NUMBER OF COMPROMISED MISSIONS A MYSTERY........ Page 1
During the eight-year secret war in Vietnam, when Green Beret-led reconnaissance teams and company-size elements ran top secret missions across the fence into Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam, many of those missions were compromised before the Military Assistance Command Vietnam–Studies and Observations Group (MACV–SOG) units landed on the ground.
Exactly how many missions were compromised, or how many Green Berets and their courageous indigenous counterparts were killed or wounded in action as a result of these heinous actions will never be known, due to the highly classified nature of SOG, its tightly compartmentalized command structure and extremely narrow channels of intelligence and counterintelligence reporting.
Thus, one of the hidden horrors of running highly classified missions where intelligence reports were delivered promptly to the White House is this: there are few paper trails to follow and the truth about the degree of compromise, if it ever was documented, will likely never be known.
More than 20 years ago, Soldier of Fortune magazine was the first publication in the country to print stories about the highly classified and deadly SOG missions. Recently gathered information from four separate sources confirms the long-held fears of many SOG Green Berets, who ran what many believe were the deadliest missions during that war where casualties exceeded 100 percent among SOG soldiers.
It’s important for yesterday’s warriors to know about the compromises, and have the hope that tomorrow’s warriors and command structures will be more diligent to guard against possible compromises in future covert operations.
SOVIETS ON THE GROUND
Evidence of Soviets and their commie pals in Laos, North Vietnam and the demilitarized zone (DMZ) was reported early.
SOG recon man Charles Berg said that when he flew visual reconnaissance in that area of Laos and the DMZ in 1967, he observed Soviet aircraft on more than one occasion. During one flight, “I told my pilot to get close to it because I wanted to shoot it down with my CAR-15,” Berg said. The pilot didn’t oblige, “but, we knew those bastards were there.”
During an operation in Laos in November 1968, run out of forward operating base (FOB) 1, Phu Bai, Recon Team (RT) Idaho heard Soviet pilots on their radio conducting aerial resupplies to their men and their North Vietnamese Army (NVA) allies in Laos.
In November and December 1968, SFC Pat Watkins was flying Covey (the SOG forward air controller) for FOB 1 missions over Laos and the DMZ, where he regularly encountered English-speaking North Vietnamese on the day’s operational FM frequency.
“It got so bad,” Watkins told SOF in an October 2008 interview, “that when we arrived over the area of operations (AO), they’d greet me on the radio. I told them to stop playing that Vietnamese music on our frequency and at least play some rock and roll.
“However, it got real serious when we went operational working with a team on the ground. Then, they’d interfere with our radio transmissions. If we told the team to go up two clicks (on their PRC-25 FM radio) or down two clicks (on the radio frequency dial), the NVA would do the same thing.”
In early December, 1968, George “Boo” Miller, a Marine gunship pilot with HML-367, received a call on his UHF frequency from an English-speaking man during a SOG extraction who knew the famous Marine gunship crew’s call sign: “Scarface.”
“He called me several times during the extraction of an FOB 1 recon team,” Miller said in October 2008. “I had run out of ammo and rockets and was making low passes so my door gunners could continue to fire on the enemy and throw hand grenades at them.”
A COMMIE IN THE DMZ
During one of those last passes, Miller observed a Soviet officer in the DMZ, just east of the team’s LZ. “I’ll never forget it. He was a large, white male in a gray-colored uniform with red epaulets on his shoulders,”
Miller said. “He was standing in the middle of a small clearing just east of the team. My co-pilot also saw him when we made a second pass to confirm what we had seen.”
However, when he returned to “fire him up,” the Soviet, “was gone.” After successfully extracting the team, Miller reported his sighting to a Marine general at Vandegrift base. He heard nothing further on that sighting.
About six months later, during a mission in the DMZ, Lynne M. Black, Jr., the One-Zero (team leader) of RT Idaho and his One-One (assistant team leader) Doug “The Frenchman” LeTourneau observed a white male, bathing with a few women in a stream at the bottom of a large series of mountains. The Soviet was too far away for their weapons and Black couldn’t muster up any tactical air assets to nail him.
A month later, on another DMZ target, LeTourneau received a call on his FM PRC-25 radio that he’ll never forget. Speaking in English, with an accent, a Caucasian male said, “RT Idaho. Come in RT
Idaho.” Because it was near noontime, LeTourneau thought it might be Covey doing a routine commo check. The only problem—there was no Covey in the AO.
A STRANGE VOICE KNEW OUR NAMES
Thirty-nine years later, LeTourneau said, “I’ll never forget that radio call for many reasons. Out of the blue, the voice broke radio silence, spoke English, he knew our team name, he knew my name and Black’s name and he knew our codenames. That really blew me away.”
When Black looked at his dumbfounded One-One in 1969, he grabbed the handset and said, “Who is this?”
The mystery man told Black that he knew where the team was located, and that he and his friends were going to find the RT Idaho men and kill or capture them. He said that he had six-digit coordinates on a map where RT Idaho was located.
Black’s response was instant: “Let me help you mother…, here are my eight-digit coordinates. This is exactly where I am.”
“I know who you are, Blackjack, and I’m going to get the Frenchman, too. I’m bringing my friends to get
you.”
Black told him: “I know your mother; she screwed hundreds of Soviet pigs to get your KGB assignment, except you’re dumb like your mother and they sent you to the DMZ instead of the U.S.”
At that precise moment, RT Idaho was near the top of a severely steep mountain. Even a dumb Soviet knew that mounting an attack against a SOG team with high ground would result in many casualties. No attack was launched. Obviously compromised, RT Idaho was extracted from the LZ by H-34 helicopters (code-named Kingbees) piloted by South Vietnamese pilots, under heavy enemy gunfire. Black was flown to Saigon, where he gave a full report. What, if any action was taken on it remains a mystery......
Big Teddy
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