

### WHAT PRICE JUSTICE

By

Mark R Corrigan

Copyright © 2016 Mark R. Corrigan

All rights reserved.

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Dedicated to all those who still seek justice and fairness in all the Courts of the United States of America

" **WHAT PRICE JUSTICE** is the price I paid to challenge the criminal abuse of power by the Officers of my Federal Trail Court and their continuing efforts to conceal their Fraud on the Court." Mark R. Corrigan

The complete story of **What Price Justice** could have been made into a series of books as evident by the Table of Contents if I did not need your support once you know what happened to me.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. SEEKING JUSTICE

2. WHEN JUSTICE BECOMES A FLEETING CONCEPT

3. IN THE BEGINNING

BOOK ONE: BACK GROUND TO GETTING HERE

1. THE MAIN PLAYERS

2. WHERE DID I COME FROM

3. MY FIRST FALLING OUT WITH CAROL

4. THE START OF MY MILITARY CAREER

5. WHEN SHOOTING SKILLS ARE REQUIRED

6. THE EFFECT OF THE GENERAL'S PHONE CALL

7. CAROL CAME INTO AND OUT OF MY LIFE AGAIN

8. GETTING MY TICKET PUNCHED

9. REVENGE OPENS THE DOOR TO COMMAND

10. UP POPPED THE DEVIL

11. NIXON'S PULL OUT

12. THE PULL OUT OF VIETNAM BEGAN QUICKLY

13. NOT EVERYTHING WAS IN SHORT SUPPLY

14. MY TIME OF ADJUSTMENT

15. MORE THEN THE ADVANCED COURSE

16. THE STRANGER WHO IS MY BROTHER

17. WHEN TO CUT AND RUN

18. FIXING AN NSSA PROBLEM

19. UP POPS THE DEVIL FOR ME AND THE COUNTRY

20. CHANGING CAREERS

21. A POWERFUL ALLIANCE

22. SET BACKS TO HARPERS FERRY ARMS COMPANY

23. WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES ANOTHER DOOR OPENS

24. WHEN THINGS ARE NOT RIGHT

25. OVERCOMING PROBLEMS ON THE HOME FRONT

26. HIDDEN DANGERS

27. CAROL CAME BACK INTO MY LIFE

28. TESTING THE POLITICAL WATERS

29. A VERY COSTLY ELECTION

30. USING RUSSELL MINTER TO REMOVE THE THORN

31. THE REBIRTH OF THE LANDMARK RESTAURANT

32. PULLING THE PIECES BACK TOGETHER

33. DOING WHAT I TOLD CAROL I COULD DO

34. MAKING AN UNBEATABLE TEAM

35. THE RISE OF VIRGINIA AMERICAN MANAGEMENT CORPORATION

36. THE LOVE OF HORSES

37. EFFORTS TO DIVERSIFY VAMCO

BOOK TWO: REOPENING MY INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

1. KEEPING MY WORD

2. JUMPING INTO THE TOBACCO AUCTION MARKET

3. NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES WITH A R DIXON

4. THE DISCOVERY OF BERCLAIR PLANTATION

5. BUYING TROUBLE

6. ADDITIONAL EFFORTS TO EXPAND VAMCO

7. THE NEXT TOBACCO MARKET SEASON

8. FINALLY WINNING MY NSSA DISTINGUISH SKIRMISH SHOOTER POINTS

9. THE START OF THE NEW YEAR

10. THE CIGARETTE MARKET OPPORTUNITY

11. DEVELOPING THE BIGGER PICTURE

12. WALKING ON WATER

13. BECOMING A POLITICAL FOOTBALL

14. ANOTHER DOOR OPENS

15. SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES

16. EVALUATING THE REAL CAPABILITIES OF LAOS

17. MOVING ON TO CAMBODIA

18. OLD ENEMIES NEVER DIE

19. MY BUSINESS MAGIC CONTINUED

20. MORE THAN JUST LUCK

21. UNEXPECTED SUPPORT

22. THE SLEEPING GIANTS OF THE BIG TOBACCO COMPANIES AWAKES

23. A SUCKER PUNCH FROM THE NSSA

24. PROGRESS IN CAMBODIA IS STALLED BY PRINCE SIHANOUK

25. THE LYNCHPIN GETS HOOKED TO THE WAGON

26. DEALING BUMPS IN THE ROAD

27. WHEN MONEY IS NOT WORTH LOSING A FRIENDSHIP

28. WHEN SAINT PETER CALLS

29. TAKING A MAJOR STEP IN THE HORSE BUSINESS

30. NEW LIFE TO THE PROJECTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA.

31. A RED FLAG IN THE TOBACCO AUCTION BUSINESS.

32. GOOD NEWS, PLOTS AND DANGERS

33. INCREASED GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE

34. HON SEN MAKES HIS MOVE AGAINST PRINCE SIHANOUK

BOOK THREE: THE DEVIL TURNS MY WORLD UPSIDE DOWN

1. IN THE CROSSHAIRS

2. FALLOUT OF THE INDICTMENT

3. NOTHING IS FAIR OR JUST IN THE FEDERAL COURTS

4. MARKING TIME TO DISASTER

5. LIGHTNING STRIKES AGAIN

6. EVERYTHING BUT FAIRNESS OR JUSTICE

7. THE FRAUD ON THE COURT BEGINS

8. LEADING THE LAMB TO SLAUGHTER

9. RILEY PUTS THE LAST NAIL IN MY COFFIN

10. AS THE DOMINOS CONTINUED TO FALL

11. THE REVELATION OF INCOMPETENCE

BOOK FOUR: THE KILLING OF JUSTICE CONTINUES

1. A NEW LEGAL CHAMPION

2. BECOMING LESS THAN THE WALKING WOUNDED

3. TAKING THE OFFENSIVE WITH HEAVY LOSSES

4. BAD LUCK DOES NOT ALWAYS COME IN THREE'S

5. THE MISUSE OF POWER EXCEEDS LEGAL AUTHORITY

6. THE PROSECUTOR'S ILLEGAL REACHING

7. GOING DOWN FOR THE COUNT

8. EFFORTS TO RECEIVE PROPER MEDICAL TREATMENT

9. JUST AS A LEOPARD CANNOT CHANGE ITS SPOTS

10. THE FARCE OF MY DIRECT APPEAL

11. MEDICAL ANSWERS FROM AN UNEXPECTED PROFESSIONAL SOURCE

12. RETAKING THE LEGAL OFFENSIVE

13. WELCOME BACK TO "SWEETERSBURG"

14. ADJUSTING TO CAMP LIFE

15. ADDITIONAL ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURAL GAMES OF MY TRIAL COURT

BOOK FIVE: A NEW LIGHT IN THE END OF MY INCARCERATION'S TUNNEL

1. A SECOND CHANCE

2. RELEARNING HOW TO LIVE

3. THE LEARNING CURVE TO EDITING MY BOOKS

4. FEAR OF THE LINGERING EFFECTS OF INCARCERATION

5. PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

6. MY RENEWED ATTEMPT TO DEAL WITH THE NSSA

7. ANOTHER FOUL BALL FROM THE COURTS

8. MY EFFORTS TO HELP EVELYN BUY BERCLAIR

9. THE "WILL" TO TAKE BACK MY LIFE

10. WHEN THE COURT'S RULES TRUMPS THE EVIDENCE

11. THE MOVE TO WEST VIRGINIA WAS NO ACCIDENT

12. FURTHER ABUSES OF ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES

13. THE INSANITY OF WORKING IN OUR LEGAL SYSTEM

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

# 1. SEEKING JUSTICE

Although Don Quixote was determined in his fool's quest against the windmills of his world he was not an Irishman. Those who would suggest Don Quixote and a hardheaded Irishman are cut from the same bolt of fool's cloth, fail to understand what motivates a determined Irishman.

The essence of an Irishman's determination is borne out in his belief when he knows he is "right," he is "right" in front of God and everyone. He believes there is a higher moral purpose in fighting a righteous cause, even when he fights this cause alone. He believes those who are in the position to expose and correct a serious injustice, have a duty to make it "right" regardless of the personal cost to him.

However, being "right" is not enough to win an almost impossible fight and it is never enough to rely on blind luck or the natural course of events to shed a new light on the truth. It is only by the continuous efforts and the relentless pursuit of the "truth" can there be any hope of correcting an injustice or a grievous wrong.

I am an Irishman who is in such a fight. I am not only fighting as if the rest of my life depends on it, I have this overwhelming need to expose and correct the "plain errors" which continues to exist in my case in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Western Division. The use of the polite legal term "Plain Error" is an oxymoron for the blatant abuse of power known as a "Fraud on the Court." There is nothing "Plain" about a fraud on the court and it is not just a simple "Error" such as when a baseball player does his best to catch the ball but somehow he ends up dropping it.

A "fraud on the court" is the most serious violation that can occur in any court of law as it makes the entire legal proceeding invalid. It is therefore understandable why there are no statues of limitations to correct this injustice.

The continuing criminal acts committed by the members of this court are not only a fraud on the Court; their acts became a Conspiracy to defraud the United States of its rightful function. We sometimes forget our courts are just as much a part of the United States as any other branch of the government. When the Officers of our Courts commit a fraud on the court, they are not exempt from the law or the punishments for committing a Federal crime to defraud the United States.

I hope by sharing my story with you, we can help each other reestablish the original function of the Judicial Branch of the United States Government, rather than what has become a mockery of misusing the Court's Administrative Procedures to protect the criminal actions of the officers of the courts and allow them to preserve their illegal convictions.

I believe we can all agree justice in court does not always mean a fair trial. My case is not unique. Time and time again, we hear news stories about someone who was illegally convicted and set free when the truth came out.

Although the innocent victim is compensated by large sums of money for the time he unjustly spent in prison, the money is never enough to balance the scales of true justice when nothing is done to the officers of the court who committed this horrendous crime of a fraud on the court on him. Their crime of a fraud on the court is the most hideous of all criminal acts as they are the trusted guardians of our justice system. There is no acceptable excuse for knowingly abusing their legal authority or violating their legal positions of trust, responsibility and duty to insure truth, justice and fairness prevails in our Courts. Although there are no statues of limitations on a fraud on the court, have you ever heard of any Judge or Prosecutor going to jail for their most serious offense against their victim? Either we are a country where there is equal justice for all, or we have become a nation where our courts will protect the clearly illegal and Constitutional violations by their fellow judges and prosecutors at all cost.

We in the United States have been raised on the myth that our justice system of using qualified legal counsel to present the truth to an impartial jury trial of our peers, is the best and the fairest legal justice system in the world. In theory, it may be true if you have access to a qualified and prepared legal counsel to defend you. However, even then the scales of justice in the Federal courtroom are not in balance. The government Prosecutor has the clear advantage in the use of unlimited financial resources, the ultimate power to compromise and coerce witnesses into providing the story the Prosecutor wants the jury to hear, and the "truth" be damned.

Our legal system of Justice is only as good as the people who sit in judgment, prosecute the case and manage the affairs of our Courts. When the Officers of the Court can be influenced by those in high office then the actual guilt or innocence of the accused does not matter as long as the outcome of the trial is achieved and "justice" be damned.

I would like to believe that the first 10 Amendments of our Constitution, known as the "Bill of Rights" still protect us from the abuse of power from any branch of the United States Government. These basic human rights were so importance to the people that without them there would not be a United States of America. Our founding fathers established the Judicial Branch of the Government to protect the people from any abuse of Federal Power. However, when the integrity of the court itself is involved in that abuse, the "Bill of Rights" be damned. When the Court will not police itself or correct its errors the future of our country is also damned.

The integrity of our justice system is based on the false assumption that all the actions in a court of law are honestly preserved in the court's records and transcripts, when they are not. When a Judge who has violated our fundamental constitutional rights criminally alters the official court records, he cannot objectively rule on his own criminal acts when we appeal his actions. When this is allowed to happen in any court, the integrity of all our courts is lost and our entire system of justice has violated the basic trust of the American people.

The biggest break down in the courts to correcting this clear fraud on the court has been the Court of Appeals who have become so engrossed in using their own administrative procedural rules that they fail to address the merits of the legal claims made by Pro Se Appellants untrained in the law.

Anyone making an appeal who is not a licensed attorney is considered by the courts to be untrained in the law and anyone untrained in the law who represents himself, is called a Pro se Appellant.

Being a Pro se Appellant is like a Little League baseball pitcher trying to strike out a Major League home run hitter in the bottom of the 9th inning with the bases loaded and with the Appellate Court Judges as the umpires who are also members of the same Major League team.

To take this analogy one-step further, our Appellate Court judges have a built in bias against the legal actions brought by Pro se appellants as being frivolous claims. These Judges automatically assume once a defendant has been convicted, he had received a fair trial and after a lawyer filed his Direct Appeal all possible, legal errors have been resolved. They believe they have the right to use all the Appellate Court's Rules to protect the actions of the trial court to maintain its conviction, thereby ending all further appeals.

These judges will dismiss the Pro se appeal as quickly as possible clearly taking advantage of the Pro se appellant's lack of legal knowledge and the court's administrative procedures usually contained in the court's own local rules. This practice eliminated my legitimate appeals based on a Fraud on the Court when after six years I produced a copy of the criminally deleted May 14, 1997 Pretrial's transcript that was withheld from the Court of Appeals that established the constitutional errors made by my Trial Court.

If an attorney who represents himself, has a fool for a client, than anyone untrained in the law, would not willingly place himself in that position either. Unfortunately, having an appeal actually heard on its merits by the court requires hiring of the best legal counsel money can buy.

Removing the access to my money was the first thing the court and the prosecutor did to remove a fair challenge to overturning my conviction based upon the "plain errors" that occurred before, during and after my criminal trial.

By writing this book, I am fighting for what I still believe exists in my country. Although I am only one man fighting this battle now, it only takes one man standing his ground at the point of attack to turn the tide of battle and change the outcome of the war. If I am this man standing his ground to turn the tide in this battle to restore the integrity of our courts, I need your active support and your understanding of what happened in my case. I am asking you to make your own judgment about what the courts have done to your basic freedoms once guaranteed by our constitution and then decide what you would do, if this had happened to you.

This is a true story about what happened to me in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Western Division under what appears to be the less than Honorable Judge Malcolm J. Howard. It deals with my more than 17-year battle to correct the deliberate disregard of Judge Howard to preserve the basic fundamental principles of justice and fairness in his Court. I am challenging the ultimate integrity of that Court in its continuing efforts to conceal its criminal acts to preserve my illegal conviction.

# 2. WHEN JUSTICE BECOMES A FLEETING CONCEPT

The statue of "Lady Justice" is the most recognized symbol representing truth, justice and fairness in the United States Courts. She has a set of scales suspended from her right hand, upon which she measures the innocence or guilt without bias or prejudice. In her left hand, she carries a double-edged sword symbolizing the power of Reason and Justice she can wield for or against any party. However perhaps the most important aspect of Lady Justice is, she has a blindfold to represent her complete objectivity to rule, without fear or favor.

If Lady Justice is blind, the altered Docket Sheet and the missing transcript from my criminal trial are no longer hidden from your eyes. It took me over 6 years after my trial to get a copy of this May 14, 1997 Pre-trial Hearing. What took place at this Pretrial Hearing represents the beginning of a Conspiracy to Defraud the United States under 18 USC Section 371 by using a Fraud on the Court under the Federal Rules Of Civil Procedures, 60 (b)3. Although Rule 60 (b)3 clearly states there are no statues of limitations to make an Appeal when there is a Fraud on the Court, you will see how a dishonest Judge circumvented both the spirit and the intent of the law.

I filed my Pro se IN RE Petition as an Independent Action in the US District Court Eastern District of North Carolina Western Division on the 13th day of January 2012. This filing date is somewhat ironic, as this US District Court sentenced me to 188 months in Federal Prison on the 13th Day of January 1998 and the US Marshals immediately took me into Federal Custody.

When the US District Court and the US Attorney failed to respond to this Appeal after more than 11 months, I filed a Motion for Summary Judgment on December 3, 2012 under FRCP 56 claiming there was no dispute over the Material Facts in my Appeal. After nine more months without a response from the US District Court, I was convinced I was dealing with a continuing Fraud on the Court to cover up and preserve the reputation of my Trial Court Judge.

A very dear friend convinced me I needed an Attorney to represent me, as the Court was not taking my Pro se Action seriously. Although I have always believed when you are "right," you are right in front of God and everyone; it does not mean I had the legal knowledge to force the Court to timely act on my appeal.

Being "right" did not mean I could find an attorney who would be willing to challenge the integrity of a long term sitting US District Court Judge in the Federal Court system unless you had a lot of money and that attorney was about to retire. I must have talked with 50 attorneys before and after I filed this appeal. These attorneys fell into two basic categories. Those who demanded large fees just to study my case and those who feared retaliation from the courts against their other clients if they represented me.

Since I have never been a quitter and I could not see any reason why I should not try again to find an attorney who might be willing to help me as a significant part of me as a person and what I worked for in my life was illegally taken away from me.

For years, I prayed through the intercession of Pope John Paul II for Gods help, as I knew it would take a miracle to overcome this injustice. _Quiet Miracles_ is one of books I wrote while I was a guest of the government. In researching the requirements for establishing a true miracle to write this book I confirmed my understanding it would take at least two miracles verified by the Catholic Church before someone could be considered for Sainthood.

I have always admired what Pope John Paul accomplished in his life and he already had one verified miracle. If God helped me overcome my impossible situation through the intercession of Pope John Paul, it would be the second miracle Pope John Paul needed to become a Saint.

When I wrote my last appeal I knew Pope John Paul was helping me find the right case laws, structure the correct legal claims and choose the right words in my IN RE Petition. As I filed the additional motions to overcome the almost impossible obstacles created by the Officers of my Trial Court, Pope John Paul continued to inspire me, as I knew I did not have the legal training to know how to do it otherwise.

Not all miracles happen in an instant. In my situation, it would seem there were a series of minor miracles and none of them came easy. I prayed for a minor miracle to get the District Court to act. As long as the Trial Court refused to act, my IN RE Appeal was dead in the water. Sometimes when you are beating your head against a brick wall, the Good Lord takes pity on you and He taps you on the shoulder to show you where the open door is located in the wall.

I had just come from a young attorney's office after seeking his legal advice on how to deal with a US District Court's failure to respond or act on my Pro Se IN RE Appeal or my Motion for Summary Judgment. This young attorney had the opportunity to read my Appeal and my Motion for Summary Judgment before our meeting. He gave me the curtsey of listening to the history behind my Appeal but he was not sure if he could help me.

"I can see you have a well documented claim with the Court's own records and although you are right and you have been screwed, the courts will not do anything about it. The Court Justices' will not turn on one of their own, and any attorney who attempts to help you will be committing professional suicide.

I would suggest you consider writing a book, as this story would make one hell of a movie. There is more than one jury in this world and the jury of public opinion can become the ultimate decision maker in your case. I realize after talking with you that revenge is not your motive. However, it could become very sweet when they are asked about the truth of the Movie and the part they played in it." He stated.

"That's almost funny, as I wrote 40 manuscripts while I was a guest of the Government, and I have published 16 of them on my own Publishing Company's Website hosted by Go-daddy. I wrote a book called _Back to_ _Granville_ in 2008 when I thought I had an Appeal in the 4th Circuit Court that would overturn my conviction. I wrote it as if I had won my Appeal and I was returning home to where I grew up in Milwaukee Wisconsin to put my life back together.

As you know, we can never really undo what was done to us just as we can never actually return home. In the book, I used the fact the Town of Granville no longer existed, to reinforce the concept life continues to go on just as you cannot step back into a river in the same place twice, as the water is constantly flowing and forever changing with or without you.

Although the book itself was a Romantic Fiction, I could tell the story of what happened to me. I could use the book as a vehicle to inform the public, about the abuses and undo influences on the Federal Courts to illegally convict me and hold me prisoner to achieve an International political agenda, of the President of the United States.

The book turned out well as I was able to weave in actual events in my life before I left Wisconsin and took a Regular Army Commission when I graduated from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. In the book, the Courts had ultimately corrected the gross miscarriage of Justice and I was able to start rebuilding part of my life that had been illegally ripped away from me.

I received a number of favorable comments from those who had bought the book. The only problem was my Website _I Mark Publishing Inc_ was so small few people could find it. You know yourself if your Website is on page 200 of E-books and Audio Books on Google's listings, few people will look past the first three pages if they are looking for something new to read.

I tried buying front page listings using Google's "Adwords" internet marketing service but I was competing with Kentucky Fried Chicken and Auto Insurance Companies who had bought the prime space, but had nothing to do with direct downloadable E-Books or Audio Books " I told the attorney.

"Let me say this, if you do write this book I would like a copy as I may have a friend who might be interested in making a true life Movie out of it." The Attorney quickly responded.

"Hell I might need an attorney to represent me when this book hits the streets." I found myself saying and I was thinking, "I'm not sure, if he is just being nice in his legal brush off or if he was being honest about the value of my published life's story."

"Just a word of caution, make sure everything is well documented and simply tell the truth." He advised me in a positive way." You might just need a good lawyer if they are foolish enough to try to sue you and your publisher. I may not be able to help you with your Appeal, but I sure can help the book and the movie, become an overnight success as the harder they yell, the more free publicity you will get. That type of revenge puts money in your pocket and with the exposure; you might just help some other poor soul who has suffered the same fate you did to win his appeal.

Let me read your Appeal and the Motion for Summary Judgment again to make sure I have not over looked something. However, I do not think I have. I am sorry I could not be more helpful." The Attorney said as he walked me to the door of his office.

"Perhaps you already have. I only asked for your honest opinion, and that is what you gave me. I have come to believe everything happens for a reason and we just need to be patient enough to find out what the Good Lord has in mind. Thank you very much." I found myself saying, as everything he told me, was the way things were and not how I wanted them to be, no matter how "right" these things were.

As I drove my brown and silver vintage 1986 El Comino towards home, I knew I had to write this book if for nothing else to put an end to my efforts to be Don Quixote and attempt to right the windmills of this world.

When I sat down to write this book, my fingers typed a Motion for a Hearing on my IN RE Petition. The District Court might have been able to take advantage of my ignorance of the law and sit on my IN RE Petition until hell froze over but the court could not ignore a Motion for a Hearing which had to be docketed within the next 3 months of the court's next calendar quarter. Once the Motion was in the mail, the words flowed on the pages in my computer as if someone else was writing this book.

# 3. IN THE BEGINNING

There was light, hope and the belief in the American Dream where if you worked hard and played by the rules you could become anything you wanted to be. No one ever mentioned someone else could be playing by a different set of rules when they could not stop you any other way.

It started at the 1989 Spring National Matches of the North South Skirmish Association in Winchester Virginia. A shooting friend I had shot with while I was a member of the 5th Virginia Cavalry before I joined the 66th North Carolina approached me about the idea of selling tobacco overseas.

He knew I had been in International Business since I started Harpers Ferry Arms Company back in 1972 and he was wondering if I had any business contacts who might be interested in buying US Tobacco.

I was honest with him when I stated I did not know anything about tobacco other than I smoked a pipe for years. I listen as he told me how he was making 50,000 dollars a week as a Registered Tobacco Dealer, buying and selling tobacco in the Tobacco Auction Market established by the United States Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service.

The Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS) was an agency of the US Department of Agriculture established in 1961 to administer programs concerning farm products and agricultural conservation. It granted loans to farmers; purchased farm products from farmers and processors; administered land allotments and quota programs; shared the cost of resource conservation and environmental protection measures with farmers and ranchers; and supervised civil defense activities relating to food and food production. Every county in the United States has a local ASCS Office under their State's ASCS Office. Their function is to assist the farmers and manage the controlled quotas of farm products such as the growing of tobacco in allotments issued to the Tobacco Farmers.

Jim went on to explain how the Tobacco Auction Market worked and how much money I could make if I was interested.

"But the serious money is in the overseas markets and if you had a contract buyer you could fill the order by buying Tobacco at Auction and make even more money." Jim explained and he had a ready answer to each question I raised, especially about the unfair competition from the major Tobacco Companies.

"The overseas market buyers are looking for independent Tobacco Sellers as the big boys think they have this market all wrapped up. In fact, although they will deny it, the big boys have divided-up the World and they have agreed not to compete against each other. Their main business is selling cigarettes, which has a huge profit margin. They do not want to sell bulk tobacco overseas, as then someone else will be making cigarettes and cutting into their profits.

Did you know Philip Morse is making Marlboro cigarettes for less than a nickel a pack? There are 50 cartons of 10 packs of 20 cigarettes to a pack. That is 10,000 cigarettes in a Master Case and it takes just over two pounds of tobacco to make a Master Case.

With tobacco selling for a dollar 70 cents a pound at Auction, the most expensive thing in a cigarette is the filter. You can see why they do not want to sell bulk tobacco at those prices overseas when they can make millions selling their cigarettes." Jim explained.

"So why don't you go into the cigarette business?" I asked him.

"We could once we establish ourselves." Jim quickly replied but went on to explain what makes a cigarette taste good. "Tobacco is grown around the world but there is only one problem, most of it has no flavor. It takes a special soil and the right kind of water to produce flavored tobacco.

Did you ever wonder why Cuban Cigars are so popular? It is because they have the right combination of soil and water to produce that taste. Since Castro took over, people have tried to grow Cuban Tobacco from Cuban seeds that they smuggled out of the country but they do not have the same soil or water so their cigars do not taste as good as the Cuban Cigars.

I am going to let you in on a secret. 70% of all the flavored cigarette tobacco in the world is grown in the golden triangle between Kinston, Goldsboro and Wilson, North Carolina and this is the Flue Curd Tobacco market, I am working in." Jim told me and explained how Flue cured tobacco was grown and processed for the Tobacco Auction Market.

Now you only need to make a cigarette with about 10% of this Flue Cured tobacco to make it taste good. You could mix it with horseshit and the cigarette would still taste good. Philip Morris has an agreement with Standard Commercial in Wilson North Carolina to buy all their Flue Cured Tobacco from this golden flavored tobacco triangle. They do not want to compete directly with them, as that would drive up the price on this special type of Tobacco in the Auction Market.

The Tobacco Auction system was established by the USDA through the ASCS to insure the farmers got a fair price for their Tobacco, but that is nothing but a scam to make the Politicians look good to their farmers while the big tobacco companies fill the Politician's pockets with the real money.

