Back in 1990, my colleague Jimmy Carcerano introduced me to Vincent Arnone, who was an ex Green Beret Master Sergeant who served in Vietnam and still lived in Thailand since he’d married an ethnic Lao Thai woman.
Vinny claimed that he needed some “working capital” to consummate a lucrative deal to trade Lao gold for Thai arms to support the anti-communist anti Pathet Lao insurgents in Laos. He further claimed to know where some American POWs were being held against their will deep in the Laotian jungle and he knew where and how we could liberate them.
Now Vinny came highly recommended by Jimmy and my psychologist friend Lorna DiMeo examined him and proclaimed his assertions to be true and that he was an honest man.
Vinny came complete with an old SOLDIER OF FORTUNE magazine in which the whole issue was devoted to detailing how he and Bo Gritz and Loh Tharaphant had attempted to use a group of Vietnam vets to do the same thing, that is to say they had made an incursion into Laos to try to rescue some American POWs.
Not only had a successful movie been made of that caper – DELTA FORCE – but Vinny had a videotape of a BBC documentary questioning whether there were in fact POWs still being held and concluding that they were definitely still American POWs being kept in captivity in the Laotian jungle.
That BBC documentary prominently featured interviews with Vinny Arnone and Loh Tharaphant along with Henry Kissinger and other famous people. The video showed Vinny in Thailand camped with a paramilitary group that he apparently had formed and was in command of.
Vinny’s friend Loh Tharaphant was an extremely successful ethnic Vietnamese businessman in Thailand. He was originally from Hanoi and had been the prime political enemy of Ho Chi Minh in the struggles to govern Indo China after the Japanese had left at the end of World War Two.
Obviously Loh had lost that power struggle to Ho and had fled with his family and assets to the north of Thailand to the village of Nkon Phnom on the Mekong River. This much is all definitely true and was verified in both the Soldier of Fortune article and the BBC documentary.
After being convinced of his veracity, a bunch of us raised about $15,000 to send me to Thailand to hook up with Vinny and his organization and to make the guns for gold trade in Nkon Phnom brokered by Loh Tharaphant.
A Canadian geologist and former Canadian Army Ranger asked to come along for the adventure and to assay the gold which was supposed to have been mined in Northern Laos right next to the Chinese border by anti Pathet Lao operatives.
After effectuating the trade my Canadian friend and I were going to sneak into Laos by boat across the Mekong River to join up with Vinny’s people and some anti Pathet Lao guides to liberate one or two American POWs.
Sounds pretty straight forward doesn’t it? Get rich and famous in one deal. Oh well… My colleagues and I thought so and I was certainly excited by the adventure of it all.
That’s a picture of Lorna, me and my buddy and colleague in this deal Joe Lopisi taken the evening before I boarded a Northwest Airlines jumbo jet for the thirty plus hour flight to Bangkok. The flight included an eight hour layover at Narita Airport in Tokyo.
I was pretty tired when I arrived at the Bangkok Airport where I was met by Vinny, his wife and his Thai colleague Pat. After checking into a modest hotel we drove back to the airport to pick up our Canadian Colleague and drive him to his fancy hotel. He was also exhausted by the flight but, never-the-less; we stayed up late; drinking; sharing war stories; and reviewing the currently planned operation. We were all very high on adrenalin in spite of our physical exhaustion and jet lag.
We had two days to spare before taking the bus North so Pat drove us all to the Royal Palace to see the Temple of the Emerald Buddha the first day and then he drove us about one hundred kilometers to Kanchanaburi… the site of the BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI and the cemeteries and JEATH MUSEUM that memorialized the almost twenty thousand allied soldiers who had died constructing the Thai-Burma Railway under the command of the savage Imperial Japanese Army.
The drive through the Thai countryside was notable for the wonderful Thai architecture and beautiful countryside. I also interviewed Pat about Thai manners, customs and history with my Sony Video Cam. Thailand is a wonderful country with an amazing history. I particularly remember when someone asked me “Where are you from?” to which I answered “Boston.” My querrier responded “Oh… I know that place… it’s near San Francisco… right?”
Once we arrived at Kanchanaburi we walked over the famous River Kwai Bridge and admired the old Japanese locomotive on display there. We then rented a long boat powered by a V-8 engine mounted on a swivel to tour up and down the River.
