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“it was a CIA program. The Marines were involved because they were in the area,” Hernes Jackson told Rubens. “I have to say that there wasn’t much online from the CIA. I found nearly everything I needed from the Department of Defense.
I’ve made appointments to look at the paper records as well.
Possibly that will reveal more.”
Jackson explained that the CIA had sent “support” payments to loyal village elders during the war. The payments were essentially bribes, and there were few checks and balances in the program. The CIA worked with local military units to arrange and protect couriers; depending on the sec-tor, Army Special Forces, Marines, and even SEALs had been involved. In the area of Phu Loc 2, the CIA worked with Marines attached to the strategic hamlet program.
In the case cited by Phuc Dinh, one set of payments totaling $250,000 had gone missing during the last year of the war. This had happened after the man who had been coordinating the payments — Greenfeld, as Dean had said — was killed in a rocket attack on a Marine camp he’d been visiting. Three payments were missed in the interim, making the amount carried by the new courier extra large and probably extra tempting.
A South Vietnamese officer acted as the courier, with two Marines assigned as his escort to Phu Loc 2. There was an ambush. The Marines and the South Vietnamese officer were separated. Neither the money nor the South Vietnamese officer was ever seen again.
“The Marines just let him run off?” said Rubens.
“No,” said Jackson. “There was an ambush. They came under heavy attack. According to the Marines, he was oblit-erated by a mortar. They ended up calling for an air evac.” The guards were Marine Sergeant Bob Malinowski and Marine Sergeant Robert Tolong.
“Malinowski was wounded in the ambush and died back in the field hospital, or en route,” said Jackson. “One of the reports says that Tolong was wounded as well, but if so the wounds were minor, because he rejoined his unit immediately afterward. The CIA wanted to talk to Sergeant Tolong, apparently because he was the last American to see the cash.
I am reading a bit between the lines.”
“Perfectly logical assumption,” said Rubens. “Go on.” Before the CIA could debrief him, Tolong volunteered to go on a patrol, checking on a hamlet team that had missed its call-in the day before. The unit was attacked in the afternoon of their first day out, a few miles west of Tam Ky. Tolong and another man named Reginald Gordon were separated from the main group. The firefight continued well into the night.
In the morning, the fighting resumed when some he li cop ters approached, and it wasn’t until late afternoon that they were extricated. Gordon and Tolong were among the missing.
“About ten days later, Sergeant Gordon showed up at the base camp of a unit about thirty miles to the west,” continued Jackson. “Tolong, he said, had been seriously wounded and died a few days after the ambush. He’d buried him, but wasn’t sure where. The Marines sent two different patrols into the area, but never found him.”
“Did the CIA find the money?” asked Rubens.
“Doesn’t appear so. As I said, I’ll have to look through their paper records to be sure,” said Jackson. “The men were assigned to the courier job by a Captain McSweeney. His name was on some of the reports, including two about the ambush.”
“Senator McSweeney.”
“Apparently. One other thing I found interesting,” added Jackson. “Reading between the lines, it seems that the CIA later concluded that the courier had been set up by one of the village leaders, who was working with the Vietcong. The leader was Phuc Dinh.”
“Why would he have the courier ambushed before he got the money?” asked Rubens.
“It would make sense if the South Vietnamese officer didn’t really die, but escaped during the attack,” said Jackson. “In any event, the CIA apparently tried to get a little revenge by assassinating him. According to one of the Marine Corps reports, they succeeded.”
“So I surmised from the transcript of Mr. Dean’s interview with Mr. Dinh.”
“Did the interview note that the assassin was a Marine scout sniper named Charles Dean?”
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Rubens was still considering exactly how to summarize the situation for Bing when she returned his call.
“This is Dr. Bing. You have an update on the Vietnam project?”
“Thao Duong is part of a people-smuggling network,” said Rubens. “There is no Vietnamese assassination plot.”
“There’s no assassination plot or he’s not part of it?” The bite in Bing’s voice annoyed Rubens. He reached for his cup of cinnamon herbal tea — part of his never-ending campaign to cut back on caffeine — and took a long sip before replying.
“The only evidence that we had of a possible plot involves dated CIA data, and circumstantial evidence we developed related to Thao Duong. Upon further analysis, that evidence now fits better with the hypothe-sis that he was part of a people-smuggling operation originating in China. We were wrong, initially,” added Rubens — even though he had cautioned about jumping to conclusions all along. “We have now given the material a very thorough review, and there is nothing substantial there.”
“There was an attempt on a senator’s life, Billy. If that isn’t evidence enough for you, what is?” Rubens winced. He hated being called Billy.
“I realize that you want to take a harder stand toward Vietnam,” said Rubens as evenly as he could. “But I have to tell you that we have no intelligence linking them to the attempt on the senator’s life.”
“Then you’re not working hard enough,” said Bing, abruptly hanging up.
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Finished briefing Rubens, Ambassador Jackson returned to his desk in the research and analysis section, planning on taking care of some odds and ends before checking back in with the FBI and Secret Service. While he’d been up with Rubens, the Pentagon had answered Jackson’s request for contact information regarding the members of Tolong’s unit. Among the information was an address and phone number for Reginald Gordon, the last man who had seen Tolong alive.
Jackson called the phone number, only to find it had been disconnected. That wasn’t particularly surprising — the Defense Department data was many years old. Next, Jackson entered the name and last known address into a commercial database used by private investigators and others trying to track down people. Within a few minutes, he had an address and phone number in Atlanta.
This phone, too, had been disconnected.
Jackson then did what a layman might do when looking for information about someone — he Googled Gordon.
The screen came back quickly. All of the top hits were from newspapers.
Reginald Gordon had jumped from a hotel window in Washington a week before.
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