Now if we can find an overseas buyer, who already knows he is going to get the special North Carolina Flue Cured Tobacco, they will welcome the opportunity to buy it at a more reasonable price.

How can we do that? First, we are buying the tobacco at the Auction price. That minimum price per pound of tobacco is fixed by the subsidy the ASCS puts on a particular Grade of Tobacco. There are 173 ASCS Tobacco Grades and each Grade has a support price attached to it.

When a farmer brings in his tobacco, it is weighed by the pound and the leaves of tobacco are loosely wrapped in burlap sheets. The tobacco is inspected by the ASCS Government Inspectors before the Auction and based on that Grade the tobacco is worth a minimum amount per pound. All this sounds fair until you realize if the Auction price is not equal to the ASCS Support price the Government must buy it. However if someone bids just one cent more than the Support price the farmer must either sell it or take it back home.

The farmer cannot take it home as his tobacco barns are full producing more tobacco he needs to take to the Auction Warehouse to sell. Now some Warehouse men will try to run up the bid for his farmers, but the big tobacco companies know this and they can force the Warehouse to buy the tobacco until he has all his money tied up. Then he will need to put the tobacco back on the Sales Floor if he is to get his money back. He is now competing with the Farmers who have agreed to sell their tobacco at his Warehouse. The price of tobacco like any other commodity it is governed by supply and demand, and the more tobacco that comes on the market the lower the selling price will be.

Where I have been making my money, is buying my tobacco at the Warehouses that opened their tobacco season first. The 12 week, Tobacco Auction Market starts out in Florida and southern Georgia on the Monday after the 4th of July. The North Carolina Market opens the middle of August and the last tobacco market in Virginia opens on the Monday after Labor Day. The Virginia tobacco market closes the first week of November.

What happens, as the farmers start bringing in more tobacco to the Warehouses, the prices continue to fall and most of the tobacco, is either bought by the Government or sold at a penny or two above the ASCS Support prices for that Grade of Tobacco.

What I have done is make agreements with Tobacco Dealers from down south and when the big Tobacco Companies do not bid, they buy the tobacco for a penny more than the Support price, let's say at a dollar and 61 cents a pound for BK4 Graded Tobacco. Since the Tobacco Market in North Carolina is just opened and the farmers are just starting to bring in their tobacco, the price of that same BK4 Grade of tobacco could sell as high as a dollar 87 cents a pound. This gives me more than 25 cents a pound profit as it usually cost 5 cents a pound to ship it here.

Each Tobacco Warehouse can only sell so many pounds of tobacco on a specific Sale day, based upon the total amount of tobacco allotments of the farmers who have designated that Warehouse to sell their tobacco. If the Tobacco Warehouse was authorized to sell a 100,000 pounds but his farmers have only brought in 60,000 the Warehouse is losing that 40,000 pounds it could have sold. I have arranged with several Warehouse men in North Carolina, who will sell my tobacco as high as a dollar 87 cents, a pound when their farmers fail to bring in enough tobacco to meet the Warehouse's daily-authorized sales so it is a good deal for them and me.

Now if we had an overseas buyer, we would save the right Grade of Tobacco to fill the overseas buyer's order and after spending 5 cents for processing the tobacco, we are selling it to them for $3.50 a pound and they think they are getting a deal. The Big Tobacco Companies sell processed bulk tobacco for more than 4 dollars a pound. Do you see what I am telling you?" Jim asked.

"I think so but I am usually better with numbers when I see them on paper." I told him. "Let me ask you something. You say if no one bids for the tobacco at the ASCS Support price, the Government has to buy it. What does the Government do with it?"

"That is the biggest scam of them all. The Government pays the tobacco processing companies like Monk and Standard Commercial to haul it and process it and then the Government pays them to store it. Then guess what? The Big Tobacco Companies buy it, as there isn't anyone else in the Bulk Tobacco market. I wish I could have the Government buy all my tobacco, haul it, process it and store it until I wanted to sell it." Jim told me.

"All right Jim, I will look into it and see if I can contact some of my old international business friends to see if they can put me in touch with the right people who would be buying this tobacco." I told him and I put it out of my mind as I was confused by all the information Jim had thrown at me.

I was also very involved in a number of business ventures since we moved back to Virginia. In 1985, Carol and I formed Virginia American Management Corporation, VAMCO. One of our principle client's was a company called American Rehabilitation Inc out of Charlotte North Carolina. VAMCO managed American Rehabilitation's Vocational Rehabilitation Division, which had sky rocketed into becoming a leader in providing injured workers and Workman's Compensation Claimants new employment within their work restrictions in 3 States and Washington DC.

On top of that, Carol and I had found a mutual interest in raising American Quarter Horses. We had carved out a niche in the horse industry by breeding World Class Broodmares to AQHA Stallions on the Leading Sires list to produce exceptional foals. Each of our baby horses was given the best possible start in life, through the process of desensitizing them within hours after they were born. This process made our baby horses a dream to handle and a pleasure to train.

BOOK ONE

### BACK GROUND TO GETTING HERE

# 1. THE MAIN PLAYERS

When I first met Jim, he was managing a Volkswagen Dealership in Norfolk and the way he talked, it always sounded like he was trying to sell me, a used car. He had joined the 5th Virginia Cavalry shooting Team the year we won the NSSA Nationals in Winchester Virginia. Jim was the paternal twin brother of Henry, who was our Unit Commander at the time.

Jim was a truly competitive type of person and he was a natural shooter who quickly earned a spot on our 8 man Musket A Team. He and I became shooting partners as we could read each other's mind during a Team Match. We just knew which target each of us would be shooting at next and then shoot at another target, unless it was the last target and then it became a race to see which one of us could hit it first.

In 1980, I had gone broke trying to keep my International Businesses of James River Imports and Development Corporation and Harpers Ferry Arms Company going. By that time, the full impact of President Carter's failed economic policies, double-digit inflation, 22% Interest-rates and the 100% increase in the cost of oil had put so many people out of work that they were not buying anything beyond what was necessary to stay alive.

James River Imports could not import things cheap enough for its clients to sell and the South Korean Company who was making Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Reproduction 1861 Springfield Muskets could not afford to heat his factory much less manufacturer my reproduction Civil War guns.

With no economic recovery in sight and after I became a political threat to a major Chemical Company who manufactured Kepone, I was forced to sell the Chesterfield Hotel with its Landmark Restaurant and the Three Doors Down Bar to pay off my bills.

Carol my high school sweetheart had come back into my life for a third time two years before. She called me one Saturday afternoon after tracking me down based on the information I own a Reproduction Civil War Gun Company called Harpers Ferry Arms Company. They say the third time is a charm and it must be true as she quit her job with the State of Ohio's Rehabilitation Services and moved to Virginia with everything she owned and this included her dog Sugar Bear. Carol had her Masters Degree in Rehabilitation and she had worked for the State of Ohio helping the deaf, blind and profoundly disabled find work. She was legally blind herself, as she had suffered from macular degeneration in both eyes as a teen ager.

We had met in 1961 while she was dating a member of our Civil War Rifle Team who lived in Michigan. Our Musket team had members scattered from Milwaukee and throughout most of the upper mid-western States. I still remember seeing her, for the first time in a well filled out orange blouse and plaid shorts looking at me on the Courthouse Green in the Henry Ford Museum of Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.

Every year the Henry Ford Museum held their living history Muzzleloaders Festival, where individuals dressed in period costumes from the days of the French and Indian War, our American Revolution and the Civil War period who shot muzzle-loading firearms at breakable targets where thousands of paid spectators watch the competition. On Saturday evening, a formal Dressed Ball was held in Lafayette Hall where an orchestra played music for period dancing. On Sunday morning after a formal parade lead by a Civil War period Military Marching Band from the Village Green, the recreated Civil War Unit Musket Teams representing the North and the South held a shooting event called a Skirmish.

This was a spectator sport where the audience of over 20 thousand people could see their favorite Team hit bust-able targets in competition with all the other 8-man Civil War Musket Teams. There were 5-Team events in the competition that were shot in relays. In the first event, each team shot 32 clay pigeons mounted on a cardboard backer. The second event had 16 clay pigeons hung on a string. The third event had 16 colored powder filled clay pots hung on a wire and the fourth event had 16 soda cans hung on a string.

This shooting was a spectacular demonstration of the accuracy of the Civil War Rifled Muskets that killed more Americans than in all the other wars our country fought. The highlight of this competition came when each team shot Minnie Balls to cut off a vertical 2 by 8 wooden stake put in the ground.

Once a team cut off their stake they where allow to shoot the 4-explosive targets mounted on short wooden stakes next to the 2 by 8 stake. When the team hit the explosive targets, there was a loud explosion and a lot of smoke simulating Cannon fire that created the feeling this was a real battle that could have occurred during the Civil War.

In between these timed team events, there would be Cannon shooting and Gatling Gun demonstrations, along with shooting contests by individuals using the various historical weapons such as Indians using their bows and arrows to destroy the same number of targets shot by individuals using a Kentucky rifle, the Revolutionary Brown Bess Musket and the Civil War Musket. One demonstration had 8-men Musket teams shoot 32 Cay Pigeons mounted on a cardboard backer and two US Army Marksmen shot the same number of clay Pigeons using the Army's M-1 Rifle but the Army never won.

My team the 5th Virginia Cavalry was one of the favorites in the competition and we usually shot next to our Northwest Territory Regional Team's rivals the 6th Wisconsin Infantry as one of us would end up taking the Regional Championship Trophy at the end of the Skirmish shooting season.

However there I was grinning at her, leaning on my 3-band mint conditioned original 1863 Colt 58 caliber rifled musket and I was star struck. I could not take my eyes off Carol's bright red hair, big blue eyes as she had literally took my breath away, and I knew I had to find out who she was.

When Bob introduced us, he made the comment she should be careful around me, as I was known to break little girls hearts. Throughout the day, I had a red headed audience watch me shoot in the individual matches and I was able to win the Revolver Competition beating the current National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association Champion for the third straight year here at Greenfield Village. Much to my surprise, I also won a victory kiss, from Carol.

That evening Carol came in a Civil War period Ball Gown that left no doubt as to her womanly charms. Bob did not dance and I took advantage of the situation as I loved to dance and so did Carol. Bob made several comments about our dancing too close and suggested he might have to challenge me to a duel to protect her honor. However, he was afraid I would choose pistols for this dual and he was not ready to die.

Throughout the rest of the shooting season, Bob continued to bring Carol to the Skirmishes held in Michigan. We would flirt and tease each other, as her chest was bigger than mine was as I wrestled in the 138-pound Weight Class throughout high school.

We started writing during the off-season of the shooting matches and we became quite serious. It was during Carol's junior year in High School when she started to go blind and the doctors did not know what was causing it. Carol spent a year at the Ann Arbor Michigan Medical Research Center and learned how to deal with being blind. She was diagnosed as having Macular Degeneration that destroyed her central vision of both eyes and there was no known cure.

It was a rough year emotionally for both of us. We continue to write and I would block print my letters to Carol, as my hand writing and spelling was never very good. She did not want anyone reading my letters and her parents encouraged our relationship, as I was one of a few outside contacts she had. My letters were forcing Carol to use the special experimentally designed reading glasses to see what I wrote.

We wrote about everything and shared our inner most feelings as our relationship deepened and it was blossoming into love. I did not care that she may be blind for the rest of her life even though my mother cautioned me that marriage was hard enough when two people are physically normal. I was just not interested in other girls and I did not even go to my High School's Senior Prom.

I was not sure what I wanted to do in life and my mother encouraged me to go to College. While my father was not as sure about the need for further education as my older brother had not gone to College and he was making good money in the Construction Trades. My father believed I should become a carpenter like he was as I had a natural talent for building things.

My mother told me an education was something no one could take away from me. She always resented not having the opportunity to go to high school or take Art Classes. My mother was a self-taught artist and she had a gift for writing poems and short stories. I would be the first one on both sides of our family to go past high school except for Aunt Regina who was a Religious Nun with the Maryknoll Mission Sisters.

My family was not rich and they could not afford to send me to College. However if I went to the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, I could live at home which would save me that major expense and I would only need to work during the summer to earn enough money for my books, tuition and gas money to get there.

When I was 7-years old, I learned to work for what I wanted. I made 43 dollars picking potatoes at a local farm that year. Half of that money bought my school clothes and books and the rest was put in the Bank. The deal my parents were offering me to go to college was like the time when I was seven years old and I wanted a bicycle. I paid half of the 7 dollars to buy a used bike and they paid the other half.

# 2. WHERE DID I COME FROM

Although all men are created equal, once they are born nothing remains equal. I believe who we are and what makes us who we become in life is already limited by circumstances beyond our control and the rest is what we want hard enough to overcome the obstacles placed in our path. Even then, what we are made of and the choices we continue to make, allows us to succeed or fail to reach our true potential.

Why are some men made of clay and the best they can hope to be is a clay pot while others start out as raw iron and they become highly tempered steel as it takes fire to make both a clay pot and steel. The difference is a clay pot only takes one firing to make it. While the making of steel requires the reheating of raw iron to white hot temperatures in hundreds of fires and while the iron is still soft and malleable it is pounded by a million sledgehammer blows into becoming highly tempered steel.

However, who is to say which 'fire' or combination of 'fires' has the greatest impact on us. There may be a single incident or a specific moment in time which over shadows all the rest and all those other incidents are only significant to someone else. I disagree with the concept or the idea that a "part" made from a mould cannot be better than the original mould. If this were true in humans, we would never have any hope of becoming any better than our parents were and we would not have progressed beyond swinging in the trees.

I also believe the Good Lord has a plan for each of us, and through God's grace, we can excel and do better on the important things in our lives if we are just willing to try. Perhaps the hardest thing in life is not knowing, why bad things happen to us or why we have so little control over the outcome of bad things, once they start to happen even when we have honestly done our best to overcome these bad things.

I was born to a simple family of hard working parents who believed in God, honest hard work and loving their neighbor as they loved themselves would earn them a just reward in heaven. I was taught by my parents to be grateful for everything I had.

I thought I was lucky to have been born in a free country that would try to make the world a better place as the United States of America was fighting a World War against the evils of Nazi Germany and the Imperialistic expansion of the Japanese.

My family would never be rich but we were better off than many people in this World were as we always had enough to eat and we never had a mortgage on our house. Our first house was on 107th Street in the Town of Granville. The Town of Grandville was located north of the city of Milwaukee.

My dad had bought the land and a partially built shell of a house with the money he had saved after working two years in a World War Defense Plant in Milwaukee. My father was a farmer, a Carpenter and a Master Cabinet Maker and he used those skills over the next year to turn that house into our home.

My father had less than 3 years of formal education and my mother taught him how to do the mathematics he needed to work in the Falk Machine Shop turning propeller shafts for Destroyers and Battleships on the huge machine lathes.

My parents had come from the Dairy Farm country of central Wisconsin. My mother who was Polish came from a farm east of Wausau and my father who was Irish was raise on the Corrigan family Homestead farm in Amherst. The Corrigan family almost lost their farm when my great uncle Bill died owing the cost of staying in the County's Home for the elderly. My father bought the Corrigan Homestead at public Auction when he was just a teenager and his parents, his brothers and sisters just moved in to live off him.

My father met my mother when she worked at her brother's local Cheese Factory and the General Store near the Corrigan Homestead. When my father asked her to marry him, she told him she could consider it when he kicked out his mooching relatives. By then she had learned he was the only one who worked in that family and he was the one who owned the farm. Yet his family came into the Store and ran up the bill as if they were millionaires and they expected my father to pay it. She was firm in her belief that when she married a man she had every right to expect him to take care of her and the family they hoped they would have together.

She knew there was no reason why his father did not work. There was no physical reason why any of the rest of the members of his parents' family did not have a job or at least contribute something to the overall welfare of the family.

My father loved my mother but he did not know how to get his parents and the rest of the family to move out. She told him to stop paying their bills at the Store and that was what he did. My father told my mother's brother who owned the store that he would no longer be responsible for any Bills at the Store except for his own.

He told his family they could not charge anything at the Store anymore and the Store would not give them any credit. He also told them he was getting married and they would have to find somewhere else to live. I was never told what happened after that by anyone in the Corrigan side of the family.

However, when his family moved out my mother agreed to marry him. I know my parents lost their first son James and they nearly lost the farm during the depression. Somehow, they were able to keep it as the only debit they had was at the grocery store, as they did not believe in mortgaging the farm just to eat.

After my father and mother worked at her brother's store to pay off their debt my grandparents and aunt Mary, who was my God Mother moved back on the farm, when my father and mother went to work at a Country Club in Menasha Wisconsin. My mother was a very good cook and my father took care of the greens on the Golf Course. I know my parents had supported them until my grandparents died and then Aunt Mary got married at the age of 49 and moved out.

When the War broke out after Pearl Harbor my dad was too old to join the Army and he had a family to support as my older brother Richard, "Dick" had been born in Menasha Wisconsin in September of 1940. My uncle Bob on my mother's side of the family was living in Milwaukee and he encouraged my parents to come to the city where my Dad would find a better paying job working in the Defense Plants as they were hiring anyone who could get a security clearance.

Although the machines at the Defense plant were huge, my father had no trouble learning how to do this type of work as he had learned how to operate, fix and repair all types of farm equipment once he saw someone else do it. He was also a perfectionist when he built high quality wooden cabinets, turned duplicate chair and table legs on a wood lathe and when he did finish carpentry work.

With my mother's help, my father learned to use the precision instruments to measure the close tolerances necessary to operate the huge machines that turned propeller shafts for Destroyers and Battleships. These propeller shafts had to be machined perfectly round or they might vibrate and ruin the support bearings between the Ship's Engines and its propellers.

Even worse, the vibrations of an out of round propeller shaft could send the ship's location to the enemy as sound travels a great distance in the water. The United States had already lost too many ships at Pearl Harbor and it could not afford to lose another one do to the lack of machining skills of the machine operator.

While my father worked at the Folk Plant in Milwaukee, he became a member of the Sabotage Watch Team for the FBI. When he did this well, he was asked to become an FBI Agent but he did not have the formal education they required. I was born in Milwaukee on June 28, 1943. I was a year old when we moved from living with uncle Bob to our new home on 107th Street.

They say when you are only that old, you do not remember things but I clearly remember walking across the three-lane highway of 107th Street and eating a big green apple, I found under the neighbor's tree. Perhaps it was the fact I got sick and threw up all night made finding and eating that green apple the day we arrived at our new home stand out in my memory.

I remembered my first experience with a dead person as my Grandfather George Corrigan died that same year. It was the custom back then to have the dead person laid out in the family's home rather than at a Funeral Parlor. I remember thinking how strange it was that the people who came to the house, talked very softly in whispers as they stood next to Grandpa as if they did not want to wake him from his sleep. I remembered the house full of people kneeling down and praying the rosary the night before the Funeral Mass held at Saint Patrick's Church, which was just a mile down the road from the farm.

My mother did not let me go to Grandpa's burial, as it was a cold and windy day. However, I do remember after Grandpa was gone, the house was again filled with people who seemed as if they were celebrating something important and my father got angry when Uncle Jim got drunk.

What little boy does not remember his first dog? I can still see "Teddy" our gray Scottish terrier, as he bounded into our bedroom and jumped into our bed the morning my father brought him home. Of course, Teddy was not just my dog, as he was our family's dog. However, after that first morning when he licked my face and I hugged that wiggling creature he was my best friend, as he was always with me. Teddy's arrival had to have been sometime after my father finished the upstairs bedroom where Dick and I slept in the same bed. I remembered when we first moved into the house, we all slept on the first floor in what would later become our living room.

I remembered when my father plastered the walls of that upstairs room after he built in our dresser into the wall. I loved to watch my father work and he let me hold his hammer rather than laying it down when he was not using it.

I was thrilled when he told me this would be Dick's and my bedroom. Having something that belonged to me or was mine reflected a warm feeling of ownership beyond just being part of the family.

I was four years old when my sister Sue Ann was born and my Aunt Helen had come to take care of us kids while this was happening. My brother was going to the first grade at Saint Catherine's parochial school and sometimes I would go with him but I do not remember the reason why I was allowed to do that, other than it could have been when I went with my father while he fixed something at the Church. My father was always fixing something at the school or in the church and he would continue to do that as long as he lived in the Parish.

That morning seemed exceptionally confusing to me, as everyone was going somewhere and I felt as if I was being left out of something. I decided to take my tricycle and go to school where I knew my brother would be and I knew how to get there. I had peddled a mile down the road to Granville Junction. When Mrs Logon who was the Postmaster of the Granville Post Office while her one handed husband managed the small general Store saw me, she ran out to stop me before I could go any farther.

She knew who I was and she convinced me to come into the store for a piece of candy. I had not been there very long when my father showed up with the car and took me back home. When I arrived back home I found my mother with the new baby. To this day, I have been accused of running away from home when I found out I was not the baby of the family any more.

I remembered after the War, when the Stonemasons laid the Linen stone from the local quarry over the tarpaper that covered our house. I also remembered when my father fell off the 4-story scaffolding while he was working as a Carpenter. He was out of work for a long time and my mother told us we had to be quiet if our father was to get better.

I remember working in the garden and feeding the chickens, the rabbits and our pig and my mother saying, if we didn't do all this we would not have anything to eat. Back then, I did not realize just how true my mother's words were.

We just did not have any money to buy anything and we never went to the store any more. I remember my mother re-sowing the hand me down clothes we got from our cousins so their clothes would fit us. The only place the car went was to Church on Sunday and somehow Mom saved enough money from selling fresh eggs to buy the gas at Mr Hacker's Garage in Granville Junction.

I always found Mr Hacker's Garage interesting as old Man Hacker was a Blacksmith and I loved to watch him work at his forge making plow shares and fixing broken farm equipment. I wanted to learn how he did things with the iron and steel he worked with. Later on in my life when I had any free time, I would go there and ask questions about what and how he did things. He was a kind man and he would let me make things even though he told me I was wasting my time trying to learn about being a Blacksmith as the days of a Blacksmith were over. Little did I know that one day I would use the knowledge I learned about iron and steel from him to make snow tire chains in South Korea and reproduction Civil War and Revolutionary War firearms in Harpers Ferry Arms Company.

My mother canned everything we ate that year even the apples and cherries our neighbor across the street let us pick. We went to the neighborhood farmers and picked potatoes not for money but to get our potatoes for the year. Once the farmers had cropped their fields, we would look for the carrots, cabbages, onions and potatoes they had missed. We would also pick berries and asparagus that grew wild along the roads. To my brother and me this was fun as my mother made a game out of it.

About once a month my Uncle Bob and his family would bring the small wooden trailer my father had built filled with old bread and broken cookies from a bakery in Milwaukee. Although this bread and cookies were intended to help feed our chickens and the pig, we would pick through the cookies to find the ones that were not broken and save them to eat after they went home. I especially liked the cookies that had a hard sugar coating with a soft chocolate cake in the middle.

Eventually my father got better but he could not go back to work as a carpenter on a construction site. He started to make custom kitchen cabinets in the garage but I remember he had a problem standing on his feet and he would come in the house to lie down several times during the day.

In 1947, Wisconsin was hit by a major snowstorm that dropped so much snow we could not get out the doors of our house. All the electrical power was out and fortunately we heated our home with a coal furnace and we had bottle gas to cook our food. However, we had to get out and feed the chickens, the rabbits and our pig. Since I weighed the least my father put a rope around my waist and let me climb out the second story window and I was able to walk on top of the snow.

It had turned so cold it froze the crust of the snow bank that it was thick enough to hold me and I thought it was fun. My father then sent my brother out on the snow bank with a rope around his waist and the crust on the snow was strong enough to hold him too.

The two of us had to dig down to open the chicken coop door. We were lucky the wind had blown the snow away from around the pig's barn and the rabbit hutches. We carried half-full buckets of hot water to the animals so they would have something to drink. We fed the animals for two days by climbing out on the snow banks until we dug out the back door. I remembered my father had dug a tunnel from the back door to the chicken coop, as the crust of the snow banks would not hold him.

A day later the Town of Granville's big chain driven Warsaw snowplow had rammed through the snow banks and finally open the road. We spent several days digging out the driveway so we could get the car out and go to church the next Sunday.

By 1949, my little brother Patrick was born and both Dick and I were going to Saint Catherine's Grade School. Dick and I earned money working for the local farmer picking potatoes in the fall and then the next summer we hoed corn, picked vegetables for the farmers market in Milwaukee and we helped bring in the bailed hay. I could not lift a bale of hay so I would steer the old Model "A" Farm truck, as the men would load the hay on the back of it.

I got an extra job cutting grass for the neighbor across the street. She had one of the first powered lawn mowers and she was willing to pay me a whole dollar for doing it. Every penny we made counted as my father was barely making a living building kitchen cabinets and we were expected to earn money to help pay for our school clothes, books and tuition.

Perhaps one of the most significant things in my life happened when I was in first grade at Saint Catherine's School. Sister Mary Linea recognized I had a hearing memory much like some people have a photographic memory. Once I heard something, I could repeat it and I could mimic the person who had said it exactly as they said it even if they had a foreign accent.

The children in Sister Mary Linea's first grade class were broken down into reading groups based upon their ability to read. The most advanced group of readers, were called the "Busy Bee's" and those who had the most difficulty reading were called the "Blue Birds."

I was part of the Busy Bee's and because of my ability to mimic what someone else had said, Sister Mary Linea would have me read first as a test to establish I had done my homework and I was not just repeating what was said by another student when I had listen to them read our assignment.

On one particular day, the Busy Bee's were reading the words in the glossary in the back of the book. I was reading first and Sister Mary Linea stopped me saying I was not reading the words correctly. I knew I was accurately reading the words printed in my book but she insisted I was wrong and told me what the word should be. When I started to read the words again as I knew them to be, she became angry and made me repeat the word she was using before I could read the next word. However, when I stated the next word she told me I was wrong again yet I knew the word in my book was as I had said it and I was not going to say the word was something else when it was not.

After several more attempts to read the words from the glossary in my book, Sister Mary Linea dismissed the Busy Bee's saying I had not done my homework and I was deliberately disrupting the class. I insisted I was reading the words correctly and I attempted to show her my book to prove it.

