Dance with the Darkness: Part One

In November 1968, Richard M. Nixon was elected President of the United States. His election followed that of Lyndon Baines Johnson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and Dwight David Eisenhower among presidents who were in office when the United States had involvement in Vietnam. The U. S. role in Southeast Asia is an historical fact: an open conventional conflict the United States took the lead role in combating the "domino" theory: if we didn't stop communism wherever it reared its head, the whole of the undeveloped countries would fall, nation by nation, like stacked dominos.

There was also a ghostly whisper of clandestine and secret black ops conducted by some of America's bravest and finest sons in Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam, and Thailand. Some activities were rumored to be by ex-military in the employment of the "company" (the CIA), some by U.S. service in black ops. They were ultra-secret and not officially acknowledged missions of which no official records were generally kept.

For the most part each administration believed that they had to neutralize the insurgencies of guerilla groups sponsored by the U.S.S.R and China and their proxies in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and to some extent Thailand. Billions were spent and thousands and thousands of lives were lost on both sides in places of obscurity, little known at the time, and long since forgotten by most since America's participation in the war ended.

The war was generally managed as a political war: a geopolitical chess match that pitted human pawns against each other in mortal combat. It was fought without the clear military objective. Even the unclear political objectives changed with each administration and sometimes more often depending on U.S. domestic politics and news reporting. The political nature of the war, and how it was managed (not freely by theatre commanders, or even freely from the pentagon, but often from the White House) provided confusion and contradictions that frustrated the military generals and lower field and tactical commanders, its fighting forces and the general populace of the United States.

In the early days of the American military, Gen. George Washington, America's first supreme commanding army general and later commander in chief, acknowledged that intelligence is the key to victory in any campaign and war. He had his own network of spies that allowed him to escape certain defeat numerous times and generally frustrated the enemy.

This book is about the men who sought that intelligence on long-range patrols in Vietnam. It is about "humint" (human intelligence), but also about early electronic surveillance that saved lives and punished the enemy. These men fought with honor and for freedom. At least that is what they were told, and what they believed at the time...