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"Strap
Hanger"
© 1997 Donald E. Valentine
All rights reserved
If
you haven't already done so, please read http://www.don-valentine.com/gruntp.htm
first.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Super
Spook Training
[This
section covers intelligence training as an Agent Handler [Ft
Holabird, MD April 1970-August 1970]
US Army Intelligence Center and School
Fort
Holabird is located in South Baltimore near an industrial center
in the Dundalk neighborhood. After a thirty day furlough, I
reported there in March 1970. They processed me in and told me
that I would be receiving an allowance for quarters and rations
and that I would have to find a place to live off post because
they were short of quarters on post. So I went apartment hunting
and of course my first stop was the post watering hole, the NCO
Club, where I met an SF buddy, Sergeant First Class Curry who
just happened to have a spare bedroom. Curry was an SF radioman
that I had met at Fort Bragg through Harry P. Clark. Curry was
about 6’ tall and medium built with dark curly hair. He
offered to share his three bedroom apartment with me and I moved
into his unit at Bear Creek Apartments. This apartment complex
was about two or three miles east of Fort Holabird in the
Dundalk area. Curry already had one other SF sergeant living in
the apartment with him, but I can not remember his name. They
were attending the Special Forces Intelligence Course and had
about six weeks before they graduated. My SF buddies referred to
the "Agent Handler" students as "Super
Spooks." Because I was the ranking man in my class, I
was automatically the Class Leader.
USAICS Crest
The
instructors spent the entire first week of class emphasizing
that an Agent Handler always lies about his true identity, his
job and his background; that an Agent Handler deliberately
studies people so he can be-friend them and then use this phony
friendship to take advantage of their weaknesses; how to
persuade his "friend" to risk their life to help him;
and that an Agent Handler will always know everything about his
agent, but the agent will never know the Agent Handler’s real
identity, employer or background.
Every day
for the first two weeks, an instructor would ask us if anybody
had changed their mind and wanted to drop out of the course. We
did have one or two drop out the first week, but I’m not
positive exactly how many. One of our students was a US Marine
Corps corporal and two were US Air Force sergeants, everyone
else was in the US Army. Several of the army students were
Specialist 5th Class and/or Sergeant and above, but
most of them were privates fresh out of basic training. Except
for one spoiled brat, we had a pretty darn good group of guys.
The brat was one of the recruits and he acted as if he
considered himself too good to be in the army and forced to
socialize with such riff-raff. The army should have sent him to
an infantry rifle company because he would need very close
supervision as long as he was in the military. He definitely
would not be closely supervised in military intelligence. Most
likely his family was financially well off and he was too
chicken to flee to Canada and figured intelligence duty would
be the next best choice.
They
issued me so many textbooks I could not carry them all in one
trip to my car. We had about the same number of books that were
classified SECRET, but we were not allowed to remove them from
the classroom. Almost all of our classes were also classified
SECRET. They must have issued me at least twenty pounds of books
that covered everything you ever wanted to know about communism,
the communist party and the geography of communist countries.
That course required a great deal of reading. [I still
haven’t found the time to read all of those books on communism
and communist countries.]
One of the
first things that we learned was that we were not training to be
spies, we were training to be espionage agents. The instructor
explained, "Spies are shot on the spot when captured.
Captured espionage agents are considered good bartering
material." That made sense to me. Actually we were training
to learn how to recruit, train, target, infiltrate, exfiltrate,
and debrief espionage agents as their use became necessary. But
in order for us to train them how to be an espionage agent,
first we had to learn how to be one ourselves.
There were
two neighborhood taverns on the main street between Fort
Holabird and Bear Creek Apartments and I always stopped at the
NCO Club on post where I would usually eat and pass the time
with some other special forces sergeants and maybe their
favorite tavern enroute home each day.
Back
home in the hills of East Tennessee we don’t have taverns like
those. The Dundalk taverns were friendly places where the
customers mostly all knew each other. They were a place to get
the latest neighborhood news and politics. Back in the
mountains, especially in the Cocke County area, a tavern was
called a "Honkytonk" or a "Joint" and most
of the local crooks hung out there. Those places were a
center for neighborhood meanness and most likely much of the
local meanness was planned right there. Every beer joint was
operated illegally. Back then they either did not have a liquor
or beer license but sold it anyway or they had a beer license
but also sold whiskey. Many of them also sold the services of
their female employees. Those places were also where roughnecks
went to get as drunk as they could and cause as much trouble as
they could before somebody killed them or the owner evicted
them. A stranger that entered one of those beer joints was
either ignorant or crazy because he was automatically suspected
of being with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation [TBI], Drug
Enforcement Agency [DEA] or Alcoholic Beverage Control [ABC]. If
that stranger happened to be wearing a tie, that was as good as
confirmation that he was a government man and he was treated
accordingly. A few years back, law enforcement officers raided a
beer joint in Cocke County, Tennessee. Counting the owner,
employees, and customers, there were a total of 30 people
present at the time of the raid. In addition to other illegal
items, the officers confiscated 35 loaded pistols. There isn’t
one beer joint in Cocke County, Tennessee where at least one
person hasn’t been killed and most them have been the scene of
several killings. I was in one tavern there one
time and an elderly gentleman sitting beside me was discussing
pistols with his neighbor and pulled a pistol from every pocket
in his overalls and denim jacket and those overalls have many
pockets. After he showed the pistol to his friend he would
put it away and pull out another one.
When I
discussed my tour with the 46th SF Company in
Thailand, I mentioned Big Griff and I told a few things about
him. I only know one time when "Big Griff" ever got
his massive ass whipped and that was in a Cocke County beer
joint. Big Griff was a Sheriff’s Deputy from Marion, Virginia
investigating a tractor theft at the time. Griff told me,
"I decided to try and find an ex-special forces buddy of
mine who was from Newport, Tennessee while I was there. I went
in a beer joint wearing civvies and asked the bartender if he
knew Paul Hill. I just wanted to try to find him and say hello
while I was there. As soon as I mentioned his name, everybody in
that place attacked me — males, females, the owner, the
customers — everybody. They nearly beat me to death. They
hospitalized me. I was lucky to get home alive. I don’t know
what my buddy did to them to cause that reaction and I don’t
care. Ever since then when I drive through Cocke County,
Tennessee, I speed up!" Big Griff added, "Val, Do you
know Paul Hill?" I replied, "Hell no and I’m not
asking for him either." Knoxville,
Tennessee, however, does have some taverns that resembled those
in the Baltimore area.
One
evening when I arrived home, after spending a few hours at a
local tavern, I was met at our door by a naked young lady
wearing nothing but a bed sheet that she had hastily wrapped
around herself. Pocahontas was racing madly for the front door
and right behind her, making ugly faces and waving his arms
around wildly, was one of my SF roommates. Since I had
just closed the door and was blocking the exit, I offered the
lady part of my egg salad submarine sandwich that I had bought
for a midnight snack. She accepted and it was apparent that she
was glad that a relatively sane person had arrived or maybe she
just loved egg salad.
It seems
that Lady Godiva and her sweetie had been in the sack when
he glanced out the window and noticed that it was a full moon
night. He suddenly pretended to be a werewolf and she panicked.
It didn’t take long to convince them both that it would be
best for all concerned, if she didn’t race outside wearing
nothing but a sheet with him chasing after her in his skivvies.
Finally, I persuaded her that her new found lover was not a
werewolf, that it was just a stupid joke and he was not going to
hurt her, but she still refused to go back to bed with him. The
intoxicated would-be werewolf finally became disgusted with the
whole affair and staggered off to bed. After we finished the
sub, I hit the sack too. Lady Godiva hopped into bed right
behind me. I guess she really did love egg salad.
One
weekend, our class decided to have a picnic at Fort Howard.