However, she refused to look at my book and told me she would talk to my parents about my disruptive behavior. When I continued to protest I was reading the words correctly, she took out her wooden ruler and told me to stick out my hand as she was going to punish me. I was shocked by this threat and I told her if she hit me with that ruler I would hit her back as I was not going to be punished when I knew I had not done anything wrong. She called me an evil child but she did not attempt to hit me.

My parents taught us to believe the Catholic Priests and the Religious Nuns were holy people sent by God to lead us to heaven. Yet here was this Nun, who was not the good holy person she should be. She could not be good as a good person would have looked at my book and verified the words I had been reading. I concluded if she was not holy and good, then she had to be evil and sent by the devil to tempt me to do wrong.

The next day, Sister Mary Linea put me in the Blue Bird reading group and I stopped learning anything this evil person was teaching. By the time I was in 4th Grade, I had not learned anything and my parents were told I would not be promoted to 5th Grade, as I did not know how to read, write or spell yet I was doing exceptionally well in mathematics.

I was given an IQ test to determine if I had a learning disability. Since I could not read, I took the test orally. The test established I had an exceptionally high IQ, and there was nothing wrong with my ability to learn. All that summer, my mother taught me what I had not learned since first grade and I hated every minute of it. However, I did learn how to read and write but my spelling was atrocious as I was hearing the words and I wanted to put the letters into the words as they sounded to me.

After I re-did the 4th Grade, I did well in school even though I hardly studied. I went on to College and I worked on my advanced Degree in Human Relations and Marketing while I was at Fort Bless Texas after I came back from Vietnam. To this day, I am a horrible speller and it took me a long time before I understood why.

It all came back to when I was reading the words in my book and Sister Mary Linea was reading the words listed in her new edition of the book. The words in her book's Glossary were not the same as the words in the copy of my book and it was my belief she was evil, as a good and holy person would have looked at my book and she would have resolved the problem. My failure during the first four years in school did not affect my desire to accomplish other things in my life as I had already learned no one was going to give me anything unless I earned them for myself.

Once it got cold in Wisconsin, there was not any work at the Farmer's place but there was still an opportunity to make money as Dick and I ran a Trap Line on the Little Menominee River. Our Trap Line was more than a mile east of 107th Street down Bradley Road. We used part of the money we had earned that summer and we bought steel traps from the Hudson Bay Company. Every morning including school days we got up early and we would ride our bicycles to the River to check our Muskrat traps. On a good day, we might get 5 to 7 Muskrats. After school and every night before supper on the weekends, we would ride our bikes to the River and check our traps again. That evening after supper we would skin out the Muskrats, scraped the pelts and stretch them on the drying boards.

At the end of the Trapping season, we sent more than 200 cured pelts to the Hudson Bay Company. We received an average price of 50 cents for each of the skins. After deducting the money we paid for the Traps, we cleared 67 dollars. We agreed to spend 25 dollars to buy the more expensive "Stop loss" steel traps and we split the rest as we were partners in this Trap Line just as the original Trappers who open the frontier had been.

A Trapper had to check his Trap Line twice a day. If you did not check your Traps, the Traps you set might have been "set off" without catching anything or the Muskrats you had caught might chew off their trapped leg to get away. Either way you were losing money. Our new traps would stop the loss of a trapped Muskrat, as spring-loaded bar held his head up and he could not chew off his leg.

We never consider how much time and effort it took each morning and evening to run this Trap Line or how bad the weather might have been, as we were making money when we could not have made it any other way. The next year we had a better Trapping Season but the bottom dropped out of the Fur Market and we made less money than we did the year before. We therefore agreed not to trap next year.

It 1951 my father was offered the Job as Building inspector for the Town of Granville. One of the problems in taking this job was the family 1937 Chevrolet was on its last legs and my father needed a reliable car to do the job. The other problem was he did not have the money to buy one. The owner of the Getelman Pontiac Dealership in Menominee Falls told my father he would take the Chevrolet as a trade in and sell him a car with no money down as he could see my father was trying to get a better job and he felt my father was a good financial risk.

The week my father went to work for the Town of Granville, he put a five-dollar bill in the Offertory collection basket at Church. I did not understand why he would give the Church so much money at one time. Five dollars, was more money than my mother spent for our family's monthly groceries at the National A&P Store in Menominee Falls.

Although our family was living better and there was more money coming in, Dick and I continued to work for the local Farmer and we were putting most of our money in our Bank Accounts as my mother told us, "You never know when you might need it."

We were taught if you put your money in the Bank you would be paid Interest on that money and you would not foolishly spend it if you kept it in your pocket. It was okay to plan to buy something we really wanted and the money we saved would be in the Bank to pay for it.

It seemed to me with every opportunity or advantage you made in life there was a corresponding threat or risk involved. The risk to the future of my father's job as the Building Inspector with the Town of Granville was coming from the aggressive annexation practices of the City of Milwaukee.

The City of Milwaukee was annexing parts of the Town of Granville as the people in the city were moving out to the suburbs to escape the high City Taxes and the inner City's higher crime rate. By annexing parts of the surrounding Townships the city was attempting to recapture that lost tax revenue it needed to support the inner city without the immediate need to produce any expensive City services to the new areas the City acquired.

This mass exodus from the inner cities into the suburbs was happening across the country, as people were seeking a better and a safer place to raise their families. Who could blame them for trying to avoid the City's higher crime rate and the sprawling urban blight that was associated with the expanding black community? It was no secret the City of Milwaukee spent the majority of its Tax Revenues on black welfare clients who did not contribute anything for their own support and the blacks were involved in the majority of the crimes in the City.

This condition in the inner cities and the black community is not something new and it has not changed since the early 1950's in spite of the Civil Rights movements, which took place in the late 1960's. We only need to look at the City of Milwaukee's current condition as it looks like a bombed out city on the verge of bankruptcy just like the City of Detroit is now

With the growing threat of being annexed, the people who had moved out of the City of Milwaukee to avoid the problems of urban blight and higher taxes created a number of Incorporated Villages. Over the next few years, there were Annexation Wars with the City of Milwaukee and the Villages of Brown Deer, River Hills, Fox Point, Shorewood, Glendale and Whitefish Bay were incorporated in parts of the northern area of Milwaukee County. These Villages had effectively stopped the City's northeast expansion and all that remained unincorporated on the north end of the City was the Town of Granville.

The city was attempting to make the last power grab to take all of the Town of Granville that was not under an Annexation Petition to one of the existing Villages. My father countered the City's efforts by circulating an Annexation Petition to become part of the Village of Brown Deer. The Annexation process could take years as the City of Milwaukee was challenging each Village's Annexation Petition with one of their own Petitions and the matter would become tied up in the Courts.

We had outgrown the small house on 107th Street. We sold the house and we built a new house on Brown Deer Road. My Father, Dick and I did everything to build this house except dig the basement and lay the cement block. We worked all summer and used the local farmer's tractor and wagon to move all our furniture and belongings the two miles to our new home.

The Town of Granville was fighting for its life and my father ran for Office as one of the Town's three Supervisors. We stuffed campaign envelopes, held political rallies, went door to door as part of his campaign and my father won by a landside. However, the man who would become the City of Milwaukee's Councilmen also won. One of the other candidates who had lost in the election challenged the other Supervisor's election to prevent him from assuming Office. The City's man refused to take office and by doing this the Town of Granville did not have a government and the City stepped in to take over the Town.

My father could not stop this City of Milwaukee's take over by himself. Some of the leading citizens of Granville and the Village of Brown Deer filed Law Suits to prevent the city's taking over the Town and the City cross-filed with Law Suits of their own. These lawsuits tied up the disposition of the Town of Granville in the Courts for years. In the mean time, my father was out of a job as the Building Inspector and my mother was pregnant with my youngest sister Marion who would be born in December.

Fortunately, my father had built a Carpenter shop on the property and he was able to start up his old business of making kitchen Cabinets. My father never really stopped making kitchen Cabinets as a side job and he always dreamed that this business would one day make a lot of money. I was old enough to know the family would be facing financial hardships again. Since we had moved away from the old neighborhood and the farmer we had worked for had retired, we had to look for new jobs.

We went to work at the Herdagen Mink Ranch. We worked the weekends and after school in the fall and winter as this was the time when the mink were harvested for their pelts. Early spring was breeding time on the Mink Ranch so there was always plenty of work year round.

Our family needed that money and our parents borrowed the money we had saved in our Bank Accounts rather than borrow it from a Bank. My parents had lived through the Depression and saw families lose their homes and their farms to the Banks. They had only been able to save the Corrigan Homestead Farm because they did not have a mortgage on it and they would avoid borrowing money from a Bank at all cost.

My mother went to work at the Brentwood Country Club as a Cook and every dime my brother and I made at the Mink Ranch went to support the family. My mother kept an accurate account of all the money we contributed to the family and told us they would pay it back. My mother always raised chickens and sold fresh eggs. We planted a huge garden that took up the whole back yard and everyone in the family helped to work it.

We raised white rabbits and bred them in time to sell baby rabbits to the Pet Shops in Milwaukee for Easter. We also trapped wild rabbits in live catch Box Traps and we would put them in the Rabbit cages to fatten them up. My brother and I hunted pheasants in the open fields near our property and they became our Sunday dinner through the fall and winter. A box of 12 Gage Shotgun shells cost almost 2 dollars and we knew at that price, we could not afford to miss. That year I got 24 pheasants with 25 shots and my brother only missed two shots. We were lucky that year, as my father and I each shot a deer with only one shot on the Homestead Farm during the Wisconsin Deer Hunting season.

That fall my father was hired as the Building Inspector for the Village of River Hills and six months later, he was hired as the Building Inspector for the Village of Brown Deer. These Villages were areas my father had already worked, when he was the Building Inspector for the Town of Granville before these Villages had incorporated to prevent the City of Milwaukee from annexing them.

I did not know until years later how close our family was to losing everything. We had spent all the money from the sale of the house on 107th Street to build the new house and the Carpenter's shop on Brown Deer Road. My mother had complications with the birth of Marion my youngest sister and the medical bills were unpaid, as my father had lost his health insurance when he lost his job with the Town of Granville. My sister, Marion was born with a displaced hip just like my Aunt Mary and fixing that medical problem was not cheap. I remember Marion had to wear a special hip brace for the first two years of her life.

It was a year after my father went back to work, as the Building Inspector for the Village of Brown Deer before my mother sat us down and went over all the money my brother and I had contributed to the family. When she was sure we understood how much money we had given the family, my father wrote each of us a check that included what the Bank would have paid us in Interest and we put it back into our Bank Accounts.

It was about that time when we were cleaning out an attic of a business Mr Herdagen had bought in Menominee Falls and we found an old Civil War Musket. Of course, we wanted to shoot it but our parents said we had to find someone who knew the old Musket was safe to shoot.

We found Glenn Harman who was the President of the Smoky Hollow Gun Club. He took the musket apart and found that it was still loaded. He taught us how to load and shoot it with round lead balls. It was fun and it cost very little for Black Gunpowder. We recovered the lead from the backstop and melted it down to remould our bullets. The percussion caps were the most expensive item but even with that, we could shoot all day for a few dollars.

About that time, _Life Magazine_ published an article on a Civil War group called the North South Skirmish Association that shot muskets in team competition. There were four of us in Milwaukee shooting Civil War Muskets and we wanted to join this Association and shoot in their Matches. We were told we needed 8-men for a Team and since we wanted to be Confederates there was another group in Michigan who had 6 men and maybe we could get together to form a Team.

We learned about shooting Minnie Balls and we found them to be extremely accurate at 50 and 100 yards, which was the shooting distances of the NSSA's competition matches. It took all summer to work out all the details of forming a Musket Team. We had to make uniforms and buy the cap and cartridge boxes. We became Company K of the 1st Virginia Cavalry and attended our first team match at the Henry Ford Museum at Greenfield Village in Dearborn Michigan and we almost won the Skirmish coming in second place. Our Team Commander insisted we did not win. This was the first time I learned that following the rules was more important than just winning. He claimed one of our Clay Pigeons was not half broken which was the rule in the Skirmish Competition back then.

Our Musket Team continued to grow and we would travel all over the upper Midwestern States attending these Skirmishes. The history of the American Civil War fascinated me. I would read everything I could find on the American Civil War and how these Battles were fought.

Dick and I toured the Battlefields in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia the first year our Musket Team when to the NSSA's Fall National Matches held at Fort Lee Virginia in 1958. Seeing the Battlefields added new life to the history I had been reading and I learned to admire the men in the northern and southern Armies who had fought such a bloody war.

Perhaps what interested me the most was the stupid mistakes each side made and how if I had been the Commander I would not have done what they did. Little did I know at the time, that one day I would be an Officer in the United States Army and I would use what I learned about the blunders made by both Army Commanders during the Civil War to limit my own mistakes when I Commanded my own Units.

In 1961, our group in Milwaukee broke away from some of the members in Michigan to form our own unit the 5th Virginia Cavalry and part of our original group in Wisconsin, also broke away and formed the 6th Wisconsin Infantry. That was the year I met Carol at Greenfield Village and the 5th Virginia Cavalry and the 6th Wisconsin Infantry were battling it out for First Place going into the 2 by 8 Stake event and we had a 3. 4 second lead. The Team next to the 6th Wisconsin had a spectacular Stake Event and when they hit one of their exploding targets, the concussion blew over the leaning 6th Wisconsin's Stake and the 5th Virginia Cavalry lost the Skirmish at Greenfield Village by a fraction of a second.

I graduated from Granville High School and in the fall of 1962, I went to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, as I could not afford to go anywhere else. My parents said if I wanted to go to school, I had to earn my own tuition and pay for my books, as they did not have the money to send me to College. They would provide me with room and board and if I did not go to school, I had to start paying rent.

I majored in everything but studying and my Grade Point average showed it. I had joined the ROTC, and the Pershing Rifles Drill team. I was the high freshman shooter on the Rifle Team and I had wrestled on the University's Team in the 145-pound class.

My brother who was four years ahead of me in school was working heavy construction equipment and he was laid off for the winter. Our mother convinced him that he should go to school. He did and he went on to finish his Masters Degree in Political Science on scholarships.

Dick joined the Pershing Rifles Drill team and he shot on the Rifle team. Our competitiveness pushed the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee to a National Championship in Pershing Rifles and State Champions on the University's Rifle Team. However, my Grade Point Average had put me on Academic Probation and with the Vietnam War, heating up I would be a prime candidate for the Draft. We made a bet the next semester on who would get the best Grade point average as we were taking most of the same classes.

The only exception was Dick had to take a noncredit swimming class and I took a course called "Gems and Precious Stones." This one credit course and the "A" in that course gave me four more grade points than Dick and I won that bet. We continue to compete academically until I graduated with honors and took a Regular Army Commission in the Air Defense Artillery Branch of the US Army.

However, in the spring of my sophomore year, the Wisconsin's Supreme Court ruled in the City of Milwaukee's favor and not only awarded the Area of the Annexation Petition my father had worked on, but also an area that had been previously Annexed to the Village of Brown Deer. What was at stake, besides the Annexation areas were the millions of Dollars of Tax Revenues collected in these areas held in escarole by the State since the lawsuits were filed.

The Wisconsin's Supreme Court ruled that the Chairman of the Board of Continental Can Corporation could not sign the Annexation Petition to join the Village of Brown Deer. The Annexation Petitions were not based upon the number of Citizens that signed them, but the property values of those who had signed them. By the Court, tossing out the property value of the Continental Can Corporation and by not counting it for either side the balance of the value of my father's Annexation Petition was claimed to be less than the City of Milwaukee's Annexation Petition. This unheard of ruling that the Chairman of a Corporation did not have the authority to sign such a document had the community in the newly awarded areas to the City in an up roar.

Dick and I were called by our father to a meeting held to decide what should be done about this perceived injustice. He knew we both were majoring in Political Science and we had lived through all the Annexation Wars with the City of Milwaukee.

My father who also joined the 5th Virginia Cavalry shooting team had watched us maneuver the NSSA Teams of the Northwest Territory Region to the point where my brother Dick had been elected the Regional Commander. Just what our father expected us to do was a reflection of his confidence that if anyone could come up with a solution, we might just be able to do it.

It was at this meeting we learned the Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice was a relative of the current mayor of the City of Milwaukee and there were suggestions that he should be lynched. Dick and I listen to all the comments and suggestions that were brought up. The only thing everyone agreed on was we had to take this ruling to the United States Supreme Court. There were pledges of money and proposals made to form a Committee to hire a good attorney.

When everyone else appeared to be talked out, my father turned to us and asked if we had any suggestions that had not been considered.

I was always the one in the family who could come up with a bright idea when I understood the problem. My brother would call me "Brain" when I came up with a suggestion no one else thought of. I was never sure if he meant that name as a complement as there was a character in the Television Cartoon show _Top Cat_ called "Brain" and Brain was not very smart.

"I don't see there is much of a choice." I began. "You might take this to the Supreme Court as this is a violation of the people's rights to choose the government they want to represent them and the majority of the people had decided they wanted to be part of the Village of Brown Deer."

"That's right. I moved into this area believing it was the Village of Brown Deer. That judge just can't do this to us." Someone spoke up and a number of the others voiced their agreement with him.

"I am not a lawyer and I do not understand the points of Law that were used against us. I would think the Supreme Court would consider the will of the people if our voices could be heard. What we have here is what our country fought for when King George of England failed to hear our complaints and we chose to become an Independent Nation. Perhaps we should consider becoming an Independent Nation again?" I suggested.

Than as if my brother was reading my mind he suggested, "We need to form an Independent State and call it 'Independent Granville.' We all know you cannot form a State within a State but there is a precedent for doing it and it has not been done since the Civil War. The Union allowed West Virginia to form a State out of the western counties of Virginia to allow it to remain in the Union. If the United States could justify forming West Virginia using the 'Will of the People' then we are in the same position. I believe my brother has a great idea and we have nothing to lose by trying it." Dick stated. No one spoke against the idea and the discussions dealt with how we could form this Independent Granville.

"All we have to do is make a Declaration of Independence and form a Government elected by the majority of the people. An election is not something we can hold over night. In the mean time, we need to establish a Provisional Government and post the limits of our State's boundaries, which will include all the areas of the Annexation Petitions." Dick stated.

"We must be prepared to provide Fire and Police protection along with a local judicial system." I started to explain when the Justice of the Peace spoke up and told the group we already have a court recognized by the State.

"The local communities have always had an agreement to mutually support fire and rescues services and I am sure the Village of Brown Deer and River Hills will continue that agreement if we ask them." My father told them and the Fire Chief from the Village of Brown Deer told the group he would consider himself, as being asked. The County Sheriff confirmed his continued support.

"All right then." My brother Dick spoke up. "Do we have a motion to form the Independent State of Granville?" He began as he assumed the role of the Chairman of the Group and he was using the procedures outline in Robert's Rules of Order for conducting meetings.

The motion passed by unanimous voice vote and Dick asked for Nominations for 3-Supervisors to head the Provisional Government of the Independent State of Granville. Dick was nominated and two of the more vocal members accepted their nominations. The nominations were closed and they were elected by unanimous consent.

Dick asked for volunteers' to write the Declaration of Independence and five people volunteered. From then on, it became a classic example in the formation of a Government to reflect the will of the people and the spirit of Independence of 1776 was reborn.

We made the Evening News in all the National Networks and they had films of cars pulling trailers picking up the garbage. The Election was held the day before the 4th July with a record turnout of Voters. My brother was elected as one of the three Supervisors. With all the National TV News coverage, the City of Milwaukee was taking "Independent Granville" seriously.

The City of Milwaukee sent their Garbage Trucks into the area and as expected there were a number of confrontations over which "Government" had the authority to pick up the garbage. The Newspapers had a field day over the "Garbage Wars." They had pictures of both jurisdictions garbage collectors fighting over the garbage in the suburbs while the inner city's trashcans were over flowing with weeks of uncollected garbage.

The City of Milwaukee's Water Department immediately ran a ten-inch water main down 107th Street to the Ozaukee County Line. This is the county north of Milwaukee County and was the previous boundary of the Town of Granville. This 5-mile long waterline with Fire Hydrants' had come from the closest northern point the City had extended their waterlines.

This waterline was the City of Milwaukee's attempt to stake their claim to the disputed area while many of the other area's the City had previously annexed several years ago were still without City Water.

Unfortunately, this gallant effort for Independent Granville was lost as the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case on any legal grounds. My brother still has one of the Independent Granville signs that marked the boundaries of our "State." Dick wrote a major paper as part of his Masters Degree in Political Science on the formation of Independent Granville and its gallant effort to fight the City of Milwaukee's land grab.

My father was not a vengeful man but he never had a kind word or forgave the attorney who had written the Appeal of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision to the United States Supreme Court. Less than a year later, this same attorney had a fancy position in the City of Milwaukee.

# 3. MY FIRST FALLING OUT WITH CAROL

When I was in my junior year in College Carol had finally graduated from High School and she was a freshman attending Michigan State in Lansing Michigan. I had stopped in to see her after attending the NSSA's Northwest Territory's Regional meeting in Detroit, as I was the Commander of the 5th Virginia Cavalry that year.

It had been three years since we last saw each other. Although we has written every week and occasionally sent pictures, she was even more attractive than I remembered. I was now 4 inches taller and a solidly built man at 185 pounds, who thought he could handle anything. However, I was not prepared for the high inside fastball she threw at me, as she wanted to get married now.

I tried to explain to Carol that I loved her but I hardly made enough money to go to school and I surely did not make enough money to get married. It had not been a good summer for me as I could not find a job and ended up painting my cousin's house to earn enough money for my books and tuition.

I also told Carol I was planning to take a Regular Army Commission and I was considering making the Army a career. This did not go over very well as she was against the War and thought I was crazy to want to be a part of the Army. I felt Carol's position was unreasonable and she was deliberately trying to pick a fight when I was not willing to marry her how. She knew I was in the ROTC and I would have to serve in the Army for at least 2 years. It was as if all the letters we wrote about our future together meant nothing. I felt a great personal loss when Carol stopped answering my letters until I found out years later she had married the man she had been dating at Michigan State.

I had become off cycle in my studies and it would take me another Semester to Graduate, as I need to take a required course only offered in the Fall Semester each year. As a result, I when to ROTC Summer Camp at Fort Riley Kansas between my first and second Semester of my Senior Year and I would graduate in January.

I did very well at the ROTC Summer Camp as I finished second in my Platoon, second in my Company and second at Summer Camp by a man who received "extra credit" to make up for his low score in Map Reading to beat me. I never knew there was such a thing as "extra credit" at the ROTC Summer Camp. I would find out our Army Platoon Sergeant Advisor was also an Instructor at this man's school. This taught me a lesson to look for the outside influence when something strange and unusual happens.

I was however First in my ROTC Class from the University of Wisconsin and I became a Cadet Colonel that Year. I had shot on the 5th Army's ROTC Rifle Team from Summer Camp and we went to Camp Perry Ohio's National Rifle Matches. Our Team took Second Place behind the Cadets from West Point and I won additional Medals in the Individual Competition. I was good enough to become the Alternate Shooter for the 5th Army's Rifle Team and I shot well enough to win medals in other Rifle Matches that year.

My final Semester in College was a blast, as I needed only that 3-credit course to graduate in January. I was in a Work Study Program with the University's Political Science Department as a Survey Research Assistant and I could work as many hours a week as the number of credit hours I had. I took 15 Credit hours and I enrolled in classes I always wanted to take to include some Graduate Level Courses. One Course I thought would be interesting was Basic Drawing in the Art Department. I also knew there would be a number of freshman girls in that course. What a single red-blooded American man would not have a special interest in them.

The Art Class met four times a week and after the first week, the Instructor approached me and asked why I was in his class. At first I thought he was part of the growing "peace-nick's who were against the War in Vietnam and he did not want me showing up in his class wearing my ROTC uniform. By then I had eight rows of ROTC Competitive Ribbons on my chest with the Shoulder Cords from Pershing Rifles and Scabbard and Blade. The only thing I did not have was Stars on my shoulders like General MacArthur as I had more Ribbons than he did when he was a Five Star General of the Army.

When my Instructor went on to explain the quality of my work was beyond this level of Basic Drawing and he felt I was wasting my time, I told him why I had taken this Class.

I did not tell him about the freshmen girls but explained I had always been interested in Art but until this Semester, I had not been able to take it. I told him I was also taking the course on Art Appreciation.

"So what you are telling me is you will be graduating in January, you want to experience Art to appreciate it and you have no formal Art training." He asked.

"Not since Art Class in Grade School." I admitted.

"I see." He said and paused in thought. "If you had come to my class four years ago, I could have gotten you a full four year Art Scholarship. Let me ask you something and it is none of my business. If you have the money to buy art supplies I could push you and teach you to a level in Art that would take you 2 years to learn."

"I would like that." I told him.

"Good. I am going to give you a list of art supplies to buy this week and Friday we will begin." He stated and I was happy to be able to stay in his Class.

I began working in all types of Art mediums and I painted an Oil Painting, which hung in the University's main Art Gallery. I did a woodcut of President Lyndon Baines Johnson's head and we block printed 25 copies on the Milwaukee Journal's Colored Editorial Page dealing with Vietnam in money green ink so it looked like a dollar bill printed over the map of Vietnam. My Art Teacher loved it. He made me break the woodcut to prevent making any more prints from it. I carved a three-foot classic nude from an old oak beam over Christmas vacation and I got an "A" in his Class.

After I graduated in January, I had less than three months before I had to report to Fort Bliss Texas for my Officers Basic Course in Air Defense.

Since I had taken a Regular Army Commission, the Bank of Fort Benning Georgia was offering a $2500 dollar low interest rate loan and I wanted to buy a car. I had looked at the popular Mustang but it was not doing it for me. I wanted something different and perhaps better. The Salesmen did not want to lose a sale and suggested I look at an English Racing Green Stingray Corvette sitting in the Used Car Lot.

I took it for a test drive and I loved that car but I did not think I could afford it. By the time I got back to the Dealership, the Salesman had dropped the price $500 dollars and I knew something had to be wrong with it. I asked if I could take the car over to a friend of mine who worked on Corvettes.

