The Team House - Air America Pilot Neil Hansen: covert ops in Laos to running drugs for Colombian cartels, Ep. 51

Episode Date: July 18, 2020

In the 1960's Neil Hansen flew for the CIA's secret airline, Air America in South East Asia. Neil was shot down, escaped several countries by the skin of his teeth, and had a the adventure of his life. His book is available on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Flight-Neil-Graham-Hansen/dp/1940773814 Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit Child and Family Resource Network.org today. All right, folks, we are live. This is episode 51. I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host Dave Park. And tonight our guest is Neil Hansen. Neil is a former Air America pilot. For those of you who don't know, Air America was essentially the CIA's covert air force or airline during the Vietnam conflict. They flew all over Southeast Asia.

And Neil will tell us all about that. His book is called Flight. If you guys are interested in that, you're interested in what we're talking about tonight. There's actually a link down in the description of this video. that you can go and check it out. So Neil, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you. I'm looking forward to this.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, Dave, you read the book, Flight. So where would you like to start with Mr. Hansen tonight? Well, I think we need to start where everybody starts with their origin story. Because, Neil, or would you rather go by weird? Either one. either one. Weird.

His backstory is almost as interesting as his time with Air America. So, I mean, just tell us how did you come to flying? Because you were very young when you first got your... Yes, I was. Airplanes fascinated me as a child. And back in the days where you'd buy a little kitten and they'd have blocks of balls in it,

and you'd carve them out into the shape of the airplane. And that was very crude, but it was a good learning process too. When I finally moved down to Detroit, my mother remarried, I was in a rural area, where we had no electricity, no telephone, and a two-mile walk to school, which it put you in jail for today if you tried to do it. But Detroit was a learning,

process and Detroit City Airport was my spawning ground for the aviation industry. And I'd go out to the airport hang around, wash airplanes, and I could make pretty good money doing that. That was back still the remnants of the World War II GI Bill stuff where they had a lot of flight schools. And I could wash three airplanes an hour and get $5 a piece for them, which was big money back in those days. 15 bucks and a little extra money if the guy happened to barf in the back but that fueled my funding for learning how to fly and it also eventually funded me to buy a small airplane back in 1950. And it was Cessna 140 for $1,300.

And how old were you at the time? That by the time I bought the airplane, I was 16. 17, 17 years old. Wow. But I'd already soloed and everything else. In fact, I even had my commercial pilots license before I graduated from high school or had a car license to drive a car. So it was quite a trip.

Were things just so much different back then where things, doing something like that was more within the reach of the common person? Yes, it's totally out of the reach of the young, guys that are interested and girls that are interested in getting into aviation. We've got chain link fences up and security guards and everything else. Back then you could go out to the airport and hang out,

talk to pilots and bum rides and things like that. Now you can't go out and even touch a little airplane. It's a shame and it's basically destroying aviation as we know it in America. And I hope it comes back. But my licenses and everything else morphed into different things and flight instructing and building hours that way, flying charter and all of those various assundry duties you had. In fact, back then, I was so addicted to it. I worked three years without a day off.

I was hooked. before the whole turmoil came into Southeast Asia, I was flying for the Teamsters Union for Mr. Hoffa. And some of our overnight trips would last for months, and particularly during the trial down in Chattanooga. Great guy to work for. I insisted you call home every night, and he worked 18 to 20 hours a day. But eventually the feds were catching up. up with him. Yeah. And he was going to go on a federal vacation. And I knew it was time to look for another job. So one of the stops down in Washington, D.C. when I was in the offices there,

I saw an ad in Washington Post for pilots in Southeast Asia. So I contacted them and they sent me in an application. Yeah, this sounded like a good deal. This would take me out of the line a fire and into a new realm. And I'm always been curious about doing things different, which is good for you. Sometimes. Got an application back, fill it out. It sat there for a while and it didn't get any answer. And I called him and he answered me, we're not hiring right now. Well, I thought that's a dead horse. Three days later, I was in Meg's in Chicago, the Lakefront Airport, it's no more, and waiting for the attorneys to come back to the airport and get a call to come to the airport manager's office. And I thought it was them saying you're going to be late. But no,

it was a Mr. H. H.H. Dawson from Air America. And he said, I want to ask you a couple of questions. And I'm just kind of curious on how he knew I was there, because we never filed flight plans if we didn't have to. We just went incognito from various places. And if you'd file a flight plan, you'd file it for a fake destination. Because you knew the feds were going to be running right after you. And he says, can you fly good? Holy shit. This is not sounding very good.

And I says, yeah, I can do pretty good. And he says, you drink a lot. And I thought, well, maybe this is a prerequisite for the job. And I said, no. And he says, can you leave in 10 days? I said, no, I don't have a passport or anything. And I want to give the employer notice. So back to Detroit and down to get a passport in that federal building.

And they said it'd take about a month to get a passport. And I said, I've got a job overseas I'm supposed to report to in the next two weeks. And they said, who with? I said, Air America. I had the passport in four days. It was an indication that something funny was going on. And did you know who Air America was at this time? No, I didn't.

The only thing I'd heard before was a case. that came out to the airport and claimed he'd been over there and had some pretty tall tales, but I thought I'd give him a call and see what all this is about. I looked in the airline guide and it only listed two airplanes, a C-46 and a DC-6 as part of their fleet. Well, I called his house and his mother answered, and I asked to talk to him, and she says, I'm sorry, but he committed suicide. Oh, man. So I knew something was wild there.

So I'd got delving further into this sort of thing. And one of the attorneys on board the airplane on the way back from Chicago asked me where I was going to go to work, and I told him Air America. He says, oh, yeah, that's a CIA. And all kinds of visions of Terry and the pirates and all of us, that sort of thing. the James Bond novels that were coming out at the time. And it's all far from the real action, though. But I looked up a lot more on that thing

and found out that Air America was part of a conglomerate of holding companies by the Pacific Holding Corporation out of Delaware. It had Air America, Air Asia, Civil Air Transport, Arizona helicopters, and a couple of other things hidden in there. And the Delaware Holding Corporation was wholly owned Pacific Corporation by the agency. And delving further back into it, General Chennault, after World War II, stayed in China because he married a Chinese gal.

And formed an airline there. But as Mao Zedong came into power, he chased him out of the mainland and went to Formosa. This is after the World War II and the OSS and the newly emerging CIA was looking for contacts and places overseas where they could operate. Well, this fit the bill perfectly for them. So they bought into it in 1952 and were a secret holding corporation of the whole thing and funded it. And then it went onward and upward from that point. And as a Vietnam conflict came about, it got crazier and crazier. But before that, our first fatality down there was with a French C-119.

They had cat pilots flying these C-119s, air dropping at Denbien-Foo. And James McGovern and Wallace Buford got shot down. and they crashed in Laos. The remains or what fragments there were just came back just a few years ago. But that was basically our first fatality. So Dave, that reminds us of the interview we did with a former French foreign legionaire

who definitely was not there, a younger guy. But he mentioned the Americans provided some support towards the end of the battle, I believe. That's right. And the crazy part about it, all the fire bases the French had there in the valley, which is not a clever place to be. When the enemies on the high ground with artillery were named after the French general's mistresses. The only supply they had was the air dropping of the munitions into their sights.

The loadmaster on that 119 that crashed in Laos survived. and he was a Frenchman. And he was in France up until a lot a few years ago, and I don't know if he's still alive or not. But it was a Wild West type existence back then. My escapades there started off, of course, with the matriculation into the company in Taipei. And everything was Chinese.

We had Chinese doctors. had Chinese registered airplanes. And since I was there as a pilot, I needed a Chinese license. And so you went to Chinese license ground school. And it's something that's not a poo poo. It's a valid test, but it also involves testing on Chinese history, which I had a little help with that.

Where I was staying there in Taipei, the one gal behind the desk, She wanted to show me the town. And I went into the Chinese operas and the rest of that sort of thing and enjoyed the good life there in Taipei. But I asked her, you know, why is nobody passing these tests? And she says, you don't speak Chinese and you don't show respect. You have no face. And I said, well, how do I do that?

And she says, when you go into the examiner, go right up to his desk, take the test with both hands, which shows respect for the papers you're receiving. Don't sit in the back of the room, sit right in front of them. And when you finish the test, hand it back with both hands. And it worked. And I passed a Chinese airline transport rating test. You mentioned you know you have no face and I think a lot of Americans don't really understand what face means and what a face culture is because you see that a lot in Asia but we really don't get it here in the U.S. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, face is the respect of your fellow person there, whether it's male, female or what it may be and their culture.

we don't respect culture as a group in the world. We think we've got the only way, the right way. And that's not true. There's many other cultures that have little nuances that are better than ours. And it's being part of their culture and their respect of each other. We need more of that here, actually. We're so fragmented right now. There's also like a sense of propriety.

Like if you're in a face culture, like you don't make a scene in public. It's a big shame to do something like that, to draw attention to yourself in that way, right? Exactly. Yes, you don't do that. You don't mistreat somebody in front of other people and the rest of that. It's you lose face when you do that sort of thing. And we are bad about that because a lot of them, didn't want to eat the local cuisine.

I immersed myself in that thing. I'm going to be over here. I better learn how to eat their food because just for survival is a good thing. A lot of people, every day, they have a meal of unborn embryos, burnt grain and belly slicing from an animal. and that's the common breakfast of bacon eggs and toast.

It depends on how you look at those things. Right. Yeah, the brazed pigeon and all the rest of that and grasshoppers. Yeah, they're okay. It's just a way of looking at things. So because of this young lady's help and advice, you actually got a license. that other Air America pilots had not been able to attain.

They'd get in like a basic operator's license, but you got something a level higher. They even told you don't try for this because nobody gets it, right? That's right. Yeah, they said you shouldn't do that. Well, I have a stubborn streak of some sort, and I figured if I do it the way that they say, this lady said it would be appropriate

and not disrespect them nor the test, it would work, and it did. And regrettably, I did not go down into Southeast Asia right after that. I went back up to Tachau, Japan, and flew DC-6s out of there for Southern Air Transport Pacific Division, which is another part of this big conglomerate. But on occasion, we'd land the airplane in Okinawa, towed over to the other side of the field, and they'd strip all the markings of it. No bars and stars, no end numbers, nothing to identify it as an American aircraft.

And we come out at 2 o'clock in the morning, leave all our identification in operations, and get in that airplane and fly at 10 hours down into Southeast Asia. No radio contact the whole time. Fly 500 feet off normal airline altitudes busting right through the airways and unload the stuff down there, refuel, and come back the same way. Once you're about 50 miles outside of Kadina and Okinawa, give them a call, and they just simply clear you to land. They tow it back over to the other side and paint everything back on it, just like it was normal.

