Mustang Report # 14 - Part I:

My best friend Jerry, his name now engraved on THE WALL - Master Sergeant
Gerard V. Parmentier - was killed in action his fifth time in combat in Southeast
Asia (Laos
& Vietnam).
Jerry, a fellow Green Beret and a number of South Vietnamese irregulars, were
mortally wounded in battle by Viet Cong insurgents on 17 August 1967 near Dak To, South
Vietnam.
They were the unsuspecting victims of a power struggle between
General Westmoreland and the Special
Forces Group commander.

His son Albert, also a Green Beret, was serving in a neighboring Special
Forces camp when he got word that his father had been killed in action. After
learning details of the battle and its aftermath from his father’s commanding
officer, Albert accompanied his dad's body back to the United
States where he was interred with military
honors at Rosecrans National
Cemetery in San
Diego. I was there.

After the funeral I spoke with Albert and he confirmed what I’d suspected,
having learned from his father’s A-team commanding officer that Jerry’s unit
had suffered heavy casualties, with most due to faulty or withheld
intelligence. The enemy force that killed Jerry was many times the strength
that had been gleaned from available intelligence. In and of itself, that fact was
not uncommon in war, particularly in a counter-insurgency situation. What was
unusual and unforgivable in my judgment, was the fact that the enemy order of
battle was known but withheld from the Special Forces. Those facts were told
Albert by his father's A Team leader before he left Vietnam,
escorting his father’s body to the U.S.

Though it was important first hand testimony for the book I was writing
about Special Forces in South Vietnam,
it was decided to delay recording Albert's recollections until his mother was dead.
We felt it would hurt too much for her to know the truth. When Mama Rose died
and was buried in Providence, Rhode
Island, I approached Albert to document what he knew
of his father's death. It would be used to help demand an investigation into
withheld intelligence. Unknown to me until that very day, Albert had retired from
the service and was now working for the “company” (CIA). Needless to say, he
was forbidden from disclosing any knowledge relating to the CIA. No sense
arguing, the cards had been stacked to make certain the truth would not be
known.

In 1983, Presidio Press published LTC Charles M. Simpson’s book, Inside
the Green Berets, which included the account of how LTC Dick Ruble, a
member of Westmoreland’s Intelligence staff, had, without the knowledge of the
Special Forces Group CO, denied their access to intelligence (“code word”) documents
until such a time that Special Forces would permit non-airborne Military Assistance
Command personnel, disguised as Green Berets, access to Special Forces Camps.
The Special Forces Group had been excluded purposely from their distribution
list, including access to intelligence gathered by CIA resources and critical
to success against an entrenched enemy.

.My book Expendable Elite – One Soldier’s Journey Into Covert Warfare
contains much detail, including direct quotes that told of General
Westmoreland’s refusal to demand an end to the enemy’s safe-havens in Cambodia
and his lack of courage when given the opportunity to go before Congress and
tell them that American and Allied forces and innocent civilians were being
killed and maimed by the enemy operating out of the “sanctuaries” that
President Johnson had provided against the wishes of then Premier Nguyen Cao
Ky. General Westmoreland admits to these failures in his book A Soldier
Reports.

Another fact of life in South Vietnam
at the time I served as a Green Beret in An Phu District and Chau
Doc Province
was the almost total absence of routine resupply of Special Forces units in the
IV Tactical Corps Zone by General Westmoreland’s huge Saigon
depot. When I was B team logistics officer, responsible to resupply all Special
Forces A Team Camps under the wing of B-42 in late 1966. Shortages of critical
items and the total lack of logistical support by the Saigon depot forced me to
"borrow" a Landing Craft Utility (LCU) from the U.S. Navy, and take
it down river on the Bassac and then over to the Mekong River to the Saigon
Depot. Once there we “borrowed” some of their trucks, drove past fearful guards
and picked what we desperately needed from shelves, bins and pallet storage,
loaded it on the trucks and then off-loaded unto the LCU tied up at the depot
docking site. From there we re-traced our way back to Chau Doc, unloaded the
supplies and equipment and returned the LCU to where it had been tied up.

Within a year of my return to the US, while attending the US Army Career
Course at Fort Lee, Virginia, Colonel Pieklik, who had commanded the Saigon
Depot when I was forced to steal what we needed, stood in front of our class at
the end of his presentation and asked if there were any questions. As class
president I fielded the first question. "Why did your depot refuse to
supply the needs of Special Forces units in the 4^th Tactical Zone in
1966?" I was impressed with the
fact that he answered unequivocally, telling our class that the reason his
depot was not supplying our needs in the IV Tactical Zone (the entire delta
area) was because General Westmoreland had ordered him not to. He was told not
to supply our needs until such a time as Lieutenant General Quang Van Dang (CG
of the IV Tactical Zone) would allow conventional American forces to be moved
into the delta area. Our mission and our safety was given a back seat to his
desire to put forces where they were not needed. The IV Tactical Zone was the most secure of
the four zones in Vietnam.
More detail is to be found in the Victory Edition of Expendable
Elite - One Soldier's Journey Into Covert Warfare.

Part II: "The
present and the future Aiding of the Enemy" will be forthcoming and will
include specifics regarding my thus far vain attempts to have the truth of our
government's aiding the enemy from then until now incorporated in instruction
to officers in the Army War College, Command & General Staff College, West
Point, and the Special Operations Command. My 15 June 2007 letters to MG David H. Hutton,
Jr. (War College Commandant), General Bryan Brown (CG of the US Special
Operations Command) and LTG Franklin L. Hagenbeck (West Point Superintendent),
together with my 16 June 2007 letter to MG
William B. Caldwell IV (CG US Army Combined Arms Center), none of which have
been responded to as of this writing, will be detailed along with my efforts to
get Congress and the media to force our government and its military hierarchy
to cease and desist from aiding and abetting the enemy. Each of the
aforementioned will be provided a copy of Mustang Report # 14 - Part I with a
request for comment to be posted in Part II. I lost my four best friends in Vietnam as KIA in a war
they were not permitted to win, while at the same time we were aiding the enemy
who killed them and 58,000 others plus countless South Vietnamese. IT IS TIME
WE DID SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!