hill tribes and raved about his expertise, which would be very valuable to our mission. Zabitosky was reassured that Young’s polygraph exam as well as his CIA agent background checked out positive.

We set up a meeting with Young in Chang Rai. Since we’d never laid eyes on him, we didn’t know whether to expect a hell and brimstone nerd with thick horn-rimmed glasses or a swashbuckling plant sent our way from “Spook Central.” TR fretted, “Young could be a burnout who’d bang the table as he embellished war stories or bitch about how the world had screwed him around.”

The tall, handsome, by now portly American in his 50’s, who stood out in stark contrast to the locals, looked more like a professor than a renowned anti-communist fighter. He climbed out of his late-model pickup truck accompanied by his local much-too-young girlfriend, “Lek.” The SOFers inhaled a fair amount of cocktails while the former hard drinking Young, who was on the wagon, abstained.

As the night wore on and our defenses with it, he started looking more and more like a perfect match for SOF. A master storyteller, he told us of a run-in he’d had with his CIA superior, a well-known backstabber ever eager to bolster his career. Young, flying high as a kite in 1967 during the Vietnam War, paid the SOB a visit and thoroughly kicked his ass. His CIA gig was over. “You’ll never work in this town again,” he was told. Needless to say, he sounded like our type of guy.

He went freelance after leaving the agency, picking up investigative assignments whenever he scored gigs, which was often, since he built up a smashingly respectable reputation. His low key and very polite manner sucked us all in, except for Zabitosky, who thought that anyone who didn’t take a drink or light up a cigarette had two strikes against them.

We plotted into the wee hours how to photo recon Muong Sai. With our already wild imaginations enhanced by the booze, we concocted guidelines for future recruitment and training of our Liberty City contingent. Our initial major worry was that the possibility of initiating armed hostilities between Thailand and Laos, which would no doubt drag Vietnam into the fray, was real. It was SOF’s “Super Bowl,” as TR said, and I wanted a tight, disciplined unit without a bunch of Rambos getting creative and slipping across the Mekong to settle personal scores.

I would make a site recon to Muong Sai, Laos with 30 of our Liberty City troops, TR, Zabitosky, Coyne and Mingo. Some of the team members had repeatedly slogged their way up the eerie, cloud-caped mountains of northern Laos, passing through KMT Chinese strongholds amid late-night thunderstorms—locales where white faces just weren’t seen.

If we could confirm American POWs in Muong Sai, we assumed, some heavy cash and favors could be called in to finance a snatch op.

Young was especially intrigued by the pan-tribal coalition Zabitosky had organized, claiming that it would score points for some quid pro quo as the mission progressed.

The multi-lingual Young, who spoke four dialects (Meo, Lu, Lao and Lahu) like a native (which he was), would act as our interpreter for the Laotian tribesmen. He upped the ante by offering to serve as intermediary between SOF and the powers that be, both Thai and American, down in Bangkok.Little did I know at the time that that his machinations were slowly tightening the noose around my neck. The U.S. Embassy knew good and well that I was in the country and up to some hanky panky in Chiang Rai and parts north. While the Embassy officials had assured us that all was “no sweat,” they had been non-committal regarding our planned recon.

I was so impressed with Young, I ordered him put on the SOF payroll. He would be the linchpin to cement the diverse (and oft-times warring) elements of our newly formed Lao “confederation” and dispatch them quickly down the road to Muong Sai.

Zabitosky, via some secretive sources which we never did identify, had formulated the theory that Muong Sai prison might hold a missing Air America crew downed by hostile fire on 27 Dec ‘71, for which the CIA had offered 2kg of gold per man. Whether Roy Townley, George Ritter, Edward Weissenback and non-Air America pilot Clarence Driver, or four other U.S.-types, were held there remained uncertain. What was crystal clear was the fact that the team faced 30 very rugged days in, and at least 30 out . . . and God knew what in between.

CHINESE “CHECKERS” AND SHAN NASTIES

Days later, Young dropped some disturbing news on us: some at the People’s Republic of China Embassy, he said, were salivating over our growing in-place armed force up at Liberty City, and were dancing around the idea of joining hands to do a major number on the mutually despised Vietnamese. Confirmation being impossible, we dismissed it as but the first of Young’s over-dramatizations and he never brought it up again.

Young continued (he said) to grease the skids with our Embassy. The officials there were cordial enough but we had to remember that Bo Gritz and his coterie, back in March, had made international news for their stupid and incompetent over-the-border incursion into Laos on a POW rescue attempt of their own.