I was amazed by the floating villages that dot that river and I was particularly amused by the “night club” barge that actually sloshed up and down to the beat from the energetic adolescents dancing to the Thai superstar Burt MacIntyre’s BOMMERANG. I later bought a tape of his album. Burt has a Thai mother and an Australian father which explains his name. Thais pronounce his name as BOORDT.
We visited a Buddhist temple deep underground in a cave. There was a huge statue of the Buddha in the final chamber at the very bottom. The surface temperature was certainly over 100º and the humidity also was near 100. The jungle we passed through to reach the Buddhist cave sounded like a TV set turned all the way up between channels. I mentioned to my friend that I could understand how the Allied prisoners of the Japanese would choose the Japanese brutality over the possibility of escaping through that dense, disease ridden Thai jungle.
We ate dinner on a floating restaurant hard by the bridge and, in spite of my love for great Thai food; I couldn’t get the fire out of my mouth no matter how much water I drank. The drive home took a little over an hour from Kanchanaburi to the outskirts of Bangkok and another four hours of horrendous traffic back to our hotels.
The next morning we were scheduled to catch the bus up North to start our adventure but I was delirious with a high fever. They took me to Siam General Hospital where I was admitted. I don’t remember much of the day and night spent in that hospital but I do know that not a single soul I encountered in that hospital spoke any English at all… not a doctor, not a nurse and not an administrator. I couldn’t believe it.
While Vinny and my Canadian friend were in Nkon Phnom; Pat took me from the hospital to his father’s home. His father had been a physician in the Imperial Japanese Army of occupation who’d married a Thai woman and changed his name at the end of the war. He had a huge house with very little furniture, a Buddhist shrine and a big picture of his father kissing the King’s ring. Pat gave me a cup of boiled water every few hours and I felt pretty good by evening.
That evening, Pat, a few of his friends and I had a great feast in a fabulous Chinese restaurant in downtown Bangkok. It was the best Peking Duck I’d ever had. That evening we attended a party given by his friends and we had a fabulous time with their Thai girlfriends. My buddy was named Mari pronounced Mai Lee.
The next day Vinny and my Canadian friend got back and things hadn’t gone well. My Canadian friend said the “gold” wasn’t up to snuff and that the Laotians had left in a real snit. Vinny was in a very dark mood and said we still had time to make the deal happen and asked me for more money to show “the other side” that we still meant business. This was to begin a process of him trying to take all the money I had to “make the deal happen.”
Loh Tharaphant came down to Bangkok to meet me and assure me the deal would still happen but all he said to me was that he would like to work some import-export deals with me after I got back to the States. Needless to say this never happened and Vinny got weirder and weirder telling me how easily he could kill me and get away with it in Thailand and no-one would ever know about it or care about it. When a bona-fide former Green Beret E -7 tells you how easily he could kill you while you’re in a Third World Southeast Asian nation it needs to be taken seriously and plans need to be made.
Since I was by now pretty much out of money and Vinny was still demanding more; I wasn’t feeling very safe. Unbeknownst to Vinny I changed my ticket and left Thailand a day early.
I did take the KLONG TOUR – a tour of Bangkok’s many canals, the floating markets and a great snake farm where poisonous snakes were milked to make anti-venom. I got real close to a King Cobra and other snakes with my video camera.
The best part of the trip home was seeing the peak of Mt. Fuji majestically rising above the plain of clouds as we approached Narita. I was extremely happy to be alive and devastated by the failure of our deal and how I could possibly face my friends and deal with this disaster. All I could do is to tell them the truth and hope they believed me.
Since then I’ve clearly decided that Vinny was a brilliant and very dangerous con man and I really believe that he slipped me a drug or something to make me sick so I wouldn’t be present at the important final deal. I felt absolutely fine before and after the brief “illness.”
Back home, my friends, though disappointed, surprisingly understood. God Bless them all.
Published in Washington, D.C. March 6, 1986
Read this:
Covetous 'Rambos' disrupt U.S. efforts to locate POWs
By Richard S. Ehrlich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
BANGKOK, Thailand
Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Jack E. Bailey is asking Americans for 708 dollars a day so he can sail the South China Sea to find out where U.S. prisoners of war are enslaved in Indochina.
