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Worcester, MA Telegram:Tuesday, December 12, 2000
By Pamela H. Sacks
Telegram & Gazette Staff
They seem like old pals, laughing, joking, and at times almost finishing each other's
sentences. Yet it is no ordinary set of circumstances -- a boyhood friendship or a bond
forged in college -- that has created their camaraderie.
Douglas Valentine, a lanky author who lives in
Longmeadow, and Richard Finkle, a stocky photographer from Leominster, are linked by a
common purpose: to expose government wrongdoing.
This fall, they reached an important milestone when Mr.
Valentine's book, based on Mr. Finkle's account of a dangerous secret mission during the
Vietnam War, was published.
The 129-page volume is titled “TDY” -- the
letters stand for “temporary duty” in military parlance -- and Mr. Valentine
believes it adds to the body of evidence showing that the Central Intelligence Agency has
engaged in immoral and illegal activities to further its own aims.
One reader the account has captivated is fellow author
Michael Levine, the former federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent who wrote
“Deep Cover,” which made the best-seller list in The New York Times Book Review.
“From Page 1 it took control of me, and dragged me
back to that shadow world where wrong is right, and violent death lurks in every
corner,” Mr. Levine wrote about “TDY.”
Getting the story out has been a catharsis of sorts for
Mr. Finkle.
“This was a serious thing I was a part of,” he
said in a recent interview. “I needed to verbalize the fear and get myself through it
and say, 'God, I did survive.' I needed to examine why this happened and what it
accomplished.”
Mr. Finkle and Mr. Valentine first encountered one
another in 1985. The author came to the photographer's studio to have his picture taken
for the dust jacket of his first book, “The Hotel Tacloban,” an account of his
father's horrific experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II.
Mr. Valentine had gone on to develop an interest in the
psychological effects that covert operations have on the soldiers they involve and was
researching the CIA's role in Vietnam.
As the two men discussed the war, Mr. Valentine could
sense that Mr. Finkle had a story to tell. He quietly left a copy of his book at the
studio.
When the author returned to pick up his photographs, Mr.
Finkle was ready to talk.
Mr. Valentine soon realized that he was being made privy
to an astonishing tale.
Mr. Finkle revealed that while he was serving as a
photojournalist in the Air Force in the late 1960s, he was part of a covert operation
mounted by the military to capture the scene on film and audiotape as CIA agents bought
huge quantities of opium from Montagnards deep in the jungles of Laos. To this day it is
unclear what the military intended to do with the filmed evidence of CIA drug dealing.
Finkle and three other servicemen were recruited for the
mission's technical work with the lure of large bonuses. They were told they would go to
the Philippines, and that the assignment would not be dangerous. Having been stripped of
all identification at the outset, they were informed of the true location and purpose of
the mission only when it was well under way. In the end, six of the 22 men involved made
it out alive, Mr. Finkle disclosed.
Mr. Valentine had no doubt that Mr. Finkle's story was
true.
“It came back to him spontaneously,” Mr.
Valentine said. “I had done enough interviews to see that he was back on the trail in
Laos. It was completely honest. He was trembling and sweating. He was reliving the
experience. You can't make up a story like that.”
Mr. Valentine viewed the entire episode as emblematic of
the nature of the American presence in Southeast Asia. He asked Mr. Finkle if he could
write about what had occurred.
At first, Mr. Finkle hesitated out of fear of CIA
reprisals. Later, after weighing the pros and cons, he agreed, as long as his name was not
used and certain facts were changed to protect his identity. Those concerns, he explained,
have eased in the days since the two men met.
Over time, the two men made 10 hours of tapes. Mr.
Valentine put a manuscript together, which he said was rejected by several publishers who
maintained it was not substantial enough to be issued in book form.
At that point, other priorities intervened, and except
for occasional phone conversations, Mr. Valentine and Mr. Finkle went their separate ways.
A key moment came early this year, when Mr. Valentine
learned of iUniverse.com, an Internet publishing outfit half-owned by Barnes & Noble.
Its books are published on demand and can be ordered through Amazon.com or
BarnesandNoble.com, or directly from the publisher. iUniverse.com agreed to publish
“TDY” under its imprint, Authors Choice Press, and charge $10.95 a copy.