(When Gritz ran for President on the Populist Party ticket, and conservatives asked why I would not support him, I responded: “Anyone who takes eight people armed with only three semi-automatic Uzis and one . 38 caliber revolver into a hostile situation, in this case communist Laos, is not playing with a full deck.” No one could argue with this and that quickly ended any argument.)

During the hellstorm that followed, veiled warnings were tossed our way: “If you guys try anything, keep it low-profile. And watch your asses. Because if you get grabbed inside Laos there won’t be anyone coming to get you. The American Vice-Consul from Chiang Mai dropped by and gave us the same big-brotherly warnings from on high. Suspiciously, his visit came only days after my in-depth Washington D.C. briefing to Admiral Alan Paulson, mentioned above, after which we were green-lighted to continue with our search for MIAs. Keeping Young on board was seemingly a necessity.

THE CIA AND U.S. EMBASSY: WARNINGS OR MANIPULATIONS?

We’d assumed since entering Thailand that the CIA had been tracking our movements. Since the Gritz missions of misfortune, Embassy-types were a trifle testy over independents roaming at will over Thai turf with the potential of inflicting diplomatic black-eyes or setting off nasty bloodlettings with neighboring dictatorships.

Untrained in diplomatic signal-watching, we were slow to pick up on gentle hints. Young clued us in. He’d heard, invented (or had been spoonfed) a vicious little rumor that the Shan National Army from over in Burma was planning to off several Americans, and that any round eyes who were venturing north out of Bangkok were apt to get themselves whacked.

Was our Embassy saying, “We have empathy for your objectives, but don’t get careless”? Or in other words: “You’re on your own boys. We never knew you.”

Lt. Colonel Denny Lane, at that time the Army Assistant Military Attaché in Thailand, summed up the official position, maybe:

“I didn’t know that you had built a camp inside Laos, let alone why the Thais went along with the project. Apropos the U.S. Government and SOF, all that I remember was getting a message saying something to the effect that I was to assist Robert K. Brown and SOF but not to get involved. I think that Dick Childress, who was then at the National Security Council, had something to do with that. Also, if I remember correctly, when Bo Gritz came out with his gaggle, we were told that Dick Childress drove him to the airport. Ergo we never really knew if Gritz had at least tacit backing from the NSC.”

With that he reconfirmed why Zabitosky and TR sensed mixed signals at the time. Had the Vice-Consul’s visit been to warn us off from bringing a POW back, or to simply alert us to a genuine danger posed by anti-American elements?

Several of our contacts advised us that there were numb nuts in the State Department, Pentagon, CIA and DIA who didn’t relish seeing any MIA Americans staggering out of the Laotian bush. Whether diplomatic maneuvering was a higher priority than locating live Americans, we hadn’t the foggiest. I suppose they were miffed that former Vietnam vets were attempting to pull off what American intelligence agencies and the American military should have carried out years before.

We became aware that certain elements of State and the intel agencies wanted us to pack our tent, leave Thailand and jet on home. Others we came to know covertly supported our efforts. Still we were always wondering who for sure was on which team.

The chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs in Hanoi for over a decade, Bill Bell, whom I met at the time, confirmed my suspicions. With four tours in Nam, he was a highly decorated Airborne-Ranger. In spite of the fact that he had endured enormous tragedy when he lost his wife and daughter in the first Babylift flight from Vietnam at the end of the war, which crashed, he returned to serve DOD in Thailand.

As Bell put it, “The Ambassador and senior staff appeared to be more concerned that your activities as private citizens might add to the number of missing Americans already listed, rather than effective efforts that might reduce the list. Almost all of the staff on the lower end of the diplomatic totem pole seemed to be supportive of your private efforts and they generally regarded the POW/MIA issue as being one of traditional mom and apple pie variety. I think it would be fair to say that regarding your private recovery efforts, most American expatriates, in both official and unofficial status, were in the bleachers rooting for what they perceived to be ‘the good guys.’

“Of course,” Bell continued, “there were a few diplomats in the Political Section who were proverbial ‘nervous nellies.’ These guys were primarily concerned that your activities, especially the cross-border forays from Thailand into Laos involving ‘resistance forces,’ might result in an even stronger level of animosity than the extant degree of mistrust between Thailand and the paranoid Lao Peoples Democratic Republic.

“Certain American officials stationed at remote camps throughout Thailand were also monitoring your efforts. Sometimes in a place like Thailand there are so many unilateral and bilateral operations being conducted that it is difficult to determine which are private, which are official and which are simply tourism. After all, that is the name of the spy game—use a cover op to hide an even more highly classified op. I recall that in my office we also submitted periodic reports on anyone we became aware of that intruded into our Area of Operations.”

