BMT (RIP)
08-07-2005, 09:22
Anyone see the AP story about Billy in your local paper?????
BMT
Ambush Master
08-07-2005, 09:35
Negative !! What is the By-line ??
Retired Green Beret, CIA contractor still ready for action at 75
By Bill Kaczor
The Associated Press
Posted August 6 2005, 12:13 PM EDT
NICEVILLE, Fla. -- Billy Waugh traces a burning desire to serve his country to Dec. 7, 1941 when Sheriff Ed Cartwright ordered the movie stopped at the Strand Theater in Bastrop, Texas, to announce that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor.
Waugh, who popped popcorn at the theater, was only 12 and too young to fight in World War II, but at 18 he enlisted in the Army. He saw combat as a paratrooper in Korea and a Green Beret in Vietnam, where he was wounded eight times in 7 1/2 years.
After retiring as a sergeant major he became an independent contractor for the CIA. In his 60s, Waugh spied on Osama bin Laden and tracked down "Carlos the Jackal,'' celebrated his 72nd birthday in Afghanistan with a rifle slung over his shoulder and then served similar duty for the spy agency at 74 in Iraq last year.
Still trim and muscular from a regimen of jogging, push-ups and sit-ups, Waugh at 75 is ready to go again if his country calls. He says all he needs is 20 minutes and some cash.
"I know how war is fought and special operations,'' Waugh said at his home in a gated community just outside Niceville in the Florida Panhandle. "If I can be of help I want to be there. It's my duty. It has been since World War II began.''
Waugh traces his military and CIA careers in "Hunting the Jackal,'' a biography he co-authored with Tim Keown, a senior writer for ESPN the Magazine. It was published by William Morrow in hardback last year and in paperback in June.
He also shares his knowledge of special operations, weapons and anti-terrorism techniques through speaking engagements, mostly to police and military groups, and plans to write a series of three novels based on his experiences.
Waugh, whose first wife died in 1995, remarried seven months ago. His new bride, Lynn, 20 years his junior, is a widow whose first husband also served in the Special Forces. She said she would be worried if he went back to work for the CIA but wouldn't stand in his way.
"I'm supportive of whatever he wants to do, and he's excellent at this,'' she said. "You don't cage a tiger. There's no point in that because you'd just have to listen to him growl.''
Waugh said he keeps his opinions mostly to himself and avoids criticizing military and political leaders "because I'm a soldier and I'm a dedicated man.''
He is steadfast, however, in his belief that al-Qaida, the terrorist organization bin Laden was forming in the early 1990s while Waugh was spying on him, must be crushed.
"Their intent is to destroy our way of life,'' Waugh said. "Al-Qaida and many other factions of Islam -- not all of Islam -- are devoted to taking down the West. How long has it been going on? It's been going on since the Crusades.''
He regrets not killing bin Laden while eavesdropping on him in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1991-92.
"I'm not a very good shot with a pistol, but I could have killed him, certainly, with a silent weapon,'' Waugh said.
Waugh played a typecast role as an aging American fitness enthusiast and would regularly jog past bin Laden's home. He said he often came face-to-face with bin Laden, who undoubtedly knew the CIA was tailing him. Neither said anything, but Waugh recalled exchanging pleasantries with bin Laden's Afghan guards.
"Actually, they would point a weapon at me like this,'' Waugh recalled, aiming an imaginary gun, "and I would go -- hand grenade -- like that.''
Neither Waugh nor the CIA then could have foreseen that the Saudi businessman would become a mastermind of terror against the United States including the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"He was building roads and a couple buildings in Khartoum,'' Waugh said. "We didn't know very much, but we knew that he was up to no good.''
An executive order dating to 1976 also barred the CIA from carrying out assassinations. It was lifted only after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Waugh's greatest CIA success was finding Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the Venezuelan-born terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, in 1994. He had not been seen for years, but Waugh and other CIA operatives followed one of his bodyguards and his new wife until they led them to Ramirez in Khartoum.
Waugh even snapped the Jackal's picture as he emerged from a hospital an apartment building. The CIA shared its find with the French, who apprehended Ramirez. He is serving a life sentence for the 1975 murders of two French secret agents and an alleged informer.
Ramirez has been linked to many other terrorist acts including the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jet to Entebbe, Uganda and the 1975 kidnapping of 11 oil ministers attending a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Waugh begged CIA officials to send him to Afghanistan, where he joined a small team of CIA operatives and Army and Air Force special operations troops.
They tracked down Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, often calling in air strikes with laser- and satellite-guided bombs. He served with a similar team in Iraq.
"I'm a pioneer of the modern era,'' Waugh said. "If I'd been living in the olden days, I would have been at the Alamo or across the Rockies. ... This is what I live for.''
Team Sergeant
08-07-2005, 09:42
Anyone see the AP story about Billy in your local paper?????
BMT
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050806/APN/508060506
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/12326010.htm
http://reg.naplesnews.com/npdn/web/loginForm?from=www.naplesnews.com/npdn/florida/article/0,2071,NPDN_14910_3983787,00.html
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050806/APN/508060506
Your google is weak.... :D
TS :lifter
Ammodawg
08-07-2005, 23:17
Super-Stud! :lifter
I was very impressed with his book and his accomplishments in life, truly an inspiration. I cannot think of a better example of a strong mind keeping a body going to get the job done.
It's good to see that the SGM is still up and after the thrill of bagging terrorists. I thoroughly enjoyed his book and can't wait to see what else he may have in store.
75 and still rockin', I gotta go :lifter to keep up with him.
Just saying "Hard as woodpecker lips" isn't enough. Gotta be something harder to better describe SGM Waugh. :D