My friend literally took the car apart and after he put it back together told me there was nothing wrong with that car and if I did not buy it, he would. After I had signed the papers on the Corvette I found out it would cost me $1,000 dollars a year in Automobile Insurance and I was about to cry.

"Wait a minute." The Salesman said. "Didn't you tell me you were taking a Commission in the Army? Here I think you should talk to these guys as they write Auto Insurance for Officers." He told me as he dialed the number and put me on the phone.

When I was done, they offered me Auto Insurance on the Corvette for $231 dollars a year and they would take payments to buy their Insurance. I was so excited I hung up the phone before I knew who they were and I had to ask the Salesmen. It was the United States Automobile Association out of San Antonio Texas and I have been with them ever since.

There was one question bugging me, about the car. "Why was this Salesman selling me this Corvette so cheap?" My friend who drove Corvettes had told me I was stealing the car at that price, as nothing was wrong with it.

"I have only one question now that I owned this Corvette." I began. "Why did you sell me this car at this reduced price?"

"You mean you don't know?" He asked. "I couldn't sell it after that Milwaukee Playboy was killed in it. Someone shot him through the open driver's window and the bullet broke the passenger's window after it killed him."

"Well his misfortune has become my gain. I am just glad there was nothing wrong with the car." I told him and I could see he was about to kick himself for selling me a car when I did not know what had happened in it.

Since I would be leaving Milwaukee for the Air Defense Officer's Basic Course at Fort Bliss Texas on March 20, I went to work in Construction on a high-rise apartment building in Downtown Milwaukee for 8 hours. Then I went to work as the Lock-tender in a pressurized tunnel for a major sewer line for 4 hours, yet I received a full 8-hours pay. The Lock-tender could only work a four hour day due to the constant changes in air pressure each time I opened and close the Air Lock to let in or take out the mining cars.

By the time I left Milwaukee, I had a nice nest egg and it was 3 degrees below zero. When I crossed the Illinois State line the temperature was 35 degrees and I made my mind up I would not come back to Wisconsin to live.

# 4. THE START OF MY MILITARY CAREER

After I finished my Officer's Basic Course in Air Defense Artillery at Fort Bliss Texas, I did not take any Military Leave before I went to South Korea. I wanted to come back to Wisconsin in September to attend my sister Sue Ann's wedding.

I was assigned as the Hawk Missile Service Platoon Leader to Alfa Battery of the Seventh Battalion of the Second Division of the 38th Brigade of Air Defense Artillery. It was located on a mountaintop outside of Osan Air Base in the center of Mig Alley south of Seoul Korea. Although Alfa Battery was just 12 miles from Osan it would take over an hour to travel the rough trail the US Army called a road to get there.

As the new Second Lieutenant, I was assigned just about every additional Duty in the Battery. I was the Mess Officer, Motor Pool Officer, the Supply Officer, the Unit Property Book Officer, the Communications Officer, the Korean Sundry Fund Officer, the PX Officer, the Safety Officer and the Officer who work with the Korean Repair and Utility Company that maintained our Administration Compound and the Hawk Missile Compound on top of the mountain. The only advantage about having so many extra duties was I did not need to coordinate with any one and I only had to please the Battery Commander by keeping him informed about what I was doing.

With all these extra duties, I was still expected to qualify as a Missile Site Commander of the Hawk Missile Battery and I had to pass my Operational Readiness Inspection within 30 days. The quicker I could pass my ORI, the sooner I would rotate the duty on the "hill" with all the other Air Defense Officers in the Unit. We were fortunate to have a full complement of four Air Defense Commission Officers and one Warrant Officer so you could expect to pull the duty on the Missile Site every five days and we would rotate the duty of Commanding the Hawk Missile Battery on the weekends.

I had not been in the Hawk Battery three days when I caught the Korean PX Manager about to walk out the Administration Compound's Gate with a briefcase filled with ink pens. Ink pens in South Korea were as scarce as hen's teeth, but you could buy them on the Korean Black Market.

However before the Battery could have a new Korean PX Manager assigned I had to do a physical inventory of the Post Exchange. The funny thing was I had a number of GI's volunteer to help me as they saw me as an Officer who was looking out for them.

The Motor Pool was a mess as the vehicles would take a beating traveling over those poor Korean roads and you could not have any Depot Maintenance done to them unless all the first and second echelon Maintenance had been preformed. Just driving a vehicle to Camp Humphries, which was our Depot Support Unit, would result in additional Unit echelon maintenance problems that had to be fixed before the vehicles would pass the Depot's intake inspection. If you could not get your vehicles into the Depot Maintenance facility, the vehicles could not be repaired and their lack of repair would be reflected in the Unit's "Vehicle Deadline Report" sent every month to the Battalion Commander.

I am sure you have heard of the Movie _Catch 22_ where everything they tried to do according to Military Regulations was further complicated by events beyond their control. That Movie could have used what was happening in South Korea just as well as what happened in that Movie about a World War II Army Air Corps Unit.

I was faced with a nearly impossible situation of keeping our Unit's vehicles running when the system to get them repaired was beyond the normal means prescribed in the Army's Regulations. Perhaps it was the experience I had while growing up in a family that I had to make things work with what you had rather than just going out and buying a new one that I was willing to look at the problem and the solution differently.

My first idea was to send my Motor Sergeant and my Mechanics' along in a separate truck and they would perform the Unit Echelon Maintenance in the parking lot in the Depot's Compound. However, that did not work, as sometimes they needed a repair part that had to be requisitioned from the Supply System before they could repair the vehicle they wanted to turn into Depot Maintenance. This would require an authorized Supply Form signed by the Unit Supply Officer and I was not willing to sign blank Supply Forms.

However to get the job done I would go with the vehicle we wanted to turn into Depot Maintenance and I would take the Unit's Supply Books and Requisition Forms with me. The only problem was if the Supply System did not have the repair part in stock, we were stuck with a vehicle that would not be accepted by Depot Maintenance until it was fixed. We could not leave the vehicle there, as it would be stripped of its useful parts the moment we left it unguarded. We had no choice but to take the vehicle back to the Unit until the repair part could be sent to the Unit.

In the mean time, that vehicle had to be listed on our Unit's Deadline Report and it became a "Catch 22" as the Battalion Commander was demanding to know why that vehicle was still on Deadline. To complicate the problem further South Korea was not getting any vehicle repair parts as the United States Army's Command Priority Supply System was sending them to support the War in Vietnam.

This created a moral dilemma for me and I had to make a judgment call to use the South Korean system of bribes to resolve the impasse. If a bottle of whiskey was left on the front seat of the vehicle, the South Korean Inspectors would accept our vehicle regardless of the maintenance that needed to be done. For the price of a bottle of whiskey, which cost less than 2 dollars in South Korea, the vehicle went into Depot Maintenance. When we picked-up the vehicle all the levels of maintenance were done on it. The vehicle would now be available to be used in the Unit and it would come off the Unit's Deadline Report. In less than two months, Alfa Battery had the lowest vehicle Deadline Rate in the Battalion and no one asked how I did it.

If the Motor Pool was a mess, the Supply Room was a disaster. Nothing matched the inventory and the Supply Records and Unit Property Books did not show how we had acquired the equipment we had.

The Unit Executive Officer known as the XO in the Army had been the Unit's previous Supply Officer. His ability to do basic accounting was beyond understanding or reason. The only way to correct the problem was to redo the Property Books and make new Supply records according to the Regulations. Supply Sergeant Duvack and I would spend every evening after supper in the Supply Room redoing all the records since the last Inspector General's Inspection.

An "IG Inspection" was conducted by the Major Command Headquarters every year on every Unit's Section and on every aspect of each Unit in the Army to establish the Unit's ability to perform its Mission. Although Alfa Battery was one of the better Units in the Battalion, it barely passed the 8th Army's IG Inspection last year.

Redoing all these records could drive a man to drink and it did. Sergeant Duvack and I would each buy a bottle of whiskey at the Unit's NCO Club and we would head into the Supply Room and lock the door. We made an agreement not to work beyond midnight, as we would be performing our normal duties the next day. I did not realize how much I was drinking until I came home to my sister's wedding.

I was drinking straight whiskey out of a water glass while the rest of the men in my family were drinking it in a mixed drink and they were getting drunk. I made up my mind I would stop drinking but when I came back to South Korea after a month's Leave, the XO who had picked up the temporary Duty as the Unit's Supply Officer while I was gone had screwed everything up since I left.

When I found out what the XO had done, Sergeant Duvack and I did not go into the supply room and we each bought a bottle of whiskey. We went to the Korean Night Club in the local Korean Village that was outside the Administrative Compound's Gate and we both got seriously drunk. It did not take very long to do it and that was the first time in my life I had gotten drunk. I vowed never to do that again as I have never felt so bad, as I did the next morning.

The Unit ran a Sundry Fund to pay the Korean workers who acted as Houseboys for the GI's and paid the Korean Mess Hall kitchen workers so the GI's would not have to perform KP duty. The XO had been the Sundry Fund Officer and those financial Records and Account Books were a nightmare as none of the money matched what had been collected from the GI's every month or what had been converted to Korean money to pay the Korean Workers. The Battalion XO supervised the Unit Sundry Fund Officers and he told me to forget about correcting the Sundry Fund Books and to start over.

The Unit's Mess Hall had also been the XO's responsibility before I became the Mess Officer. The Army may not have had a very good reputation for the chow served in its Mess Halls but I had never seen good food turned into an uneatable concoction, until I came to Alfa Battery. As far as I was concerned, there was no excuse for the awful condition of the meals, these GI's were forced to eat and I surely was not going to continue to eat it. My mother had taught all of her boys how to cook, make bread, pies, cakes and cookies just as my father taught my sisters how to use common tools to fix things.

The first day I was the Unit's Mess Officer, I made the Mess Sergeant pay for the unacceptable breakfast meal he had been responsible for cooking.

I remade the coffee and meal before the men of the Missile Platoon came down from their duty on the Hill. I fried eggs to order as the men came in. I had the Korean Mess Hall workers and the GI Cooks prepare and serve fried ham, hot oatmeal or breakfast cereal along with properly browned toast.

After I arrived in the 7th Battalion Headquarters in South Korea I was interviewed by the Battalion Commander who told me it would be several days before I would receive my assignment to a Hawk Missile Battery.

While I was waiting to be assigned, I spent my time reading all the 8th Army's, the 38th Brigade's and the Battalion's Regulations as I knew these were the rules I would need to know to be a good career Officer in South Korea. I believed knowledge was power and I did not want to be like every other new Second Lieutenant who did not know what he was doing or what should be done according to the Regulations. As a result, of my studying the Regulations I also knew my duties as the Unit Mess Officer to insure the food was properly prepared and they gave me the authority to make corrections when it was not done.

As expected the Mess Sergeant went to the Battery Commander and the First Sergeant to protest my action to make him pay for the breakfast meal and I was called "on the carpet" by the Battery Commander.

In the presence of the First Sergeant and the Mess Sergeant, the Battery Commander asked me to explain what I thought I was doing. When I quoted the correct Regulation and the authority of the Mess Officer, it took them by surprise, as they had not expected a new Second Lieutenant to have such knowledge and understanding of the Military Regulations. I also referenced the Army's Regulations on the individual's restitution responsibility for the loss of property due to negligence or dereliction of duty.

When the Mess Sergeant realized things were not going as he expected and he could face serious Military Charges he asked for a Transfer to another Unit. I told the Battery Commander to give it to him as he was not doing the job here and the men deserved to have decent food to eat. I then added that as long as I was the Unit's Mess Officer I would see the men were served good chow even if I had to cook it myself.

I was asked to leave the Battery Commander's Office while he and the First Sergeant discussed the turn of events. I went back to the Mess Hall to supervise the preparation for the noon meal. By this time, all the Cooks in the Mess Hall were doing their jobs as if a General was coming for a visit and I was pleased they were taking me as the Unit's new Mess Officer seriously. The meal was cooked correctly and it was served, as it should be.

After the Battery Commander and the First Sergeant ate their lunch, they came into the kitchen to complement the Cooks on the excellent meal and they found me making out the Mess Hall's food requisition form for the next Supply Run.

"Lieutenant Corrigan, I don't know how you did it." The Battery Commander stated. "But that was the best meal I have had in this Unit and if you want me to transfer the Mess Sergeant I will do it."

"Maybe that will not be necessary if he has learned from this experience. Let me talk with him and see if he wants to remain here and work with me, as he should know what he is doing to have the rank he has, Sir." I suggested. The First Sergeant thought it was a good idea to resolving the situation in the Unit. Otherwise we would be airing our 'dirty linen' in the Battalion and he would have to talk with the Battalion Sergeant Major to explain what happened if the Battery Commander was going to Transfer the Mess Sergeant.

Things worked out well as the Mess Sergeant knew he was letting the Korean Kitchen workers cook the meals and they were not following the Army's prescribed recipes. I also gave him an incentive to be Alfa Battery's Mess Sergeant. I told him if he did his job and made this Mess Hall the pride of the Command I would not make him pay for the meal he screwed up.

Within a week, the Mess Hall had smiling faces on the GI's coming into the Mess Hall to eat and that month Alfa Battery became the best Mess Hall in the Battalion. To show my appreciation for this accomplishment and the improved quality of the food served I bought a case of beer for an after-hours party in the Mess Hall and I included the South Korean workers.

Since Alfa Battery was a 24 hour a day active Combat Unit, the Mess Hall Regulations required it to serve four meals a day as the midnight meal would be the midday meal for those GI's on duty on the Hawk Missile Site.

It was up to the Mess Sergeant and the Mess Officer to order the extra meal from any food items served that day. There was no reason not to order stakes or any other premium food items for this meal, if those extra food items Requisitioned by the Unit were authorized in 8th Army's Master Menu for any meal during that day.

This authorized extra meal had the added benefit of allowing the Unit to Requisition enough food as if the entire Unit would be eating it. Since no one could predict when or what the North Korean's would do, every man could be involved in performing the Unit's Combat Mission and they were entitled to eat this extra meal.

Although the intended purpose of this Regulation was for this fourth meal, it did not say when these men had to eat it or what should be done with the food if it had not been served. Using the Mess Hall Regulations and selectively ordering the best food items from the Master Menu for the Unit's fourth meal, we had saved up enough of the extra quality food items for a Unit Party the end of the first month.

Unfortunately, with all the positive changes I made at Alfa Battery they could not overcome other events affecting the Unit's Combat effectiveness. When the Battery Commander went back to the United States the XO was not given the Command of the Battery, as he was due to go home the next month and so was the Missile Platoon Leader.

The new Battery Commander started screwing up the day he arrived. A Missile Unit Commander would be relieved of Command if the unit could not perform its Air Defense Mission and the men knew how to put their Commander in that position, when they felt they were being unfairly dealt with, by him. All it took was to have a critical piece of equipment necessary to perform the Air Defense Mission to go none operational.

A Hawk Missile Battery has two Missile Sections of 3 Missile Launchers with 3-Hawk missiles and each Section has a High Power Illuminator Radar, which acquires and tracks the enemy Target and feeds electronic data into the computer to control the Hawk Missile to intercept and destroy the Target. During a Combat Mission, all the Hawk Missiles in these two Missile Sections will be armed and ready. Their control is passed on to the Air Defense Officer in the Fire Directional Control Van who will use the Acquisition Radar to locate, indentify, track and engage the enemy aircraft with one or both Missile Sections.

A Hawk Missile Unit's Combat Readiness and Operational Status is determined, by the number of functioning Missile Launching Sections and if the Battery has the ability to use the Acquisition Radar. The easiest way to limit the Hawk Unit's Combat Readiness is to put one of the Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radars out of action.

However, if both of the Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radars or the Acquisition Radar went none operational, the Hawk Missile Unit cannot perform its Air Defense Mission.

Within three days, Bravo Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar went none operational and the Radar Maintenance Section was unable to locate and fix the problem. The new Battery Commander went to the Hill to check on the problem and he threatened to keep the whole Missile Launching Platoon on the Hill, until that Radar was operational. Bravo Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar was operational within a few hours but Alfa Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar went out of action. The renewed threats from the Battery Commander resulted in the Acquisition Radar going none operational and then both Missile Tracking Radars went out of Action.

The Battalion's Radar Maintenance Support Team could not locate the problem and neither could the 38th Brigade's Support Team. The Battalion Commander and the command's Sergeant Major came to Alfa Battery and after meeting with the Unit's None Commission Officers, the Battery Commander was relieved of his Command. The next day the Unit became operational with the XO as the temporary Unit Commander until a new Battery Commander took command of Alfa Battery three days later.

The next Battery Commander lasted only two months. The XO and the Missile Platoon Leader had completed their Military Tour of Duty in South Korea and they had rotated back to the States. They were replaced with a Unit transferred First Lieutenant from Delta Battery as the XO and a new Second Lieutenant became the Missile Platoon Leader while I remained as the Service Platoon Leader with the Mess Hall, Motor Pool, the Unit's Property Books and the Supply Room as my normal Duties. The new Second Lieutenant as part of his extra duties became the Unit's Sundry Fund Officer, the Unit's Safety Officer, the Communication Officer and the PX Officer.

Alfa Battery's problems continued when it failed its annual IG Inspection even though the Motor Pool, the Supply Room and the Mess Hall had received Superior Ratings. We were to be re-inspected by the 8th Army's IG Inspection team within the next 120 days

A week after the failed IG Inspection there was an electrical fire in the main compartment of Bravo Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar, which destroyed all the circuits making it completely none operational and beyond repair based on the Radar Experts at the Depot Support facilities. Winter had come early with plenty of snow and it stayed in sub zero conditions making the roads impossible to move the damaged Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar to the Depot Maintenance facilities or have the new Radar brought into the Battery.

Alfa Battery's position in Mig Alley was critical to the Air Defense Mission in South Korea and it could not be fully Combat Ready without having both Missile Sections operational. The Battery Commander was not dealing with these problems very well. He was trying to correct the problems in the Unit by becoming a more demanding Commander and it was not working, as the Battery went none operational when the other Missile Tracking Radar went out of Action.

Rather than try to change his method of Command he asked to be relieved and the XO assumed Command. The Battalion did not have another Officer to assign to Alfa Battery and there were no new Officers schedule to come into South Korea due to the demands for Officers in Vietnam.

The new Battery Commander did not last a month, as he was not able to bring the Unit to any Combat Ready Operational status. I was having my own problems as the bad roads were limiting travel to our Supply Facilities and the Depot Maintenance Support Unit to get our vehicles repaired. We were lucky if we could make a single Truck Supply Run sometime during the week and if we could not the men were eating "C" Rations in the Mess Hall.

The Combat or "C" Rations the Unit had were from World War II and the Korean War and they were part of the Unit's emergency meals. Many of the "C" Rations had a date of manufacture the year I was born and 1943 may not have been the best year during World War II to have them made.

The Mess Sergeant knew I expected him to use all his knowledge and cooking experience to take these "C" Rations and make some remarkable meals out of them. There were actual "C" Ration recipes created by the American GI's over the years, which established what types of "C" Rations could be combined and mixed together to make appetizing meals and the Mess Sergeant knew them all.

By this time, I had perfected the South Korean barter system to do some "horse trading" to get what the Unit needed. I was able to get a set of snow tire chains for one of our two and a half ton trucks. We needed this truck to make the three mile run on the snow and Ice filled road to the top of the mountain to change the shifts of the Missile Crews and haul up their Mess Hall prepared meals during the day.

No matter how hard I tried to find another set of snow tire chains in Korea, they just were not available at any price. I did get almost a ton of one-inch linked chain from 8th Army's Salvage Unit in Yongson.

This was the first time I was able to use what I had learned from Mr Hacker the Blacksmith in Granville Junction. I built a Blacksmith's forge in the Motor Pool and I used it to make truck snow tire chains using the one set of tire chains I had as my pattern. When our Supply Truck using my snow tire chains made its first run to Camp Humphries those snow tire chains sparked an unusual amount of interest.

Private Peters who was the normal Supply Run Driver had also learned how to wheel and deal to get what the Battery needed. He told anyone who asked him about the new snow tire chains that he knew where to get them and he came back with three orders for my snow tire chains.

Having something everyone wanted and needed in South Korea allowed you to name your price. I made the three sets of snow tire chains he had promised to bring on his next Supply Run along with two more sets. What Private Peters came back with was a pallet load of frozen stakes and two pallet loads of canned chicken as that was all he could carry on his Supply Truck with all the other supplies the Battery had ordered and received.

The Mess Sergeant was thrilled to receive all this extra food and he came up with a list of what else he would like to have if we could get it. I talked with the other Section leaders in the Battery, to get their list of must have supplies they could not get through the normal Supply Channels.

Since I could not spend all my time making snow tire chains, I taught some of the Korean Repair and Utility workers how to make them. Mr Uh the owner of the Korean Contract Repair and Utility Company, was delighted by what I did to teach his men and he wanted to know if he could sell some of these Snow Tire Chains as the Korean Buses also needed them to travel the snow and ice filled roads. When I told him that was not a good idea I could see he was disappointed but when I suggested he make them himself, the smile came back on his face. I helped him build his forge in a mud hut in the Korean Village outside of the Main Gate.

Within a week, Mr Uh gave me four sets of snow tire chains made out of smaller chain-links designed to fit on the Battery's 4-Jeeps and he had a metal Jeep Cab installed on the Battery Commander's Jeep. Things in South Korea were done this way, as one favor obligated the receiving party to return a favor where it was needed.

With the Army's increased manning requirements in Vietnam, we were not getting any replacements for the Missile Crewmen who had rotated back to the United States. The Unit's strength continued to drop to a critical level and we were not getting anyone even in the Service Support Platoon. Everyone in the Service Platoon was now performing double duty, as part of the Security Force for the Missile Site on the Hill as there was not enough Missile Crewmen to do it and perform our Air Defense Mission.

There was a break in the weather and I made a three truck run to the Maintenance Depot with all the trading materials I could get my hands on. I also took 3-cases of whiskey and 10 sets of truck snow tire chains. I "wheeled and dealed" for all the parts I needed to repair our vehicles and even those parts that were beyond our Unit's authorized echelon of maintenance.

The Army's Regulations specifically stated what level of maintenance a Unit such as Alfa Battery was authorized to perform on its vehicles. However if I tore the vehicle apart there was nothing in the Regulations to stop me from ordering our Motor Pool from putting the vehicle back together with the new parts.

I was in the middle of tearing apart the engine of a "Duce and a Half" Truck when the First Sergeant came to the Motor Pool. He was the type of First Sergeant who spoke only to the Battery Commander and he rarely spoke to an Officer and even less to a Second Lieutenant so I was surprised when he came to see me in the Motor Pool.

"Lieutenant, the Commander is going to be relieved and I have recommended you be given the Command of the Battery. I will admit I did not like what you did to the Mess Sergeant at the time, but you have shown me you not only know the Army's Regulations you also know how the bend the rules to get things done, just as you are doing now.

We both know how things work in these Missile Units when the men turn against the Battery Commander. It is not like the rest of the Army, where everyone must follow Orders whether they like them or not. What goes on in the Air Defense Unit's is black mail pure and simple and the Commander is at the mercy of the technicians as he cannot do their jobs and there is no one else he can order to do it.

We are in a very difficult position here on the top of the mountain in the center of Mig Alley as the entire country of South Korea is open to Air Attack when Alfa Battery is none operational. The North Koreans have been stepping up their military activities as part of the Communist effort to limit our Army's ability to support the War in South Vietnam. I wouldn't put it passed them to send some of their Migs into South Korea and rattle both the South Korean's and 8th Army's cages. We must get this unit operational.

You have the support of all the NCO's and I will do whatever it takes to help you. The Battalion Commander believes you are the one Officer he has who can get this job done. He has seen what you have done to boost the morale for the men in the Unit by improving the quality of the food served in the Mess Hall. He also knows only your sections received a Superior Rating during the IG Inspection.

The Battalion Commander is waiting for you to call him and if you are willing to assume Command of Alfa Battery he will verbally Order you to take Command and your orders will be cut at Battalion Headquarters today." The First Sergeant concluded.

"All right First Sergeant. Let me wash some of this grease off my hands and we will make that call to the Battalion Commander. Tell the Battery Clerk to call all the Battery's NCOs for a meeting in the Mess Hall right after I am finished with the Battalion Commander." I found myself saying.

The Battalion Commander wished me luck and promised his complete support. While I had the Battalion Commander's attention, I asked him for as many men as he could find. I explained the Unit's strength was approaching a critical condition where we did not have enough men to pull the required Security Guard Duty on the Hill and have enough men to operate the Missile site.

The meeting with the NCO's went well as I told them I needed their help and I expected their support. I reinforced what the First Sergeant told me, about the increased threat from the North Koreans and the importance of Alfa Battery's Mission to the security of all of South Korea. I also told them Alfa Battery was not the only Unit who was undermanned as the entire 8th Army was less than 60% of their authorized strength and the way things were going on in Vietnam we may not be getting any more men.

"There is only one thing I am asking you to do and that is to try to do your best and you can expect the same from me. I believe the men of Alfa Battery are better than what we have allowed this unit to become. I am looking to you for suggestions and better ways to overcome the problems we have and I know you will not let me down.

One more thing I will be in my Office every Monday night after supper until midnight and if you have a question, a problem or a suggestion you do not need an appointment to see me."

I held a meeting with the Unit's Officers in the Missile Site's Ready Room on the Hill, as I wanted them all to hear what I had to say and the only place this meeting could take place was on top of the mountain as one Officer was always on the hill and in Command of the Missile Unit.

I then held a meeting with just the Warrant Officer and his Radar Maintenance Section. I told them how critical Alfa Battery was to the Defense of South Korea and I did not care what they did, to get this Hawk Battery Operational, as it had to be done.

Surprise, surprise the none operational Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar, was fixed by the time I went to bed at midnight and Alfa Battery had assumed its Alert Status at 2355 Hours. I called the Mess Sergeant and told him the break out the stakes we were saving for the next Unit Party, as we would be having them for breakfast.

The Battalion Commander called me the next morning to congratulate me on achieving our Unit's Alert Status and he wanted to know if I could use some special soldiers known as McNamara' Project 100,000.

Little did I know when I agreed to take them that these Draftees' were men who had an IQ of less than 100 and they bordered on being intellectually classified as "Moron's" and they were as dumb as a "box of rocks." The Battery was desperate for men and I was willing to take anyone with a warm body who was still breathing if he could carry a rifle and pull Guard Duty. I should have known something was wrong when the Colonel told me I could take all 25 of them as he felt they would do better if they remain as a group.