And how long were you in Japan? I was only there for about six months. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging.

It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. And since I had my airline transport rating test, written test for Chinese license done, And I also had the written test for my FAA license, airline transport. And I bugged them up there to get the FAA examiner in Tokyo, come down and would do a flight.

And I'd get my ticket. And finally did. And I passed that, and I went into operations and said, I just want to send the thing to the first, the chief pilot. and tell him, I need to go to Southeast Asia, which I did. My family at that time was not too keen about that. It ended up that way. They were with you, right?

Oh, yes. Neil, could you explain just for the uninitiated then, like, what was Air America? Because you explained how it was a front company for the CIA through these various holding companies out of Delaware. But like, what were you flying? Where were you going? What was, I mean, what was this network that existed across the Pacific? Well, the Southern Air Transport Pacific Division, of course, was flying stars and stripes and troops from Japan, Okinawa, Philippines, Bangkok, Saigon, and that route.

and Air America itself was down in Southeast Asia. And it flew rice, munitions, bodies, everything. Was it up to FAA specs? No. Not at all. We operated differently down there. Whatever the distance was that it took to get off the ground was the strip's length that you needed.

That doesn't mean it was safe. In multi-engine airplanes, there's a speed called VMC, velocity minimum control. If you lose an engine below that speed, you can't fly it. It's going to roll over and crash. We did come off below VMC.

We had a long gray area there before you had enough speed where you could comfortably lose an engine and make it on out of there. And I would always impress on everybody. Engine failures happen when you change power. Same thing in the cars. So once you start rolling down the runway and you get off the ground, don't touch those throttles until you got someplace figured out that you can survive.

and you have speed. And then you can go ahead and pull the power back to climb power. Otherwise, just leave the throttles alone, as that's where you're going to get killed if you start pulling with that stuff. There's cautions in the operating manual. Don't leave max power on for more than two or three minutes. Bullshit. I'm going to leave it on for as long as that takes to make sure I'm going to live.

You know, just kind of, I can't really read the chat while we're talking, but just looking at it, there's been a couple of questions about the flying tigers and civil air transport. Can we rewind real quick and just talk about what happened in China with Japan during World War II and how we even got there and sort of the history leading up to America or America? Well, they got to the flying tigers thing, to the Chinese government requesting from the American. American government for assistance. There's the Chinese, that Japanese came through China, eating up their property just as fast as they could. FDR, Thedero Roosevelt, he authorized the release of 100 P40s to the Chinese nationalist government and allowed pilots from the military

to resign from the military and go to China to fly them. And they flew those on a per kill basis. It was pretty darn good, actually. It was a, they could make $6,000, $7,000 a month, which is big money back then. And the P40 wasn't a great fighter airplane, but it was good enough for the jet to try to shoot down Japanese airplanes.

After World War II, or as the military, we did join the conflict, these guys were absorbed into the military. General Chenal stayed there. He became a general until the end of the war. And then since he'd married a Chinese gal, he saw an opportunity to start an airline in mainland China because transportation was awful there.

And he did, called CNAC. And the communist forces slowly began getting power and forced them to escape to Formosa, which is now Taiwan, and established a base there. And that's where I mentioned that the agency came in with funding and everything else. The maintenance facility we had there was an authorized inspect and repair as necessary in Tainan, the southern part of Formosa. it was a huge facility, 30-foot-high metal fences or walls around it so people could not look in. And it was staffed by all Chinese mechanics. And most of these mechanics had FAA airline transport or airframe and power plant licenses.

And they were not making an awful lot of money. They were making like 75 cents a day. If the guy had an FAA inspector's license, he got a dollar and a quarter, which is ridiculous. But they did magnificent work. Their work on aircraft that would come up there on our helio carriers, all you needed to get out of the crash site was a data plate. They'd send that in an envelope up to Tynan. They'd build an airplane around it. Helio Currier got rather upset over that, claiming that we were manufacturing airplanes without permission from them.

But the data plate was a cover, and they could do that. They rebuilt Helio Curriers, they rebuilt Twin Beaches, just about everything you can imagine. They even rebuilt a 727 wing that got blown off. That's amazing. I mean, it's amazing what the ingenuity and local resources can do. That's right. And if they did not have the part, they'd build a wooden frame that fit the specs for it and take a sheet of aluminum and beat it into shape. And it would look magnificent. So, okay, so you leave Japan, right? And you want to, and you want to to go to South Southeast Asia, right?

You and what was it about Southeast Asia? And this is kind of before a lot of our involvement, before the big buildup for us, what was it about that that attracted you? Well, a cushy job, right? You had a good job. Yeah, it's a good job, but I have the urge to walk on a wildside. And that was really where you could walk in a wild side. you were allowed to take the airplane to its limits and beyond.

And I was on the line as a captain about four or five days after I got there. A month after that, they made me an instructor pilot checking out new guys. And a couple months after that, they made me assistant manager flying, checking out all the new guys and in charge of the C-46 program, the Twin Beach program. I had the Dornier 28, a German airplane, and even a little Piper Apache. And so I was awash with characters there, definitely. Some he-haw type, some not so he-haw, they punch you in the mouth just for nothing.

It was my kind of envelope. It really was where I wanted to be. And you worked seven days a week, and you had a radio by your bed to wake you up in the middle of the night in case something went south and you'd have to get out there and clean it up. So where was your first assignment then after Japan? Where did you go first? I went to Saigon. To Saigon. Yeah. When did you pick up the nickname weird? I think because of my willingness to do the unusual and sometimes unusual things. My checkouts were hell on wheels. And my washout rate was god awful too. But I didn't have any fatalities

in the programs I was supervising. So even though the headshed may have been a little upset over my methods, they couldn't argue with me because I was being effective. That was a big thing. Now, for anybody who has not read the book yet, and I highly recommend you do, I think that you know, just saying that your checkouts were a little intense or whatever, it isn't really paying honest tribute to some of the things that you would do to these new Air America pilots. You, to me, reading it seemed like there were times you were put in your own life in jeopardy. Obviously, you probably didn't think that.

But you would never put it into a situation that I couldn't get them out of. but I did put them in extreme situations. Here, if you give a check ride, they don't compound emergencies. But if you look at accident records, it's never one thing. They killed a guy. It was a combination of things. That's why I would compound emergencies and be very radical in doing that. But it gave me, if the guy would,

try to recover from the situation I was putting in, even if it was wrong, that's better than the guy that would sit there, is terrified and do nothing. I wanted people that would do something. If they're not going to do anything, I don't want you. You're going to go home.

One of the stories you tell, because you tell a couple stories about check rides in the book, and one of them, you talk about a guy who you're, I think you're giving two or three different pilots, three different pilots, check rides. and one guy is kind of nervous on his first flight, then his confidence gets up,

and he actually says, I can help you develop more a training program. Can you tell us a little bit about the check ride you gave him? Yes, he was one of those guys. He was ex-Air Force, actually, and he became very confident. I saw him in the briefing before we got into the airplane. He was scared.

And once he got in the airplane, he thought he was better than he had. actually was. In cases like that, you really want to make the guy look for cool. When he started saying he's going to help me write the manuals and do this, no, no, you're not just dug yourself a grave. Of course, I made him look the fool and all the other guys sitting back in the cabin could see what I was doing. And this, of course, finally the light came on and he knew what I'd done and made an enemy but I wasn't there looking for friends in the cockpit. I was looking for guys who could fly.

And if that hurt his ego, so be it. But he didn't quit, and he continued on. And he did come up to snuff. There one pilot in there, and he was one of the best pilots I've ever met in my life, Roger. He was not the guy that you'd imagine as a pilot, but he was great. And he really reveled in the out-of-the-box type stuff we were doing.

And he could fly an airplane. There's only one other pilot or two other pilots, David Pan, a Chinese pilot. I had in the C-46 program, and Bill Pruner, who I lost due to ground fire. He was also a good pilot. And I'd known him from here in the States when I was flying for the Teamsters. He was flying for Cummings Diesel and we run across each other in pilots lounges. And he was a real pleasure. But scud running down to a strip down in the Delta

Vietnam and they got stitched up with a 50 on the bank of the canal. and managed to put it down in a rice paddy. Man, I thought we got this made. You know, usually your first hour is your survivability. After an hour, you usually got a problem. And had choppers on the way in there. And when they pulled up alongside the airplane, and bad guys were in there and shot up one of our choppers

in the Air American Chopper. And the co-pilot had a bullet around to his. and I finally got gunships over there and got the bodies out and he was my friend. That was a hard one. Yeah. There are a couple things. And we'll get into, and in your book, I mean, in your life that happened before, before anybody really understood what post-traumatic stress was and, you know, what was going on.

emotionally. Do you feel like some of the things would happen? Because you talk a little bit about, I don't know if it was that, you know, I think it was more after your crash, but sitting on the tailgate or sitting on the, you know, the edge of the plane. Do you feel as though those things sort of compounded and there was no way to release it or no real understanding of what was going on internally for you? Yes, you get into that syndrome. And I don't think you ever get rid of it. I don't think there's a magic potion or system to do that.

You compartmentalize it and you put in a little bottle in the back of your head. And it's deadly stuff in there. And if the court comes out, it can kill you. And it's killed several people that way. I've met several instances where that did happen. One in Saigon where another friend of mine got killed by the customer in the back. He always had a Swedish cave, and he'd cock it before landing. But I think he let the bolt slip, and it went off, and it killed everybody.

He'd crank short of the strip. Yeah, that happens. And you've got to be aware of it. and live with it. In some ways, it's kind of a drug. It fuels you in many ways. And if it doesn't, it's going to destroy you. Yeah. So what was a typical day or was there a typical day for you when you were in Saigon? No, no typical day, really. Having all of those programs on my back kept me pretty damn busy. And also radio by your bed so they can call you out any time of the day or night,

which would not make home life too happy either. Right. Some of these, what they call black flights, were crazy. One that went bad for me was one where I got called into the chief pilot's office. and he said, we didn't have a black flight to run an agent out of the embassy here in Saigon over to Thailand. We don't want you to look at him. We want you to file a flight plan and don't worry about this. When you go into Ta-Klee, you divert from Bangkok.

It's all laid on by the embassy. Well, boy. Finally got into the airplane. and didn't look at him. He had an embassy escort with him who came up to the cockpit, closed the door. Thank God, because I've been sitting there for about a half an hour, and the cockpit temperature was over 130 degrees. Finally got it cranked up and went on over it.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five

with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. As I got closer to Bangkok, I told them I'm diverting to my alternate. And they've rogered that. and went to Tokli, which is Royal Thai Air Force Base. And we had a place there that we used to do some spooky stuff out of. And landed and got him out.