In “TDY,” a young airman named Pete gives an
action-packed account of the mission Mr. Finkle recalls. He describes an arduous three-day
hike with a military security team and a cadre of Montagnard guides through territory
teeming with trip wires and hostile patrols. Without major incident, the group reaches its
destination, a large enemy encampment in which the drug deal is supposed to occur.
As Pete and his fellow technicians are strapping on
their equipment, the military team leader reminds them to focus on photographing the opium
as evidence that the camp is a nexus of drug trafficking. He goes on to tell them,
“We're also here to find out if there are any Americans involved in what's going
on,” he says, referring to the CIA. “And if there are any Americans involved, we
want you to take their pictures and record their words. Understood?”
Hidden from view, they watch the arrival of an unmarked
plane. Two senior CIA agents emerge and proceed to buy five tons of opium for a quarter of
a million dollars.
Pete and his cohorts succeed in recording the
transaction, but they are discovered, and they and the other team members are forced to
battle their way to a rendezvous point on a hilltop 10 miles away, where helicopters are
to pick them up. Pete describes his growing terror as the men are repeatedly ambushed and
gradually picked off by snipers. One helicopter is blown up in midair as it takes off with
several of the men. The few survivors make it to a second helicopter amid a hail of North
Vietnamese bullets.
“The helicopter ride into South Vietnam remains a
blur. All I can recall is sitting in the doorway with my feet on the skids, in a state of
wonderment, thinking, 'Thank God I'm alive,' ” Pete says.
Mr. Valentine's story, however, does not end as the
chopper takes off. Mr. Finkle also had told the author about his life in the military
after the mission.
In the book's epilogue, Pete accepts another top-secret
assignment, this time in Vietnam. As it progresses, he teaches English to Vietnamese Army
officers at a school in Saigon that is a deep cover operation for CIA agents.
Pete witnesses corruption and double dealing going on
all around him, and ultimately gets drawn in.
He makes a small fortune as a private tutor to the
families of Vietnamese officers, and then trades the earnings on the black market. He
takes a Vietnamese lover; she has his child and is pregnant a second time when his tour of
duty is up. He tries to take her with him but cannot, because members of her family have
been blacklisted as communist sympathizers.
Mr. Finkle himself was discharged from the Air Force in
1970. He returned to college in New York State and got actively involved in Vietnam
Veterans Against the War.
He said he told the story of the special mission in Laos
at public meetings until he was threatened by two CIA agents in a parking lot late one
night. From that time until he met Mr. Valentine, he never again repeated it.
Mr. Valentine, 51, said he has had his own troubles with
the CIA. After he spent years doing documentary research and interviewing, his book on a
CIA operation known as the Phoenix Program was published by William Morrow in 1990. The
program is alleged, among other things, to have used soldiers to assassinate Vietnamese
communist sympathizers.
The book, titled “The Phoenix Program,” was
published in paperback by Avon in 1992, and is now back in print through iUniverse.com.
After it came out, critics both praised and panned it.
Mr. Valentine said he was harassed and threatened by the
military and the CIA during that period.
“You can't go whacking a hornet's nest and not
expect to get stung,” he said. “I really thought it would be the last book I
would ever write, and I would have to find something else to do with my life.”
CIA spokesman Tom Chrispell said the agency is not
familiar with Mr. Valentine's latest work and would have no comment.
Meanwhile, neither Mr. Finkle nor Mr. Valentine is in
the least disheartened that the story of the mission in Laos did not reach the public
until 25 years after the end of the war in Vietnam. For one thing, the passage of time has
allowed Mr. Finkle, now 53, to feel he can safely talk about what happened and face down
the skeptics.
“If you take a look at all the bunglings the CIA
has done and all the convoluted avenues they have traveled, mine is just one of the
stories,” he said. “They've got plenty on their plate. This is just a little
dribble of gravy.”
Mr. Valentine, for his part, asserts that the account
has lost none of its relevancy. He said it clearly demonstrates how illegal covert
operations halfway around the world can have devastating consequences close to home.
In this instance, Mr. Valentine said, the smaller story
leads to the bigger picture. International drug trafficking, he noted, helped create
widespread drug abuse both in the military and on the home front.
“There is a moral imperative to tell the
story,” he said. “If there are enough of these small contributions, maybe it
will change the world.”