Every once in a while, the truth wins out, and the Military Industrial Complex takes a little hit.
Col. Dan Marvin is the author of Expendable Elite – One Soldier’s Journey Into Covert Warfare. The book tells the true story of Marvin’s experience in Vietnam, in the An Phu province, befriending and defending the local population, (the Hoa Hao’s), and how his team was marked for destruction by the CIA. The book was finally published in 2003 after being turned down by over 100 publishers.
Dangerous Dan, packin’ some heat.
Marvin’s group at An Phu was to be eliminated by a mass of ARVN troops after he pushed the envelope of his authority. He was tasked by the CIA to assassinate Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. He agreed, but only on one condition, that there would be an end to enemy safe havens just across the border in Cambodia.
He was advised that ‘you don’t make demands of the CIA’... and approximately 1,000 ARVNs were mobilized to take out his team. Marvin and his crew made it out alive, but just barely… and that is a story somebody doesn’t want heard.
Marvin IDs this chopper as an ‘Air America’ taxi.
It’s a fact that Cambodia was bombed extensively by the US. But the role of Special Forces along the border is somewhat murkier due to the secret nature of the operations conducted in the area. (Incursions across the border were in contravention of international law.)
However, this did not stop the Viet Cong or ARVNs from crossing the border, as reported by Prince Sihanouk himself in his memoir, “My War With the CIA”. In “My War”, Sihanouk also details the many encounters he had with agents tasked by the CIA for his death. Here is a typical example which preceded a visit by the then President of China;
...A week or so before the scheduled visit, two strangers rented a house alongside the airport road, at a point quite close to what was then Phnom Penh’s best-known Vietnamese restaurant, the Nakry Bopha. The senior of the two was a high-ranking Kuomintang army officer from Taiwan. From their residence, the newcomers started digging a tunnel towards the center of the road. In this tunnel they proposed to place a bomb – a ‘CIA special’ like the lacquer box, with a super-explosive charge. President Liu’s visit was a splendid occasion for them to kill two birds with one stone, and to satisfy two patrons at the same time: the Kuomintang and the CIA. Peking tipped off my security services when the two desperadoes departed from Taiwan and headed for Phnom Penh. So we had them under surveillance, and our police caught them in flagrante delicto – digging tools, bombs, false identity papers, and all. They could do nothing but make a complete confession, including details of their dealings with the CIA.(1)
So there is little doubt that the CIA had it in for the Prince.
Nonetheless, once Marvin released the book, the publishing company, TrineDay started getting letters from the Special Forces Association, to the effect that the book was not true, should be re-branded as fiction, or pulled.
Kris Millegan, the publisher, declined to take the advice of the letters, and wound up in Federal Court in South Carolina, along with Marvin, defending against a $700,000 libel suit. The suit was bankrolled by the Special Forces Association, and filed by 7 members of Marvin’s own An Phu team.
Maybe that’s why 120 other publishers declined to print the book.
As the trial got under way in January, and testimony was heard, it became appararent that there was a major problem with the case; a number of the plaintiffs had documented their experiences in An Phu on audiotape for Marvin in the late 1980s. The tapes were presented as evidence and played for the jury.
Where the action was.
The plaintiffs first entered their testimony, and then the tapes were played. In every case, the audiotape testimony directly contradicted the sworn testimony given by the former soldiers.
In one case a plaintiff is heard saying;
...Several operations that we run from the FOB to and across the border and around our defensive area, we were constantly firing at the pagoda over there and we had intelligence reports that we caused quite a few casualties from up in there. Most of the incidents that we went across the border there – it was never reported – except as a routine operation, so anything official we never gave ‘em the directions or anything like that. I believe the border violations at the time was called a code word “Nantucket”. I don’t know how many damn many “Nantuckets” we had on us there but we was always in and out of the border and firing across the border.
After 3 days of severely contradictory statements by the plaintiffs, the jury deliberated for two hours and found Marvin and his publisher “Not Guilty” on all counts.
Moral of the story? Document everything.
(1) “My War With The CIA”, Norodom Sihanouk & Wilfred Burchett, Penguin, 1974, pp. 114-115
More;
Battle For A War Story – Soldiers association sues independent publisher over Vietnam book
Former Military Assassin and Green Beret In Vietnam Wins Federal Libel Case Backed By CIA And Pentagon