He got into another curtained embassy car and whisked away. But on the way out, Thai military fell in on me and stopped this whole thing. So I spent about a week or so there under house arrest, more or less. And that when in trouble like that, it pays to get very, very stupid. And I was lost. I was not a Saigon, but I got lost. And finally, somebody got to them. They bought it. And let me go back to Saigon. I'm sorry. There's this B-46 thing out of there, too, to Hong Kong. That was another middle of the night thing.

And normally in the C-46s, we had American captain, Chinese co-pilot, balancing of yin-yang, and called me out at 2 o'clock in the mornings and an embassy car by after curfew with guards in a jeep and brought me out to the airport, and I picked up another American on the way out, destroyed his night of sleep. and embassy guys there. The C-46 is a large cargo airplane. And you've got about a 30-foot walk from where you get into the thing in the side door up through the cabin to the cockpit. Well, he took me aside and he says, don't tell you a co-pilot.

But we want you to go from here to Hong Kong non-stop. Do not talk to anybody. and don't look at the cargo. Jeez, I got to walk by this stuff and yacht in the airplane and walked up the cockpit and it's all munitions, hand grenades, tear gas, small arms ammunition.

Hong Kong is hell on wheels and that sort of stuff with the British had control of Hong Kong. So, get into the cockpit, cranked up, went radio silence all the way up. He says, won't you get in about 50 miles of Hong Kong? Give him a call and they'll clear you to land. Oh, boy.

If they don't, I don't have enough juice to go anywhere except ditch the bird or go ahead and land and face the music. Oh, they called them. They cleared me to land. Wow. Pulled up onto the ramp right in front of the main terminal.

and shut her down and here came a police truck out from the side of the building. And oh, boy, this is probably not going to be pretty. No, they pulled up and said, all you doing, Mike? And I said, pretty good. And opening up for us. I did. And they scrambled in and they started offloading this stuff. Found out later there was rioting in Hong Kong at that time.

I needed a tear gas and small arm stuff. Rayfield went back the same way. That was a good one. But sometimes they're not. Yeah. So would you, you were running the air mark of the time, rice and munitions. You know, there's a big myth.

Oh, here's a picture. Is this, what time frame is this? That'd be about 69, 70, long time ago, before wrinkles. I don't know why they invented those things. So there is just, I got my wings on, one I've got it on right now to my chief pilot wings. And above those wings is a small Buddha. And I always wore that in Laos. In Laos, when did you leave Vietnam for,

or Laos. 69. And 69. So whether it was Vietnam or Laos or any place else, you know, there was this big, or now currently, there's this big idea, this big myth, folklore around Arab-America and how they were running drugs. And the CIA was making all this money off the drug trade. And we know that you are not shy about talking about drugs as, you know, drug running as we'll

get into later. But what was your experience with that? And what, you know, drugs were in Laos. There was no laws against drugs. Primarily, it was controlled by other factors, mainly taking stuff to as far as Marseille. And they had a couple airplanes there that would go and airdrop the stuff to freighters out in the Gulf of Siam. We no doubt had some sticky bricks on board at one time or another because we're shot. people and troops all over the country.

But that was not our trade. We did not have anything to do with that. There was one instance of heroin coming into Vietnam in one of our airplanes in the tail wheel. Several people got fired over that. But I don't think it was an agency operation. I don't know. Positive it wasn't.

And because there was no point in it. It just was crazy. there was enough homegrown stuff here to satisfy the people in country. And there still is. And, of course, I think the majority of it's coming out of Mexico now and the mid-east, too. Yeah. Okay. So what, so you wouldn't just like load things on your planes, though.

I mean, there were a number of times where you would make multiple. trips in a day, right? You'd hop from one location to the next to the next. How would you, like, know if there were hostile troops in the area? Like, how would you plan your drops or your landings? Like, how did you figure all this out? You had, we had what they called a flight information center. And the flight information center would have relatively up-to-date information on big gun locations and who's friendly and who's unfriendly. Our site maps or our site books had all the unfriendly ones listed in there. But that wasn't the case that all the time. Sometimes they would fall and you didn't know about it. So air dropping, they'd have to put out of

panels with a letter like Lima Lima, L, or whatever the site designation. designation was for that time. And if that came out, yeah, you can go ahead and drop. But you also had other clues that you were looking for. If you're seeing kids out and dogs and things running around in the little village nearby, that's a good sign that the bad guys are not there. It had been violated several times and people died over it. Overall, in Laos, we lost a lot of guys. over the whole thing, 240 of us died. None of us are on the wall. And there's a wall in Chaboygan, Wisconsin, that the people of ours that got killed in Laos and the Continental Air Service guys, their names aren't that wall. Well, why is that, Neil?

How come you're not on the CIA's memorial wall, the guys who were, they were agency contractors that died with Air America? There is a plaque in there, but how often have you been in the Langley building? They won't let me in. I know. That's why it should be a public recognition. And the Hmong that built this memorial in Sheboykin, they funded it. No government funding involved.

And they did it to honor the Lao among the Americans that died in Laos. And they did a magnificent job, Black Marble, and that's a, a wonderful tribute and an honor since it came from the Hmong of the people who were supporting in Laos. And they even got my name with a special guerrilla unit on wall, but I'm not dead yet. So were there any instances, was it Vietnam or Laos where the Americans decided to replace rice with Bulger? That was Vietnam and oh my God that was such a debacle. It was crazy. Some dietitian or lobbyist in Washington decided this would be a good thing possibly influenced by the wheat growers association. And we got this vulgar. It is good food. I know we used to use it slop hogs when I was a kid

and then you'd wash it to get the chaff out and it was porridge. You know, it was pretty good to eating actually with a little maple syrup on it or something like that. But the Vietnamese thought it tasted like shit. They'd been living on rice their whole life for thousands of years. Now a crazy American going to make them change their diet. No way, Jose, that's not happening. They didn't want to offload the airplanes and we'd have 16,000 pounds of this stuff on the 46. And when they would offloaded, they just throw up in the ditches nearby. And that caused flooding during the rainy season. But that was another big debacle. Another one that was really great after Tet, down a cantoe in the Delta area, a hundred tons of emergency wartime supplies came in and C-130s.

There was real fresh chocolate milk. And that was another one that the locals didn't want because it gave him diarrhea. I had cases of that stuff around the house for a long time. It was pretty good. Who were like in Saigon in that area? Who are some of the guys that you worked with? I know that you talk about, you know, this colorful roster of characters. Can you tell us about some of those guys? Yes.

You're going to find individuals that want to come over to a war zone and fly. It wasn't truthfully because of the pay. Our pay originally was $750 a month for a co-pilot and $1,050 a month for a captain. You could enhance that pay by hazard duty pay or P-pay, as we call a project pay. And it was $5 an hour for a co-pilot and $10 an hour for a captain. So that came about the term of the $5 turns. After takeoff, when you're really right in the area where ground fire could get you small arms, you always made your turns to the right.

Copilot sits on the right. The bullet had come through him to get to you. It was not really one of the popular things to do with the co-fellas. But it's called the $5 turn because that's why he was getting paid. That's right. Yeah, he's going to be the one that's a fatality. And there were crazy bullet episodes, particularly in Laos. One of our volpars was coming down south and north of the 20 alternate and the south of the PDJ.

And one round came through the cockpit window, hitting him right in the temple and killed him. Luckily, there was another pilot in the right seat. and flew it back. Another one in the chopper pilot we lost, he just flared out and landed in a pad on the north-east section of Laos. The guy just stepped out of the bushes, mailed him right in the forehead.

That there was crazy stuff like that. Would you- Go ahead. In Air America, I mean, it was an airline. I'm just curious if, in addition to logistics, if you guys had anything to do with like inserting paramilitary teams. I was just interested if you had ever crossed paths with, you know, like James Parker and George Washington Bacon and some of those other guys who were, you know, somewhat famous now paramilitary operatives that were active in Laos.

Probably did. But nobody went in there with their real names. They were all codenamed. The station guys were like gray, Fox and Tallman, Hogg, Bolok, Tony Poe. Oh, Tony Poe, it's another big name, yeah. Yeah, which he ended up getting kind of thrown out a Laos and relegated to the training bases down at Wahin and Titano Luke.

Because of the ear necklace stuff. Well, yeah, well, he got pretty crude on that and Tony did drink to say the kindly. But he would pay people for years of enemies. And he didn't get reimbursed for it. And so he went into embassy with a whole bucket full of rotting ears and dumped it on a secretary's desk. And that was the end of that particular program. That'll do it. And there's a lot of fallacies in that because sometimes they'd be using the ears from their children. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Was this situation, because you said you were in Vietnam until 6'9, and then you went to Laos. Was the situation much more dangerous, would you say, in Laos, than it was in Vietnam? In one envelope, yes. And your flying was more dangerous. But your living conditions were great. In Vietnam, your living conditions were kind of iffy, because that, There was always sappers wandering through town, chucking a grenade in a bar, stuff like that.

And Laos, yeah, we had some watering holes that were just splendid. And you could really immerse yourself in the local culture. And what was that immersion like? What was it like for an Air America pilot, whether it was in Saigon or Ventien or whatever? I mean, I'm sure that they weren't mostly choir boys. That's right. Yeah, we did run rampant on the bars and things there. But Ben Chen was good in that respect.

There was a couple watering holes there that were magnificent. The White Rose was a bar, perhaps Bordello type. And everybody went there. There was another one run by a British guy who died over there called the Purple Porpoise and not so many females of the night there, but a lot of good drinking and playing dice games. But the White Rose were perhaps the most famous of the whole bunch. There was another one called Lulu's of the Club Rendezvous, which dealt in something else. And a lot of the American guys had family.

families over there, right? So how did that all kind of mesh with maybe some of the guys just his hardcore partiers, the other ones having families, maybe even the ones having families enjoying the parting? That's right. Well, it was kind of a free fire zone in that respect. Here, of course, the danger of contracting something more than your love to bring home is very high. There it wasn't. The people there were very clean and careful about that sort of thing. And yes, it did happen. One, I think, instance that I've got in the book,

there was about a fellow that bounced a check in a place and really upset the gal. Because it took her about two months for the check to go from the French bank back to the States, find out it's a bum, and then come back and she got even. So you spend your time in Vietnam and then you go to Laos. And what was Laos like for you? For me, it was really the playground that I wanted to be in.

We pretty much had a schedule there that we could abide to and take time off every month to go empty your going to idle stresses and go wherever you want. It was much more pleasant. And food was great there. Of course, I was into the local food. Yeah. Some people didn't.