Several of the younger guys brought a girl friend. We had a good
time. While we were there some soldiers in jungle fatigues came
strolling out of the woods; they were SF men and students at the
school also.
Naturally,
the SF soldiers noticed the attractive ladies amongst us and
gazed admiringly at them which caused some concern amongst our
group. None of the SF men had noticed me yet, I guess I don't
rate compared to the girls. Whispered comments between my
students indicated they were fearful there was going to be a
confrontation because of the ladies. So I stood up and walked
through my students to my roommate, Sergeant Curry, who was with
the group of SF guys. Curry introduced me to the other SF guys
that I didn’t know and I told them who we were and why we were
there and they continued on their merry way — much to the
relief of my students. The ladies were simply amused by all of
this. Shortly afterwards, the SF class graduated and my SF
roommates returned to Fort Bragg. That was the last I ever saw
or heard of Curry or his "werewolf" buddy.
That was
when I asked the two air force students in my class to move in
with me and home life became less zany. In fact, we were down
right civilized. At least there were no more naked women running
around the apartment wrapped in a bed sheet. Of the air force
guys, I only remember one that dated and that was Sergeant Bird
[not his real name] who was stationed in the Tampa/St Petersburg
area. Bird was a tall, skinny, redhead with a hooked nose and
his buddy was a short, slim man with dark hair.
One of our
instructors was Chief Warrant Officer "Dirty Tom"
Conley and another was named Picarello. Dirty Tom was a crusty
old soldier and we took to each other right off the bat. One day
about a week after school started, Dirty Tom called me aside
during a break and said, "Val, you really screwed up."
I asked him, "How’s that Tom?" Tom replied,
"These people love to get their hands on you guys." I
asked him, "What do you mean Tom?" Tom said,
"Real Soldiers. MI loves to get real soldiers from the real
army because we have some dirty assignments that they can’t
get their candy-ass intelligence types to do." Tom walked
away without explaining exactly what he considered a
"dirty" assignment. I thought, "MI can’t have
any duty assignments that are any worse than what I have already
been through." However, it was a good clue that I might be
headed right back to Vietnam when I finished training.
So we
began our education in the clandestine ways of the intelligence
community. We learned right away that our intelligence
instructors used the "real world" teaching method
instead of the traditional teaching method whenever possible. In
other words, in traditional schools, "First you learn, then
you’re tested," but in the real world, "First
you’re tested, then you learn." Of course the real world
method assumes that you will survive the test. The real world
method of learning is very effective, but it is also very
frustrating and stressful.
Our
training began with the basics such as terminology, military
intelligence organization, typing and paperwork. Soon, I
discovered that there was lots of paperwork involved in my new
job and I was glad that I had started learning how to type on my
own before I left Oki.
Ma Klicka
was the typing instructor for our class. Ma Klicka was a legend
in her own time at Fort Holabird and the Baltimore area in
general. There was only one parking space on Fort Holabird that
had a sign reserving it for any particular individual and that
sign read, "Mrs Klicka." God help anyone who parked in
Ma Klicka’s space: She did not hesitate to telephone the Post
Commander. Ma had been an instructor for the US Army
Intelligence School since there had been an intelligence course
located at Fort Holabird. She had been a typist for many years
before that. In fact, during the 1920s or 1930s, she set a world
typing record for speed and accuracy and I believe that record
still stands to this day. As I recall, she typed something like
150 or 200 words per minute for six hours non-stop and never
made a single mistake. She accomplished this on an old manual
typewriter and like I said, even with the new electric
typewriters and computerized word processors, that record has
not been broken to this day.
Apparently
Ma had outlived more than one of her husbands which didn’t
surprise me in the least because that lady was one tough cookie.
One of her late husbands had been the sheriff of Baltimore
County when he died and she had replaced him as sheriff. From
all reports, she had made a good sheriff too. Like I said, Ma
was one tough cookie.
Ma was a
real stickler about how you handled her typewriters. You could
not just grab the paper and rip it out of the carriage, you had
to roll it out by hand and when the class was over, you had to
cover the typewriter and the cover had to be all the way down
and the bottom edge of the cover had to be horizontal. She
insisted that the typewriter was a weapon and was to be treated
with respect.
Ma was in
the process of writing, editing, and re-typing a new typing
manual for the school. She did all of this at the same time that
she was teaching her class. She was giving us verbal
instructions, supervising our typing efforts, and final-typing
the new typing manual all at the same time. That may sound
impressive, but it is only half of the story. Ma was also typing
fast, very fast, and the keys were clicking to the rhythm
of the Lone Ranger’s Theme. Ma never missed a beat,
kept a watchful eye on her students and never made an error the
entire time.
One day,
my prima donna student was about thirty minutes late for typing
class. He strolled in the door during class and I asked him
where he had been. He said, "I’m not a kid anymore and
you’re not my father. I can take care of myself." He was
walking down the aisle to his desk at the time. He sat down as
he finished his stupid statement and when he looked up, I was
standing beside him. He grinned a nervous grin. Leaning forward,
I rested my hands on his desk with my face nose-to-nose with him
and in a low voice I told him, "Wipe that stupid smile off
your dumb ass face or I’ll wipe it off for you!" He just
gaped at me because I wasn’t nervous and I wasn’t grinning.
I said, "Wipe it off, now!" He wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand and he was no longer grinning. With that I
stood up and motioned for him to follow me.
When we
reached the men’s latrine, I chewed him out for about ten
minutes. During that time, I reminded him, "The army had
decided that he would be responsible for everything that he did
or failed to do and that I would be responsible to make sure that he did it the army way, not his
way." I also
informed him, "I’ll let you know when you can miss a
class or formation and until then you better have your sorry ass
at the appointed place at the appointed time and if you ever
pull a stunt like that again, I will personally ram my boot up
your ass all the way to your empty skull."
When we
finally returned to the classroom, he was a tad more subdued and
tried to blend in with the rest of class and disappear. I
actually thought that dipstick was going to cry. Ma loved it!
She said, "Sergeant Valentine, you’re my kind of
guy."
[In the
mid-1980s, I saw a commercial on television promoting the Apple
"McIntosh" computer and the Apple word processing
program. The only person that appeared in the commercial was
this little old lady who demonstrated how easy it was to type
using that system, but she stated something to the like "nobody,
even if they used a McIntosh, could break her world typing
record." She patted the McIntosh and wished it good
luck with, "Lots of luck trying little fellow." The
lady in that commercial was none other than, "Ma Klicka."
It didn’t refer to her as "Klicka," it listed her by
another name that I did not recognize, but that was Ma Klicka
alright. The commercial probably used her maiden name or her
married name at the time she set the typing record. That was the
last time that I ever saw, or heard anything about, Ma Klicka.]
One of our
first classes was on the art of "elicitation."
Training on this subject lasted several hours. Elicitation is a
method of getting someone to share information with you without
directly asking for it. One way to elicit information is to make
a direct statement that you know is incorrect in hopes that the
source will correct you before he realizes that he’s said
something that he shouldn’t have. Another form of elicitation
is sharing intimate secrets about your job or your personal
life, which will be a lie of course, in hopes that the source
will also share a secret with you. There are too many techniques
to cover them all, but this should give you a basic
understanding of elicitation.
Naturally
the final exam for the elicitation training was also based on
the real world method of teaching. Each student was given the
last name and class number of another student at Fort Holabird
and an otherwise blank Personal History Statement that consisted
of six pages. We were to fill in the blanks with information
that we "elicited" from our assigned subject. My
target was an army specialist who was in the classroom across
the hall from our classroom. Within a week, I completed almost
all of my form and turned it in.