So, SOF was being watched, monitored, followed and, in all likelihood, infiltrated. But the question remained: who was for and who was against us?

WE LAY PLANS TO GO TO MUONG SAI

I was never sure which team Young was on, other than his own. He seemed to say and do the right things. But we assumed that very few in actuality leave Agency employ or association. We fervently hoped he was one of the good guys, not a career suit who’d kiss off any confirmed POWs to garner points with higher-up puppet masters. At the time we needed him in the fold. If he were somebody’s inside man, we’d have to chance it.

Zabitosky repeatedly said that the Agency was highly interested in the Muong Sai area and had conceivably blinked its green lights to Young, allowing us to proceed with our missions.

China was still doing a bit of low-key, saber-rattling in regard to launching their Lao-led insurrection. It was imperative that we get to Muong Sai, obtain confirmation photos of Americans, and put into operation our project to snatch these guys. If we failed, they’d be relocated—or dead. We had seen that the People’s Republic was continuing in its attempt to create difficulties for the Vietnamese, especially in Laos, where we did confirm that Col. Bounleuth (who we found was worthless) and a cadre of Laotian troops not under his command then cooling their heels up in Liberty City, had indeed received formal military training near Kunming, China.

To hell with the warning that the PRC was expanding its sphere of influence; it was the thought of any Americans up there twisting in the wind that bothered us.

But meanwhile we were on hold, stuck in the “no sweat” world of Young, whose “Just hang in a bit longer, Bob” routine was wearing thin. But he was hardly the only barracuda circling the good ship SOF.

In the meantime our armed troops at Liberty City, many of whom had trekked down from China, were antsy to get on with the recon to Muong Sai. Young dragged on the waiting game, citing diplomatic difficulties in getting his official OK for us to launch the incursion.

With Coyne and I heading back to the U.S. to take care of other business, Zabitosky and TR settled in for the wait; two weeks stretching to nearly three months. Buni and Tor, and then Young, coughed up all sorts of excuses: monsoons, sick relatives, non-cooperative Thai border guards, and on and on.

I returned to Boulder, trying to line up some heavy-bread business-types to whom I was pitching this latest buyout proposal. There was a good deal of interest—but no forthcoming cash.

With Mingo’s, Buni’s, Tor’s and Young’s credibility sinking, only their two Muong Sai eyewitnesses could save them from being sacked and thrown off the gravy train. Young, I suppose in desperation, latched onto my support for the “ever-growing”—but thus far invisible, to us at least— Laotian resistance movement, which had now allegedly targeted Sayaboury Province as the kick-off place for their grand offensive.

Young continued to shift focus from the POW effort, saying that now was a bad time to perform our recon, since our Thai hosts were getting cold feet. But while we just waited, why not thrill the Supreme Command and move up the Resistance to front-burner priority?

SHUTDOWN

In October, we heard rumors of a large number of Vietnamese troops moving into locations across the Mekong from Liberty City, which now contained more than 200 LULF freedom fighters.

In November 1981, high-ranking Thai officials pressured us to close the camp. We had no choice but to follow their directives as our only source of supply was across the Thai border.

Questions I had then and now will never be answered. Were “T” and “B” conning us with POW reports simply to fund their dream of returning to Laos? Were POWs in Muong Sai? Did “Ko” actually know the Pathet Lao governor? And, again, what was the Thai motive in letting us establish Liberty City in the first place?

We put austerity measures into quick effect: Our Chiang Rai safe house was closed and Young was placed in overall command of SOF’s operations. Zabitosky was understandably miffed at being replaced. But I thought, at the time, Young possessed the contacts and expertise to permanently weld the tribal coalition into a formidable military force, and keep his ear to the ground for any intelligence on POW intel.

Young assured us that all would again turn butterside-up with the Thais. He insisted on giving our boys up at Liberty City the bad news personally . . . with cash bonuses for their efforts. In light of what we found out about Young later, I question whether any “cash bonuses” were paid to the troops.

The SOF team reluctantly folded their tents and headed for the Don Muong Airport to board a JAL 747 to Tokyo’s Narita airport. “My thoughts raced back through the previous four months,” TR said. “We thought we’d made headway but it had cost more than $125,000 to do it. I should know; I picked up the money. In relative terms, though, we hadn’t seen nuttin’ yet.”

Four time zones away in Chiang Mai, Young was laying out his mother of all schemes: SOF’s solo financial takeover of the mysterious Laotian Resistance Movement!