And they would shy away from me. If I asked him about, do you want to go? Do you have something to eat? And they wouldn't. It was a wonderful place. It's changed immensely. since then.

And a lot of people don't realize there was a leper colony there. And we had lepers working in the kitchen in the hotel. And a lot of people think, well, yeah, you're going to find a finger in your soup. That's not true. They can arrest that. And it's not that bad. But it does old stigmatism. Also, there's a thing called catois.

And that is a marmaphrodite. They don't shave. they grow breasts and they still have a little bit there that is kind of upsetting for some. I fixed up one guy that used to be a Marine major with one, and he fell in love. And then he found out what he had. He never spoke for me again. Practical jokes were kind of a milieu of yours or something you enjoyed doing. Can you, because you, was it the British, because you did something similar in a bar, not, not similar to that, but you played a practical joke in a bar that almost got you kicked out.

Like, was that part of the, was that part of who you had always been, or was that part of you taking it to the, limit in this environment? Part of taking it to the limpet in that environment. I know one friend of mine, he was a load master there. Gene Hassamfuss. He was involved in the

Nicaragua thing. He was the guy that got shot down. That's right. He lives up just a couple hundred miles away from here. No kidding. Yeah. But Fourth of July, my God, we better show how these people

how Americans celebrate the 4th of July. So he'd liberated some MAD firecrackers from the military that they used for training. And we were up in the second floor, the set of palace. The red Chinese embassy was right across the road, a big high wall around it. And so we chucked some of those over and, hey, let's have fun with this. And like all embassies everywhere in the world, whenever in danger and doubt, running little circles and scream and shout. And they did that with great flair.

And Gene and I went back down to the bar and sitting there having a drink. And boy, a big six-by comes by with a whole bunch of troops in it and guns. Wow, I don't wonder what's going on. And soon they were running into the hotel and up the stairs and down to the area where we had been. In the meantime, one of our border pilots had come back. back, or Heliol pilots actually, and he was in his room with his wife showering. And they broke the door down and hauled him off, still soggy. The chief of security for the embassy, gosh, I can't remember his name, came into the bar, looked at Gene and I, says, you guys, he knew it was us.

And he thought it was really funny. And he said, well, I'll get them sprung, but don't worry about it. It was a patriotic thing to do. Did he ever find out it was you? Oh, yeah, he knew of who he was. But they never did anything about it. Yeah. He also bought a male rifle that we brought back from the country.

These were crude, black powder weapons, flint locks. And he was playing. playing with the thing in his kitchen. Now, the reason these people sold these mail rifles or mountain yard rifles was because it wouldn't fire. And that was because they put a charge down or two charges down the barrel and it didn't ignite. Well, in his air conditioned home, it all dried out. They were sitting in the kitchen clicking this thing and it went off and blew his screen door off.

Holy shit. There was always dangers like that. What was, tell us about like the load masters and, you know, both in the Dom and Laos, because you really talk up those guys and really give them a lot of credit

for the things that they do. Oh, yes. Yeah. They had a very difficult job. They're riding around the back of the C-123 or in a C-46. And the 123, they can't see where the airplane's going. And they've got to rassel around 1,200 pounds or more pounds of pallets on rollers that are ready, willing and able to pinch off a finger foot and ease it back to the edge of the ramp with a 5,000 foot. found a cut strap behind it and then crouch down on the floor with a knife. When the captain says, drop, cut that thing and it'll wheel right out at the back.

Well, it sounds easy, but it isn't. In turbulence, it's a son of a gun. Plus, one other little relish there is that the enemy gunners in the ground with small arms have never shot skeet or birds. They're normally not leading the airplane far enough. But most of the bullet holes are back where they live. We had one out ready to call drop, and he called, oh, I'm hit, I'm hit. And it sounded bad, I'm aborted and climbed out and sent the co-final back,

and he comes back up the cockpit laughing. Well, I didn't think there was anything funny about that. And he says, no, he wasn't hit. There's a hydraulic tank behind him. I'd only for it's red and it was spraying onto his back and it was hot and red and he thought he was in dire streets. Now, those guys were operating with open backs, with open ramps, with no tethers or anything like that. I mean, if you had to take evasive maneuvers, whatever, they were, they're kind of on their own, right? That's right.

They had parachutes on. We lost one without a parachute up around the middle of Laos. He was up and overcast and saw a hole he could dive down through, so he did. Put negative Gs in the back and one guy floated out the back without a shootout. And it became a fatality. Now, wearing shoots was a big deal to you, right? Oh, yeah. That was kind of a point of content for some guys because,

you always demanded the people wear shoots on your on your that's right they're not comfortable no right if you got the straps adjusted properly it's very uncomfortable right but if you get in trouble you really don't have time to go down there and adjust the straps and put it on before the thing impacts the dirt so you better be ready in case you need it and yeah i always insisted on that and of course the loadmasters are kickers in the back they always wore them because they were an extremely hazardous area. Copilot didn't enjoy that, but when I got shot down, he was glad he did have it. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? Do you want to talk about? Yeah, please. Towards the end of the conflict as it was spinning down, it got hotter and hotter as far as the sites we went to. overall towards the end, we lost over 50% of our C-123s. And I had the only crew that came back alive.

How many birds, I mean, when you say 50%, how many is that? 13. 13. And so how many we're talking about four crew members per bird? That's right. Yeah, it could be a bad day at Flat Rock. I was tasked with going down to Poxay, in the southern part of Laos.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail enters Laos and travels full length on down past Paxay, and then on into South Vietnam after a little about through Cambodia. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was the lifeblood of the North Vietnamese and the Patea Lao, the Viet Cong. And they had well defended. They had radar control, anti-aircraft weapons, and everything like that. Outside of Paxay, there was a high mesa called the Plateau de Boulevons. And up on this mesa, the bad guys had already put in some 37-millimeter anti-aircraft weapons and several other types.

We'd lost a caribouto down there a week before I went down there. And we lost the whole crew in the thing. I was tasked with dropping to two firebases who were sending troops out. to harass the Hocci Men Trail. And the first one, no problem. I got in there and dropped the load right where they had a smoke grenade out in the field. Since the other one was only about 15 miles away, I told the guys, just leave it open in the back. And two tie kickers, Sompop and Buma. And as we get there, we'll just make a one-pass deal and go home and drink a beer.

And he said, Roger that. And as I came up to that site, a customer on the ground who was on the radio called Big Bird, Big Bird, Get Out of Here, AAA, AAA. Well, AAA is anti-aircraft artillery. And it can come in number of forms. There were Quad-50s, Russian Quad-50s, which is a 12.7 or 50 caliber, four-barreled devil, like a hose. you had 23 millimeter, which is white hot and there's an explosive round. Then you had 37 millimeter and 57 millimeter, which those rounds are red hot, and they look like red balls come up at you.

Kind of scary. Initially, they look like they're going slow as they get closer, boy, did they pick up speed. And I poured a cold to it and I jinked out of there. I didn't see anything. But Lodemaster in the back said, a big red balls went by the tail. Well, this is not a good sign.

And went back to Poxite and told the customer's air code name for this particular site was tall man. He says, no, there's nothing there. It must have been some small arms out there. No, I'll go tell that to my loadmasters. They'll tell you what they saw. He said, oh, no, well, if you make sure, happy. I'll have them sweep the area. Well, I knew that was probably a lie. But about an hour

I came back and said, no, it's all clear. They didn't find anything out there. I said, well, I'll go back, but I want some high covers and T-28s. And I want our choppers, Air America choppers, standing by. Case I do have a problem. And he grudgingly relented on that. And I took a follow. of the choppers back. They went in and out no problem. But we'd also heard rumors that they were getting a bounty for big birds. And that's probably why they weren't. And the choppers went in, all called clear. So I punched it right down to the jungle canopy and told the guys in the back, open her up and get ready for a drop. You're going to heard two things, either drop or abort. As I pulled up to 400 feet,

I gave this huge enough altitude to open, they nailed me. Initially lost ailerons. Those are those funny little wiggly things out to the bank, the airplane. And the yoke went, a little slack in my hands. And full right rudder, and she was still rolling the jungle into the left. Stopped the roll.

I pulled the power all the way off the right side. and shoved the prop all the way up. So I had a lot of flat plate drag out there. And she rolled back. It was down 90 knots, shaking like hell. That's about stall speed for a loaded airplane. And staggered out of there. And I gave him a Mayday call.

And one of the chopper said, yeah, you're trailing fluids. Well, that means one of the fuel tanks has been hit, 700-gallon tank behind each engine in the cell. And they were foamed, so I didn't worry about it blowing up. But I could get flame following me up there, and it could be kind of scary. And had the co-pilot, he was petrified. He told him to go back and see what the damage is. And he did and came back up.

He said both the Ilarange were in the full-up position. That's why it wasn't climbing very well, like turning half the wing upside down. And he said there's big holes in the wing and horizontal stabilizer. It looks like a canter had been in it. And we're trailing fluid. There's trailing fuel. And I had a decision to make then either try to get back to Poxay or take a walk in a wildside. And the controllability problem was a bit much.

And I'd have to go back up eating a couple of 37 millimeter positions. So there was an old Japanese airstrip about 20 miles away, all overgrown. And if I want to try to put it in the dirt there or bail out, it was a nice clear area. So kept climbing and heading for that thing and told the choppers what I was going to do and have them stand by for a taxi ride back to Poxay and told the co-pilot that. we're going to bail out of this. And he was just petrified. And the loadmaster,

Sampop and Boomer, no, they were ex-tie military and jump qualified. Well, he went back, about to ring the bell from Go, and he's back up the ladder into the cockpit. And what the hell do you want? He said he wanted his survival vest. well and he left the cockpit and went on the intercom told to sound pop take it away from him and throw it out the goddamn door as if he tries to put it on the parachute won't open right be covering up the back of it now they did and ready for another pass about ready to ring the bell and he was up in the cockpit again he wanted his camera your bird is very unstable at this point in time yeah yeah yeah you

was shaking like out. Like to make these passes, I mean, because I remember reading the detail that you put into the book, and to make these passes, like, it was miraculous what you were pulling off with the bird at that point in time. Yeah, it was basically very unstable. And it was junk coming off of a thing, and choppers could see this. And he wanted his camera, and that's when he grabbed that, I hit him. I think that's the only injury.

And he fell back down the ladder. And I didn't worry about the camera. He can't hang onto it once you exit the airplane. It's kind of get ripped out of your hand. And lined it up again. I told Sampapa on the income, I don't care of what you do, get him out of here. I rang the bell, Buma. He went first.