Two days later 25 men fresh from the Infantry's Advanced Training school arrived at Alfa Battery with a Staff Sergeant who literally had to tell them they could get out of the Truck or they would have just sat there.

The Mess Sergeant was expecting them to arrive sometime after 8 pm and he had made enough extra chow to feed them. The Staff Sergeant marched the men into the Mess Hall. He then ordered them to hang their duffle bags on the backs of their chairs stating he did not want them to lose their property. The First Sergeant came to get me after he had witnessed how these men had to be "told" to get out of the truck and moved in a line formation into the Mess Hall.

"Sir, you are not going to believe this." He began and he continued to explain what they were like as we went to the Mess Hall.

When I walked into the Mess Hall there sat the 25 men almost at attention while they ate. Each man's dinner tray was exactly two inches from the edge of the table and their duffle bags were standing next to their chair just below their left elbows.

Someone yelled "Officer" and they all jumped to attention and just stood there.

"As you were!" I called out and the men sat down with a uniform grin on their faces and started to eat again. I could not help but notice each man's dinner tray had the same amount and type of food in the same tray's compartment and their cups were in the same location two inches from the top right hand corner and even with the top edge of their food tray. I remember thinking about the Pershing Rifles Drill Team taking pride in their precision but this was carrying the desire for uniformity and precision to the ridiculous.

Staff Sergeant Adams came over and introduced himself and he told us he had brought these men all the way from Fort Benning where they had completed the Advanced Infantry Course. They had been going to Vietnam until they had been diverted in Alaska and then put on another airplane to South Korea. I was getting the feeling Sergeant Adams was babysitting these men, who had to be told when they could go to the latrine.

The First Sergeant asked about their Military Training and Staff Sergeant Adams told us he had been their Platoon Sergeant since Basic Training and through their Advanced Course. He expressed the confidence they were qualified Infantrymen who would carry out any orders they were given.

The Mess Sergeant announced if anyone wanted anything more to eat, they could come and get it. However, the men just sat there looking back at Sergeant Adams waiting for him to give them his approval.

"All right you guys. Anyone who wants more chow get in line behind me." Sergeant Adams ordered and every man got up into a line formation. "Now don't make pigs of yourselves but you can take what you want and you better eat what you take." He also ordered.

After the men sat back down at their tables' and started to eat, I notice something was missing and it took me a moment to realize none of the men were talking.

Sergeant Adams explained the men were not allowed to talk when they were eating as it would distract them and they might not have enough time to finish eating. The First Sergeant and I looked at each other and I knew we were both thinking, "How much trouble we had gotten ourselves into by taking McNamara's Project 100,000 men."

"First Sergeant, I think it would be a good idea if we put these men together in the top half of one of the barracks." I suggested.

"Yes Sir, I'll get right on it." He responded and left the Mess Hall.

"Well Sergeant Adams I have the Supply Sergeant waiting in the Supply Room to issue bedding to these men any time you think they are ready." I advised him.

"Yes Sir. Do you mind if I give the men a smoke break as they usually get one after supper." Sergeant Adams told me.

"That's fine. The Supply Room is in the Admin Building and if you take your men around to the back door, Sergeant Duvack will issue the bedding from there. Is there anything else I should know about?" I asked.

"Yes Sir. What time does your Unit hold morning calisthenics?" He asked and I realized Sergeant Adams had no idea how an Air Defense Missile Battery operated as his only experience was in an Infantry Unit.

"Why don't you let your men sleep in and we can discuss things tomorrow while they are putting their equipment away." I suggested and he thanked me, as if I had just done him and his men an unexpected favor.

The next morning I called the Battalion Commander. I did not want to admit I did not know what type of men he was sending but I needed to discuss some of the problems the First Sergeant and I had already seen with using the limited abilities these McNamara's Project 100,000 men had.

It was evident to me Defense Secretary McNamara was using all his power and influence to make his idea work. He literally had someone hold these soldiers hands from the time they joined the Army and go through Infantry Training. Rather than admit this project was a mistake, McNamara had continued to have someone go with these soldiers to their duty assignment, as they were not capable of thinking or acting without someone telling them what to do.

I was concerned about how easily someone could take advantage of these men. I could see the highly intelligent men who operate the Air Defense Missile's system not only making fun of these men but also what would happen when the Project 100,000 men rebelled against such treatment. This problem would only get worse, as there was no way to keep them out of trouble once Sergeant Adams, their "Den Mother" returned to the United States.

What I found out from the Colonel did not help my situation, as he did not know what he was getting until he saw these men in his Headquarters. However, by then it was too late. The Battalion Commander had agreed to take these men, as the alternative to not getting anyone. The Battalion Commander told me to do whatever I could to use them and he was confident I could do it if anyone could. I was stuck in a **Catch 22** as I had asked for the men and I was not going to admit this was too great of a problem I could not handle.

That I did not know was the Colonel had tried to send them back and the 8th Army Commander who was being pressured by the Pentagon and the Secretary of Defense to use these men, had told the Battalion Commander if these men did not work out, these men would be reassigned to an Infantry Unit on the Korean DMZ.

"There is one thing that might help, Sir. This Sergeant Adams knows how to handle these men. Is it possible to have him assigned to the Battery?" I asked as my mind was trying to work out a way to use these men.

"For how long?" He asked.

"I am not sure Sir." I admitted but I felt I had opened the door to a possible solution. "Maybe until I can see how these men fit into the Battery." I quickly added.

"Let me get back to you on that. Is there anything else?" The Colonel said and he paused hoping I would not ask for anything else.

"No Sir." I found myself saying before the Colonel hung up the phone and when I looked at the First Sergeant who was listening on the extension phone I could see his eyes rolling towards the ceiling of my office.

We had just started to discuss the problem of using these soldiers when we heard someone barking out commands for doing the Army's Daily Dozen or Physical Training also known as "PT."

Sergeant Adams had his 25 men lined up in military formation in the Motor Pool's parking lot as he was conducting physical training on what should have been their day-off.

What I had been concerned about having these men in the Unit was coming to a head quicker than I thought it would. Sergeant Adams and his men had an audience made up of some of the rest of the men in the Battery. These men from the Battery were making "cat calls" towards these new men.

"Knock it off, unless you want to join them." The First Sergeant yelled and the audience immediately disappeared.

I took the opportunity to welcome the new men to Alfa Battery and I complemented them on their precision in performing their PT. I explain how important it was to have them here as part of our Security Guard Force.

My mind was running a mile a minute, as I wanted to cover the basic things I was expecting of them but I was not sure they would understand it. There is one concept in the Army that always worked called "Kiss" which stood for "Keep it simple stupid" if you wanted the men to understand and follow your orders. You had to tell them what you were going to tell them and then tell them. Then you would tell them what you told them as if they were stupid and they would not otherwise understand it.

I told them I would interview each one of them in my office and I wanted them to fill out a Post Card Sergeant Adams would give them which would be mailed to their mothers telling her where they were assigned and the mailing address to the Battery. I normally would have a new member of the Battery send a letter home but I had the feeling these men may not be able to write a letter without some help and having Sergeant Adams helping them mail a simple Post Card would be the easiest way to get this done.

When I asked if they had any questions I received a shout from the men, "Sir, No Sir!" and I knew I was in deep trouble.

After Sergeant Adams dismissed his men, he brought their Personnel Records to the First Sergeant. This was very unusual as those Records are normally kept in the Battalion's Headquarters of the S-1 who was the Staff Officer responsible for maintaining all the Battalion's Personnel Records. By this time I had learned more about McNamara's Project 100,000 soldiers after talking with 8th Army's G-1's Personnel Sergeant Major and I was grateful to have those Personnel Records as they gave me the complete military history of each men and what mental limitations they had.

My interviews went as well as anyone could expect as I found several of Sergeant Adams' men to be more intelligent than I first feared. It was not a question if they were black or white soldiers but it had more to do with where they had grown up and lived. The limitations of some of these men may have more to do with their coming from poor social and economic conditions and the lack of a quality education, than their ability to think.

Most of the white soldiers and a few of the black soldiers came from poorer rural areas in the south where they had learned to work as farm laborers and they had a strong level of Patriotism. The other white soldiers and the majority of black soldiers were street smart who had learned how to survive in the inner cities but not necessarily by legal means and they were given a choice of going into the Army or going to jail.

To these men of questionable abilities, McNamara's Project 100,000 opened the door of opportunity to join the Army where their families would know their son would be fed three times a day, be properly clothed and they would have a warm bed to sleep in. Although this may have been a great opportunity for these men, it did not mean the Army was prepared to deal with them and I was no stranger to learning disabilities.

I had worked with black and white children in the inner city of Milwaukee as part of the University of Wisconsin's Political Science Study to determine what age these children were still able to learn. Three times a week I held a school homework study hall in a black family's home in the inner city. This would be a quiet place, where the children could come and do their homework. I was there to help them when they did not understand how to do their homework assignments. I had a mix of students from third to eighth grade and my biggest initial problem was maintaining good order and discipline. That was quickly resolved when I told the disrupting party to leave and the child knew if he were expelled from this study hall, his parents would want to know why and the truth of their disruptive behavior would come out.

The parents of these children wanted someone to help their children do better in school and they were hoping this University Program would come up with answers to why their children were not learning.

The disruptive student tried to bully his way out of the situation and when that did not work as it did in school, he cried. Having used the "stick" it was time to use the "carrot" and I told him he could stay if he behaved himself and did his homework. The only problem was he did not have any idea how to do his homework and he was not the only one having this problem.

I remembered my own problems which came from not learning the basics of how to read and write until I flunked 4th Grade and my mother spent the summer teaching me what I should have known since first grade. If I had this problem in learning the basics, they could also have a similar problem. I had to start somewhere even though I was not their normal teacher.

A third grader was having problems doing her homework in simple arithmetic and I asked if anyone could help her. When no one could, I wondered how these students had passed to a higher grade as none of them knew how to add, subtract or multiply at the third grade level. I took this problem to the Director of the University's Study. He was surprised by what I told him, as this was an indictment against the entire City's School system if it was true.

The University's Study was expanded to look into this possibility and all the children involved in the program were given an educational proficiency test to establish their grade level and not what grade they were in school. I never heard the results of that test before I graduated from College.

Years later I found out the University's Study had determined children over four years of age had more difficulties learning if they were not exposed to recognizing and understanding numbers and the letters of the alphabet before that age. Further studies established a pilot program for what would eventually become the "Head Start Program" and the bases for the children's Television Program _Sesame Street._

I will admit my experience with black people was limited before I came in the Army. When I was growing up in Granville I never saw a black man until I was seven years old when I met him at Logon's Store at Granville Junction. He was working as part of the migratory workers at the Pea Vinery where truckloads of peas were brought in from the Farms for the first step to having the Peas canned in the Granville Canning Factory.

There was only one black family living in the Town of Granville. I met Jimmy who was in my high school class and his sister Violet was in my sister Sue Ann's Class. They were treated like celebrities due to their uniqueness of being black in an all white school.

There were of course a number of black students at the University but I never thought I was any different until the Civil Rights Movement and the Freedom Marches became commonplace in the National Headline News. I believed in equal rights and due to my extensive traveling on the 5th Virginia Cavalry's Musket Team and with the University's Rifle and Pershing Rifles Drill Teams, I became more aware of the legitimate complaints of the black people. What I did not understand were the race riots, which burnt down so much of the country's major inner cities and the need to call out the National Guard to control these riots as this happened after I came to South Korea.

Perhaps the greatest sin would be, not knowing if you were prejudice when you were. As an Officer in the United States Army and as the Battery Commander, I did not want to second-guess any of my orders or leave any question I was not treating all my men equally. Actually, I found the answer was quite simple and it was something I always felt if I were right, I would be right in front of God and everyone.

In the Army, the Mission comes first and as the Battery Commander, accomplishing the Mission did not always seem fair to those who were required to give more than the next man. Sergeant Adams would be placed in that position, as I needed him to remain in South Korea and manage these McNamara Project 100,000 soldiers until I could find an alternative. Right now Alfa Battery needed those men if we were to accomplish our Air Defense Mission and I had no idea of what would happen if he did not stay.

While I was waiting for the Battalion Commander to work his magic and pull whatever strings he had to pull to keep Sergeant Adams in Korea, the Warrant Officer asked to see me. Mr Staup had Specialist 4th Class Hanson who was the Battery's Radar Maintenance Specialist with him and Mr Staup asked if I would "order" Hanson to fix the burned out Missile Tracking Radar. Mr Staup was well aware of what I had been doing in the Motor Pool to fix the Unit's vehicles even though it was against the Army's Regulations for a Unit to perform that echelon level of Maintenance.

He went on to explain. "If you could 'order' the Motor Pool to put the vehicle back together than you have already established the precedence to ordering the Radar Maintenance people to do the same thing. I have made a list of all the parts we need. I am confident we can put Bravo Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar back into full operation and make Alfa Battery Fully Combat Ready."

I was aware of the "slush fund" he and the NCO's on the Hill had established a system to buy electronic parts and circuits when the normal Military Supply System did not have them. They were using the Northwestern Airline Pilots who regularly flew the "Red Tail Flights" in and out of Kimpo Air Base South Korea as their purchasing agents. These Pilots would go to a Radio Shack Store in the United States to buy what they needed based on the Radar's schematic's. I am not sure how it got started but it worked, as electronic circuits used in the Radars were just like, any other electronic parts found in the electronics Industry.

"Just how much will all these electrical parts cost?" I started to ask, as I did not feel they should be spending their own money to fix the Army's Equipment. However, I realized I had done the same thing to get the parts we needed in the Motor Pool. I quickly added. "Here's 100 dollars and if you need any more let me know."

"Thank you Sir and I think that will cover it." Mr Staup said with a grin.

"All right Spec 4 Hanson, you have been "ordered" to Fix, Bravo Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar and if you want that order in writing I will have it typed up for you." I said knowing he would try his best.

It was almost midnight when the Colonel called, to tell me Sergeant Adams would be assigned to Alfa Battery for as long as I needed him. That was the easy part and the hard part would be telling Sergeant Adams he was not leaving South Korea.

The First Sergeant had already taken Sergeant Adams to the top of our mountain on the noon Chow Run and he explained the importance of our Hawk Battery's Air Defense Mission here in South Korea. From the very top of the mountain where all the Radars were located, the First Sergeant was able to show Sergeant Adams the position of each Hawk Missile Section's Missile Launchers and point out the Unit's 24 hour Security Requirement to man the established Guard Positions we were using to protect the Missile Site from an enemy ground attack. The greatest threat of a ground attack would come from North Korean Sapper's who would attempt to sneak in and blow up our Radars and the Missile Launchers.

Sergeant Adams asked a number of questions as he viewed the Hill as a defensive position through the experienced eyes of an Army Infantrymen. Sergeant Adams had already served a tour in Vietnam which had Artillery Fire Bases located on similar positions on the hill tops to support the Infantry operations within the range of their guns. These Artillery Fire Bases were also subject to attack by North Vietnamese and Vietcong Sappers so this Missile Unit's ground defense was nothing new to Sergeant Adams.

The next morning I asked Sergeant Adams to share a cup of coffee with me during breakfast.

"Let me make it easy on you Lieutenant. I already know you have asked your Battalion Commander if I can be assigned here and he has agreed. I have had the opportunity to talk with a number of your men and they speak very highly of you, Sir. I will be proud to serve with you, Sir." Sergeant Adams told me and asked."Well there be anything else Sir?"

"Thank you." I found myself saying and I felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders.

Sergeant Adams experience as an Infantryman had proved his worth to the Battery as he had assessed the Battery Defense plans and came to me with several suggestions he felt I should consider.

It is amazing what a new set of eyes would see yet I had looked at the same landscape every day I had duty on the Hill and I had missed it. He moved some of the Guard Bunkers to better positions and he took the time and effort to camouflage all the Bunkers hiding them so well they would not be seen from 25 yards away. He had his men clear away the brush and trees from obvious approaches to our perimeter fence and he set trip wires and booby traps in the less obvious ones.

He reorganized the Security Guards to rotate their duty shifts every 12 hours when the Relief and Mess Trucks came to the Hill rather than when the 24-hour Duty Shifts the Missile-crewmen were working. He asked me to promote three of his men to be corporals as they would be his Guard Duty's Sift Leaders. An Air Defense Battery did not have corporals in its Table of Organization and I had to get the Battalion Commander to make an exception.

If an idle mind is the devils workshop then when these men were off duty the devil had his playground and these men could get into more trouble by accident than any trouble 10 other men could dream up. Sergeant Adams' solution was to keep them busy. He had his beautification projects all over the Battery and I could not tell you how many times he had the Flagpoles painted in between their preparation classes to take their High School Equivalency or GED Test.

One of my major concerns dealt with the potential trouble these men might get into if they went to the Korean city of Osan. I could not just restrict them to the Unit as the rest of the Battery was free to go anywhere on their days off. I asked the men in the Battery to adopt one of the Security Guards as their brother and go with him, if his "brother" wanted to go anywhere beyond the local Korean Village.

This was marginally successful and every time one of my special soldiers went into Osan, I held my breath, as I knew I could be getting a MP report citing some Military Violation that occurred. These reports required a reply by endorsement from the Unit Commander stating what disciplinary action I took to correct the infraction. Normally the Unit XO would handle that paper work but I did not have one yet and the Battalion was working on it.

The Battalion Commander told me I would have the next Officer who came in to the Battalion. Two new Officers had come into the Battalion but they would out rank me and the Battalion Commander did not want to upset something that was working.

All the men in Alfa Battery were working really hard, to get ready for of our 8th Army IG's Re-inspection scheduled for next week and I had completely forgotten about the effort to "repair" the Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar.

The First Sergeant came in my Office and told me I had better take this call from Mr Staup. "Lieutenant you better come up to the Hill as the men want you to have the honor of Commanding the Battery when we assume Full Combat Ready Status. Yes we have Bravo Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar up and running for six hours now and it is performing beyond expectations." He told me.

The trip to the top of our mountain seemed to take forever and when I arrived, Mr Staup was standing in the Fire Directional Control Van's door with a huge grin on his face. As I walked in the Control Van's door, I gave the command, "Blazing Skies" as that was the order used to assume "Battle Stations" and prepare to engage enemy aircraft.

Both Missile Sections' Crews ran their Missile Preparation Drills and the lights indicating the "ready" Hawk Missiles in each Section appeared on each Missile Section's Control Counsel in the Command and Control Van. With a full board of 18 Ready Missile lights, I stopped the Stopwatch to indicate when we had become fully Combat Ready. We had done the Operation Readiness Drill in record time and all that remained was to track an Aircraft with each Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar to prove Alfa Battery was Fully Combat Ready.

The Acquisition Radar picked up an Aircraft that had left Kimpo Air Base some time ago and it was most likely the Northwest Airline's flight to Japan carrying GI's home after they had completed their Tour in South Korea. Both Missile Sections High Power Illuminator Radars had a "Lock on" the Aircraft as if that airplane had been designated as an "Enemy Target," Alfa Battery would have engaged it with its Hawk Missiles.

"Well Done. Tell the Missile Sections the beer is on me." I told the Crews. "Keep tracking the Target and let's see just how good a job Spec 4 Hanson did at rewiring Bravo's High Power Radar." I ordered the Missile Section's Counsel Operators.

When the maximum range capabilities of the High Power Illuminator Radar was reached Alfa's Missile Section's High Power Radar lost its lock on the Aircraft but Bravo's High Power continued to hold a "Lock on" the airplane. I looked over at Spec 4 Hanson who was smiling as he had done what he had told me he could do. As the aircraft continue to fly towards Japan, Bravo's High Power Illuminator Radar continued to maintain its lock on the Airplane. We all were amazed by the ability of that Radar to hold its lock on the aircraft as it had flown way beyond the Radar's original designed capabilities.

"Sir the target is slowing down and dropping in altitude." The Bravo's Section Counsel Operator announced and I realized the Northwest Airliner was making its approach to Tokyo's International Airport, which was an impossible distance for a High Power Illuminator Radar to remain locked on the Aircraft.

"Sir I have lost lock on the Target at an altitude of 12,000 feet due to curve of the earth and ground clutter." Bravo's Missile Section Counsel Operator announced confirming my belief the Northwestern Airliner was on its final approach to Tokyo's Airport.

"Very good Johnson, make sure you get a copy of that Radar Track as no one is going to believe it." I told him and I gave Spec 4 Hanson a thumbs up signal for a job well done.

"Get me the 38th Brigade's Air Defense Command Post as I want to report Alfa Battery's change in Combat Alert Status to Fully Combat Ready." I told the men in the Battery's Command and Control Van.

It took the 38th Brigade's Air Defense Commander almost five minutes before he called back to confirm Alfa's Battery's Fully Combat Ready Status as he knew that had to be a mistake.

"Let me speak to the Site Commander." He requested.

"This is Site 45's Commander. What can I do for you?" I asked.

"I have a report of a change of your Alert Status to 'Fully Combat Ready.' Can you confirm this report?" He asked.

"Yes Sir, we are Fully Combat Ready Sir." I calmly replied.

"This has to be a mistake. Do you know what it takes for your Site to be Fully Combat Ready?" The 38th Brigade Air Defense Command Post Commander asked in an authoritarian voice as if I as the Site Commander did not know the Air Defense requirements for a Hawk Missile Unit to be Fully Combat Ready.

"Yes Sir, I have 18 lights and all our Radars are operational." I responded.

"That is impossible," came, his reply. "Have the Battery Commander give me a call." He ordered with frustration in his voice.

"This is the Battery Commander." I started toying with him.

"Verify your Air Defense Identification." He directed.

"This is site 45 and Alfa's Zero One." I responded by giving Alfa Battery's Air Defense Unit's Site designation as 45 and my Rank as a Second Lieutenant being an "O-1" Officer.

"I don't believe you." The Air Defense Commander replied. "Is there another Officer who can verify this?"

"Yes Sir, Alfa's W-2 is in the Command and Control Van and he is on the Line now, Sir." I responded and Mr Staup confirmed the Fully Combat Ready Status of Site 45. He also told the Air Defense Commander if he did not believe him, the 38th Brigade's Operational Readiness Inspection Team could come out and verify it themselves.

Within minutes, General Dean the 38th Brigade's Air Defense Commander was on the Command line to confirm my report. "Lieutenant, you can expect me to arrive at Alfa Battery tomorrow morning. I want to hear the full story before I relieve you of your Command." He stated and hung up the line. The next call came from the Battalion Commander and he said much the same thing about relieving me as the Commander of Alfa Battery.

"Boy Sir, you really got their attention." Mr Staup said as he was grinning from ear to ear. "But you always said when you are right you are right in front of God and everybody and I sure hope General Dean will listen to you before he takes your head off." He added laughing.

"Have no fear as we are on the right side of the Angels. Mr Staup I want you to write up a recommendation for the Army's Meritorious Service Award for Spec 4 Hanson, as I think the Battalion Commander and General Dean will approve it after they see and hear what he has done." I responded as I turned to Spec 4 Hanson and put out my hand. "Well done Hanson, you have done this Battery and yourself proud." I told him as I warmly shook his hand.

The Battalion Commander arrived at Alfa Battery with a panicked look on his face after dark as he had driven from Battalion Headquarters as soon as he hung up the phone.

The Command Sergeant Major called the First Sergeant just before he and the Battalion Commander left the Battalion Headquarters to tell him they were coming. The Command Sergeant Major was not sure why, as the Battalion Commander just said there was an emergency at Alfa Battery and General Dean would be there tomorrow morning early. Although the First Sergeant knew about the rebuilding of the High Power Radar, he did not know what had actually taken place on the Mountain. He felt it was best to say nothing until he knew what actually had taken place. There may well have been an emergency or an accident such as that Radar blowing up.

The First Sergeant called me on the Hill to find out what had happened. He was delighted to hear the Battery had successfully assumed Full Combat Ready Status and he was relieved to hear there had not been an accident or a real emergency as the Sergeant Major had indicated. However, the First Sergeant was now concerned that the Colonel thought there had been an accident and he had left the Battalion in a rush to get here before General Dean arrived.

"First Sergeant this is too good to tell you over the phone. You will never believe it until I tell you what happened and how 38th Brigade reacted when I changed the Battery's Status to Fully Combat Ready. I will be coming down as soon as I am finished congratulating the men on their fine performance. First Sergeant, just one more thing, you better let the Mess Sergeant know he should prepare a late dinner for the Colonel and the Sergeant Major as we both know how long it will take for them to get here." I suggested.

After I told the First Sergeant, everything that had happened and why General Dean and the Battalion Commander were coming to relieve me of Command, the First Sergeant asked why I had not told them about Spec 4 Hanson rewiring Bravo's High Power Radar.

"That's a very good question, First Sergeant." I said as I thought about it before I added. "My only excuse is they never gave me a chance to explain. They just assumed I did not understand what I was doing as I was just a Second Lieutenant who was in over his head in trying to Command this Battery."

Once the Battalion Commander and the Sergeant Major understood what Mr Staup and I told them about rebuilding Bravo Missile Section's High Power Illuminator Radar and how well it preformed, the Colonel stated he needed a good stiff drink.

"Colonel with your permission, I would suggest we adjourn to the Mess Hall as the Mess Sergeant has been saving dinner for you and the Sergeant Major. I will get a bottle from my Officer's quarters and join you there." I stated.

While we were having that drink in the Mess Hall, the Mess Sergeant asked the Colonel and the Sergeant Major how they would like their stakes done and this raised the Colonel's eyebrows.

Before he could ask, I explained how we had gotten them. He could not believe I had made snow tire chains and I had traded them for additional food for the Battery.

"Maybe I should not ask and maybe I do not really want to know. But is there something you want to tell me, off the record before General Dean arrives?" The Colonel began as he had heard rumors about my efforts to keep Alfa Battery's Motor Pool Dead Line Report so low when the other Hawk Batteries continued to have more and more problems maintaining the condition of their vehicles.

