Seeking Pay for Secret War

The ghosts of Vietnam are returning, and they want their money.

A group of Vietnamese who fought in a CIA-sponsored secret army in the 1960s say the U.S. government wrote them off as dead when they were captured on missions in North Vietnam.

Now, after serving long prison terms in Communist jails, the former commandos are asking the United States to honor a promise they say the government made when they signed on as secret warriors more than three decades ago: to pay them for the time they spent in jail.

Armed with recently declassified documents, a group of 281 commandos and their survivors insist the U.S. government had evidence that the commandos were alive in North Vietnamese prisons when it cut off regular monthly payments to the families. The commandos--with the largest group living in Southern California--are demanding $11 million in back pay.

“We did the work that no one else would do, and we were forgotten,” said Ha Van Chap, 68, who lives in Stanton. He spent 21 years in prison after being captured on a spy mission in North Vietnam in 1961. Like many former commandos, he still bears the marks of his captivity: deep scars on his ankles left by prison shackles.

“We agreed to undertake the mission, and they agreed to pay our families if we were captured,” Chap said. “They have a moral obligation.”

The novel case is unfolding in the U.S. Claims Court in Washington, where lawyers for the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have so far skirted the question of their agencies’ involvement in the covert operations. They are contesting the claim and have declined to speak publicly about the case.

Recently released Pentagon documents and interviews with retired U.S. officers suggest that the U.S. government funded and directed the operations--and that officials had good reason to believe that many of the commandos were still alive as American involvement in the war was drawing to a close. Documents suggest that despite that evidence, U.S. military officials decided to wash their hands of the imprisoned agents.

“We reduced the number . . . gradually by declaring so many of them dead each month until we had written them all off,” said a U.S. Marine colonel in a 1970 statement. “We did this to reduce any possible criticism as to where this money might be going.”

As the United States negotiated its withdrawal from Vietnam, the commandos were not included in the prisoner-of-war exchanges outlined in the Paris peace agreement. No one, apparently, had bothered to speak up on their behalf. While thousands of prisoners on both sides were freed in 1973, many commandos languished in prison well into the 1980s, and some never made it out alive.

“We recruited them, we trained them, we sent them in, we knew they were captured alive--and we let them go,” said John Mattes, the former special counsel to the Senate Select Committee on POW and MIA Affairs who now represents the commandos in claims court.

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Their claim has the support of many former U.S. officials, including retired Army Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. troops in Vietnam through much of the 1960s.

“A contract is a contract,” said retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. George W. “Speedy” Gaspard, who commanded the spy teams in 1968. “These people volunteered in good faith. They languished in POW camps.”

Not everyone is sympathetic to the commandos’ claim, which amounts to about $2,000 for each year each man was in prison. Retired CIA Director William E. Colby says the men knew the risks when they joined.

“I parachuted into France after Hitler said anyone in the Resistance would be shot,” Colby said. “You take your chances. I’d never think of filing a claim.”

The commandos are mounting a fresh challenge to a century-old legal doctrine that the parties to a secret contract cannot air their disputes in public court.

The case is likely to hinge on several issues: which government--South Vietnam’s or the United States’--actually controlled the commando operations, and whether the program, now largely declassified, still qualifies as secret.

Finally, the outcome will probably turn on whether the commandos will be able to produce government payroll records, which they claim are in 53 boxes, marked “Top Secret,” in the National Archives. The government has so far refused to turn them over.

No one disputes that Operation 34-Alpha existed. Documents and interviews show that the CIA launched the operations in the early 1960s, before U.S. combat troops were dispatched to Indochina.

Until 1970, the U.S. government funded, trained and sent teams of Vietnamese agents into North Vietnam to spy, sabotage and stir up local resistance.

At least 300 commandos parachuted or waded ashore in Communist territory. Many were captured; many others were killed.

“It was a wasted effort,” said Westmoreland, who was routinely briefed on 34-Alpha. “Those poor fellows were dropped in there, and Hanoi was quite aware of them.”

Signing Up to Serve

The commandos’ memories remain vivid. At a recent gathering in Garden Grove, a dozen men each rose from his place at a long table, introduced himself and spoke of the missing part of his life.

“Anh Van Dinh, captured 1961, released 1982,” said the first.

“Ninh Ngoc Pham, captured 1967, released 1982,” said the second.