POWs are "alive and being held captive...on road gangs, in mountain caves and work camps. Nothing but skin and bones," Mr. Bailey tells the public in mailed fund-raising appeals.
The former colonel fought in World War II, Korea and flew 256 combat missions over Vietnam. When he raises money, he sails unarmed off the Vietnamese coast rescuing "boat people" and asking them about POWs.
One of his POW-hunting competitors, Vinnie Arnone, claims to have a better system -- but it costs more. The pudgy, former Green Beret is reportedly asking for 200,000 dollars to pay a mysterious, communist Laotian major to defect with an unidentified American POW. Mr. Arnone claims he has been on five illegal raids inside Laos.
But when it comes to button-holing people with dollars to spend, former Green Beret Lt. Col. James G. "Bo" Gritz is ahead of them all. Actor Clint Eastwood gave him 30,000 dollars, "Star Trek's" William Shatner tossed in a 10,000 dollars pledge, and the computer giant, Litton Industries, donated more than 50,000 dollars along with sophisticated communication equipment.
The cash financed a failed mission into Laos in 1983. Armed with only three Uzis and outdated information, Col. Gritz and his 18 men -- including Mr. Arnone -- ran into a Laotian patrol which pursued them back into Thailand where he was arrested.
Mr. Gritz's colleagues, and Soldier of Fortune Magazine as well, denounced him as a publicity-seeker.
"I don't have any sympathy for these people who are raising funds to find POWs this way," one U.S. official said. "Bailey, for example, comes on as a humanitarian, decent fellow. Maybe in his mind he really believe he is.
"I don't know if he's making any money on this or not, but he's sort of deceiving people by saying he can find POWs. Especially the next of kin, they're extremely vulnerable."
Though Mr. Bailey doesn't go on raids, other Rambo-style POW-hunters do. This often damages elaborate official efforts to account for the nearly 2,500 Americans missing in action in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, said Lt. Col. Paul D. Mather, head of the U.S. Joint Casualty Resolution Center's Bangkok office.
The center collects reports of POWs and MIAs from refugees and others and tries to identify any uncovered remains in its Honolulu laboratories.
But self-appointed commandos discover a crash site of a U.S. warplane sometimes sloppily disrupt it, making official investigations impossible, said Col. Mather, who has served with the JCRC since it began in 1973.
By sneaking across the borders into Indochina, the hunters also violate international law and create diplomatic havoc at a time when Washington is having some success persuading Vietnam and Laos to provide more details about MIAs, Mather added.
Caught between the Rambos and the U.S. government, is a public unsure whom to believe.
Are an estimated 200 POWs rotting in bamboo cages in the sweltering jungles of Southeast Asia's communist regimes as Mr. Bailey, Mr. Arnone, Mr. Gritz and some U.S. officials and investigators insist?
All of the sketchy reports thus far have failed to prove a single American is still being held captive.
Some Western analysts suggest sightings of "live Americans" by refugees could actually be people belonging to various Western and Soviet development agencies working in isolated regions.
Others suggest a few stray Americans may have deserted the military during the war, married and settled down in rugged regions of Indochina, unwilling or afraid to return to the United States.
One alleged American POW turned out to be "a Greek national who had been held on criminal charges," said Paul Wolfowitz, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, testifying before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Feb. 27
Sifting through such rhetoric and contradictions are more than 50 serious non-government Americans who work full-time studying reports and lobbying for action -- but never personally going on illegal forays. Often they are dedicated volunteers who are relatives of MIAs.
An additional dozen or so Rambo-style POW-hunters occasionally sneak into Indochina from Thailand for adventure, money or an emotional conviction that their comrades-in-arms are trapped there.
The U.S. Defense Department says it keeps an open mind on the question of prisoners. "Although we have thus fare been unable to prove that Americans are still detained against their will, the information available to us precludes ruling out that possibility," the Defense Department stated.
More than 185 "first-hand live sighting reports" are currently "under continuing investigation," in Defense Department files. Some unsolved cases of U.S. personnel "with evidence of capture" include graphic, dramatic details.