With the cat out of the bag on how we got those stakes, I knew I had to tell the Colonel "the rest of the Story" as the popular Radio Commentary Paul Harvey would say. "Strictly off the record Sir as I think you deserve to know." I began. I told him how the Army's System of supply and getting things fixed not only in the Motor Pool, but in all the areas in the Battery just did not work, yet the Unit was expected to perform its mission as if it did. Then I told him how I used the Army's Regulations and the support system here in Korea to get what the Unit needed. As I told him how we had actually obtained all the electrical circuits to rebuild Bravo's High Power Illuminator Radar, I was not sure if he was amazed by what we had done or if he was going to Court Martial me as he just sat there with this blank look on his face.

"Sir, you cannot argue with success." The First Sergeant said as he came to my defense. "In all my days in the Army, I have never seen anyone perform the miracles Lieutenant Corrigan has. He has been able to take the Unit's Mission as a mandate to do whatever is necessary to overcome the almost impossible obstacles the previous Battery Commanders had let defeat them. As you know Sir, from your own Command experience here in Korea there is a lot more to Commanding an Air Defense unit than just giving orders. Nowhere else in any other Branch of the Army is a Unit Commander more vulnerable and at the mercy of his men than he is in these highly technical and sophisticated missile units.

As you know Sir, 99% of the men will perform their duties as expected but it is that 1% a unit Commander must inspire to willingly perform their duties or the entire unit will fail in its mission. I have seen Lieutenant Corrigan inspire his men and challenge them to accomplish things as a Team effort for the good and the pride of being in Alfa Battery and that is why I recommended him to take over the Battery after the last three Battery Commanders had been relieved.

Just look what he has done with McNamara's Project 100,000 men you assigned to this Battery. They are not only doing the job we needed them to do, they have become a model of success no one expected them to become." The First Sergeant concluded.

"You don't have to sell me on that, First Sergeant as I have read your monthly special reports on these soldiers sent to the Sergeant Major, which have been forwarded directly to the Secretary of Defense. We have just received a request from the Department of the Army and the 8th Army's Commander to find out what makes the Project 100,000 men assigned to this Battalion perform as model soldiers when other Units in the Army have reported nothing but problems with these men.

But let's get back to the issue of what Corrigan is doing to make this Battery function so well with the limited number of men and not having his authorized strength of Air Defense Officers. My concern is, how am I going to convince the Army and General Dean what Lieutenant Corrigan has done by necessity, is a reason and the justification to change how the Army is doing things, as it is way beyond my pay grade." The Battalion Commander stated.

"Maybe not, Sir" The Sergeant Major interjected. "If what was done to that High Power Illuminator Radar has allowed it to perform as well as Lieutenant Corrigan claims it has, I think the Army and the Radar's Manufacturer will be very interested in finding out how he did it. I would suggest we contact Depot Support Maintenance immediately and tell them they need to come out and see what Spec 4 Hanson did to that Radar. I also think it would not hurt to have their opinion by the time General Dean gets here."

"That's an excellent idea Sergeant Major as General Dean will more likely believe them, than just what we might be able to show him." The Colonel stated as he was grasping the concept of using the Radar Experts who could explain the significance of this improved capability of Alfa Battery's Radar to General Dean.

"Let me make a call to Mr Staup and have him contact Depot Support." I said as I went to the Mess Hall's phone.

It did not take very long for Mr Staup to understand I had told the Battalion Commander how we have been keeping the Battery operational and his concerns about being able to explain it to General Dean.

We were enjoying freshly baked apple pie when Mr Staup called back. He was pleased to tell me the Radar Maintenance Support Team and the Radar Representative from the Radar Manufacturer had departed from Depot Maintenance and they would be here as fast as they could travel the road with the new snow tire chains they had just received. As I passed along Mr Staup's report to the Colonel, I could only think how those snow tire chains on the Depot Maintenance's Support Truck could make the difference between keeping my job and being relieved of Command.

The next morning as we were having breakfast in the Mess Hall the Depot Support Team and the Raytheon Manufacturer's Representative were singing the praises of Bravo's High Power Illuminator Radar to the Battalion Commander. Apparently, as Spec 4 Hanson was rewiring the Radar, when he came across a circuit that could be improved, he made the modification rather than just rebuilding it as Raytheon had originally designed the Radar. In their opinion, Spec 4 Hanson was a walking electronic genius and they wanted him to come to the United States and work for the Raytheon Company.

Have confirmed the new capabilities of Bravo's High Power Radar, the Colonel suggested he and the Sergeant Major would meet with General Dean when he arrived and he would have the Representative from Raytheon explain how well Spec 4 Hanson had rebuilt the Radar. Depending how well that went, the Battalion Commander would inform the General of the other things I had done to help make the Battery function so well.

I had no problem letting the Colonel calm the General down as it was my turn to assume command of the Missile Site and I had to relieve Mr Staup so he could come down, take a shower and change into a clean uniform before General Dean arrived. Besides once General Dean had been told about the Radar he would be coming up to the Hill to see this High Power Illuminator Radar himself and I would be there waiting with Alfa Battery at Fully Combat Ready Status to demonstrate the improve capabilities of Bravo's Radar.

Once General Dean witnessed the High Power Illuminator Radar track an aircraft to Japan the rest of his visit went like clockwork. It was as if the General was making a routine personal inspection of a Unit who was about to retake the 8th Army's IG Inspection. General Dean never mentioned his meeting with the Battalion Commander and the Representative from Raytheon and he never asked me to explain what I was doing to help the Battery accomplish its Mission. His only question was if I thought the Battery was ready for the re-IG Inspection.

The General asked to see Sergeant Adams, as he wanted to inspect the Battery's Site Security Guard, knowing all of the Guards were McNamara's Project 100,000 men. He was impressed with Sergeant Adams efforts to improve the Missile Site's Security and camouflage all the Security Bunkers. The General was also impressed with the appearance of the Security Guards and he asked them what they thought about serving on a Hawk Missile Site rather than being in a Regular Infantry Unit. They told him this was the easiest duty they ever had and they never ate so good since they had been in the Army.

The General was about to leave the Missile Site when he must have noticed the blued butt on the National Gold Cup Colt 45 Automatic in my holster and he asked if that was my issued sidearm and if I had qualified with it.

I had to admit the pistol was my personal weapon I had used when I competed in the National Pistol Matches at Camp Perry Ohio and I had brought it with me when I came to South Korea. He asked to see it and then asked me again if I had fired my annual qualification with it.

"Yes Sir he has." The First Sergeant spoke up. "Lieutenant Corrigan Instructed all the men who are authorized to used the 45 Automatic how to shoot it and they have qualified as Experts. He also put on an impressive demonstration for the men, when we all went to the Rifle Range." The First Sergeant told him to make sure the General knew all the men in the Battery had completed their annual weapons qualifications.

"I have never been impressed with the Army's 45 as few men can hit anything with it." The General stated. "What makes this weapon any different?"

Before I could tell the General, the First Sergeant told him how I had shot the tips off "Ohio Blue Tipped" matches at 15 yards to light them without once missing or hitting the matchstick.

"I am impressed. I would like to see that myself." The General stated and then wished us luck on the Battery's re-IG Inspection before he departed the Unit.

Three days later two high ranking Executives from the Raytheon Corporation arrived to interview Spec 4 Hanson. If there was one thing I had learned in the Army above all else, it was never say something could not be done when someone in Authority wanted it to happen.

Spec 4 Hanson was offered an immediate Honorable Discharge from the Army if he would agree to work for them at the Raytheon Corporation's R&D Electronics Division. Although Spec 4 Hanson was an electronic genius, he did not have the worldly experience to understand how to protect himself or deal with these fast-talking Executives. I suggested before he agreed to anything that we have a private talk and if looks could kill, I was a dead man in these Executives eyes.

When we were alone in my Office, I began by saying. "Spec 4 Hanson I want to talk to you as if I were your favorite Uncle. You have a very rare gift for which I am eternally grateful and you have helped Alfa Battery beyond most people's understanding. What I am about to tell you is only offered as a suggestion to protect your future and you can do whatever you want with it.

These men from Raytheon want you and what they think you can do for them. They have talked a good game but until they are willing to put it in writing it is only nice words. Tell me what you want to do and I will do my damnedest to see that you get it." I told him.

"I don't understand Sir what should I want?" Spec 4 Hanson asked.

"First of all a guaranteed future and the only way you can have that is get a quality education you can use whether you stay with Raytheon or not. You know a lot about Radars and how to fix them but you do not have the Academic Credentials or the Advanced Educational Degrees to make you a recognized authority on Radars. If you went to work at Raytheon now everything you do for them, someone else will end up getting the credit for what you did for them. That is not only unfair to you and you will never be paid a tenth of the value for all the knowledge you have given them.

I am not telling you not to leave the Army and go to work for them. I think this a great opportunity for you as you have the practical experience to know how these Radars must perform in a Missile Battery and you have already proven you know more about their Radars then they do. They want and need you now, or they would not have flown to South Korea to get you with the authority to make such an offer to you.

Let me suggest you consider where you want to be in 5 or 10 years from now, if you decide to take their offer and make building Radars' your career.

Once I had Spec 4 Hanson's attention focused on the future, it was easy to convince him how he could protect himself and his career. The written employment agreement called for Raytheon to pay for Spec 4 Hanson's Electrical Engineering Degree and to continue to support his educational advancements to obtain advanced Degrees as long as he continued to work for them. Spec 4 Hanson would work while he went to school as Raytheon needed him now and they would benefit from his advanced learning.

The only question that remained was what they were willing to pay him now. I obtained the average starting salaries for Electrical Engineers from the Battalion Personnel Officer and I felt that was a fair salary to begin negotiations with the Raytheon Executives. When they agree too quickly to pay that salary I asked for a $10,000 dollar Contract Signing Bonus and they did not hesitate a moment to agree to pay it. Spec 4 Hanson's only personal condition was he would not leave Alfa Battery until after the 8th Army's Re-IG Inspection next week.

When the 8th Army's IG Inspection Team arrived at Alfa Battery, I was confident we had done everything we could do to prepare for this Re-IG Inspection. I personally inspected every Fire Extinguisher in the Battery, as the failure to make the required monthly checks on each Fire Extinguisher had been the major Safety Faults in the last IG inspection.

The night before the Re-IG Inspection, I held a meeting with all the Officers, their Platoon Sergeants and the Sections Chiefs and I asked them if there was anything else we should had done to make sure we passed this Re-IG Inspection. When no one could think of anything we had not done, I called the NCO Club at Osan Air Base and ordered a keg of beer to be delivered to Alfa Battery. Win or lose the men had worked hard getting ready for this inspection and we would either cry in our beer or celebrate our success.

The Re-IG Inspection went well and the IG Inspection Team could not find any of the pervious faults that had busted the Unit. The Mess Hall, Supply Room and the Motor Pool once again received Superior Ratings. The overall Rating for Alfa Battery's Re-IG Inspection was 81. 3%. This score would not be very good under normal circumstances but here in South Korea that score made Alfa Battery the number one Battery in the Battalion. The Battalion Commander was pleased and he granted my request to "Stand-down" the Battery's Combat Alert Status to 3 hour Maintenance so most of Alfa Battery's men could enjoy the celebration.

As the beer flowed and the men ate all the stakes the Mess Sergeant had saved up for this Party, an Army Helicopter landed in the dry rice-paddy just north of the Administration Compound's northern perimeter fence carrying General Mock who was a three Star General and 8th Army's G-3. Fortunately, one of Sergeant Adams' Security Guards who was Standing Guard at the Front Gate immediately alerted the Duty Officer who drove a jeep out to meet the General.

When I saw the General come into the NCO Club, I had the gut feeling he was not here to congratulate the Battery on passing the Re-IG Inspection as when his eyes focused in on me and I immediately became sober no matter how many beers I had drank.

"Are you, Lieutenant Corrigan?" He asked and he never waited for my response. "Pack your bags as the Commander of 8th Army, General Bonesteel needs you. Oh by the way you are now a First Lieutenant." He stated as he handed me a set of Promotion Orders signed by the 8th Army's Commander and then he walked out of the Battery's NCO Club leaving the place as quiet as a church after someone farted.

"Gentlemen there is no cause to act like this is a funeral, as I am not dead yet. Once I find out what this is all about, I will let you know. I want to thank you for all the hard work you have done in the Battery as you have established yourselves as one of the finest Missile Units in the Country and you have the right to continue to celebrate. Let us fill our glasses and give a toast to your continued success." I found myself saying, as I did not know what else to say.

I quickly stuff a duffel bag with just about everything I owned and the First Sergeant said he would send anything I left behind. The Helicopter ride to 8th Army's Headquarters was too quick as far as I was concerned as I was trying to understand why it was so damned important that only I could do it and they had to send a three Star General in a helicopter to get me. The only thing I knew, they would not have promoted me if they were going to Court Martial me.

# 5. WHEN SHOOTING SKILLS ARE REQUIRED

When General Mock and I arrived at the office of 8th Army's Commanding General, we were immediately ushered in to meet with General Bonesteel. "Welcome Lieutenant Corrigan. It would appear you are the only Officer in my Command, who has any competitive Marksmanship Shooting experience. Your Officer's 201 Personnel File was brought to my attention after I had asked my Chief of Staff to find me an Officer who could teach my men how to shoot and hit something. I desperately need someone with your shooting background. If it had not been for the entry in your 201 File about the presentation of several of your shooting awards from 5th Army's Advanced Marksmanship Unit that finally caught up with you here in Korea, we would never have known about you or all your accomplishments as an expert Marksman.

I had my Chief of Staff call Colonel Kane the ROTC commander at the University of Wisconsin who provided a list of your shooting accomplishments on the school's National Champion Rifle Team and as a member of 5th Army's Rifle Team." The General stated and he proceeded to tell me about an incident on the DMZ where a full Infantry Company on line expended their entire basic load of small arms ammunition at a North Korean in the DMZ less than 300 yards away and they failed to hit him.

"Our investigation established the Infantry Company had 'paper or pencil qualified' its men and none of them had actually fired their weapons. The reason why the men could not hit that North Korean was no one had a 'Battlefield Sight Setting' on their rifles. As far as I am concerned, this is criminal negligence on the part of all their Commanders. If the North Koreans had broken the Cease Fire Agreement and actually attacked these Units, these men could not have defended themselves as the bullets fired from their weapons hit the ground less than 50 yards in front of them.

Our investigation established this practice of 'pencil or paper weapon qualifications' is not limited to only this Infantry Company and this practice had been going on for some time. As far as I am concerned if I had a way to establish just who had conducted these pencil qualification I would Court Martial all of them." The General told me and my mind was telling me if the General checked each Unit's Supply Records, he would know which units had actually fired their Annual Weapons Qualifications. If a Unit did not draw any Ammunition, they could not have shot their qualifications. However, I thought it best to keep this information to myself, until I knew what the General wanted me to do.

"In ten days 60 men will report to you for 10 days of training and I want you to teach them how to shoot, so they can teach the men in their Units how to shoot. Can you do that?" General Bonesteel asked me.

Before I answered him, my mind was racing over all the things I would need to have available and where the General expected me to accomplish this training. I also knew when a Unit is required to send a man it would be someone they did not need to accomplish their Mission. The Unit's 8 Balls and troublemakers would be first on that Unit's list and they would be glad to get rid of them. I could have 60 of South Korea's worst screw-up's who would have no interest in learning, what I was being asked to train them to do. This was a nightmare just waiting to happen and I could see my Army career quickly going down the toilet. When I decided to take a Regular Army Commission, I turned down the opportunity to be the Officer-In-Charge of the Army's International Rifle Team at Fort Benning Georgia. I knew I had to put shooting aside as that would not be an activity where I could expect to be promoted or recognized as being interested in making the Army a Career. Now here I was being pulled back into shooting. But what choice did I have, when a 4-Star General had already selected me to do this job?

"Sir I can teach anyone how to shoot if he is willing to learn." I began to tell him but my mind was full of doubts about how I could actually do what he was asking me to do. "Just where will this training take place?"

"General Mock?" General Bonesteel asked turning to his 8th Army's Operations and Training Officer.

"We don't know yet, Sir?" General Mock responded slowly and I knew I was in trouble if the 8th Army's G-3, had no idea of where I was to conduct this training. "Perhaps if Lieutenant Corrigan will outline what he needs we can take care of it." General Mock added which made me even more uncomfortable about this whole idea and I had to get a better understanding of just what authority I would have as I was hearing that toilet of my career being flushed down the drain.

"General Bonesteel if you want me to do this job, I will need your complete support as being only a First Lieutenant I will need to be able to use your Stars to make it happen in only 10 days." I told him and the General realized I was starting his Marksmanship Training Program from scratch.

"From what I hear from your Battalion Commander, you have a way of getting things done that would seem impossible to other men. Getting the High Power Illuminator Radar back in action at your Hawk Battery is a prime example. If you are willing to do that for me, I will let it be known throughout 8th Army that you are to have their complete support and cooperation and anything you need, will be as if I personally asked them to do it. Is that what you mean by using my Stars?" General Bonesteel asked.

"Yes Sir." I responded.

"Good. What do you need to get started? The General asked.

"We need a Rifle Range I can have complete authority to use exclusively for this Training and a place I can house and support these 60 men. I will need a Senior NCO who will act as my First Sergeant and I will need the best Unit Clerk you can find, who is a wiz at typing and knows the Regulations on completing all the Army's forms especially those in Supply.

If General Mock does not have a Rifle Range, which will meet that requirement I might have a friend on the South Korean President's Secret Service who I shot with in the International Shooting Matches in 1966. If I remember correctly, Mr Song told me about a special range they used to train their Secret Service. I have no idea where it is located or what Units would be close enough to it, to support this Training Unit. If someone will contact the Blue House and make an appointment for me to see Mr Song I will know if we can use that Range." I suggested and both Generals looked at each other wondering just who I was to know such people.

"Get me Mr William Porter the US Ambassador to South Korea." The General spoke into his Office intercom. Within minutes, the General presented his request to the Ambassador and almost as fast, the Ambassador called back confirming my immediate appointment to see Mr Song at the Blue House.

General Mock went with me to see Mr Song who was a Section Chief on the Korean President's Security Force and the Secretary of the South Korean Shooting Federation.

Mr Song was delighted to see me again. When he understood what I needed he was in no position to refuse my request and he would do what he could to help me, as he owed me a debit he had not been able to repay. I had loaned him my International Pistol to shoot in the match when his pistol was broken and no one had the spare part he needed to fix it. Mr Song had shot his best Match on record and he finished in third place bringing honors to the South Korean Pistol Team and his Country.

Mr Song took us to meet the Head of Korean National Security who quickly agreed to allow me and the 8th Army the use of their Secret Range, which was less than two miles from Kimpo Air Base that was also Seoul Korea's International Airport.

Having secured the use of the Rifle Range I knew I had to offer something of value in return to the Head of the Korean National Security. I suggested I would be willing to train and provide the ammunition for any of his men who might benefit from any extra practice. The Head of the Korean National Security just smiled when he accepted my offer, as he knew I understood the ways of dealing in South Korea and I already knew from Mr Song that ammunition was a precious commodity they did not have enough to shoot in practice to be really competitive in the International Matches.

General Mock did not say a word as his driver drove us to the transit Officer's Quarters at 8th Army's headquarters. After I had signed in, General Mock suggested I plan to have breakfast with him and General Bonesteel at 6 am, in General Bonesteel's Quarters and he would send a driver to pick me up.

That night I could not sleep until I had outlined all the things I had to accomplish in the next 9 days before the 60 men arrived. Although Mr Song had told me about the Rifle Range's capabilities I needed to inspect it to make sure it would actually meet my requirements. My next priority was to find a military facility close enough to support my operation and the 60 men I had to train. The thought of living in tents on the Rifle Range would be my last and the least acceptable alternative, as I would need all the equipment and the additional personnel to support a regular Company sized unit in the Field.

During the night, the North Koreans sent several Suicide Sapper Units into South Korea as part of the International Communist efforts to divert and limit the United States Military's support for the War in South Vietnam. Although these surprise attacks had been only marginally successful one of the North Korean Unit's had reached the South Korean President's residence in Seoul Korea and the last Sapper had been killed on the President's Blue House lawn.

8th Army had gone on high alert and every Unit in South Korea was required to maintain a Ready Reaction Force in full combat gear to deal with any further threats the North Koreans might send. That same night the North Koreans captured the United States Intelligence gathering ship, the _USS Pueblo_ off the east coast of North Korea creating an International Incident.

I was not aware of these incidents and 8th Army's reaction until I met with General Bonesteel for breakfast the next morning. My breakfast meeting with General Bonesteel and General Mock went reasonably well, as General Bonesteel was pleased with my outline of priorities that reflected my level of planning to accomplish what needed to be done.

General Bonesteel informed me of a deactivating Signal Unit located near Kimpo Air Base on the 76th Engineer Compound and their facilities would be available to my Training Unit. The General suggested I inspect the Signal Unit's facilities and if they met my anticipated needs, I should go and sign for them at 8th Army's Property Control Unit. A 3/4-Ton Truck from 8th Army's Headquarters' Company with a driver were assigned to me and I was told to work with Major Mercer on General Mock's G-3 Staff for anything else I might need.

I did not have any problems finding the Rifle Range using the Map Mr Song had given me and the Rifle Range was better than I expected. The Signal Unit's facilities on the 76th Engineer Compound were more than I needed and I only signed for the Headquarters Building, Supply Room and a Unit barracks.

My next task involved getting the 76th Engineer Compound's Commander to agree to provide support for me and the Marksmanship Training Unit. As I sat in the outer office waiting to see the Post Commander who was also the 76th Engineer Battalion Commander I could not help but hear about all the problems 8th Army's requirements for the Ready Reaction Force of 20 men was having on the 76th Engineers.

The 76th Engineer's Compound was an isolated Post without any additional men beyond their Engineer Companies and their Maintenance Support Units. This 8th Army additional Compound Security Requirement to maintain this Ready Reaction Force would require one of the Engineer Companies to provide it throughout the night. If the men were on duty the night before, they would not be available to perform their regular Engineering duties the next day. The 76th Engineers were already under strength due to all the soldiers being sent to South Vietnam and to keep an Engineer Company involved with Compound Security would put them even further behind in performing the Engineering tasks assigned to them by 8th Army.

I did not know how many men were in an Engineer Company and I had no idea what the Ready Reaction Force of the 20 Combat Ready men required for the size of this Compound would actually have on an Engineer Company's ability to perform its mission.

When the Post Commander came into the Office after he had come back from 8th Army's Property Control Unit, he was cussing a blue streak about some damned Lieutenant Corrigan stealing his buildings on his Compound. "I'm going to run that bastard off before he has a chance to occupy any of those buildings." He told his Sergeant Major.

"Excuse me Colonel, I am that bastard Lieutenant Corrigan who signed for those buildings. I am here to solve your Ready Reaction Force problems as I will have 60 men who can perform your Compound's Security requirement so you will not need to tie up one of your Engineer Company's." I told him as I introduced myself.

"You can do what?" The Colonel asked to make sure he heard what I said correctly.

"I could not help but hear all the problems 8th Army's new Security Requirements are causing in your Battalion. If you give me a moment of your time, I think I have a solution to both our problems." I stated.

"Come into my office as I got to hear this. Sergeant Major you better come in too as I may need a witness if I end up killing this Lieutenant, in self defense." The colonel said as he waved me into his office.

I explained what General Bonesteel was requiring me to do and outlined how the 60 men who would be here to received special Marksmanship Training could be use to perform his Compound's Ready Reaction Force requirements in exchange for the support I needed for my Training Unit and these 60 men.

"What type of support are we talking about?" The Colonel asked as his Sergeant Major handed him a Classified "Secret" folder, which I assumed was General Bonesteel's notice to all Commanders to support my efforts to set up this 8th Army's Special Marksmanship Training Program.

"My requirements are simple. I need a Mess Hall to feed my men and a Supply Room that will be only responsible for issuing beds and bedding. All the rest of my Supplies will be coming from 8th Army's Headquarters Company. I will need vehicle maintenance support and fuel from your Motor Pool. I have a 3/4 Ton, Truck and there will be three, 2 and a half Ton Trucks to transport the 60 men." I told him.

"Do you know what this is?" The Colonel asked as he held up the Classified Folder.

"Most likely it is General Bonesteel's request for all 8th Army Commanders to render support and assistance to my efforts to accomplish my Mission, Sir." I responded.

"So you knew this was coming when you offered your men to provide my Compound's Ready Reaction Force?" He asked.

"Yes Sir, I did. However, I would rather have your willing cooperation in exchange for something you need than just using the General's Stars." I responded and the Colonel smiled at his Sergeant Major. From that point on my relationship with the 76th Engineer Battalion and its Commander was a marriage made in heaven.

I called Major Mercer in General Mock's Office and told him I had the complete support of the 76th Engineer Battalion Commander and the Major should direct the Unit's sending the first 60 men to report for training for the 8th Army's Marksmanship Unit at the 76th Engineer Compound.

Major Mercer informed me that 8th Army's two Division Commanders were resisting the idea of 8th Army setting up this special Marksmanship Training Program claiming they could do it better within their Commands.

It became apparent to me as Major Mercer discussed the issue of 8th Army providing this training that the hirer levels of Command did not operate like the rest of the Army and Command Politics played a significant role in which orders were subject to question rather than just obeyed.

He was recommending, I visit the two Divisions and outline my proposed Marksmanship Training Program to the Division Commanders and explain what I could accomplish that they might not be able to do.

My first thought was to tell him I had not volunteered for this assignment and I would be happy to return to Alfa Battery as its Commander if the Division Commanders wanted to do it. However, that suggestion, as my Air Defense Battalion Commander had stated before, "Was beyond my pay grade." I also knew what General Bonesteel wanted and if my "Dog and Pony Show" would smooth the Division Commanders ruffled feathers and convince them General Bonesteel was right, I could make a convincing presentation the Division Commanders would not be expecting.

I asked Major Mercer to gather all the Regulations on Marksmanship Training the Army had and anything on the effectiveness of the basic weapons training the soldiers received after they came into the Army.

I also asked him where I could get Over Head Projection Slides made, as pictures as they say are worth a 1,000 words. When I had an estimate of the time it would take to make these Slides, I told Major Mercer to schedule my first presentation in the 2nd Division's Headquarters the day after I had my slides made and the 7th Division the following day.