“Moc A Tai, captured July 13, 1963--and still in prison,” said the third to peals of laughter from his comrades. He escaped in 1983.

Tai said he was a 30-year-old father of five in 1963, when he was recruited by a South Vietnamese army officer.

He still remembers the address where he signed up: 81 Yen Do.

“The Americans handled all the paperwork,” he said.

Tai recalls signing many papers that day, among them a document assuring his pay would continue if he were captured.

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Within months, Tai was commanding a secret six-man unit called Team Dragon, whose mission was to gather intelligence in the north and radio it to the south.

The team didn’t get very far. After going ashore in North Vietnam near the Chinese border, Tai’s team was surrounded and captured. He was forced to announce his capture on Radio Hanoi.

Tai’s wife, Dung Tsan, never learned of the broadcast and for many years remained unaware of her husband’s fate. She recalls that shortly after he left on his mission, a Vietnamese soldier came to her door to tell her he was missing. Soon after that, Tai’s paychecks dropped to a tenth of their usual amount. Seven months later, she received one final payment.

“I didn’t know if he was dead or alive,” she said. “With five children, I had to be very thrifty.”

Tai was alive in prison. Documents suggest that Americans knew that some of the commandos were in North Vietnamese jails.

Among the many boxes of documents declassified in 1992 are transcripts of North Vietnamese radio broadcasts. Many include announcements of the capture of commandos that coincided with dates of 34-Alpha operations.

Here, for example, is the text of a North Vietnamese radio announcement dated July 2, 1964:

“On the night of June 30, a group of commandos of the U.S. imperialists and their henchmen . . . violated the coastal area of Quang Binh province to carry out sabotage activities in North Vietnam [and] were captured.”

Here is one dated Dec. 5, 1963:

“Two U.S.-Diem spy commandos were sentenced to death and six others from eight to 18 years’ imprisonment by [a] military court. . . . “ The broadcast gave the commandos’ names. (Diem refers to Ngo Dinh Diem, the former president of South Vietnam.)

In 1970, the U.S. military tried to account for 52 of the spy missions. The study shows that many commandos had been captured alive.

“Captured soon after landing,” one report reads.

“Captured, tried by NVN,” reads the summary for Team Scorpion.

Team Scorpion’s deputy commander was Trinh Cong Dang. He lives in Rosemead. He spent 15 years in prison.

“We were forgotten by our own government and the U.S.,” he said.

Work for Pay

The U.S. government has released little information about commando payrolls.

One document says that a 34-Alpha team member’s family could collect his benefits until “the agent returned.”

That’s the way it worked for U.S. POWs. They were paid for every day in captivity and were promoted and given raises.

Another document indicates that the agents had been assured that the U.S. government would take care of their families if they were captured. Former U.S. Army Col. Clyde Russell wrote that one “thing that was quite successful in Vietnam was taking care of agents’ dependents. If they were assured that, should they be captured or taken prisoner, etc., their families would not be made to suffer, it added a lot to operations.”

Even less information regarding the discontinuation of the commandos’ salaries has been released.

The single document that discusses the cutoff of money is cryptic, but it suggests that U.S. officials suspected they were still making salary payments to the families of commandos who were actually dead. Rather than continue the payments, the officials decided to give families a lump-sum death benefit, then stop paying.

Some wives say they received payments ranging from $250 to $500 before the money stopped.

“As you know, we lost quite a few agents in the North, and it had been our policy to continue to pay them as though they were not dead,” Marine Col. John Windsor wrote in a 1970 report about the delicacy of U.S.-Vietnam relations. “This was sort of a touchy subject. . . . We reduced the number of dead gradually by declaring so many of them dead each month until we had written them all off. . . .”

Gaspard, who headed the program in 1968, said that most of his teams returned safely. Any move to purge the rolls of dead or detained commandos was done before he took over, he said.

None of the other U.S. officers who oversaw the program could be reached for comment.

Families Left in Limbo

For years, the families were left in limbo, uncertain as to their loved ones’ fate.

Am Thi Vo, the wife of a commando now living in Anaheim, said that with her four children in tow she was forced out of her home. Unlike many commando families, Vo and her children received a small stipend from the South Vietnamese government until 1975. But her husband’s situation may have been different from the others: He was a South Vietnamese army regular before joining 34-Alpha.