Because
they had targeted me against someone in another class, I figured
everyone in our class had been given someone outside our class
as a subject, but I was wrong. Just before graduation, the
marine corporal in our class confessed to me that I
had been his elicitation subject and that he had just turned in
his PHS a week earlier. He said, "My form was still almost
blank. I tried to spend as much time with you as possible and
tried to get you to talk about yourself, but I didn’t get
enough information to fill in a third of the first page. All I
know is your name, rank, that you’re from somewhere in East
Tennessee, and that you served with special forces. I learned
absolutely nothing about your personal life or military history.
Even when you were drunk you didn’t talk about yourself or
your job. When you were off duty, all you did was eat, drink,
and kid around. You spent almost all of your free time
bar-hopping with your SF buddies. You’re just not normal sarge!"
He was
wrong, I was normal—for an SF soldier. He just wasn’t
SF, that’s all. Maybe he flunked the elicitation part of our
course. Regardless, I never understood how this elicitation
exercise could not affect the careers of the students who were
chosen as the target. After all, if the super spook student
succeeded and got the information that he or she was after,
their assigned subject was obviously a security risk. I
don’t know of any action that was ever taken against any of
the personnel that were targeted for elicitation training. Most
of them never knew that they had been the targets during our
elicitation exercise.
One of the
more interesting classes was on surveillance. This covered many,
many hours of instruction in the classroom and in the field. We
even went to downtown Baltimore just to practice surveillance.
Professional actors were employed full-time by the school and
each of them played various roles, such as, captured spies,
sources, suspected spies, and surveillance subjects. Myself and
two other students were assigned to follow one of the actors
that were employees of the school. Our subject was a short,
elderly, fat man. I thought to myself, "Boy, we have it
made." Not so, that old fellow had been doing this for many
years and he was an expert at counter-surveillance and downtown
Baltimore. On the other hand we were new at this job and had
never even been to downtown Baltimore. We were the ones that
were in trouble.
We were
provided with a photo of our subject and his habits and told
that we could expect to pick him up at a certain intersection at
1030 hours. So that’s where our surveillance began. We spotted
our target easily and off we went. He made a couple of turns,
stopped at several glass front stores to check us out in the
reflection, doubled back once or twice, and went through a
couple of traffic lights. It didn’t take him long at all to
spot us.
We took
turns being the closest one to our subject which we referred to
as our "rabbit" so hopefully he wouldn’t spot us.
Eventually our rabbit entered a building and went directly into
an elevator that was almost full. At the time, I happened to be
the nearest hound to our rabbit so I shoved my way into the
crowded elevator right behind him. I thought, "This little
dude isn’t getting away from me." Our rabbit situated
himself by the control panel and punched one of the floor
buttons and asked me, "What floor buddy?" I responded
as taught. Without looking at my rabbit, I said, "Top floor
thank you." Right then, I knew that he had spotted me. He
punched the button, but just as the doors began to close, he
said, "Oh, I forgot something, excuse me," and
squeezed out between the doors. Well, I shoved through the
people, grabbed the doors and exited right behind him, saying,
"I forgot something too." I
thought, "He isn’t leaving me on that elevator never to
see my surveillance team again."
Our rabbit
finally entered a Boy Scouts of America office and he never came
back out. [We learned later that he was friends with the
office personnel.] When I went into the office and asked
about enrolling my children in the scouts, our rabbit was no
where in sight. Obviously, he had exited by the back door. That
fat old man was long gone. We quickly spread out and stationed
ourselves on three corners of that block, I stood on the corner
across the street from the BSA office. From that corner I could
see each of my other two men, but they could only see me. We had
all four sides of that block covered, but our fat old rabbit had
finally lost us. We kept watching and sure enough, our rabbit
popped out again from a side street. After confirming that he
had lost us, he had returned so we could pick him up again. Off
he went again with us racing along to catch up to him. Naturally
I was the farthest one from where he was spotted and had to run
through the crowd like a maniac to get into position.
When we
returned to class the next day, the rabbit debriefed and graded
our surveillance team. Our team grade was about average. Nobody
did great, every team was just passable. Thank God they didn’t
require us to practice vehicle surveillance, we probably would
have killed somebody.
We were
also trained in cryptography and the crypto system was the same
that I had used as a radioman in SF. They also taught us how to
set up drop zones and I had already been trained in that.
They
trained us in secret writing. No, we didn’t use invisible ink.
We had a special type of paper that was chemically treated and
when you used it in a certain way, the writing was invisible. We
also learned how to clandestinely open sealed envelopes and even
how to remove a letter from a sealed envelope without opening
it.
We even
had to crawl under a military-style barbwire fence and practice
firing the .38 caliber revolver. That was a snap for an old
grunt like me. We also learned that their technicians could make
or order any specialty items that we may need from time to time,
such as "concealment devices." A concealment device is
an item that a person would blend into the environment whose
main purpose is to conceal something else. If our technical
section did not produce what we needed, they could get it from
the CIA.
We
received extensive training in "cover." Cover is the
term used to describe an "overt and legal reason" for
you doing something or being somewhere while your true reason
remains a secret.
We even
had to have a backup cover story in case our cover was blown, we
would still have one more lie to tell [your back up cover story]
to divert attention away from the truth. Many times, the back up
cover story is an illegal or immoral reason for being where you
are and doing what you’re doing and for lying about your
activities in the first place. If you use it, you may spend time
in prison, but at least you won’t be shot - hopefully. We also
learned that a good cover requires a great deal of careful
planning, practice, and support. After all, you don’t want to
be dumb enough to confess to a crime that is punishable by death
in your target country. By support I mean someone will actually
answer the phone in an appropriate manner, if you give a phony
telephone number as a part of your cover and the enemy dials
that number. Cover training even included pocket-litter. A good
cover will not draw attention to you or your mission. It will
help you to blend into your environment.
We learned
how to communicate and pass material using "cut-outs."
Sometimes we passed the material or message directly to a
courier and sometimes we deposited it in a secret spot for the
carrier to pick up later. All of this was supposed to be done in
the open in front of other people, but at the same time in a
manner that did not attract attention or arouse suspicion.
When you
select the secret spot to leave the material, you also select
two other sites - one for the load signal and one for the unload
signal. After you deposit the material in the secret site, you
put the load signal at the load site. After the courier
retrieves the material, he puts the unload signal at the unload
site. A common signal site was utility poles and the sides of
buildings near the corner. The signal itself might be a certain
color crayon mark for example. Almost every utility pole in
downtown Baltimore was marked with every color in the rainbow.
Some of
us, me included, really screwed up the first time we were
required to pass a very small item to a courier in a public
place. We were required to use a homemade concealment device.
Trying to devise a practical concealment device in which to
place that item and a practical way of passing it to the
courier, nearly drove me nuts. Of course, we had not yet had any
training in constructing concealment devices or passing items to
a courier.
Finally, I
decided on a bar of soap as a concealment device. First, I
divided the bar of soap in half and hollowed out a place in one
half to hold the item that I had to pass. Then I put the bar of
soap back together and sealed it back in its original wrapper.
It took me three bars of soap to get it right. Next I pondered
over how I was going to pass that bar of soap to my courier.
Then I had a brilliant idea; I would pass it in front of the
supermarket in Dundalk Shopping Center. First, I would buy a few
oranges and one bar of soap and then, after leaving the
supermarket, I would switch bars of soap and tear the bottom of
the bag. As soon as I spotted the courier, I would let a couple
of the oranges and the bar of soap fall out of the bag. The
courier would "palm" my soap and replace it with his
own bar of soap as he helped me gather the fallen oranges.
This was
my first try at this Super Spook stuff and it was really dumb.