As I was being driven back, to 8th Army's Headquarters, I was outlining my presentation and the major points I would accomplish in General Bonesteel's Special Marksmanship Training Program. I knew from lessons I had in the ROTC Program at the University of Wisconsin that the current Army Doctrine on Infantry tactics established the effective range of the issued Infantryman's Rifle at only 300 yards from their forward positions on the battlefield.

My whole presentation would be to train soldiers how to use their Rifles beyond the Army's self-imposed 'Effective Rifle Range" of only 300 yards, as their Rifles were capable of shooting and hitting the enemy at more than a mile. The US Army's entire Infantry Tactical Doctrine is based on the "Effective Range" of the Infantryman's Rifle and the 300-yards in front of an Infantry Company is known as the "Forward Edge of the Battlefield."

What made Korea unique is the country's high mountainous and rugged terrain features separated by the flat rice paddies built on centuries old descending and irregular terraces carved out of every square inch of available farmland across the gravity fed irrigated valleys. This type of terrain required accurate Rifle shooting beyond the 300-yard distance our soldiers are being trained to shoot during their Basic Military Training. During combat a soldier does not have time to adjust his Rifle-sights and each year during his Annual Service Weapons Qualification each soldier confirms his Rifle's Combat Sight Settings and he knows with that Rifle sight setting he will hit the enemy when he shoots.

I had one other advantage in making this presentation. I was the only Officer in 8th Army and in South Korea who had competed in any Advanced Marksmanship Unit and that made me the sole authority and the only "expert" in Rifle shooting beyond 300 yards. By the time, I reached Major Mercer's Office I had my presentation's outline completed. Now I only needed the Regulations to document and reinforce the points I would make in my presentation. I was pleased to see the stack of Regulations he had collected for me.

That evening I interviewed my First Sergeant and the Company Clerk 8th Army had found for me. Sergeant Homes was a coal black E-7 with 28 years of experience in the US Army. He had been a Hercules Missile Section Chief who had hurt his back and he was permanently limited to light duty. When I told him what General Bonesteel wanted me to do with 60 of 8th Army's worst 8 Ball's who were not in the Stockade, he shook his head wondering why the Army was treating him and me this way. Sergeant Homes told me he did not know much about shooting rifles but he knew how to handle 8-Balls as that was what he had done throughout his Army Career.

Sergeant Homes and I interviewed Private First Class Kelly who had just gotten off the Airplane in South Korea. He had graduated first in his Advance Administration Class to receive his promotion to an E-3. After I told him about the Marksmanship Unit and what Sergeant Homes and I expected him to do, I had the feeling he was about to cry as this was not what he expected to do in the Army.

"I can only promise if you work for me you will learn more about the Administrative functions of an Army Unit, its Supply and Support System than any other Company Clerk in the Army. I will also see you are Promoted as soon as you are eligible. If you don't think you can do this job, let me know now as I have less than a week before 60 men arrive at this Marksmanship Training Unit." I concluded.

"All right Sir, I will do my best." Private Kelly stated.

"That's all any of us can do. Sergeant Homes do you have any questions?" I asked him.

"No Sir." He quickly replied.

I outlined what needed to be done at the 76th Engineer Compound and I gave them instructions on how to get there, as I had to take the Unit's only vehicle to 8th Army's two Division Headquarters to make my presentations on this Marksmanship Training Program.

I spent most of the night researching the Army's Regulations to find what I needed to support my presentation. The Staff in the G-1's Office were waiting for me when I walked in and by noon, I was heading for the 2nd Division's Headquarters.

As we drove towards the 2nd Division's Headquarters my driver Corporal O'Conner asked a lot of questions about what I was really doing. He seemed to get a kick out of how I had accomplished so much in such a short amount of time.

I had not notice how fast he was driving when I had been trying to get things done, as I did not have an idea just how far or how long we had to travel to get there. "What do you have in this thing?" I asked when I looked at the speedometer and he told me.

Corporal O'Conner was from Detroit and had worked on cars all his life. He had souped-up the truck with a modified manifold and added two Jeep Carburetors with progressive linkage and bored-out the cylinders, rebuilt the transmission and changed the gears to take another faster gear, he said could do 90 in a Quarter Mile and over a hundred if he pushed it and I believed him.

The way that Truck sounded when we were stopped by the MP at the Main Gate of the Second Division would result in that MP becoming one of the first men in the first Special Marksmanship Class I gave and I wrote about him in my Book _Blackmoon Rising._

Charles Blackmoon was a full-blooded Lakota Sioux Indian from South Dakota. In early 1970, Sergeant Blackmoon would lead a dramatic rescue effort behind enemy lines in Cambodia to save my life, after I was captured by the North Vietnamese Army at the Arnnette Plantation. I wrote about this in my Book, _Three Toed Tiger Tales_ and in my Book **Blackmoon Rising** which detailed this rescue. Years later in 1983, Charles Blackmoon would help me accomplish an unusual Mission as I wrote in my Book, _Page of Diamonds._

The Commanding General of the 2nd Division was not pleased with my presentation as I had left him no argument he could use to persuade General Bonesteel he could do it better. His Staff and Company Commanders had been primed to undermine my efforts but they were not prepared to deal with the "Dog and Pony Show" I presented.

Every time I was interrupted, I took the opportunity to reinforce the concept of hitting an enemy at the greatest distance before he was close enough to inflict any casualties on us. They had never seen the ballistic charts on the M-14 Rifle or the amount of kinetic energy the 7.62 bullet still had beyond 1,000 yards. I explained I was not here to argue the merits of the Army's Infantry Tactical Doctrine, which established the Forward Edge of the Battlefield at 300 yards nor would I attempt to establish the effectiveness of using Snipers on the battlefield. I concluded my presentation by telling them why General Bonesteel felt it was necessary for me to leave my Hawk Battery and help his soldiers know how to shoot and hit what they aimed at.

"Gentlemen, my job is to train soldiers how to shoot and hit what they were aiming at so they can come back to their Units and teach your men how to do it. Only you can be the judge as to how well I have done my job. If what I am doing is not working I will be the first to admit it."

I must have done a good job making my presentation, as there were no further questions when I finished. The next day I made my presentation to the 7th Division and none of the questions the 2nd Division had asked where asked here indicating the 2nd Division had shared what had taken place at their Headquarters.

We made it back to 8th Army's Headquarters in record time and Major Mercer had a "Well done," comment from General Bonesteel.

With only a few days remaining before the first 60 men would arrive at the 76th Engineer Compound I had to acquire three 2 and 1/2 Ton Trucks and enough ammunition to conduct this training without having a recognized or established Military Unit.

Every Military Unit in the Army has a Table of Organization and Equipment to establish what that Unit is authorized to have on its Property Books and that Military Unit has the authority to Requisition what it does not have from its Supply and Support Units. Not only was this Marksmanship Unit a bastard without a Table of Organization and Equipment, it did not have any Supply and Support Units it was authorized to use.

When you are facing an impossible situation and you still had to accomplish your Mission I knew I had to improvise and use what I had learned about the Army's Supply and Support Units to keep Alfa Battery operational. I did not consider what I had to do was stealing as I would be acquiring what I needed to use in the Army for a legitimate purpose in the Army rather than selling it on the Black Market for personal gain. Whether the Army would see it that way was something I would have to deal with later. I knew to protect myself I had to keep meticulous records of everything I acquired. I created Unit Property Books and Supply Records to account for everything, as if this Unit actually existed. I could only hope by what I did to accomplish my mission justified my use of General Bonesteel's Stars.

If the US Army had one fault in its Supply and Support Systems, it was allowing low ranking Enlisted men to run the system. As long as the "Paperwork" looked "all right" and it had an Officer's signature in the correct locations on the correct Requisition Form, they would process the Requisition as an authorized request and issue the ordered supplies.

My attempts to obtain the three trucks I needed from legitimate sources went unanswered and with time running out, I had to do what was necessary to accomplish my mission. With the unofficial information from Major Mercer that the Support Unit at Camp Humphries would be issuing Multi fuel Trucks tomorrow I took three drivers and waited until a Unit came to pick-up their Trucks. When the Truck Convoy formed up, we drove our Trucks to the back of the line as if we were part of the Convoy. After we cleared the front gate at Camp Humphries when the Truck Convoy turned left, we turned right and drove the three Trucks to the 76th Engineer Compound. To cover myself I sent an official report to Major Mercer thanking him for his assistance in obtaining the three Multi fuel Trucks.

My ability to acquire the training ammunition required five separate Officer's Signature Blocks to be signed. My Unit Clerk typed up the perfect Requisition Form and put my name in all 5-signature blocks, as I did not have anyone at a higher Headquarters authorized to sign these Signature Blocks.

As I went through the five Administrative steps to draw this ammunition each Supply Clerk checked the signature block he was responsible to check and I took the Requisition to the next Clerk who only checked there was an Officer signature in the right location for his level in the authorization process. Everything went well until I came to the Supply Sergeant issuing the ammunition. 8th Army had put a freeze on issuing any 7.62 Ball Ammunition due to the new Security Conditions in South Korea and he told me I could not have it under any circumstances.

When I explained my situation and the critical nature of my Mission, he told me there were no restrictions, on issuing 7.62 National Match Grade Ammunition and he could substitute this type ammunition for what I had ordered. I made it look as if I were reluctantly agreeing to his substitution when I could not be more pleased to have this high quality Match Grade Ammunition to train my men.

As expected the 60 "8-Balls" staggered into the Unit well passed the time they were to report in and several of them did not arrive until the second scheduled day of Training. I had to take this group of misfits and make them into a team that depended on each other. The only way I knew how to do that was to challenge them physically to the point of exhaustion and force them to depend on each other as a way to survive, as I could not allow them to quit.

The first morning I lead the Unit on a steady run around the perimeter of the 76th Engineer Compound. As the 8-Balls dropped out of the formation, my driver picked them up in the 3/4 Ton Truck and took them back to our Unit Area. If the 8-Balls thought they had escaped the physical effort of running, they were sadly mistaken. Sergeant Homes had the 8-Ball drop outs doing continuous "Push-ups and Sit-ups" while the rest of the Unit continued to run. Each time we ran past the men doing push-ups and sit-ups I was sure the 8-Balls were thinking about which physical exercise was the least painful.

When the last 8-Ball dropped out, I gave the Unit a 10 minute break before I reformed the Unit for a second run. Only this time no one was allowed to drop out of the formation. I did not care what the men did to keep everyone running as long as they did it, even if they had to carry those who would have dropped out. However if anyone wanted to quit, they could report back to the Unit Headquarters and Sergeant Homes would send them to General Bonesteel's Office and what the General did after that was not my concern.

When half of the 8-Balls were carrying, the other half I gave them another 10 minute break. For any challenge to be successful there must be a positive reward if they acted together as a Team. When they all stopped together after a good run, they became a team. As a further reward, I issued their Liberty Passes to leave the 76th Engineer Compound and go into the local Korean Village outside the Main Gate. I told them to make sure they kept these Liberty Passes with them at all times as if they did not, the MP's would pick them up and put them on Report for being out in the Village without them. This level of trust surprised them, as many of these men had not had such a Liberty Pass back at their Unit for a long time. These men were usually on Post Restrictions and only those soldiers who were performing their duties would get a Liberty Pass.

Their next surprise came when I told them I did not care what they did as long as they did not get caught, and if they were in the Unit's formation ready for Training the next day at 7:00 am. I added if they did get caught, I would send them packing back to their Unit with a Field Grade Article 15 signed by General Bonesteel. What they did not realize was they would be too tired to do anything but try to get some sleep.

The first day on the Range, I had them shooting at tin cans lying on the bank of the Range's backstop at 25 yards. One of the fundamental principles in shooting was the understanding the bullet they put in their rifles and fired down range was the same bullet that hit something.

It quickly became a game to see who could hit them faster than the next man. I advanced the game into a two man team competition to see if they could hit close enough to the tin cans and make the cans fly over towards the next team while that team was trying to make the tin cans fly back the other way. This competition required both speed and accuracy to win and this type of shooting reinforced the bullets in their Rifles where the same bullets that actually hit where they aimed when they shot them.

Each day after the men shot at a specific distance into a bulls-eye paper target to establish the correct elevation to hit the Target we would conduct the tin can competition at that distance on the range. On the second day of training, they were shooting at the large number 10 food tin cans used in the Mess Hall at 200 yards and the team Competition was showing surprising results as they could hit these cans quite regularly.

The final test of what these men had learned in this training was shooting at two half-inch steel plates welded together the size of an ashcan cover suspended on wires from the Target frames at 800 yards. When a man took up his firing position, he was required to put his rifle at zero elevation before he was issued five rounds of Ammunition. When I blew my whistle, they had 30 seconds to put their Rifles to the correct elevation based on his Shooting Record Score Book and shoot the 5-Rounds of Ammunition at the steel plates. The 60 men were divided into two groups with one group shooting and the other group keeping score of the hits as you could see and hear when the shooter hit the target. Only three men did not hit all five of their shots and the poorest shooter still hit his steel plate 3-times out of their five shots.

I held a Graduation Ceremony during their last formation before they left the Marksmanship Unit. I issued each man a Training Certificate based upon his final Competitive Standing in the Special Marksmanship Unit and I commended them on their outstanding performance as few people had expected them to do this well. When the 60 Trained Marksmen left the Marksmanship Training Unit, they looked and acted as model soldiers. Their Uniform's were pressed, their Brass was shined and their Boots glistened with a high spit polish. They had learned to be soldiers again and they had the pride and confidence of someone, who could shoot and hit what they aimed at better than anyone else did back at their Units.

Just how long this military attitude and their reflection of confidence would remain with them I did not know. If they could use half of what they learned here at the Special Marksmanship Training Unit to teach the other men in their Units I would have accomplished what General Bonesteel had asked me to do.

While I was doing my final Report on the success of the first Training Class, Sergeant Homes and Private Kelly were preparing to receive the next 60 men for Training. There was a knock on my Office door and Private Borcowski wearing new Sergeant E-5 stripes was asking to see me. My first thought was he had not returned to his Unit and he was AWOL, as I had not noticed his new rank. "What the hell are you doing here?" I yelled at him.

"Not to worry Lieutenant, I am on a 30 day unaccountable Leave. I was given $1,000 dollars in Savings Bonds and a promotion for shooting a Gook at almost 1,000 yards." He began to tell me how he had killed a North Korean on the DMZ with his first shot.

"I could not think of a better place to go on this Leave so I asked if I could come here and help you teach the next Class. My First Sergeant said it was all right if it was all right with you. In fact, he told me he would see if I could be permanently assigned to your Unit if you wanted me." Borcowski told me.

"You don't mind if I call your First Sergeant to verify this do you?" I asked him.

"No Sir, my First Sergeant said you would be calling him." Sergeant Borcowski said with a grin on his face.

My phone call to his First Sergeant confirmed what Borcowski told me. I was also told to expect another man from the Battalion as he had a confirmed kill at 800 yards and he also wanted to come back to the Marksmanship Training Unit. Within two days after the 60 men returned to their Units and went on line on the DMZ, 3 confirmed Kills were made with only 3 shots. All three of these men asked to be assigned to the Marksmanship Unit and General Bonesteel wanted to know just what I had done to train these men to shoot so well. Not only was General Bonesteel impressed by their shooting performance there were glowing reports about the marked military improvement of the Soldiers who had been assigned for this Training.

# 6. THE EFFECT OF THE GENERAL'S PHONE CALL

Rather than rewrite what took place after that phone call from General Bonesteel, I have taken a few pages from my Book _The Three Toed_ _Tiger Tales_ to explain it. In this book, I used the main character's name of Michael Patrick O'Neil rather than using my own name.

At the time, I wrote _The_ _Three Toed Tiger Tales_ I just wanted to tell an interesting story about the War in Vietnam I hope to publish. I was not ready to tell the world what I did, as I believed it still might be classified.

Second Lieutenant O'Neil was at a HAWK Air Defense Missile Unit just outside of Osan Air Base and he had taken over a none functioning and none operational Unit some 60 days earlier. The men at the Missile Battery responded to its new Unit's Commander by becoming fully Operational and Combat ready. It had just past the IG's Re-Inspection when he was pulled out of his Unit. He was made a First Lieutenant and given an Order by a Four Star General to create a Marksmanship Training Unit capable of teaching all of 8th Army's soldiers how to shoot and qualify with their Primary weapons.

When the first 60 men reported to the Training Unit outside of Kimpo Air Base, it didn't take much of an imagination to realize just what type of men would be sent, when a Line Unit was already shorthanded. They would be the 8 Balls, Screw-ups and Goof offs. The GI's, who could not keep their rank and the ones who frequented Sick Call as VD patients would hardly be missed and most likely the Unit was better off without them.

On the other hand Lieutenant O'Neil would have 60 of the most talented 8 balls in all of South Korea with the unbelievable task of controlling the them and ultimately teaching them something about marksmanship with the goal of having these trained "experts" teach other members of their Units how to shoot and hit a potential enemy on the battlefield.

To say the potential disciplinary problems would be enormous was nothing compared to the potential embarrassment to the General if his handpicked "Golden boy" stepped all over himself with track shoes. What surprised everyone was this newly made First Lieutenant got the job done and three of his first 60 men were not only effective, they were outstanding making confirmed kills from 700 to 1,000 yards with the regular issued M-14 Rifle.

Yes the Good Lieutenant had rebuilt the M-14's with accurizing supplies he had the Commercial Airline Pilots bring in from the US. The most phenomenal part of all this was, these men were making these kills with open iron sights.

One of the first men to return was Ski who had a confirmed "kill" at almost 1,000 yards the first day he was back on-line with his unit. Private Borcowski was immediately promoted to a hard stripe buck Sergeant, he received 1,000 dollars in Savings Bonds and a 30 day unaccountable leave anywhere in the world. He had shown up at the 8th Army's AMU and asked if he could help train the next batch of Marksman.

This had been a godsend as the two other men helping to run the AMU were not instructors and O'Neil had trained the first 60 men by himself. The other two men who became Instructors came in the next day. Mighty Mouse was promoted to an E-4, had $100 dollar Savings Bond and a 15 day leave. Goof off came in with a three day pass and a $25 dollar Savings Bond.

Goof off's First Sergeant offered him a transfer if he wanted to go back to the AMU. Goof Off had the ability to acquire things and between him and Corporal O'Connell the driver O'Neil had been given, the AMU was not in want of anything. If Goof Off was not a professional thief he was working on his Masters Rating for his highly honed natural skills of living on the streets in Detroit until he was caught and given the choice of joining the Army or going to jail.

He really liked the Army for obvious reasons as nowhere else could he operate in a system so unable to police itself and allowed low ranking enlisted men to handle millions of dollars worth of supplies.

The immediate success was quite apparent. The General spent 20 minutes in his Staff meeting informing everyone what his new First Lieutenant had done. This Lieutenant not only kept 60 8-balls in line for 10 days, they returned to their Units on time and then they got three confirm kills with just three shots.

This was just too good not to enjoy and the General bragged to the other Commanders during a meeting at COMCINPAC Hawaii. The General's enthusiasm would not be shattered by anything else the AMU might or might not accomplish. Lieutenant O'Neil had been issued a four star halo and every Staff Officer knew they better protect this Lieutenant. Woe be it to the party to tarnish that man's sainthood.

The results spoke for themselves. O'Neil had done something unusual and had accomplished it with 60 8-Balls no unit wanted on their rosters. When these men returned to their Units' they had become good soldiers again. They had that spark of pride of being better than someone else as they had confidence in themselves and their ability to teach others what Lieutenant O'Neil had taught them and it was more than just how to shoot a rifle.

The idea of "one shot one kill" had made it all the way back East to the great Puzzle Palace on the Potomac River. Once the Pentagon had caught wind of the success of 8th Army's AMU, a renewed interest in all Marksmanship looked like it might come back into vogue.

The MAC-V Commander wanted more information and if it could be used in Vietnam. There were a few Generals on his Staff that thought it could work but they were not willing to stick their necks out to recommend something that may have been a fluke.

The only way to test the concept proposed by this Lieutenant was to try it and since this Lieutenant in South Korea already had the Training Center set up, why spend any unnecessary time and effort to duplicate it in Vietnam.

The Commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam MAC-V, agreed with that recommendation and two weeks later 60 men from Vietnam were flying into South Korea for training by the "Golden Boy" Lieutenant.

Lieutenant O'Neil was able to convince General Bonesteel that the Scoped Sniper Rifles still in the 8th Army's Armory since the Korean War should be issued to the best 6 men in each of the Training Class who would be given an extra 3 days of Scoped Sniper Rifle training. The General did not know he even had these Rifles.

To prove his point O'Neil put on a shooting demonstration for the 8th Army Commander using the Model 70 Scoped Sniper Rifles that had been used in the Korean War. O'Neil's request was granted after the General watched four men shoot 18 shots to bust 16 clay pigeons mounted black side out on a white backer at 600 yards.

O'Neil had taken the idea of shooting the Clay Birds from one of the events he shot while a member of the North-South Skirmish Association. A small hole was punched in the center of the Clay Birds and a looped wire pushed through them and then mounted on a white cardboard backer. At 600 yards, these Clay Birds stood out as pencil dots but when hit they would disappear.

At first, one of the General's Aides claimed the shooters had missed twice but when they drove down range, they had found two clay birds had been hit two times so they had actually shot 18 perfect targets within a 3-inch target. O'Neil explained the bullets were still traveling fast enough that sometimes they would punch through the Clay Targets hung against the backer without breaking them when they were hung with their black side out.

For this demonstration, he wanted the General to be able to actually see the targets disappear when they were hit. O'Neil went on to explain it was normally accepted in the shooting world if a Rifle could group all its shots within a minute of angle at any given range it was shooting up to the manufacture's expectations. A minute of angle at 600 yards would have been all the shots contained in a 6-inch circle and here he and his men had improved the Rifle's shooting accuracy by 100%.

That would be a "head shot" at 600 yards and 600 yards was twice the normal effective range on the battlefield considered by the Infantry Commanders.

O'Neil got all the Model 70 Sniper Rifles he wanted. He would not have known about these Sniper Rifles either, if he had not tried to get one of the new Starlight Rifle Scopes he wanted to use to improve the Snipers night shooting capabilities.

O'Neil who was a bit of a horse trader himself, when he was the HAWK Unit's Supply Officer and when he had to get the supplies the Unit needed. The AMU needed ammunition to shoot but there was a restriction placed on the issuing of Rifle Ball ammunition and he could not get it. However, there were no restrictions on the issuing M-14 National Match Grade Ammunition as it only took his signature on a properly completed Requisition Form.

When the Supply Sergeant at 8th Army found out why he needed this ammunition he mention the Sniper Rifles that were still in the 8th Army's Armory. O'Neil signed for the 8 Starlight Scopes that the Supply Sergeant was happy to get out of his inventory. O'Neil was now turning out truly qualified Snipers who were stopping the North Korean's dead in their tracks.

O'Neil took the selection of the men he would train to become Snipers one-step further. He developed a Psychological Test that would establish that these men had the capability of making killing shots without missing due to the subconscious factor of knowing that they were taking another human life.

What most people needed to understand was the American culture reinforced the value of life and the need to protect the needless loss of life. Killing another human is the highest crime that anyone can commit. But suddenly you are in the Army and it is your job to kill the enemy. Even then, it is not too difficult to deal with when a hundred men have been shooting and dead bodies are found after a firefight. Any one of them could have killed those enemies and it is easy to convince yourself that someone else's bullets actually killed them and it was not your bullets.

This was just like those who dropped bombs from 30 Thousand feet they never saw the faces of those they blew up. The direct relationship between you and the death of someone else is so remote that it is hard to transfer any possible guilt for those war dead to anyone except in the case of the Sniper or those who have killed in hand to hand combat. But even in hand to hand combat it was killing done in self-defense where you both had a chance to kill the other guy.

The Sniper does not have those psychological excuses or means of denial. He is off in the distance when his victim is an image in the cross hairs of his Rifle's Scope. He shoots his Rifle and the body is lying dead, leaving no doubt of who actually killed him.

O'Neil believed subconsciously most American's place such a high value on human life that sooner or later the Sniper's mind or his social subconscious revolts at the knowledge of killing even if they are the enemy.

Even the normal American Soldiers deal with killing the enemy by depersonalizing or dehumanizing them into something less than human by calling them Zips, Gooks, and VC that are of no significance and deserves to die.

The Sniper is from that same culture and he could easily feel guilty when he lies back some 900 yards and kills the enemy who will be dead before he even hears the shot that kills him.

Some Snipers can no longer kill after taking out one man while others can shoot 20 or 30 and sometimes even more than a hundred enemies and not appear to be affected by knowingly killing them.

O'Neil believed everyone had a point where his subconscious over comes his performance and he starts to miss for no apparent reason. His subconscious eye will not see the slight movement in the scope or the error in centering his sights on his target with his rifle he had the confidence that it would make this shot. When he does start to miss, he becomes a danger to himself and his shooting partner as the enemy will find them and kill them.

It was therefore better to separate those who would have a problem knowingly killing someone and allow them to be excellent soldiers in their Units rather than become a failure as a Sniper.

Along with the Testing came the Snipers responsibility of accounting for every shot fired. When a Sniper started to miss for no apparent reason it could be his subconscious was telling him he had reached his psychological limit and should be retired as a Sniper. Keeping a written record or Shooters book was mandatory. It established the results of every shot fired and it helped the Sniper review shots that he might have made under similar conditions. All this was reflected in the concept and the Unit's motto of "One shot, One Kill."

The Army took O'Neil's suggestions to develop its current Sniper's Rifle. The M-14 having proven itself to be highly suitable as a Sniper Rifle by 8th Army's AMU was now being made a camouflaged plastic gunstock, with the chromed plated rifle barrels used in National Match Rifle Competition and then added a flash suppressor which was just a name used rather than the sound suppressor it really was.

All this happened after the first Class of 60 men from Vietnam had come to South Korea to be trained as Snipers. After several 60 man Classes had graduated and had been sent back to Vietnam the results of this training had been evaluated and their performance was head and shoulders above those who had been trained by any other method.

The exception was a small group of Marines. But when you understood the nature of the Marine Snipers it was easy to understand why. The Marines were using battle hardened and experienced NCOs who already knew how the fight, while the Army had common soldiers who were younger and from the lower ranks. No one had previously thought about that.