When Bill leaned out the troop door to see his parachute open Sampup, took him out. And he had reason to be scared. He'd never jumped. I'd done skydiving in the United States. And he thought you just come in like you're doing the movies and pull like that. Well, that metal conduit, your cable will get kink on that thing. And it doesn't pull very easy. You want to grab it and go straight down and strip those pins out of the back.

Well, he fell for a ways before he found that out and ruined his underwear. But I had the stage door left or right on this case, the right troop door, and got stable and watched a bird. And four I pulled. And she went, oh, about another seven, eight miles away and started clipping off jungle canopy. And then she blew. And I don't know, airplanes to me have a life. And it's sad to see him die. Well, I ended up in some low scrub and chucked the shoot and waited for a chopper.

I could hear him coming and I had a little clearing there, but it wasn't big enough to land a chopper in. But I could see he was going to try to do that. And he had some branches with his tail rotor and showered me with that crap. You fall and kill me now. I'm going to really be in the head. He picked back up and dropped the sling and I rode that up into that. the cabin and took a seat on the far side of the cabin and Thai soldier and our Hmong soldier on the other side bloody arm and a puddle of vomit between his

boots and I can understand where he's coming from but the tail rotor damage was so bad we went down on that Japanese strip and shut down and well had usisies in the cabin there and got out of that thing and Bob he came down to the cockpit said he called in another choppers on the way back good and when he showed up he landed about two 300 meters away from us oh he had to carry the wounded oh he had to carry the wounder doing a bunch of crap you know what the hell you do that for he says well you guys are in a minefield they couldn't have been very good minds but he reloaded all the wounded in there and he was full so there's another chopper going to be coming back for us

okay if i would have got picked up with the first chopper and taking back to poxay had a little 38 derringer in my leg pocket and i was going to put that in tall man's nose and pull a trigger and i was starting to cool down a little bit yeah And waited for the other chopper to come. And he came in, all climbed into that thing. Got off the ground there and doors open. And I gave a one-finger salute to the bad guys. And we got to the edge of the plane to Boulevants.

He ran out of gas. And we're all rotating down into an area that you know good or bad guys. But as we flared, one of our. H-34s with a twin turbine engines in it, and it's S-58T pulled up alongside, and he still had gun mounts on it. And that was my last ride in, Foxe. But when I walked into the line shack there, Tallman was there, and I had an oozy in my hand. And he just turned light as paper. And I said, who's going to get the beers? I dropped the clip out of it. And he said, I will, I will. Smoked out the door. And Gray Fox, the other customer there, he said, you know,

you're probably not going to come back. And I says, that's probably smart. I want to put something up on the screen. Can you, can you see this? Can you tell us what this is? is that coming up? Not here. I don't see anything. No. Oh, Jack, you need to enable screen sharing on me. Let's see if that works.

I see, Jack. Okay, let's see here. Hold on. Is that my lost and damage report? It is. I can't share it from here, Dave. Why don't you just... Wait, there's something.

There you go. Okay, cool. Hold on. There's a better... How's this? Yeah, yeah, we see it. Yeah, like all government agencies, you've got to fill everything out 10 copies. And I filled all of this out and stuff I had and how I discovered my loss was watching the aircraft impact the ground and explode.

And my witnesses were our Hotel 81, Hotel 52, Hotel 53 crews and the enemy. And I listed everything I lost in there. also included one thing that I used to harass co-pons with, and that's coloring books and crayons. And I put on my box of 64 crayons and three coloring books, and they paid me for them. Yeah, well, we haven't really talked about that. I mean, that's part of what led to, you know, another contributor to your nickname weird. But let's, how did you harass your co-pilots with that? Let's talk about the coloring books and crayons for a second. Oh, yeah.

New guys, they were fresh meat for me. And I just wanted to find out in the 123, we had all American co-pilots. And I just wanted to find out whether they could handle the unusual. If they couldn't, then go the hell home. This is not going to be a regular scheduled passenger flight from A to B and with stewardesses and everything else. it's going to be down and dirty. And after takeoff, I pull out a coloring book and crayons.

You know, you got to hold his heading and start coloring. And one of the loadmasters used to come on the intercombe. Can I color too? Yeah, but you've got to stay in the lines this time. That'd either get them to quit or get their attention anyways. Or on short final, if at Alderman, which was scary. approach and just start screaming, oh my God, my God. See if he'd ruin his underwear.

Hey, Jack, can you take control back? I don't know how to get out of screen sharing now. Yeah. There you go. But you actually did enjoy coloring, though, right? It was. Yeah, it's a mindless thing. And it's good.

And I would not use up the coloring books. At the end of the day, if I had to. some high kickers on board. I'd give them the crayons and the coloring books to take their kids. Yeah. It's interesting that you were, that was a form of like relaxation for you at the time

because now it's been very popular and adult coloring books are market. Oh, really? Yeah. It's a thing that a lot of adults are doing now. I'll be darned. Well, I have to go back to it. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And now you're not limited to 64. They've got, you know, 128. And I don't even know how many, how many. They've got some fancy ones, I know. They do. They do. They've been inventing colors since the 60s.

So how, so you started in, in Laos in 69. How long were you there for? I was there until Air America quit. And in 73, they gave up the ghost. And towards the end, I just wanted to explore a little more of the philosophy of the area. Yeah. So I joined a watt as a monk. And a watt is a temple.

That's right. Same as a church, basically. A lot of people think that there's a regular organized religion. And it is in some places, but it's also a way of, clearing your brain to meditation and the rest of that. And Laos is probably one of its purer forms. And of course, the basic premises that came out of India with was, if you lead a good life, you won't come back.

They'll never be reincarnated. And because the area back then in India was so rough and so hard that to die and go away forever was perhaps a very great desire instead of having to come back and working a rice paddy and shovel buffalo crap and the rest of that and be half starved to death. Right. It's a very interesting thing. And I love the meditation part of it. And there's a danger too.

When you enter into that, the person that leads you can go ahead and lead you down a wrong path. In Vietnam, some of them let them down to pour a can of gasoline over themselves and light a match. In an actuality, giving you complete confidence and faith in three days, I can get you do it through self-hypnosis, and you do it to yourself. It's not something that you're doing to them. You're just giving them the path. Right. Well, you're familiar with that too. Yeah, right. Yeah.

And yeah. I mean, you know, it goes back to kind of the MK. Ultra idea and why it failed is it. You can't make somebody do something they're not, they wouldn't naturally be inclined to do, but if they do have an inclination, that's right. Definitely given the nudges in the right direction to do it.

To go there. Yeah. Yeah. It's been used by not only the, Buddhist faith, but many other faiths too. And sometimes it hasn't been that great. The Kool-Aid thing down in Guyana. Sure.

The rest of that, David Kyrush. Yeah. And you know, Buddhism, like, you look at the history of like Tibetan Buddha, like Buddhism is not innocent of its own sort of organizational sins against its number or others or anything else like that. That's right. It's like any other organization, any other. party, any other, you know, identity, anything.

Calacies and competition and everything and every form of that. And for me, I was lucky. I went into a lot that was really good. There was only one in there that felt I was taking his position. What was it like for you being the only American, the only Caucasian I'm assuming in a, in a watt? What was it like for that? Well, I lived with them and I lived the same thing.

In the morning, you'd get up and collect your Bazzi Dam, which is a black bowl, and you go out barefoot walking through the village, begging. And you just walk down the road and people come out and give you a handful of rice or something to eat. And you go back and you do that. And of course, the basis for meditation, you've got to be hungry. You've got to have everything shut down. And it's a real process and it's really good for you in many ways. But it can be used for a bad end due.

Sure. We've been going for a bit. Now, we have a couple of questions and maybe some other stuff. Brendan, thank you very much for the donation. Did you ever do any, have anything to do with the Ravens and Laos? And did you ever fly the Helio Courier or the Piatis order? Patis Porter? No.

I was mainly a big bird pilot and multi-engine pilot. I do know the Ravens. We did that job before they got there and then turned over the T-20H, the Hmong to fly them. And then the Ravens came into being, and they had quite a bit of success. And what were the Ravens? They were military. Okay. They were military advisors, advisors,

pilots and the rest of that, they'd go up and help identify targets and fire on them, too. Did you ever have any problems with, I don't know if you even work with them, but with military pilots that your way of doing things was quite unorthodox and not quite up to FAA regulations. And the military pilots are like, by the book, everything's got to be done the right way. Well, I did have trouble with that. Most of them I'd send home that couldn't adapt. to my way of thinking. They did not have crew chiefs that were out there pre-flighting the airplane for them, carrying their bags out to the airplane, and all the rest of that. If you got upcountry and you know, we're loading cargo, you're going to have to tie it down. There's nobody else going to do it. And if you need to be refueled, you're going to have to climb out on the wing

and refuel it. And if it's low on oil and with the tanks, you're going to have to hoist a five-gallon jury can full of oil and poured into the tank. And if you're not willing to do that, I don't need you. You can't work here. And what about active duty military? While the war was at its height, did you cross pass with them often? I did on occasion. The worst part was Vietnam.

The army operated on FM frequencies. The Air Force operated on UHF. I don't know what the hell the Navy was on. And we were on VHF. We didn't hear what they're doing. We had no idea if they were having an airstrike in the area. The rest of that, we had one midair down in Socktrak in the Delta area of Vietnam with a helicopter and our darnier, and they all walked away, luckily.

Wow. In fact, part of that airplane is up here in Green Bay, Wisconsin, one of the wings. and the guys got it on his door near. They got a little history there. The pilot for that, Victor David, he quit not too long after that and came back to the United States and flew for frontier airlines

and was a captain there and he had a bad end. He was coming out of a restaurant and a car jumped the curb and hit him and killed him. after all of that yeah it's amazing I am hammer and nails thank you very much oh he said going to have to watch the rest this morning thanks for the great content thank you Seifer, thank you very much for the donation. Ian Hutchinson, thank you for the donation. Did you ever have to try to hot extract two Kazakh nationals and one American national from Cancun?

No. He's making a joke about a book I wrote. He said Jack will get the reference. Yeah, it's a novel. Okay. Let's see if I can, I can't read all these comments. Can you touch on the, do you know, Can you touch on the evolution of Air America into Evergreen cargo in the 80s?

And it's limited... Yeah, Evergreen was part of the mishmash. They're hiding these firms. In fact, there was quite a few of them. Pan Am was even involved at one time. There's... It was rumored at one time there were over 500 companies that the agency had a piece of the action in America.

and some of these companies, the profits from that would fund other operations that they couldn't go to Congress and say, hey, we want to assassinate this guy and we need some bucks for it. Well, Congress is not going to go for that. Perhaps one of the biggest ones was in Africa. There was a despotic ruler there

that they wanted to off. And so they came up. with a plan of poisoned toothpaste. Well, this is great, except the guy never brushed his teeth. Ended up with a taxi driver at Wackte him and left him in a trunk out of the airport. Wow, where was this Zaire or the Congo? Africa, Mobutu. Ah, okay.