They had not yet trained us how to do this because we must first
try it on our own, which would vividly impress upon each of us
"how not to pass material to a courier." The
wind was blowing that afternoon and my oranges took off as soon
as they hit the pavement. I had to chase a couple of the
oranges. We were supposed to pass the item without attracting
any attention to our self or the courier and if any bystander
did notice us, we weren’t supposed to be doing something that
would make them suspicious. Oh well, one out of two isn’t bad.
Is it?
As soon as
the instructors read my plan, they smelled blood. They had
planned to video tape the passes that they thought would make
the most negative impression on the class. Naturally, I was one
of those selected for that honor. They set up the video camera
in a parked van in front of the supermarket. Fortunately for me
just as I dropped the bag, a large van pulled up in front of me
and stopped. Old Val, the Class Leader, was saved from being
embarrassed silly in front of his entire class because they
couldn’t see what I was doing. They showed the attempts that
some of our guys made to pass their item to a courier and then
they showed some clips from previous classes. During the film,
they explained what was going on and critiqued the student. That
film was absolutely hilarious. That film should have been on
television, it would have won a prize. After watching that film,
I didn’t feel so stupid even if we did look like the old
Keystone Kops from the silent movies.
Now that
we were experts at making drops, next we had to learn how to
retrieve an item that a courier had left in a supposedly safe
spot to be picked up later by an agent. Our classroom
instruction included a demonstration using the "Real
Life" method, of course. The only two props on the
classroom stage were a desk and a chair. Both were facing the
students. The instructor briefed us on the situation. He said,
"Pretend that this is the lobby of an office building.
Behind the desk on the wall is a directory showing room numbers
and floors to the various offices in this building. Off to the
left of the desk is an elevator. Your job is to retrieve an item
that is taped to the bottom side of the center drawer of that
desk. You can have a couple of minutes to plan how you’re
going to retrieve this item. If you need anything just ask and
you can have it." He asked for volunteers. I smelled
a rat. Well, at first he got no volunteers but finally one
of the guys volunteered.
As soon as
the student got near that desk, a side door opened and out
popped two other instructors. They intercepted him and
introduced themselves as the Aggressor Police. They wanted to
know who he was and why he was in this building and he had to
show his "pretend" identification and travel
authorization papers. Of course, the student’s hasty attempt
to establish a cover story was inadequate and his lack of
confidence was apparent. So things quickly went sour for our
brave volunteer. He clung desperately to his mission. He finally
tried a sneaky attempt at retrieving that information with them
both hovering over him and of course they got the item and he
was a goner.
The
learning points of this demonstration were many. For one, it
reinforced a very old army adage, "Prior Planning Prevents
Poor Performance." For another, "You never make a drop
or pick up, if you know the enemy is observing you —
never!"
On the
next practical application exercise, students were also used as
couriers. After you select the drop site, you also select a site
to use as a load signal and another for the unload signal. Then
you deposit the item in the site and activate the load signal.
You must notify your superiors about these sites and signals.
They pass this information on to the courier. They gave us just
the barest of instructions on how to do this and of course, they
also videoed us again, but I was not videoed this time. Thank
God for small favors! That first film was just funny, this film
made you laugh until your gut hurt.
The film
showed a tall student leaving a package atop a wall that was
over his head and then it would show a short courier come along
and try to retrieve it, without attracting any attention. The
couriers would eventually give up on the clandestine methods and
carefully check out the area for anyone looking and then when
the coast was clear they would start hopping as high as they
could hoping to grab that package. They never got it.
One
long-armed student deposited his package beneath a ledge. A
small courier with short arms tried several times to
clandestinely retrieve the package without success. The package
was taped to the bottom side of the ledge and so far back the
courier couldn’t feel it anywhere. Finally he checked the
immediate area and after satisfying himself that no one was
watching, he got down on his knees and crawled around under that
ledge until he finally found his package.
Several
students left their packages inside buildings. They used
privately owned stores and government buildings. Some students
didn’t bother to check the office hours for those buildings.
Please rest assured, the instructors did! If a pickup was
scheduled when the building would be closed, naturally the
camera crew had to be present just in case the frustrated
courier’s reaction was worthy of recording for posterity - and
a few laughs. The Life Method of teaching is a tough way
to learn, but very effective.
Our
training also included information on the technical support we
could expect. We had a demonstration on intelligence-oriented
photography. The photography experts showed how they could
photograph a man holding a pack of cigarettes who was a mile
away and tell what brand of cigarettes he was holding.
We also
got a demonstration by the DAME [Defense Against Methods of
Entry] experts. This is the term the army uses for
intelligence-oriented locksmiths. The DAME experts demonstrated
how easy it was to open several different types of locking
devices. Many of the locks were formerly considered by the army
as "high security" locks and had been used to secure
weapons, munitions and classified documents. They were no longer
used for those purposes, partly because these same guys had
found very easy ways to "by-pass" them. Lock
manufacturers send newly developed locks, minus a key, to the
Military Intelligence’s DAME Instructors for them to test. As
of that date, they had always opened the locks well within the
time limit.
Our first
field training exercise was conducted in the Baltimore area and
lasted only about twenty four hours. It began very early one
foggy morning when a group of students were loaded onto a motor
launch and taken out into the Chesapeake Bay off the coast of
Fort Howard on Sparrow’s Point. We then were loaded onto a
rubber boat and paddled in to shore where we were met by a guide
who led us to a building [Safe House] in an isolated section of
woods. Here we remained until daylight and then our guide
released us in pairs to go about our assigned duties.
Each
student had to select a drop site and drop off a package at that
site. We also had to select load and unload signal sites for
that drop. We were then required to prepare a written
description of all of this and pass that message to a courier.
We also had to receive a message from a courier and pick up a
package from another student’s drop site. For rookies that was
more than enough to cause us a problem, but there was more. We
had to return to the same beach where we had landed so we could
exfiltrate via rubber boat. However, there was one additional
problem that we must overcome — a very high, double row of
barbwire fences that was guarded by walking sentries. Where this
fence was when we infiltrated Fort Howard, I don’t know.
I assume we had landed at a different spot.
After we
returned from downtown Baltimore we met at the same Safe House
and waited for darkness. We had been informed that anyone caught
anywhere near that fence would be shot and that it was guarded
by special forces soldiers who were here attending the Special
Forces Intelligence Sergeant’s Course. This got all of my
fellow students shook up. They were really nervous now. Sergeant
Bird asked me, "Val, do you SF guys have a secret handshake
like the Masons? I sure would like to know what it is?" We
didn’t and I assured Bird of that, but I also knew that there
would be no SF guarding that fence—and I was right. The
instructor had just said that to terrify the students.
Try as I
might, I could not dream up a cover story for being near that
fence that would save me from being executed should I be so
unlucky as to be caught. This problem had hounded me every
moment that I was downtown carrying out my other assigned tasks.
The only feasible story that I could come up with was "I
was drunk staggering around in the dark and had no idea where I
was or what I was doing." I thought, "Who else but a
drunk or a spy would be stupid enough to be in such a
place?" So, before I returned to our Safe House, I stopped
off at a package store and bought a pint of whiskey to support
my story.
After I
was released from the Safe House, I paused in the woods and
poured that smelly whiskey all over my shirt and rubbed it all
over my face and neck. After I used the whiskey as a mouthwash,
I put the half empty bottle in my pocket. Then I headed for the
fence and hopefully home. So I could time the sentry making his
rounds, I lay in the bushes about ten yards from the fence and
just waited and watched. It wasn’t a full moon night, but
there was plenty of light to see by. Being an old infantryman
and special forces soldier, I would have preferred a
pitch-black, stormy night.
While I
was hidden there, a couple of students who had teamed up came
crashing through the brush like a herd of wild elephants. There
was enough moonlight to see them clearly, but not enough for me
to identify them. They never noticed me because I lay still in
the shadows and remained quite. They paused briefly behind a
bush about fifty yards to my left and discussed their situation.