The mother of Tiep Van Tran built a shrine to him in the family home after being told he was dead. Atop the altar, she placed his small black-and-white portrait. On the back she wrote: “Died 1966.” Tran now lives in Midway City.

Tai’s wife, Dung Tsan, said she sold dried fish and fruit at the Anh Do Market in Saigon. She said she received the equivalent of $250 after her husband disappeared. And then nothing more.

“After eight or nine years, I decided he was dead,” she said.

Thousands of POWs went home after the 1973 prisoner exchanges, but not the commandos. U.S. and South Vietnamese negotiators failed to seek their release in the Paris talks. Most stayed in prison another seven to 10 years.

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Those who took part in the talks say they didn’t ask about the commandos, because they didn’t know about them.

“There was no mention of it at all,” said retired Army Col. Harry Summers, who was on the negotiating team. “It was still a highly classified operation.”

As the years went by, many families assumed their loved ones were dead. Vo built a shrine to her husband and often pointed to it when their children asked about him.

In 1980, 18 years after he disappeared, Vo got a letter from her husband, Tam Van Nguyen. He wrote from prison to say he would be coming home soon.

“I cried so much I couldn’t finish the letter,” Vo said. “I handed it to my sister to read to me.”

Looking back, the failure of both the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments to secure the commandos’ release in 1973 embitters Tran the most. He didn’t get out until 1982. “There are many people who might have lived if they had not been forgotten,” he said.

Lost Legal Battle

Vu Doc Guong was one person determined to make sure his comrades were not forgotten.

Guong, a captured commando, escaped from prison in 1980 and came to America. He found an attorney in Chicago and sued the U.S. government for $21 million in back pay and damages.

Guong and his attorney also wrote a letter to then-Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, claiming that many of his comrades were still in Communist jails.

“These men risked their lives in the service of the United States, and their reward has been endless imprisonment under barbaric conditions, forgotten by the government they once served so well,” wrote Guong’s lawyer, Anthony Murray.

Guong included his own note.

“Our prisons are humid, dark, dirty, airless. I was chained except in the hard-labor hours. Many prisoners were beaten to death.”

An aide to Haig replied.

“This office has no information regarding the factual questions you raise concerning Operation 34-A,” the aide wrote. He said he could not help Guong’s jailed comrades and added, “Inquiries in this matter should be addressed to the appropriate authorities in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

Guong lost his legal battle too. A federal appeals court reached back to 1875 to find a precedent. The case involved a Union spy whose estate sued the government for unpaid wages. The high court said the case had no business being in court.

When Guong appealed in 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case.

The case that the commandos and their families are bringing against the government is simpler than Guong’s. They are seeking $2,000 for every year each commando spent in jail. No interest, no damages: $11 million total.

Mattes, their attorney, has assembled 10,000 pages of statements and declassified records.

As for the Civil War precedent, Mattes thinks it doesn’t apply. Because most aspects of 34-Alpha are declassified, the commandos’ contracts are no longer secret--and so ought to be enforced.

“You can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” Mattes said.

Still, the commandos face a formidable legal hurdle. They do not have copies of their contracts or their long-lost ID cards.

Their case may hinge on whether they gain access to the records in the National Archives that the government refuses to turn over.

Government lawyers concede that while the records do contain financial papers, they say they are not relevant to the commandos’ case.

“Every indication is that those documents do not contain a single thing” helpful to the commandos’ case, Justice Department lawyer John Erickson told Judge Lawrence S. Margolis.

The Justice Department said that later this month it plans to file a motion to dismiss the case.

Getting on With Life

The old soldiers say they are getting on with their lives.

At the recent gathering in Garden Grove, they seemed remarkably at peace. They drank Hennessy cognac and Budweiser and shared plates of roasted pigeon. They sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the national anthem of the old Republic of Vietnam.

Tan Hu Nguyen cradled his 20-month-old daughter, Trang. On his living room wall hangs the yellow and red flag of his now-defunct nation, a painting of the Last Supper and an American flag.

The memories of imprisonment haven’t completely receded.

Some said they still suffer from nightmares. Others complain of pains stemming from their incarceration.

Tran, who married a year after he was released in 1982, says he still dreams of his years in prison. Recently, the dreams changed.

“Now,” he said, “my wife and family are usually in jail with me.”