That's a, no, fascinating. stuff. And, you know, we interviewed on a, we did two episodes actually with Ron Mueller, who was a air branch officer in the war on terror, served in Afghanistan and Iraq. So it's really interesting to like kind of see, you know, you were on the ground for making history and then see kind of where it ended up decades later. And it didn't end up real good. It's just like the attempt of extricating the embassy people in Iran. The groundwork and the road that they were going to land on with the 1.30s and depart from was done by a couple of our pilots in a heliolion.

But it got screwed up because somebody got excited and tried to take off and hit the wingtip on the other bird and killed a bunch of people. And so the whole thing was in the board. That was, it was a helicopter. Yeah, that crashed into the C-130. But the initial flight whereas the CIA pilots was with Major Carney when they did the ground assessment. Yeah, I know who the pilots were and I won't mention their name. Were they Air America guys back in the day? Yeah. Let's talk about a little bit, if you don't mind, like evacuations. Because you had some experiences like in the Planned Dajars, I think, and maybe a couple other places.

As things started to fall apart, what were your experiences with evacuations and how they would go down and how organized were they or were they not? Evacuations were a nightmare on wheels. The Hmong were very good, but still terror overcomes almost everybody in reason. And they'd be storming the airplanes and throwing their children on. The only thing about the Hmong, they would take care of the women and children first, whereas in Vietnam, no, the soldiers would be throwing them off the bird. But there it was chaos, really, and heartbreaking in many ways. People walking into tailrooters and propellers and things like that.

It was bad. I remember I came out of 20 alternates on an evacuation. Normally there's 60 seats. Well, I took the seats out and just put straps across the floor, I think. I had 154 on board. And what was the capacity or what were you supposed to have? 60. I didn't care about the frills, just get them out of there.

That's big. And during one of those evacuations, I flew 21 legs in a four-engine transport in one day. Wow. And it would get to the point where, I mean, troops would have to, or people would have to, you know, unfortunately beat these people to keep them from trying to get on you'd have to close well the 123 was great because i'd have the side troop doors closed on the thing and just dropped the ramp and when we had all we could take in it have the kickers raise the ramp and uh or the cold turn go yeah yeah that was all you could do and he was sad

It was really. And where would you, like with the mongs or whomever else, where would you fly them to? Where would you evacuate them to and what would happen to them once they got there? Sometimes down to Von Bing, which was in the northern north of Ben Chen, a little ways. And then a lot of them were down to Lima site 272, which was on a branch of the river feeding the dam site down there. And they had a lateralite strip there that we'd take him into. And there they were going to have to live in the dirt. But at least they got to live.

Yeah. I think actually this is probably a good time to talk a little bit about sort of the political situation. Why were these people getting evacuated? Like I think that many Americans don't understand. They don't know anything about the killing fields anymore. They don't understand, you know, like people poo-poo the domino theory, but it actually was a thing and it actually sort of happened in a number of ways. So what was happening at that time and why were these people evacuating?

What was going on? Well, they didn't want to fall under the North Vietnamese rule and that. And they'd be used as cattle, you know, labor and the rest of that. That was a very, very sad time. And it was a destruction of a culture. It's amazing that the Hmong were able to come to America and assimilate as well as they have, which they've done a great job. Nothing is perfect, but they've done a magnificent job since coming to this country and not being able to speak the language or anything else. A friend of mine down in Sheboygan, his brother came back to America from a refugee camp and into Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

and a host family picked him up at the airport. He didn't speak any English or anything and drove him off into the countryside. He'd heard rumors that Americans were cannibals. And he's out in this farmhouse out in the boondocks and terrified. But they didn't need him. And he ended up joining the Army and becoming a senior master sergeant. Really? He was out of the U.S. Army.

Did a beautiful job. Sure, thank. And you had already mentioned that the, in, is it, Michigan had set up, okay, had set up, you know, a memorial. So they recognize and appreciate what had happened and what you had done for them. Not you personally, but you as an organization. Is that the memorial there, Neil? That is the one that's in the McDermott Library in Texas.

Okay. It's currently not being displayed. Let me see if I can find the other one. But please continue. Thank you. But no, they're extremely loyal people and I feel bad about abandoning in there. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened.

Right. And we've seen the modern day, the Kurds are kind of the modern. day, you know, in a lot of ways, the modern day embodiment of that of backing up a group that, you know, an indigenous group that helps us and then kind of bailing when our political needs are done. Well, we change regime so often. Yeah. Every four to eight years, our regime totally gets trashed and there's new sheriff in town. In some ways, a dictatorship, if it's benevolent, is probably the better form of government. But that I'll probably get a call from the FBI.

But frankly, I don't give it in. Well, that actually leads us into maybe our next segment about getting calls from the FBI. What happened? Huh? Or Cambodian. Oh, go ahead. or Cambodia. When I left Laos, I went down to New Zealand and thought I could let it all go. Well, that was wrong. And a friend of mine called me and wanted to know if I'd like to go to Cambodia and fly there.

Oh, right. Okay. I said, sure. Let's do that. So I hopped to smoke her out of Auckland, New Zealand, up to Singapore and picked up the Conver 440 there that had been with the Garuda. The only thing was, Garuda had not aid Conver for those airplanes. So they'd been sitting and rotting in the heat down there and all the seals and engines were questionable. But took that up to Nampan. And Nampan was something of the nightmares made up. out of. The city itself was surrounded by the Khmer Rouge. And I stayed in a place downtown where there was water about three hours a day. And so you had to collect water. And if you didn't collect water, when you came back in, lift the toilet tank lid and dip the water out of there. That's okay. But it wasn't drinkable. It would give you a severe case of two step. But, uh, That convere ended up losing an engine in Kampang Sam or Batambong.

And came back to Kampan and caught a ride with an old C-46. It just shook like hell when I took off out of there. And took it down to the coast and was flying out of the coast in Kampong Sam, with rice up to various sites. and had a Chinese copilot and letting down into a site north of Nampen and there was loud in the back. And copon, oh, cargo fall over. No, I know what that is. I heard that sound before and landed there, offload in the cargo and I walked around it and about four inches from the main fuel selector valve the right side is a 50 caliber bullet hole out to the top of the wing through the cabin and on out the other side. Well, took that thing back down to Compensom. And when I got on the ground

there, it was safe walking around the airplane and thought I'd check this thing out. And everything looked fairly good. Just this is one hole and came up to the left side and the left engine and they'd like most panelists do grab the propeller blade and it moved frontwards and backwards the backwards the whole thing was loose in the hub ready to come off that's where my vibration was well that was the end of that airplane picked up another con bear down there with anchorwater airlines and again shuttling rice there and was in battenbaum over by the tieboard and a friend of mine was on the ramp there. He had a flat nose wheel tire on his airplane, getting it fixed.

And I could hear a 50 caliber talking on the perimeter. Well, it was outgoing 50. That's not a good sign. So the bad guy's going to be pretty close. And one of the Cambodian officers came up to me and he says, you know, all-American go home. Really? Well, I'm still here.

He says, no. they come in with helicopters and take all your embassy and they take our generals and they leave. And all our political people. Wow. Well, I got my friend aside and said, I'm going to go back down to Comptons Sound, get a load of fuel, and then tomorrow I'm going to leave for Bangkok with the crew. And I said, why don't you come too? And he says, yeah, I'll, I'm all.

I'll be down there. I said, well, be down there before noon and we'll leave with the best airplane. At a 12 o'clock, color me gone. He says, well, my wife is in Nampan. I want to go get her. Well, the next day, just dawdled around out to the airport and always noodle stands and things around the airport ramps. They started to disappear. That's not a good sign. To the north, there was a road cut through the hill low hills up there. And if I would have saw dust coming up from that, I would have left early, but nothing. Cambodian military started to leave.

They wouldn't let me ride with them. I had a good idea. They didn't want to be seen with a Rundi. And I think they'll probably, their uniforms would be in the closest ditch to the airport. I had a little bit 412. Well, I told my crew what we're going to do. They thought that was a great idea.

Got the station manager who was there and told him, you come with us to Bangkok. And he said, no, Captain, my family, non-Pent. Well, I can't argue with that. I should have. I didn't know what the Holocaust was going to be coming. 1.7 to 2 million people killed. and noon still with a friend so I cranked her up and we left

on into Bangkok I didn't have a passport had a whole suitcase or a briefcase full of Cambodian money now worthless yeah but it looked good it was green now when you were flying in Cambodia was that under the auspice of Air America the CIA was it completely commercial. It was just somebody who stood up in an airline and got a contract to fly humanitarian

aid. No, no. No. Commercial. Commercial. It was all the old trucking companies that used to haul goods around in Cambodia. Okay. And the Khmer Rouge cut all the roads. So they needed a way of hauling their goods. So that fell on our payload. And they bought junk airplanes. Some of them were really bad. What I had is when I escaped out of Cambodia was a real good one. It was a real decent airplane. And the only problem was, didn't have an American money, didn't have a passport. It was not there.

And landed in Bangkok. Wow, I was surprised. They had me parked right near the terminal and was reluctant to open the cockpit window. well, I'll open this and see if the police start out here. Didn't happen. Wow. I had a stewardess, or Stuart, he was Cambodian, and the stewardess was his girlfriend about 13 or 14 years old.

Right. Open the air stair door. Wow, still nothing. So we're all in uniform. It looked fairly decent. And, well, okay, you follow me? do not say anything. Walked into the terminal,

all the health check desks were empty, walked right by them. But there's a side office where the immigration people were, and he looked up and saw me and waved me over. Oh, boy. Now it'll hit the fan. And he says, Captain Manifetz, please.

I said, oh, I don't have any. You have any blank ones? and I filled out some blank ones, phony names, and everything. He stamped him, but I flashed him an old Air America ID card. In fact, I think I sent a copy of that to you guys. And they waved me on through. And I went into town, taxi driver. Of course, Cambodian reel, the biggest one they had was a hundred,

real note. It was green. They had one hundreds in each corner. I had it folded for, they couldn't see the Sanskrit writing on the thing and told him, I don't have any change. You go get change and come back. He saw that 100. He snapped that up and smoked off. I smoked off in the other direction. So what, so did you still technically own this plant? Like, what was the fate of this plant? The fate of that plane was the next day I met in a watering hall where all the Air America guys used to go to called Max's Prince Panya, the royal family in Laos. He had been given two C-46s that Air America used to have and the operations building, and he was hauling rice and stuff around in Laos. Well, he says, you come to Laos, bring your airplane, and I'll paint it up and we'll fly passengers. I said, sure.