Suddenly they raced for the fence. They shook and rattled that
wire loud enough to wake the dead. One must have caught his
clothes on the wire because I heard him cursing. I don’t know
for sure how they fared because after they breached the fence
they were too far away for me to see them, but I heard the
sentry give chase and shoot at them. This had caused quite a
commotion among the guards and several raced up to support their
buddies and join in the chase. They all mulled about and some
checked the fence to make sure it was not torn down. They
gradually disappeared and finally I was alone once again.
Silently, I cursed those two dancing elephants because they
had, for no good reason, caused a lot of commotion that had cost
me a lot of valuable time. We only had until midnight to be at
the beach and I only had fifteen minutes left when I crawled
under the fence. While I was between the fences, I heard another
sentry approaching. They only had one sentry patrolling this
area prior to those two elephants crashing through the fence,
now there were two. I could only lay still with my face down and
hope that he thought that I was a log. It worked. The sentry
walked right by without challenging me. After I could no longer
hear him walking, I crawled under the second fence and made my
way to the beach where our instructor awaited us. I was under
the time limit. The field exercise ended when we checked
in with our instructor.
An Agent
Handler is required to prepare numerous reports. Trust me, that
job involves a great deal of paper work. His superiors require a
very detailed report that fully describes his plan before he can
begin a new operation. Depending upon the mission, the length of
this report usually varied from fifty to one hundred pages.
After he meets with an agent or prospective agent, another very
detailed report is required. This report was usually about ten
pages — sometimes more. If he gathers any intelligence during
these meetings, an additional report that fully explains this
information is required. When he pays his agents, a report
accounting for this expense is required. A busy Agent Handler
has an endless amount of paperwork that he must complete.
Fortunately, this field exercise was a "freebie," no
reports were required. I later learned that some high class
Agent Handlers spent half of their twenty years of service
handling only one agent while others worked on several different
operations and with several agents on each operation.
We learned
about one Agent Handler that the MI set up in a legitimate
import/export business in Southeast Asia so he could use that as
a cover for contacting smugglers and using them as agents and/or
couriers. This Agent Handler did so well in this business and in
the smuggling business that he took his discharge "in
place" and opened his own import/export and smuggling
business next door and stole business from the agent that
replaced him in the "front" business. Another man that
was also trained to be a DAME expert got out of the army after
only one hitch and became a safecracker. According to the
instructor, he was still serving time in prison while we were in
training. An old recruiting pitch said, "Join the Army and
learn a trade," but I don’t think that this is what they
had in mind.
Our final
war game or 'graduation exercise' was scheduled to last five
days and required us to use almost all of our Super Spook
training. We were given the exercise "situation"
which, generally speaking, went something like this:
"America
had been taken over by the Communist Party and we [students] are
with elements of the US Army that have taken refuge in Puerto
Rico.
I and some
other students were assigned a target to reconnoiter in Akron,
Ohio. Also while we were in Akron, we had to make a drop, meet a
courier, pick up a drop, meet, recruit, and train a prospective
agent, and write and mail a letter using our secret writing
material."
We were
required to prepare our own plan and the plan had to include how
we would get from Puerto Rico to Baltimore, not Akron. We also
had to prepare fake ID [identification papers] under two
different names and use both while we were in Akron. The fake ID
was simply a card whose format and contents had been chosen by
school personnel. It had no meaning for anyone other than the
people that were involved in that FTX. It was useless as a form
of ID except for identifying you as a participant in that FTX.
If we were stopped by a real police officer, we needed a genuine
form of identification to show them. We, however, were not
allowed to carry any additional ID on us during our stay in
Akron. We were only allowed "one" ID card on our
person, in our luggage or in our room at any one time. If the
FTX "bad guys" found multiple IDs in our possession,
we would be in serious trouble. So we had to hide our second
phony ID card and our genuine ID while we were in Akron.
Assuming a
false identify is difficult enough and we soon learned that
trying to use two false identities during the same operation was
a real pain in the ass. Remember, our instructors were still
using the Real Life Method of teaching; they were forcing us to
operate the wrong way so we would hopefully learn from our
suffering. Of course, they made sure that we actually suffered.
We had to
memorize the name and address of our target. My target was a
lumber business that was several blocks north of downtown Akron.
Don't ask me why a small lumber business was considered a target
because I don't have a clue. We also had to memorize the
details of the many tasks that we had been assigned to
accomplish. We had to remember the full name of our prospective
agent and the time, place, and bona-fides for that meeting; all
of the personal information that I subsequently gathered on my
prospective agent and they wanted us to be able to complete as
much of that six-page Personal History Statement as possible to
include dates; all of the details that we obtained concerning
our target; the name and address where we were supposed to send
our "secret" letter; detailed descriptions of our drop
sites and signal sites; and a detailed accounting of our every
move from the time we left Baltimore to include streets we
traveled on and the exact time and dates of each action we took.
They expected us to retain all of this data until we returned to
Fort Holabird without writing anything down. By the end of the
second day, I felt like that data was oozing out of my ears.
The first
few days of preparation were the most frustrating because we
were each trying to figure out how we were going to
clandestinely infiltrate Baltimore and return home. We all spent
that time sweating over one plan after another and wasting paper
trying to put each silly plan in writing only to discard it for
another plan that was even worse. We spent the second week
typing our final stupid plan.
If I had
just read a few spy novels or if I was an experienced criminal,
I would have had a much easier time of this field exercise. Me,
I preferred reading western novels and had never considered
being a criminal. Not one student asked the instructor,
"What countries have normal relations with both the new
Communist America and Puerto Rico?" Traveling through that
country would have been the easiest way for us to reach
Baltimore without drawing attention to ourselves. We were
required to infiltrate and exfiltrate Communist America via
Baltimore. That complicated the situation and we made the
situation even more complicated by trying to invent a new method
instead of using what was already available and working. The
trouble being, we didn’t have the foggiest idea what we were
doing so we didn’t know what method was being used by the real
bad guys and working. Ready or not, for better or worse, we
finally submitted our plan. When I packed for the trip, I made
sure to include some envelopes, stamps, and a box of plain white
stationary.
Generally
speaking, my "war game" plan looked something like
this: I would enter Chesapeake Bay in an inboard motor boat and
travel to the Baltimore area; reach shore by rubber boat; hide
the small rubber boat; fly to Akron; do my assigned tasks; fly
back to Baltimore; retrieve my rubber boat; and rendezvous with
my motor launch. My general cover story was that I was going to
Akron to repossess a car for the Volunteer Finance Company in
Knoxville, Tennessee. My backup cover story was that I was
actually there to steal a luxury car for a large international
car theft ring that was operating out of Knoxville.
In
reality, they issued each of us army travel vouchers in our real
names to be used on a specific commercial round-trip flight from
Baltimore to Akron. They had already made motel reservations for
each of us, also in our real names, at the Holiday Inn in
downtown Akron. We had to carry our real military ID with us to
use with the travel vouchers and reservations. This was the
third identity that we had to carry on our person. Carrying my
real ID proved to be my undoing because the intelligence agents
who were chosen to pretend to be the "bad guys" in
Akron for our little war game became a little too enthusiastic.
Of course,
since Old Val was involved, fate just had to take a hand in this
situation. Unknown to any of us, shortly before we departed
Baltimore, someone had actually planted a bomb in or adjacent to
a newspaper office in downtown Akron and to the best of my
memory, people had been injured or at least this is what an
Akron policeman told me at the airport when we landed. The
police in the Akron area were still very concerned. Actually,
our war game wasn’t supposed to start until we were in Akron.