For example, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Barton Creed, who was shot down in southern Laos on March 13, 1971, radioed he had parachuted to the ground but suffered a broken leg and arm. His last message was: "Pick me up now. Pick me up now. They are here." Laos says it has no record of Cmdr. Creed.
Other cases include correspondents for Time magazine, CBS, NBC and UPI. Some servicemen and civilians are described as captured but later believed executed or to have died trying to escape.
Former Marine Pfc. Robert Garwood, who was found guilty in 1981 of collaborating with the enemy when he stayed in Vietnam after all other American captives came home in 1973, claims that between 1975 to 1979 he saw more than 60 prisoners speaking English in several locations in Vietnam.
Posted by: AntiBo | July 26, 2004 at 11:33 AM
...Lazarus Omega
Back to Thailand, this time with the two MIA daughters and a former SF supply
sergeant, Vinnie Arnone. (Note: Arnone is a sad character. From the
contacts that we had with him, I suspect that his elevator stops short of the
top floor. His prize possession was a photo of him in his Boy Scout troop
leader uniform with a gang of Thai children swarming over him.)
Lazarus Omega get off to a rollicking start. Bo used some of the money to
hire prostitutes (at least one was reported be transvestite). One of the
team members, known as "Doctor Death" was to make poison darts for the team
to use. In a really strange affair, Bo decided to award a US Legion of Merit
to Loh Tharaphant. He did so, complete with a certificate signed by Richard
Nixon and General Creighton Abrams. The award was made in 1983, ten years
after Nixon left office. Loh did not seem to notice.
Zappone, still held by Phoumi from Operation Lazarus, got his hands on a
grenade and threatened to blow up himself and his guards. Phoumi's people
released him.
Gritz decided to move. He assembled his team and some Laotian "irregulars"
recruited from the refugee camps, and launched. No one was certain where they
were going. Bo has claimed that they went into Laos, found a POW camp, and
rescued two Americans. As they were returning to Thailand, they were
ambushed and had to abandon the two rescued POWs. Bo never did get their
names. Thai authorities tell another story. They had Bo and his crowd under
surveillance all the while they were in country and they report that Bo holed
up in a series of houses owned by Tharaphant. Take your pick -- Bo's story
or the story told by the Thai police.
Either way, Bo was charged by the Thai with espionage activities and put on
trial. Really bizarre. Bo brought into the court room one of his old Army
uniforms, complete with a full complement of medals. He was found guilty and
Gritz and his whole crowd were tossed out of Thailand.
End Lazarus Omega...
Posted by: NoArnone | July 26, 2004 at 11:41 AM
I'd be grateful for anybody to tell me if anybody ever mounted a proper expedition into northeastern Laos -- not blowhard grandstanding for money but a well organized and well led incursion to really go where real POW's really were. For example, Ross Perot hired COL Bull Simons (leader of the Son Tay rescue mission) to lead a team into Tehran to rescue Perot's employees held by Ayatollah Khomeini's Reveolutionary Guards. Anything that legitimate to rescue POW's in Laos?
Also, has U.S. government or anybody forced the SRV government to deal with the prison camp at Bat Bat where Bobby Garwood and other Americans were held until 1978? How about the "Chinese Farm" POW Camp up by Chinese VN border? How about the Chinese Viet mortician who took care of 400 sets of American remains in Hanoi until he was kicked out of VN at the time of the Viet Chinese War of 1979? How about General Vang Pao and his "500 live sightings?"
There is a ton of REAL stuff out there about REAL POW's in Vietnam and Laos up to 1986. What does anybody have to say about all that? I'd really like to know.
Posted by: Tip Boxell | March 25, 2006 at 05:56 PM
hello there pep.typepad.com admin discovered your website via yahoo but it was hard to find and I see you could have more visitors because there are not so many comments yet. I have found website which offer to dramatically increase traffic to your site http://xrumerservice.org they claim they managed to get close to 1000 visitors/day using their services you could also get lot more targeted traffic from search engines as you have now. I used their services and got significantly more visitors to my site. Hope this helps :) They offer backlink search engine seo keywords http://xrumerservice.org>backlink service creating backlinks Take care. Jay
Posted by: backlink solutions | December 22, 2011 at 03:48 AM