And he says, and I make you chief pilot of the C-46 program. Okay. Did that and started flying rice upcountry into places we never would go to before because it was all enemy. And into the plunded jars. and there was Russians there too. They were also flying race around. I'd make three trips to their two, and they didn't think that was right.

They had a turbine airplane, and I had an old C-46 built before World War II, and I was hauled more than they were. But they were so top-heavy as far as management and everything else. And then they started putting a little guy with a red star on his cap in the jump seat. and I knew the end was near here. So I forged some papers and operations with Royal Air Lowe logo on it and forged a prince Panya's name on it, got discount tickets as far as Anchorage, Alaska.

That's all I could get 75% discount and all I could afford. And arrived at the Mekong River and across the, you know, across. of Mekong River and down and the train. You escape from Cambodia and then you had to escape from Laos. That's right. That was a sad day. I know when it was off the airport and boarded Pan Am.

And he cranked that thing up and taxied out and rolled out and rumbling off. Low cloud deck there we got on top of. Behind me was the only world that really really been immersed in. A year in or more when you're getting shot at and stuff is like a thousand to anybody else. And it was the most helpless feeling I ever had. And my real world was behind me and I was hidden to Anchorage, Alaska. With what kind of resources, what kind of money did you have? I had about 50 bucks. Luckily, Roger, my friend from Saigon, he was there,

and I slept on his floor there for a while. I had a few Air America guys ended up in Anchorage or in Alaska. Yeah, it was our kind of flying. It wasn't FAA by the numbers and like in the lower 48 where you had no leeway. Right. You could go ahead and take the airplane and make it do what it's supposed to. Yeah. And so how, so you got to Alaska, you arrived Alaska, Roger was there. And you talk about Roger quite a bit in your book, and he's quite a character.

Oh, yeah. Sadly, he died at 49. He died when? he's 49 years old. He was 49, right. So what did you do while you're in Alaska? And how long did you stay there? I stayed there until summer came around.

And I'd saved up $500 to buy a Ford Falcon. And loaded everything in that and headed south. I was sick and tired of the cold. in the winter in Alaska, you get up in the dark, you go fly all day long in the dark, and you come home in the dark. This was not fun. It does strange things to your mind. Sure.

And the summer is just the opposite. You got daylight, you know, it's broad daylight at 3 o'clock in a morning. In Anchorage, you know, the sun would just dip down below the Brooks range a little bit. and back up, or that was in Fairbanks. And no fun. And there again, junk airplanes and the rest of that sort of stuff. I'm good at that. Yeah.

And so where did you decide, you bought this Ford, you said Ford Falcon? Yeah. And where did you go to? Where were, what was your direction? Port Charlotte, Florida. Why Port Charlotte Florida? Because I had another friend who was down there. working on a golf course.

Got down there and ended up with a job with Guyana Airways, down in Georgetown, Guyana. Another old C-46. And there had been one down there before, but it crashed on takeoff and burned. And when I got down there, the tail sticking out of the jungle off the end of the runway had the same number as a number I had on that airplane.

So something funny was going on there too. And so Guyana, you know, you mentioned Jim Jones earlier, was he around at that time? Was that a thing? Building his empire down there in Jones Town. And the people were coming in. And he was one of the good guys with the government there because he was paying all these bills and all the rest of that sort of thing. and they couldn't see what the hell was going to happen with this compound when it finally got off the ground and they ran out of money and everything else. And Kool-Aid was cheap.

But the interior of Guyana was really interesting. I'd go into Lethbridge and pick up meat from a slaughterhouse, a raw sides of beef. But back years and years ago, John Chisholm came down through there. and organized a cattle drive from Lethbridge to Georgetown. And I think they only lost 3,000 head in route to the jungle streams, the crocodiles and all the rest and that sort of stuff. But there was still a lot of junk around there. The storekeeper there had some old black powder six shooters.

And the rest of that sort of thing. I should have bought one of those things. Yeah, hindsight. Yeah. So, and how long did you work the job for doing that and why did you leave? And, well, when they stopped sending paychecks, which was a good... That'll do it. And caught a ride with a Cuban crew and an electric back to Miami.

Oh, so you didn't even fly back then. You are... I fly yourself back there. Left the airplane there, guys. If I would have tried to go international with that thing, all the way. alarm bells would have went off. It was Guyana Registry. Okay.

Got back up there and got a job with a construction company flying, freight and their little single-engine airplane and their multi-engine airplane. And that again, had the kiss of death upon it when they got contracts to build I-75. And we'd start making trips down to Cancun.

And they'd put their money in the little banks down there and they declared bankruptcy. So after receiving these big government checks for building the freeway. That's right. During this whole time, you never turned, I mean, you had experience on big birds, but you never turned to the commercial market. Did you feel as though that was sort of a fate worse than death? No, not really, but I was too old at that point.

Okay. that's a bad part. It would have been great and probably I could figure out how to be stable again. That is such a wild one. Yeah. But those routes never did really appeal to me. Yeah. So this construction company goes, well, they kind of take this money and then they declare bankruptcy and then what do you do?

Well, a friend called me and said, would you like to go? south. And that was a euphemism in that time for going down to Columbia to bring back weed. And I did. And is this, was this a friend from Air America? Yes. He's now dead. And did you say yes immediately? I mean, did he have to lure you with the money? Was it just like, it sounds adventurous? I mean, what were you thinking when he called with that proposition? The money. The money and the thing. Yeah.

Just out of curiosity, Neil, I was wondering if you saw the Tom Cruise movie about this particular subject and what you thought about it. Yeah, that was very seal out of Mina, Arkansas. And actually, it kind of scared you. And when he wanted to cooperate with the authorities, and when he did, they still shipped him. out and did not uphold their part of the bargain. Did you think that movie was like fairly accurate as to, you know, what it was like at the time running drugs north-south? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. But he paid the price for setting them up too. Setting up the cartels? Yeah. Yeah. They don't play games. He got assassinated down. Was it in Miami?

No, it was down in Louisiana somewhere. At a halfway house. Perhaps New Orleans. Let's see real quick. He was murdered. Six Colombians connected to it. That's right. Shot to death in front of a Salvation Army Center.

I'm just looking at the Wikipedia page here, but it doesn't actually say what city it was in for some reason. Oh, Baton Rouge. Baton Rouge, okay. Yeah. Red stick. So what was that like when you started flying, were the aircraft good?

Were the working conditions good? I mean, what did you think? Oh, that'd be one run and that's it and you dump the bird. That's all it was to it. It had the allure of money and something I did not have. And it was kind of getting back to what we were doing before. Yeah. Taking it down into the dirt and doing it fast and quick.

Yeah. And it wasn't, I mean, it obviously wasn't safe. But it wasn't safe in other ways, too. You talk about running out of gas. if you got there, like, or running out of fuel, there was another crew down there at one point in time that was basically let off, right? Yeah, they got killed.

And why were they killed? Because they were down in the area of Columbia, that for them to have the Colombians take them 100-some miles, up to a major town where they could catch an airliner home, would have been a great exposure for them and a lot of problems. So they solved their problem. And it was because they ran out of fuel or they didn't have enough to? No, they got excited.

They were out of Texas. And the dirt strip that we went into there had a hump in it. And the airplane they had was an arrow commander. And it wasn't sitting up high enough to see that there was. more runway. So they thought they were at the end of the runway. So they tried to pull it off the ground and pull the gear up. Well, they went right back down the dirt, slid off the side. And they came back up, and they thought that they would give them a ride up to Berengia. Wow. And I said, no, they're not going to do that. Why don't you climb in this DC6 I got here, and I'll take you back.

And he says, well, then you, we don't know that you get in trouble when you come on back or, well, you're going to do that. I said, well, don't worry about that. Just worry about your butts. And they didn't want to. So they were going to go down to the wreck that they had, get their personal belongings out of it. And then the Colombians were going to help them. Well, they got down there and I could hear a couple of pistol shots. And arose a flame from where they burned the wreckage. And then there was a time that you ran out of fuel there, right? Or in a similar situation? Yeah, yeah. I did, an engine came apart on me.

Okay. That was down near Cartagena. Okay. But the guys I was working with there were good, and they walked us to us and got it out. That's completely nuts. But it's always an iffy situation. Yeah.

I mean, I remember reading in your book that you were talking about. Was it coming back in? Was it a celebrity's house that you would use as a landmark or somebody's house that you'd use as a landmark, the lights, so that you could go sort of visual from there? You want to stay offshore quite a ways out as far as Treasure Key, then turn due west, put it right down on top of wave tops, and bore right in. There was a good light at Jupiter inlet. and also yard lights from smoking a bandit. And it's straight over your house, pull it on, up, turn right on the airway, and it looked like you came out of an airport there

as they were painting you on radar. So you were using Bert Reynolds' house as cover too? Oh, and so then the radar signature would look like you came out of the airport. That's right. It worked. If you're checking for a tail, you'd circle Disney World, but one time. that. That's amazing. I mean, ground lights illuminate anybody, it would be on your tail.

So, I mean, what ended up happening with this? I mean, did the good times come to an end? Do the feds catch up with you? Yes, they did. Well, basically, when one of them went south, the kingpin turned everybody in. And this was out of, was this out of Arkansas? Is that right?

No, South Carolina. Oh, South Carolina, where the state police were involved and... Yes. And they were setting up, they were like blocking off landing strips for you, right? That's right. That'll raise a hole. Yeah. So the state police would come in and block off a portion of the road so that you could land the drugs or use that area as a landing strip.

And that was the, that was the organization or part of the organization. That's right. Well, it's landed on dirt strips and fields. and stuff like that too. Oh, so the cops were in on it. Yes, not all, but some. But a group of got released, I know. Yeah, a group of them were in on it

and would come in and sort of like secure the area. The story is oldest time. So there was a report that came out, or you found out there was a warrant for you, correct? That's right. And then you decided to screw that, I'm somebody else now. That's right.

Okay. And how did that happen? Like how did you develop an alias, get the IDs and things like that? The South Carolina State Police. They're licensed and everything else. Protect and serve, right? They were just serving them. It wasn't all of them.