At that
time, the Akron Airfield was twenty miles or so outside Akron,
about half way between there and Canton as I recall. As we
disembarked at the Akron/Canton airport that Sunday afternoon, I
noticed a policeman glancing at each passenger on my plane and
then glancing at what appeared to be a photograph that he held
in his hand. When I reached the bottom of our gangway, the
policeman stepped forward and escorted me to an empty room in a
nearby warehouse. Old Val was to be the first student 'in the
barrel'.
As soon as
we reached the room, the policeman told me about the bombing of
the newspaper office in downtown Akron. He told me that I looked
like a terrorist that was reportedly coming into Akron to
support the local bad guys and he asked me for identification.
This was a genuine police officer in proper uniform, complete
with pistol and badge, so I presented my genuine military ID. As
soon as I did that, out of an adjoining room leaped a couple of
guys in civvies. They took control of the interrogation from
then on. They really raked me over the coals. The two of them
alternated asking me questions while I was trying to concentrate
on the questionnaire that the police officer had given me to
complete. If I stopped to answer a question, they would force me
to keep writing while I answered the question. It is very
difficult to stick to a "new" cover story; one that
you haven’t even "trail tested" under such
circumstances. It is doubly difficult to do so when you know
that you have already given your real identity to the enemy.
Even though, I knew that I had already blown my cover, I stuck
to my cover story anyway. Because we weren’t yet in Akron and
because he really was a police officer, I figured they
wouldn’t count that against me. We weren’t supposed to use
the phony IDs until we reached our hotel in Akron and even then
it would only be recognized and accepted by the other people
taking part in our exercise. We had to use our genuine ID to use
our travel vouchers at the Baltimore Airport and we had to use
our genuine ID to register at the hotel in Akron. Because these
two jerks had interrogated me in an area that I considered to be
"out of bounds," I didn’t worry about it.
Unfortunately, I was the only person in Akron, Ohio with that
point of view.
During
their questioning, I didn’t tell them anything about my real
reason for being in Akron nor did I implicate anyone else. They
finally released me and I joined the rest of my buddies on a
shuttle bus that would take us to downtown Akron.
Immediately
after I checked in at the hotel, I began searching for a place
to hide my extra IDs and my secret writing material. Finally, I
hid them on top of the soft drink machine that was on our floor
in the hall. Then, in the lobby, I bought a city map and picked
up a city bus schedule before I went for a stroll. Actually, I
accomplished quite a bit during my stroll. I cased my assigned
target and en-route to my target, I located a good spot to meet
my courier. The meeting spot would be at a bus stop in front of
a small diner. A couple of doors from the diner was a small gas
station and it had very small rest rooms and the locks on the
door worked.
Next, I
located my target, the lumber company, and entered their office
where I got information on their office hours and priced their
two-by-fours and plywood. While I was there, I took the
opportunity to memorize their office floor plan. Also, I made
sure that my stroll took me by the corner where I was to meet my
prospective agent the next day, on Monday. For our next meeting
place, I chose the Greyhound Bus Station and I chose a nearby
bar as a place for us to talk after we made our first contact.
We would possibly have to meet three times: one initial meeting,
a recruiting meeting and a training meeting. Nobody bothered me
during my stroll or during supper and nobody disturbed me that
night at the hotel.
The next
day, I searched my room, including inside the telephone handset
and inside the heating and air conditioning unit, for anything
that remotely resembled a bug [electronic monitoring device].
I had no idea what a "bug" looked like, but I
dilligently searched for one anyway. After finding
absolutely nothing that I thought resembled a "bug," I
met my prospective agent and took him to the bar. We had a beer
and got to know each other. So far as I could determine, no one
tailed us.
[During
our debriefing later, I learned that we were tailed and they
followed us into the bar. During that meeting, the two guys
tailing us were standing slightly to my rear in the aisle right
beside our table throwing darts. Thankfully, they were
unable to overhear our entire conversation. They only heard bits
of it.]
My second
mistake of the day was when I allowed my prospect to enter the
restaurant first because he had chosen our table. He chose the
seat that faced the door which left me at a disadvantage again
— another mistake. Of course, I wasn’t aware of all of these
mistakes at the time. I thought everything was cool. Once again,
I was as wrong as two left feet - the war game gestapo were way
ahead of me.
There
was much about this war game, however, that we students did not
know. For example, our prospective agents were actually from the
same military intelligence unit as the "bad guys" and
they were deliberately trying to screw us up. They relayed the
details on our next meeting to the "bad guys" so they
could be waiting for us. The same thing would happen with the
couriers that we would meet. The details of every proposed
meeting and drop site were relayed to the "bad guys."
We were being "set-up" at every turn. It was
impossible for us to complete this war game without being caught
carrying out at least one of our assigned tasks regardless of
how well we did it. Whenever we left our motel to carry out one
of our assigned tasks, we were under close surveillance. Because
I went for a stroll as soon as I reached my motel, I had escaped
detection that very first afternoon.
That
night, just before I went to sleep, someone knocked on my door.
When I answered it, there stood the same two gentlemen who had
interrogated me at the airport. They once again introduced
themselves as "members of the secret police" [the bad
guys] and brushed right by me into my room. They thoroughly
searched everything that I had brought with me while also
interrogating me. They also tossed my stationary all over the
room. They thought that I had placed my secret writing material
a certain number of sheets down from the top and reckoned that I
would be unable to relocate it in the pile they left. The
reckoned right. Then they searched the rest of the room, all
except for my bed. They found nothing suspicious and finally
left after about an hour or so.
About ten
minutes after the bad guys left, I think it was about midnight
by this time, somebody knocked at my door — they were back.
"Like the ass that I can be at such times, I said, "I
figured you would be back." "Why," asked one of
the bad guys. "Because you forgot to search my bed,"
says I. Well that really sent them into a tizzy and they
immediately disassembled my bed and threw it into a pile by the
far wall. When will I learn to keep my mouth shut. Then
one of them whipped out a screwdriver and they really
began to search the room. They even removed all of the fixtures
from the walls and even disassembled the built-in desk and
cabinets.
When they
finally finished searching my room this time everything in the
room except for me and the skivvies that I was wearing was in
one pile against a wall. My bed, the parts to the phone, lamps,
furniture, electrical wall fixtures the built-in desk and
cabinets — everything was in that pile. They still found
nothing incriminating and they were beginning to get ticked.
Those guys had made one hell of a racket throwing things around
and yelling at me and I was surprised that someone had not
called hotel security. They had tried to confuse and panic me by
alternating questions as they had done at the airport. Hell, I
practically stay confused, it seems to be my normal condition,
but I never panic, well not often anyway. By now they were not
happy campers.
They took
me to the police station for further questioning anyway and away
we went. They did allow me to don a jacket and a pair of
trousers before they "escorted" me out through the
lobby. As we went through the busy lobby, the "bad
guy" that was holding my right arm whispered, "Act
natural." There I was barefoot, wearing only a pair of
trousers, a jacket and my skivvies and they were dragging me
through the hotel lobby by both arms. Under those circumstances,
I had absolutely no idea what they meant by "natural."
By the
time we reached the Akron Police Department, it was about one
o’clock in the morning. They deposited me in one of the tiny
interrogation booths and began my hostile interrogation. Trust
me, no one looks forward to undergoing a hostile interrogation.
There was just enough room in the booth for a small folding desk
and two folding chairs. One of us had to stand, naturally it was
me. They constantly questioned me, threatened me with bodily
harm and forced me to do hundreds of pushups. "Who are you
really? Why are you here? Where are you from?" I stuck to
my original story, "I’m Bill Rappa. I’m from Knoxville.
I’m here to find and repossess a car for the Volunteer Finance
Company." Finally, after about an hour, they made me stand
back about six or seven feet from the wall and lean against it
using just my thumbs to support myself. They told me to stay in
that position and then they left the room.