Yeah, right. You totally got that. So now you have a new ID, a new persona, and what did you do? I went to farming in Arkansas And eventually I got teased back into it But it was a setup Yeah And when you went to farming though

What kind of you had animals right Yes And what types of animals did you have Had pygmy goats I had Ria's which is a South American Ratite family And emus And a lot of other peasants and things

like that. I enjoyed that. That was fun. And everybody, like, you just became a new person. That's who everybody knew you as. You were married at the time, and even your wife started calling you that name. That's right. And how long did you do that for? About three years. And so then what happened? You were telling Jack that you went back into it. Yeah, one of the guys from South Carolina. got a hold of me. I don't know how he found where I was, but wanted me to make a run south. And he said he had an airplane. No, he wasn't. He was just setting me up and he's his own butt clear. Yeah. And so were you picked up right away? I mean, did they come to your farm? Did they? Yeah, they, they caught me down at the front gate.

They had about 10 guys. And what were you thinking at that point? Were you like, okay, life in prison, like this is it? No, there again, it's another game, truthfully. The county and state prisons are not all that bright and shiny. But if you do have a little sense, you can work the system. In the federal system, I was actually a quality control supervisor in their furniture factory. And that works. I have relatively good life. So you took a plea deal.

No, no. When you were during the whole trial system, did your time with Air America come up at all? Did they recognize you for your service? No, they didn't. Nobody ever has. And that's the one thing that our site, the Air America Historical Social Club,

We're fighting to get recognition. You know, I'm not looking for money, but I'd like to see the guys that died at least acknowledged. But they're not. What would that look like weird? Like if, like what would that look like for you to get acknowledged, for them to get acknowledged? Oh, nothing but an Air America Day.

I'm not looking for a retirement thing and the rest of that. Between military and Air America time. I'd qualify for retirement of some sort, but they didn't do that. We were throwaways. They had credible deniability and what we were and where we were and everything else. Well, we were violating the Geneva Accords and Lowndes very badly by carrying munitions in and supporting indigenous troops. said that is not what the Geneva Accords said, although the Russians and everybody else was doing it too. Right.

North Vietnamese and Red Chinese and the whole enchilada. We want to keep the white hats and they ain't happening. Yeah. And that's why they've kind of tried. And the world doesn't know it that way anyway. That's why they've tried to bury a part of your history, you feel like. That's right. No, if they just have an Air America Day, you know, they've got it for every other thing, you know, the National Candy Day and whatever else they have on the calendar.

Yeah, you're not asking for a federal holiday. You're asking for a day of recognition. Exactly. Yeah. It's one of those things where like you guys should have a statue in Washington, D.C. or something like that, you know, I don't know, at the Vietnam Memorial or elsewhere. or in front of the CIA headquarters at Langley. I have no idea. But I mean, it's one of those things.

There should be something that you can go visit. Well, a statute is fine. And I think that the memorial here in Sheboygan, Wisconsin is about the most we can expect. It was done by the Hmong people who we supported. And they had enough honor to do that for us. And that I respect tremendously. Booyang and all the Hmong over there. that every Memorial Day they've had me in their parade.

And that's great. And it's quite an honor. And I've been a speaker at their events too. So where are you at today, Neil? Tell us a little bit about your book and how that came about. Okay. The book came about over many years of writing this thing. And it was a little labor.

And I've been a speaker at, Oshkosh and the EA air show here, which is the largest in the world for five years up until this year, of course. But one day in the audience, there was a lady that used to be with the Chicago Tribune. And after I gave my spiel, she says, let me buy you a beer. And I said, okay, I'm easy. And we went to a local hotel and we sat down and had a beer and talked about, everything. And I said, well, you really need to write a book. And I said, well, I really kind of have. I've got about 400 pages of typed manuscript. And she's ran into these things before. And

regrettingly, she said, well, send it to me and I'll take a look at it. Well, it wasn't too long after that, I got a call. She says, oh, no, you've got to have this mainstream. We've got to get an agent. And she cleaned up some of the iffy stuff and added a good prologue to the thing. And it's gone onward and upward from that point. We found an agent and an agent found a publisher. And now it's going to get further legs, I think. But we'll see. We have had. quite a ride with this thing and she's done a magnificent job on this thing and the only thing additional in here that I wanted was a list of all the guys who died and I've got that right in the back and their names are all there and dates it definitely deserves to be known it because

even during this interview I think one of like a couple of things that I haven't really been able to get across is that this is a very, this isn't just times and dates and places, but this is a very personal account about the people that you were with, their idiosyncrasies, the internal politics. Like, even when you crash or got shot down, the people who were betting against you and the people who were betting against you and the people who are betting for you

and the people betting against you because they wanted your job. That's why it was nothing personal. No. They just wanted to move up in the ranks. And that happens in every industry, whether it's auto industry or airline or anything else. When a senior guy dies or retires,

everybody steps up with China. Right. You know, and not just the people in Air America, But, you know, your kickers, I'm not going to say Sampop, right? And boom up. And yeah, and how precious they were as human beings. And, you know, and their personalities. I've really enjoyed those guys, particularly the Thai kickers.

They had respect, and I showed them respect. Right. At the time I'd give them the traditional Y. and they also showered me with many Buddhist amulets and things. And it was great. You had mutual respect. And, you know, those are like we didn't talk about your Budapin. Can you tell us a little bit about your Buddha pen and your necklace?

The only thing I have left is the Buddha pin. And that I gave to Luan Grosskept, my co-author. And she wears it around her neck. And but that had in and I'm sure she understands how precious that was to you because that has such history in it and it has such history in your book. You know, they would give you these gifts, you know, and they would give you these things. And then they would always make sure that you were wearing them. That's right. You know, because they were blessings essentially.

That's right. That's common things in many religious followings and whether it's a, whether it's, cross hanging from your rearview mirror or things like that or a St. Christopher's thing on the dash. Yeah, there I am when I was in Watt. Boy, I was skinny and I was white. Were you somewhat of a celebrity amongst the locals because you're a Caucasian in a lot? That's right. Yes, I was. Yeah, I was. It was a learning curve. and I'm glad I did it. And the Watt forms a big part of the community there.

Children that are orphans are taken into the Watt and they become novices. And they're fed and they're clothed and they have a place to live. That's an old C-46. That is a Chinese registry, Bravo 858. won't that many times. Good bird. So how long did you spend in jail then? It was a federal prison, correct? Yes. And how long, how long did you spend there? Four years. Four years? And even that was an interesting time, right? Because you learn if you've got any sort of abilities whatsoever, you're not looking for mensa candidates there. I could type, I could do things like that.

And I learned the legal system myself where I could write pleas and the rest of that for guys. And that gets you a notch up the ladder. And it was good. And you shared, I mean, you were there at the same time. There was a very interesting personality who was possibly involved in the Kennedy assassination, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah, you guys can read the book for that.

We've already spilled too many secrets. And some of the names across this interview, I mean, good Lord. We went from Jimmy Hoffa to Tony Poe to Mobatu, Sessiseko, Eugene Hoffenfoss. This has been nuts. Jim Jones. I mean, yeah, it's amazing. It's truly, now, you know, you. You said that, you know, there hasn't been any recognition.

How has the CIA, has the CIA given you any sort of outreach or formal recognition? Have they ever invited you to Langley at all? No, but they did give us a, oh gosh, a certificate of commemoration. But that was during George Tenants regime. I think he got in trouble over that. And he also had a coin made that was given to us with all Langley stuff on it and the rest of that. Yeah.

America emblem on one side. But I can understand the politics and the problems they have on that and their reluctance to admit that they were involved in violating Geneva Accords and everything. everything else. But it's, you know, come on, it's been over 50 years for guys. Yeah, I mean, hasn't it all been declassified by now? Just by the nature of the classification loss? That's right. If it wasn't, I'd be in jail right now. Right. Yeah. Guys, Neil, this has been really incredible. And if anyone wants to go and pick up Neil's book,

flight. There's a link down in description. You can just go click on that and it'll, and there's the book right there. And like, Neil, is this thing like available as an audio book, Kindle, paperback? It's available on Kindle and Amazon and also paperback on Amazon. I'm currently doing the audio version right now. Awesome. I read it on Kendall, guys. I mean, it's definitely worth, it is, highly, highly, highly recommended. It's, like you said, we've really just kind of brushed over the broad strokes here. And even, you know what's very interesting is not only about the personal tales, the interpersonal stories, the personalities, the politics and the situations,

but your love of flight, your love of flight truly comes through to just the way you talk about flying and you talk about, you know, your Berger airplanes. I mean, I had to look a lot of stuff up in some of the, well, I didn't have to, but I wanted to because I really wanted to feel, you know, I didn't know what the mechanical terms were, and I wanted to know what you were talking about. And it just really comes through that you are a person who is like one with your airplane. Yes, well, I've flown over 130 different single-engine airplanes and 25 different multi-engine airplanes. But back in those days, you didn't have to go through all the crap of getting checked out on each one. You got in and you flew the damn thing. It's good basic common sense if you know airplanes.

Now a poor kid can't do that anymore. It's a real shame. Yeah, yeah. But it was dangerous, yes, I've got to say that much. Well, and that's something else we didn't really talk about is some of the airmen. fields and landing conditions you guys I mean some of them were strips on a plateau that that yeah you know that a lot of the deaths were due to guys trying to hit an air strip in a cloud bank because you know so and yeah I mean it was amazing truly amazing yeah hitting one of those things

is called a cumulogranet well guys um just as to you know wrap things up here. I don't know if you guys have any final thoughts, but I got to give the obligatory call to action to everybody that, you know, thank you everyone who joined us live tonight. It's really awesome. Please make sure you subscribe to our channel. If you haven't already, and hit the thumbs up button, you know, share the video with your pals. Leave us some comments down below. All that kind of stuff kind of helps us bump up in the algorithms. And there's also a link to our Patreon down below. If you're interested, in supporting the stream and you'd like to have access to all the bonus segments we do with our

guests you jump in it's it starts at one dollar a month so it's super easy to get into yeah weird do you know what bonus thing we're going to do for this tonight uh do we know yet uh because there's there's some good stuff out there that we haven't talked about so oh yeah all right join us on patreon guys uh it'll be out every wednesday right is when the bonus content up yeah yeah and Just a tease for next Friday. Next Friday, we will be live with our guest, another pilot, Dan Hampton, who is an F-16 pilot. He's authored a handful of books. He wrote a memoir about his time as an F-16 pilot.

He wrote a great novel called The Mercenary that I read. And he has a new book about Operation Vengeance that I really don't know anything about, but it's a World War II historical book. So we'll have Dan on next week to speak with him. it'll be a great follow on to this episode, Neil. I mean, this has been amazing, man. Thanks so much for joining us tonight. You've been blowing my mind.

And you want to make on for afterwards? Yep. So good night, everyone, and I'll see you again on Friday.