They were
gone about forty-five minutes and during that time my sweaty
thumbs slid down the wall until I was on my knees. Upon their
return, one "bad guy" made me do pushups again and
then he put one foot on my back while I was doing them. Instead
of playing their game until they exhausted me, I pretended to be
exhausted and just laid down and grunted. That’s when he
leaned down next to my ear and said, "Why did you tell the
policeman at the airport that your name was Donald E. Valentine
when your identification says that you are William Rappa?"
He shoved the form that I had completed for the police officer
at the airport under my nose. I said, "My God guys, why
didn’t you ask me that right up front? You could have saved us
all a lot of time and trouble, especially me. Look, I’ll level
with you guys. I’m really Don Valentine, but I’m not here to
repossess a car: I’m really here to steal a luxury car for my
boss." Now they were happy campers and I finally got to sit
down. Then they hit me with a long list of other questions:
"Who are you working for?; How and when did you first meet
your boss?; How does he pay you?; How do you contact him?; and
How does he contact you?" I answered all of their
questions, but I had to make up some of them as we went along.
Then they told me, "We’re going to turn you loose.
You’re going to steal your car and take it back to your boss
just like before. One of our men will contact you in Knoxville.
You’re going to help us break up this bunch of thieves."
I said, "Oh no, they’ll kill me if I do that," says
I. The "bad guy" sitting across from me, pulled his
revolver, pointed it at my nose, cocked it, and said,
"We’ll kill you right now, if you don’t." I said,
"Good point. You got a deal." They escorted me back to
my hotel. As we went through the police department, I spotted
three other students awaiting interrogation. Putting everything
in my room back like it was originally, without benefit of a
screwdriver, took me a couple of hours. I finally got to bed at
about five o’clock in the morning.
[Later,
during the debriefing, I learned that a real criminal suspect
had been sitting outside waiting his turn to be questioned.
After listening to what happened to me, he confessed before they
ever got him into the interrogation room. The interrogators
succeeded in breaking the cover stories of most of our students.
They also had a couple of students that broke down during
interrogation and couldn’t take anymore. The interrogators
told the cadre, "That old sarge (meaning me) was the
toughest one of the bunch. Nobody has ever stayed against the
wall on their thumbs that long."]
Early
Tuesday morning, I made my drop without encountering any of the
"bad guys." Maybe that was because they did not know
exactly when or where I was going to make that drop. Later that
day, when I met my prospective agent at the bus station, I
noticed the "bad guys" were all over the place. They
were on us like ducks on a June Bug. As soon as we met, I took
my prospect in tow and led the bad guys on a
ring-around-the-rosy through a nearby shopping mall. Finally, I
stopped to finish our meeting. At first I thought that I had
lost them, but then I spotted them closing in again so I aborted
the meeting and quickly arranged to meet my prospect at the same
bar where we had met the first day. This time I beat him to the
bar and chose the table and seat. This meeting went okay, we
were not interrupted and I successfully recruited him to be an
agent.
[During
our critique after the exercise, I learned that they do not like
Agent Handlers to meet agents in bus stations or train stations.
They certainly made their point with me.]
That
evening, in the lounge of my hotel, I wrote my secret letter and
mailed it in the lobby without any interference from the
"bad guys." The return address I selected at random
from the local telephone directory. That night I went to bed
early and nobody knocked on my door so I got a much-appreciated
full night’s sleep.
The drop
that I had already made contained the details on where, when,
and how I would meet the courier so he could pass a message to
me. Early on Wednesday morning, I met the courier. My "bona
fides" were, "I would be standing at the bus stop at
exactly the appointed time with a newspaper rolled up in my
right coat pocket and reading a bus schedule," so that’s
what I did. I had the bottom quarter of the schedule folded up
like an envelope. The courier’s bona fides were, "He
would ask me, ‘What time does bus #6 arrive?’ and then point
at the schedule." As the courier pointed at the schedule,
they were supposed to drop the message into that little
envelope-like fold.
Except for
me, no one else was anywhere near that bus stop. No one was
in any of the cars that were parked near me and no one was in
any of the windows facing me. I knew the "bad guys"
would be somewhere nearby, I just couldn’t spot them, but I
remembered how effective those long-range cameras we had been
shown were. They could be watching from anywhere.
About two
minutes before drop time, I walked up to the bus sign and
displayed my bona fides. A couple of seconds later, from the
corner of my right eye, I noticed a pregnant lady get out of a
car that was parked a couple of blocks away. That was the first
time I had noticed that vehicle and now I saw the silhouette of
at least one more person inside that car. The pregnant lady
waddled across to my side of the street and made her way towards
me. She was the only person walking in my direction. I thought,
"They wouldn’t." They did. She stopped and asked me,
"When does bus #6 arrive?" and then pointed at my bus
schedule. She had the note in her hand, but she didn’t drop it
into the flap. I whispered, "Honey, you must be new at this
too. Just drop it in the flap at the bottom of the page and haul
your pretty ass out of here." She did as I suggested and as
soon as she departed, I turned and walked straight into the rest
room in the gas station. Afterwards, I quickly locked the door
so the Gestapo could not reach me until I had plenty of time to
memorize that message before I flushed it down the
commode. I was surprised again — no "bad guys"
pounded on the door. I was positive they would try to jump me
before I could memorize that note. I thought, "Maybe I have
finally done something right."
The
message told me where to pick up a package that had been hidden
for me and where the signal sites were and what the signals
were. That afternoon, I located the drop site on my city map and
picked up the package with no problem. Again, there were no
"bad guys" waiting to pounce on me. If they were
there, they chose not to jump me. Of course they had no
idea what time I would be there.
Later that
evening, I was contacted by phone and told to meet at our
instructor’s hotel room. They told me to bring the
"bug" from the heat pump in my room. So there had been
a bug there after all. He told us that our exercise had been cut
short and that we were to check out of our hotel on Thursday
morning and catch a flight back to Baltimore. Then,
individually, our performance during the exercise was critiqued
by the instructors and the "bad guys." After sitting
through all of those critiques, I decided that, comparatively
speaking, I hadn’t done nearly as bad as I had previously
thought. Compared to some of the other guys, I was practically
another James Bond. So much for the "field work," now
we faced a mountain of paperwork.
As soon as
we arrived back at Fort Holabird, we were assigned a room
complete with a mountain of paper, reference material, and
typewriters where we could work on our reports. We had no time
schedule and could work whenever we wanted. Everyone headed
home, except for yours truly and big dummy went to work.
Grabbing a stack of paper and a pen, I began writing down
everything that I could remember from the very first day of the
operation. Until I had recorded everything that I could
remember, I wasn’t about to start typing a report. It was as
if my brain just had to vomit all of the details onto
paper right then. It took me twenty four hours. When I finally
left, I was exhausted, but I felt like someone had just lifted a
tremendous weight off of my shoulders. They simply gave us too
many missions to accomplish on one trip. It was just too much
information to retain for very long. That was one of the points
that the instructors were trying to make, "keep it simple
stupid!" I, for one, got their message loud and clear. They
gave us about ten days to finish all of our reports.
In the
meantime, I found another tavern that had a restaurant and a
dance floor. It seemed like a nice quiet place to spend an
evening or a Saturday afternoon. While en-route home one night,
I stopped by there to have a drink. The only other customers in
the place were two drunk marines in their dress blues so I sat
at the opposite end of the bar. One was a sergeant major and the
other was a gunnery sergeant. The sergeant major was drunker
than the Gunny — much drunker, and loud — very loud.
Heretofore, I had thought that gunny’s were the loudest most
obnoxious things on earth except for CPOs [Chief Petty
Officers]. Obviously I was wrong. The sergeant major got even
louder and began ranting and raving about Vietnam and especially
flower children, anti-Vietnam demonstrators, and draft-dodgers
in particular. Because I was in civvies and obviously old enough
to have served in the military, he assumed that I fit into one
of those categories and so much as said so. I ignored him.
The
bartender told me that they were the local marine recruiters.
The sergeant major ranted on for about an hour or two.
Meanwhile, I was hoping that some more customers would show up
— no such luck. The marines were sitting about ten stools away
from me, but the sergeant major began inching closer to me all
the while running his mouth. After I had consumed about four
bourbons, he was standing at my left shoulder and you would have
thought that he was talking to troops on the far side of a
parade field. Finally he said, "We’re loosing that war because of guys like you." I asked him, "What do
you mean by that?" He answered, "You’re afraid to
fight." I asked, "What did you say?" He repeated
it and I back-handed him across his mouth as hard as I could
with my left hand while I was still seated. He sailed backwards
across the aisle and did a back flip over the top of a table and
chairs and landed in the corner on his face. He didn’t get up
so I spun around on the bar stool looking for his buddy, the
Gunny, but he was still in the latrine. Meanwhile, both
bartenders leaped over the bar and pounced on my back. It upset
me because they grabbed me when he was the one that had
instigated the fight, but I didn’t fight them. They
"ushered" me into the kitchen. The rather large lady
that owned the place met us there with the largest butcher knife
in the kitchen and informed me that I would have to leave. I
said, "Its your place lady, but I didn’t cause the
problem. That loud mouth jar head did." And I left.
Shortly
afterwards, they issued orders assigning us to our first MI duty
stations. When the instructor called my name and held out the
thick stack of orders for me, a cold chill ran down my spine.
Before I read those orders, I knew where I was headed —
Vietnam. I was right, they were sending me back for my fourth
tour of duty in that stinking war. It wasn’t a premonition or
vision or anything like that — just that cold chill. Anyway, I
assumed that feeling meant that I was a cooked-goose this time.
After all, I figured if you went to Vietnam often enough, sooner
or later your luck would run out. At least they gave me a 30 day
leave plus travel time to the west coast en-route to my new duty
station. So I packed up and headed south. As soon as I arrived
in Knoxville, I learned that my mother was in the hospital, she
had a serious heart problem. While I was visiting her, I learned
that her only chance to survive was open-heart surgery. She
needed two or three valves replaced in her heart. Because she
was too poor to pay for the surgery and her insurance couldn’t
or wouldn’t pay for it all, her doctor arranged to have the
National Health Institute in Bethesda, Maryland perform the
surgery. Bethesda was only about twenty miles or so from
Washington, D.C.
Mom asked
me to ask the army to let me stay stateside so I could be with
her until after her operation. It seemed like a reasonable
request to me so I telephoned the Department of the Army
Personnel Section for all MI enlisted men at the Puzzle Palace
in Arlington. They told me to get the Red Cross to contact them
and they would see what they could do so I talked to a lady at
the local Red Cross office. A short time later, MI Personnel
told me that the army would be sending an amendment to my orders
to my mother’s home address. The Green Machine gave me a
ninety day deferment with temporary duty with an MI
Detachment
at Fort Meade, Maryland, but I didn’t have to report for duty
until after my thirty day leave expired. Fort Meade was about
twenty or thirty miles away from DC and on the opposite side of
DC as Bethesda.
In late
August 1970, I drove mom and one of her nurse buddies to the DC
area. Mom had arranged to stay with my uncle Jay Proffitt's
brother and his family, who lived in that area, while she was
being examined and making other arrangements to be admitted to
NHIS for surgery. While she was waiting, she wanted to visit
Arlington National Cemetery. In particular, she wanted to see
President Kennedy’s grave and the Change of Guards at the Tomb
of the Unknown Soldiers. After we had visited Kennedy’s grave,
I led the way up to the tomb and walked right past the grave of
SFC Von Kliest. He and I had been on MSG Tom Kemmer's A Team in
B Company before the 5th Group went to Vietnam.
That was before I volunteered for that super secret mission that
C Company had which was canceled. I was surprised because
I didn’t even know he had been killed.
She was
very impressed with the change of guards ceremony at the Tomb of
the Unknown Soldier. She asked me, "Do you walk guard like
that, Don?" I laughed, "No mom. Nobody else in the
army walks guard like that. That’s strictly for show
only." I guess she just knew that was the way her son would
perform guard duty. Mothers are like that. After
about a week, we returned to Knoxville and I just goofed off for
a week or so, mostly with Babs [Barbara Ann Ball].
My
step-father, who had been admitted to Lyons View Asylum years
earlier, died in early September. In late September, I drove mom
to Bethesda so she could be admitted. As soon as we got mom
admitted to the hospital, I reported for duty at Fort Meade.
That unit did not have a job for me, in fact, no one in that
unit had a job that I could see, except for the clerk that made
out the morning report each day. The three or four days that I
was with them, I never saw more than four members of that unit
and they were all lower ranking enlisted men who never seemed to
leave the Orderly Room where they played a board game or cards
all day. Before I went crazy from boredom, I called the MI
Personnel Section again and asked them for a job. "We’ll
check on it for you." I also asked the unit clerk,
"Please find me a job. One a little closer to DC, if
possible. Anything will do, just something to keep me
busy." I even volunteered for duty as a Sky Marshal. That
was a big deal at the time because several airliners had been
hijacked. Commercial airliners flying on high risk routes were
now being supplied with at least two armed men to protect
against possible hijackers. They were using some military
personnel as Sky Marshals, that’s why I had volunteered for
it.
Finally,
on the fourth morning when I checked in with the clerk, he told
me, "I’ve found you a job. It’s with a unit in DC doing
classified work." I said, "I don’t care what it is,
if they have a job for me, I want it." As soon as he had my
orders ready, I headed for DC. The unit’s headquarters was
just inside the beltway in Arlington. When I reported for duty,
the commanding officer informed me, "Your actual duty
station will be at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, but for security
reasons, you can not stay on Belvoir and your duty uniform will
be civvies with coat and tie. You will have to find quarters off
post." Their supply sergeant, Staff Sergeant Warren Hammer
[not his real name], came to my rescue. He offered to share his
one bedroom apartment with me, if I split the rent. His
apartment building was located on US Highway One just about a
mile south of the beltway. Belvoir was also on US Highway One,
just a few miles farther south so I accepted. Warren arranged to
have an army folding cot and bedding hauled to his apartment for
me and we set up housekeeping together.
Warren was
a short, chubby, good-natured guy with black hair. He was almost
always in a good mood. When it came to housekeeping, Warren and
I were exact opposites. Warren was meticulous and was forever
underfoot cleaning house, cooking or washing dishes. It wasn’t
long before I nicknamed my roommate "Mama" Warren. He
cooked regularly. He was a good cook and of course I split food
costs with him, but he was just too meticulous around the house
for me. However, Mama Warren and I got along great. Whenever I
brought a lady home, Mama Warren was the most gracious host that
you could imagine. He even offered his private bedroom to me on
such occasions. However, I soon discovered that Mama Warren
exaggerated my luck with the ladies to his fellow workers down
at headquarters and every time I would have to go there for some
reason, the ladies there would eye me strangely. One of the
enlisted women that worked there struck up a conversation with
me and told me that Mama Warren had told them all about me and
my "many" lady friends.
Personally,
I don’t think having three different girlfriends within ninety
days qualifies me as having "many" girlfriends.
Especially since, I did not date any of them at the same time.
They should have known some of the guys that I had served with
in my former outfits. Dating two women at the same time wasn’t
for me, I had tried it about ten years earlier — that didn’t
last long. For me, it was just too confusing and also I just
never felt right about it. Besides, one woman can totally
confound me all by herself: she doesn’t need any help.
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