O'Neil's efforts produced the man of the moment, taking a psychologically selected individual and making him the 'Hot shot shooter' who could be reproduced and exchanged with someone else who had the combat experience of years of service. Instead of having one or two hero's who had been written up in the National News, he was producing hundreds of top quality combat environment killers who would not brake under even the most extra ordinary conditions. They would be good day in and day out, shot after shot, and kill after kill.

When O'Neil studied the results, he convinced the 8th Army Commander he needed to understand how to teach his trainees to perform better and he could not expect these men to perform in the field as snipers if he himself had not done it. It was not the need to establish his own kill record but the need to understand the full nature of the business and experience the real situations of those who had to survive and kill effectively in the field.

How could he train these men to become accomplished Snipers if he had not done it? He needed more than their respect as a shooter. He would need their understanding that he had been there. Nothing could replace the "Act" itself and the experience of surviving on the most primitive level while killing the enemy.

O'Neil went to Vietnam and came back with a new concept for Sniper deployment. It was based upon the principle Long Range shooters could effectively control an extended the killing zone and prevent all the enemy's movements in that zone. The enemy's war effort depended on the movement of men and supplies coming down from the North and the Snipers could control large areas of the Countryside with a minimum of men.

The first real test of this concept came when O'Neil's Snipers replace a Battalion and covered its killings Zone last week and it had ended just 24 hours before this party started here at the New York Club in Saigon.

O'Neil had selected his men from all those who had gone through the Training Program at 8th Army. Two of the first Class of 60 men were part of this team. Ski who had become a Sergeant E-5 after his initial training was now a Sergeant E-6 and O'Neil's Deputy Commander. Goof Off who had been up and down the ranks before he became a Sniper was now a Sergeant E-5 and O'Neil's main man on the team's far left flank.

Using 8 men in four Sniper Team Elements they took up the same position the Battalion had been in during the Classic Blocking Position for a Hammer and Anvil operation which had taken place for the last 30 days.

In Vietnam, one of the worse kept secrets was when a Unit is going to move and usually the VC and NVA knew before the Commander of the battalion even knew it.

Within a day after the last Battalion's trucks pulled out of their Combat Positions several VC and NVA Units began testing the area to confirm the American's had actually moved and it was safe to resume their normal activities. Within the next 24 hours, supplies were being hauled through the area as if they had never been interrupted.

Understanding this, the Sniper Teams had to remain totally concealed and undetected for the first 48 hours after they had assumed their positions. They had come in 24 hours before the Battalion actually pulled out to make their ranging shots and confirm known distances to various locations in front of their positions. The hardest thing the team had to do was they had to sit and wait until the VC and the NVA believed it was safe to move through the area again.

On day three, four and five O'Neil's Team reported 103 kills and the Brass refused to believe that 8 men could amass more kills in three days than a whole Battalion could claim during the 30 days they had been on the same position. When the MAC-V Commander himself flew out with the Division and the Battalion Commander, the bodies were still there as no one had been alive to carry them away and the count produced 107 kills. O'Neil had to explain the reported count difference by saying they had only counted confirmed kills.

The really remarkable thing was not a single High Explosive round of Artillery had been fired in support of the Snipers even though it was available if they needed it. During the Team's out briefing, they were asked why they had not called in any Artillery and one Sniper Team Member behind O'Neil had piped up with the comment. "Awe gee Sir that would have spoiled all the fun." O'Neil was pleased that at least who ever had made the comment had the good sense to include the word "Sir" in it.

The success became well known within a small circle of Officers and Commanders but it was not published or reported to the News Media who might create more problems for the Snipers than just the "name calling" of being cold blooded killers.

Lieutenant O'Neil became Captain O'Neil by order of the COMCINPAC Commander and he and his Sniper Team were given a week of rest and recuperation.

Having proven O'Neil's Concept this Unit would not be going back to South Korea as the Commander of MAC-V had other ideas about where and how these Sniper Teams might be used.

The success and the effective use of Snipers in Vietnam of what I had started in South Korea had become one of our Military's best-kept secrets, for almost 25 years until an article on Snipers in Vietnam appeared in the American Riflemen magazine of the National Rifle Association. During the Vietnam War, our military could not tell the Anti-Vietnam War News Media who might have claimed our Snipers were not giving the poor Vietcong and the North Vietnamese a fair chance by shooting them from so far away. By not telling the News Media, the American public would not know how effective these Snipers were and officially neither would the North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese already knew how effective our Snipers were as they brought in Sniper Experts and Sniper Rifles from the Soviet Union to teach the NVA soldiers how to become Snipers. These instructors used a translated version of the same Sniper Training Manual I had rewritten for the US Army. I wrote about the North Vietnamese Sniper Training efforts in my Books," Soft Touch," "Three toed Tiger Tales" "Blackmoon Rising" and "The Page of Diamonds."

# 7. CAROL CAME INTO AND OUT OF MY LIFE AGAIN

While I was running the Marksmanship Training Unit in South Korea and developing the effective use of Snipers in Vietnam, I received a letter from Carol. She had sent it to my home address in Milwaukee and it was forwarded to me at the Hawk Missile Unit. I had already left South Korea for Vietnam and it took several more months before the letter caught up with me.

After reading her letter and seeing the photograph Carol had sent, I did not know how I should feel about her. When Carol had stopped writing and I got over the emotional rejection I thought I had closed that door and moved on with my life. I let Carol's letter set on my desk for over a week while I was thinking how I wanted to respond if I wanted to respond at all

Part of me wanted to know what actually happened and why she had rejected me. The emotional part of me was telling me I should not reopen that old wound to my heart and my ego. I also believed that everything that happens in life has a reason and my curiosity won out.

This letter became the most difficult I have ever written. I wrote a number of letters of my possible response but I realized I was letting my past emotions rule over what I wanted to know. Too many years had passed and I was not responding as if my letter, were just answering her last letter and nothing happened since then. I was not going to risk reopening an emotional door when I might be reading more into her letter than what she actually said or why she was writing to me now. In the letter, I finally sent to Carol, I told her about how long it took her letter to find me. I told her what happen in my life since she stopped writing and I suggested she do the same. I sent a recent photograph but I did not tell her about my current assignment training Snipers in Vietnam as my Official Duty Assignment was still in South Korea.

In her next letter Carol told me about getting married and having a son, she called Scott. She was now divorced, living with her parents and going to the University of Ohio in Toledo majoring in Sociology and Anthropology. What she did not say was when this all happened or how soon after she stopped writing she had gotten married.

Since I already knew Carol did not like the idea of me making the Army a Career I had to find out if Carol still had her Anti-Vietnam War feelings and if she did, there was no reason to consider a relationship beyond a casual friendship. I approached the subject by telling her how important my early promotions to First Lieutenant and Captain had been and how well with this fast start I was going to make Army my Career.

Her reply only dealt with how long I would be in South Korea and where my next Duty Assignment might be. I had not given my next Duty Assignment much thought as I had already been extended 6 months in South Korea and I was not sure General Bonesteel would let me leave 8th Army even then. When I talked with Major Mercer about going home and getting back into my Army Career Branch of Air Defense, he said he would discuss it with General Mock and General Bonesteel.

The answer came back, if I trained my replacement I should plan on going home in November and I could have any duty assignment I wanted, anywhere I wanted it in the world with General Bonesteel's endorsement.

I chose to be a Hercules Missile Air Defense Battery Commander in the Detroit Michigan area of the Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh Air Defense Region of the North American Air Defense Command. A Duty Assignment in the Detroit area should put me within an hour's drive of Toledo Ohio where Carol was living. This would give me the best opportunity to find out if Carol should be in my life and if she was willing to support my chosen career.

Because of the delays in leaving South Korea when I arrive at Selfridge Air Force Base north of Detroit where the 517th Air Defense Battalion Headquarters was located, I was given the Command of Headquarters Battery and told I would be given the next Hercules Missile Battery Command when it became available. Commanding Headquarters Battery was a snap, compared to what I did in the Marksmanship Training Unit. I only had to worry about the Mess Hall and the Headquarters Motor Pool. I chose to be the Unit's Mess Officer, as I knew how it should operate and how importance good chow was to the men.

My first meeting with Carol, was a disaster. When I arrived at her parent's home in my Corvette for our planned Dinner-date, she was with a man or a boyfriend who acted more like her protector, than just a friend Carol claimed he was. He insisted we drive in his car and he took us to a nice restaurant where everyone knew him and it smelled like the MOB all over it.

My combat survival instincts were on high alert after I could not help but notice the bulge of a pistol in a shoulder holster under his tailor-made shark's skin suit. I had to wonder to myself, "If he had gone to all the expense of having a tailor-made suit why didn't he have it tailored so his gun would not show?"

He insisted on ordering for us. When Carol wanted a fish dinner, he told the Waiter she would be having the Veal Parmesan and I quickly understood the game of control he was playing. I order the fish dinner and he told the Waiter I would be having the Beef Tenderloin "rare" which was just what I wanted and I smiled at him so he would know he had been had.

While we were eating, he dominated the conversation. He talked about all the places he and Carol had gone, and how he had been there when she needed him. I was not sure if this was an act to make me jealous or if he was telling me, he had a prior claim on Carol.

I had learned long ago when you are in the enemy's territory and he was making noise so you could find him, you let him make all the noise he wanted to make, as that would confirm where you wanted to bring in the heavy artillery. There is also the factor when a man is getting away with his boasting, you let him as he would embellish his 'boasts' beyond belief and remove any doubt he was overloading his ass with so much shit he could not carry it. Best of all, he would think you were believing everything he said and his self confidence would blow up the balloon of his ego until it exploded without having me to do anything.

When Carol went to the Lady's Room, he came right out and asked me what my intentions where towards Carol. I told him it was none of his business and he stated it was as he patted his suit over his gun to reinforce his treat. I told him if he were stupid enough to reach for his gun, I would jam the butter knife I was holding in his heart before he could get his gun out of its holster.

"Maybe you don't realize where you are and who you are dealing with?" He came back with a slight stutter in his voice.

"I know exactly where I am and I know you are a cheap hood who would not want to cause a scene in your friend's restaurant and have the police come and pick up your body. I think I will pass on dessert and take a Taxi back to my car. Please give Carol my apologies for leaving so soon and if she wants to reach me she knows where to write." I said as I got up and ran right into Carol.

"Where are you going?" She asked and looked back at her friend.

"I don't like the company you keep. I am going to get my car and I am driving back to my Unit." I told her and I left her standing there.

All the way back to Selfridge Air Force base I kept thinking what a fool I was for taking this Duty Assignment and I knew I was not going to get caught up in any games she wanted to play. Four days later, I received a letter from Carol saying she was sorry for the way her friend acted and she wanted me to call her.

When I called Carol, she admitted she had gone out with him a couple of times and she tried to break it off with him, but he would not leave her alone. "I told him about you and how you had been given a special Army assignment in Detroit to see if we could pick up the pieces and maybe have a future together. But he told me I was not going to see anyone else and if I did, he would make sure you were a dead man. I did not know what to do when he showed up and he insisted we go with him in his car.

After you left the Restaurant, he said you had told him that you were going to get even with me for dumping you and he almost had me convinced it was true until I realized why he was telling me this. I do not know what you said to him, but when I asked him to take me home, he did not protest like he usually did and he did not insist on coming in for a drink.

He did not send any roses as he usually did after we went out and I don't think he will be bothering me anymore. If nothing else, I want to thank you for running him off. I would like to see you and this time it will only be the two of us. Will you come next Friday?" She asked and waited for me to say something.

We had several dates, where I would drive down and rent a Motel room and we would see a movie and have dinner. I would come over on Saturday afternoon to spend some time with her and her son. Sometimes we would go somewhere we would take her son Scott on Sunday afternoon and then I would drive back to a house I had rented off Selfridge Air Base with two other bachelor Officers.

The night Carol and I went to see the Movie _Romeo and Juliet_ the movie had just started when Carol asked me if we could go to my Motel room. We made none stop love until almost 3 in the morning and she did not want to leave then. From then on, we never saw another movie, as we just could not get enough of each other.

There were personnel and operational problems at Charley Battery, which was a Hercules Missile Air Defense Unit in Union Lake Michigan and its Battery Commander was relieved. An Army Captain who needed 60 days of Command Time before he could become a Major came into the Battalion even though his Branch of Service in the Army was not Air Defense. He assumed Command of Headquarters Battery and I was send to C Battery in Union Lake along with a new First Sergeant.

Union Lake Michigan was more than an hour's drive from Selfridge Air Force Base and this gave us the private time to get to know each other. We also talked about how I intended to Command the Battery.

The First Sergeant was significantly more knowledgeable about the problems in Charley Battery than I was and he told me about them to get my opinion of how we should handle them.

I shared some of my experiences in establishing that Marksmanship Training Unit in South Korea and dealing with the group of 8 Balls I had been sent until both 8th Army's Division Commanders realized how effective the 8 Balls had become and they started to send their best men for this Training.

I had asked the Battalion Commander to allow Charley Battery to stand down to a Three Hour Maintenance Alert Status, as I wanted to give the Unit a party. He argued against the idea, as he did not feel the Unit's performance deserved a reward.

After I explained I needed to understand the real reasons for the Battery's personnel and operational problems and the men would talk about them after they had drank a few beers, he told me he still thought a party was not a good idea but he would let me make my own mistakes.

The First Sergeant understood I was offering the men a "carrot" before I would use the "stick" and he liked my approach. The Beer Truck had delivered the Keg of Beer I had ordered just before we arrived. The acting First Sergeant had told the Mess Sergeant to make the food for the Party and he set up the Keg of Beer under an Army Squad Tent next to the basketball court.

The Change of Command Ceremony was conducted by the Battalion Commander. After I assumed Command of the Unit, I gave the assembled Battery a short speech. I introduce myself and their new First Sergeant and I proceeded to tell the men they could expect me to buy the Beer and have a Unit Party anytime the Unit received a Superior Rating on any Inspection from a higher Headquarters. I also told them the First Sergeant and I were aware of some of the past problems this Battery had and I knew they were better than that and I would help them to prove it. I then ordered the First Sergeant to dismiss the men and prepare to drink that Keg of Beer dry.

The Battalion Commander was given the honor of drawing the first beer. The party was a roaring success as I had told the acting First Sergeant to make sure all the wives and girlfriends of the men were invited to the party. As the music played from a "boom box" the men and their significant others drank the beer, ate the food and I learned a lot about the battery's problems just as I had hoped I would.

The biggest problem was the result of the Army sending soldiers who had received a Compassionate Reassignment to the nearest Active Duty Unit close to where the reason for this reassignment existed, such as Charley Battery in Union Lake Michigan. Most of these soldiers came from Vietnam and their Military Occupational Specialty, MOS was not in Air Defense Artillery. Yet all of these untrained soldiers were still being counted by the Army, as if they had more than the year of school training as an Air Defense Missile and Radar Operators. With the Battery having its authorized number of men on its roster the Unit was not getting any of the normal school train Air Defense Artillery men to effectively perform the Battery's Air Defense Mission.

The underlying problem dealt with the Army's attitude towards the soldier's families. The prevailing Army's attitude was if the Army wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one as if they had no responsibility for keeping a soldier's family together. Yet most of the soldiers who had received a Compassionate Reassignment to Charley Battery had been for family hardships. However, their reassignment had not solved the problem even if they were reunited with their families as the circumstances of finding a place to live in the area of Charley Battery were beyond their financial means.

The Union Lake area of Michigan with hundreds of small lakes was a semi-vacation resort destination during the summer months for the people who lived in Detroit and the surrounding suburbs. As a result, the rents for any housing in the area were well over the 400 dollar a month range while the monthly salary of most of the GI's assigned to Charley Battery was just over a hundred dollars. Even with the Army's Housing Allotment for a soldier's family, it could not cover half the rent and it left nothing for any food. The soldiers took part time jobs, which was against Army Regulations and their wives took any job they could find and even that was not enough.

The Special Weapons in the Army's Air Defense Missile Units required the Battery Commander to evaluate his men's Human Reliability to perform his duty without question in a wartime environment. It is no longer a Military Secret that these Air Defense Hercules Missiles were armed with Nuclear War Heads designed to take out the Nuclear Bombs in the Russian Aircraft, that threatened our cities and our nation's industrial capabilities. The standard in determining a soldier's Human Reliability was very high. If the Commander had a man who was drinking heavily or if the man was having family problems, it could affect the man's judgment then he was no longer Humanly Reliable.

Once I knew about my soldiers living conditions that could affect his ability to do his job and ultimately jeopardize my Battery's Mission I had to do what I could to change their situation.

As I had been in all the other Units I was in, I was the Unit's Mess Officer. Mess Sergeant Onsby understood what I wanted to do and he had no problem following the Army's Regulations on ordering the Rations for the Battery's fourth Meal. Every third weekend of the month, we held a dinner dance for the men, their wives and children in the Mess Hall. The Battery's Recreation Room was set up as a care center for their children and I was never short of volunteers to entertain and care for them. This gave the men and their families a night out when they could least afford it as most of them had already run out of money.

The normal duty in a Missile Battery required the men to spend long hours away from their families as they could not leave the Unit to be with them. That did not mean their families could not come to the Battery as long as they remained in the Administrative Areas. I set up the Craft Shop with a kiln and moulds to make ceramic pottery dishes, knick-knacks, ashtrays, figurines of all types and even Chess Sets. Although the men were still on duty and they were ready to respond to an alert, they could spend time with their wives in the Craft Shop. The ceramic slip was free and many of the families made custom dinner wear sets they could use at home. I cannot tell you how many Chess Sets were made or how many special gifts I received.

Not once did the men and their wives attempt to sneak off into the barracks to have sex, as they knew if they did the privilege of their wives coming on to the Battery's Compound would be over for everyone. I had not only won the support of the wives I had given them something they prized the most, time with their husbands. The men responded to my efforts by doing an outstanding job and they were overjoyed when I bought the beer for a Superior Rating in an Inspection.

The most complicated situation I faced when I took over the Unit were the number of pending Court Martial's and Congressional Investigations dealing with the complex personnel problems the men had brought with them when they came into Charley Battery from their previous units.

The previous Battery Commander had compounded the adverse living conditions at the Unit by attempting to enforce the discipline of a Court Martial on the men for minor offences. A Unit Commander has the authority to use Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the proper use of an Article 15 could be both the "stick" and a "carrot" to establish and maintain the good order and discipline in his Command.

What had happened with the previous Battery Commander, was the men realized if they refused punishment under Article 15 for a minor infraction, it would forced the Battery Commander to either drop the charges or proceed with a Court Martial. This meant they would cause more work for their Commander and most likely the charges would be thrown out, before the offense ever came to a Trial.

These circumstances did not relieve me of the duty to deal with these Court-Martials and I had to get these men back on track and performing their duties if I was going to have any chance of making this Battery run properly. Before I could deal with all these Court Martials, I needed to reduce and eliminate the underlying reasons why they had become necessary. Anyone who has ever served in the Armed Forces knows it is the Sergeants in the Unit that makes it run properly and without them doing their jobs correctly could be the reason behind these cases for a Court Martial.

In my meeting with the None Commissioned Officers, I addressed my policy on discipline in the Battery and how I expected them to handle the future infractions to the good order and discipline in their Sections.

I wanted to assure them they would have my 100% support in dealing with any disciplinary problems they might have and I would punish the offender to the maximum extent allowed in the Regulation whether the offence they brought to me was justified or not. However if they were wrong in their attempt to punish the offender, they would be next in line for punishment as their actions had shown me they did not know how to use the Sergeant's rank on their sleeves. I also told them if they could not use their rank correctly and effectively, I would replace them with someone who could.

In my meeting with the Officers in the Battery, I covered the same points I had made with the NCO's. I was fortunate to have two outstanding First Lieutenants as Platoon Leaders and two exceptional Warrant Officers in charge of maintenance for the Missile and Radar Sections. My Executive Officer was a Business Major in College and he had been doing a reasonable job in spite of the past Commander's questionable actions.

After the First Sergeant and I reviewed all the Charges in the pending Court-Martials, I held a meeting with these men. I informed them of the limited choice I had to process their Court-Martials, as they were filed by their previous Battery Commander and I had no right to second-guess his actions.

However if they wanted to reconsider having their Charges heard by a Court Martial I would offer them an Article 15 and I explained how I had used an Article 15 in the past. When I was forced to discipline a soldier under an Article 15, I would hold it in my desk for 30 days before I would send it to higher Headquarters for their Personnel Records. If during those 30-days, the soldier demonstrated to his Section Chief, Platoon Sergeant, Platoon Leader and me that he was not the soldier reflected in the Charges I would tear up their Article 15. I would also give it back to them as proof it would not be filed in their Personnel Record. I asked them to consider this alternative before I had the First Sergeant schedule their appointments with me.

All but one of the 17 soldiers facing a Court Martial chose to withdraw their request for a Court Martial and take my Article 15. The means available to a Unit Commander under an Article 15 to punish the offender was to take his money and time away from him. Since I knew taking away a soldiers pay would hurt his family I only restricted the offenders to the Unit and gave them extra duties designed to correct the offence they were charged with. At the end of the 30-days I was pleased I could tear up all these Article 15's and give them to the men as I had accomplished what was necessary to make them good soldiers again. Throughout my Army career, I had never found the need to Court Martial a soldier and I only had to file one Article 15 in a soldier's Personnel Records.

The Congressional Inquiries were not as easy to deal with, as the problems under investigation were from another Unit in the Army. However, the paper work and the phone calls dealing with the Congressmen would require a significant amount of my time.

The men in Charley Battery responded well to all the changes I had made and they took great delight in seeing me buying the beer after each Superior Rating the Unit received during an Inspection. Charley Battery received a 99. 5% in its Annual IG Inspection. We were the honor Hercules Missile Battery in the nation for receiving the highest score during the Unit's Short Notice Annual Service Practice.

This shot notice test required each Missile Battery to fly down to Fort Bliss Texas to assemble a Hercules Missile with its Warhead and then engage in the actual firing of two missiles to establish the Battery's capabilities to accomplish its Mission. Charley Battery received the Connelly Award for having the Best Mess Hall in the Army and we received a Presidential Citation for the Unit's over all outstanding performance.

With all this national recognition, the Army wanted to find out what Charley Battery was doing to achieve such a remarkable success when all the other Air Defense Batteries were having major problems. A number of Inspection Teams from the Pentagon came to look at Charley Battery. They conducted interviews with the men, had an excellent meal in the Mess Hall and they wanted to know why I had done the things to change how this unit operated. Perhaps the biggest thing they found I had done to make Charley Battery run so well, was I had taken care of the wives and families of the men assigned to the Unit.

My relationship with Carol had progress to the point I asked her to marry me and we had started to plan for the wedding when I received Orders to go to Vietnam. Although I had already served in Vietnam on a number of short assignments dealing with the development of the snipers, I needed an Official Tour of Duty on my Military Record. In the Army, this assignment in Vietnam was called getting your "Ticket Punched" and it was part of my career path to future promotions.

This assignment became a problem between me and Carol, as I wanted to complete my tour in Vietnam before we got married. Carol's true feelings about me staying in the Army as a career resurfaced. The anti-Vietnam War protests had already divided the Country's feelings about continuing to fight the war and she could not understand how I could continue to want to be a part of the Army.

I really like being in the Army and with my early promotions and the success I had experienced as a Unit Commander I was committed to making the Army my career. What I did not need was a partner in life who was not willing to support my chosen profession.

I remembered what my mother said about marriage being hard enough even with someone you loved. Life in the Army could be hard on a wife as there would be times when your next duty assignment would separate you from your family for over a year like an assignment in South Korea or Vietnam. I had taken this assignment in Detroit to see if Carol belonged in my life. Maybe I had found out I truly loved her but love is not enough when you do not think alike and you have different values about the dangers in the real world threatened by Communism and the Russian Bombers carrying Atomic Bombs that were just hours away.

I felt, if Carol was against the Vietnam War and my career in the Army, I should call off the wedding and break off my relationship with her. It was hard to know what to do when emotions and great sex are pulling you one way, while logic and reason were reminding you of the differences, which will rip your heart out if you disregarded them.

It has been my experience if we really listen, the Good Lord helps us see the right direction or he makes the wrong path filled with problems and harder to travel. It also seems when problems arise they come in bunches of three's that adds to the emerging complications and my relationship with Carol was no exception.

The first problem dealt with my new Executive Officer, who was killed in an automobile accident and his replacement would be delayed due to the increasing demand for Officers in Vietnam. This shortage of an Officer in the Battery was restricting the time I could normally spend with Carol. The Russians were also rattling their sabers by sending their Bombers closer to the US borders. Their actions put the Air Defense Units on high alert and sometimes I just could not leave Charley Battery.

The second problem dealt with my replacement as the Battery Commander for Charley Battery. He had resigned from the Army and my departure for Vietnam, was placed on an indefinite hold by the Army. This delay should have made Carol happy but my Missile Platoon Leader had completed his active duty service requirement and he went home leaving Charley Battery short two Officers.

The third problem came-out-of-the-blue when the Army's Criminal Investigation Division approached me about my relationship with Carol. The CID was working with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and they were investigating the Drug Smuggling of Heroin into the United States from across the border with Canada. There was a Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Toledo who was using his Field Trips to the islands in Lake Erie as a cover to bring these drugs into the country.

Normally the Army would not be involved with Drug Smuggling in the United States. However, there was a growing problem of GI's coming back from Vietnam hooked on Heroin. These returning soldiers were now stationed in Army Units across the country and some of these soldiers were stationed in Air Defense Missile Batteries here in Detroit including my Unit Charley Battery.

The fact these men are on drugs jeopardizes their Human Reliability and their Human Reliability was further compromised by the fact they were being supplied with Heroin by the criminal elements of the organized Mob who had established a direct heroin supply connection with the Drug Lords in Southeast Asia. This heroin addiction was just the tip of the Iceberg compared with what happened to the GI's in South Vietnam after the Cambodian Incursion in 1970 as I wrote in my Book _Soft Touch._

Now that I heard the background to the problem, I had to ask how my relationship with Carol had anything to do with this.

"You mean you don't know Professor Peters? Carol has been going on his Anthropology Field Trips to the Lake Erie islands for the past two years and she is one of the site's excavation managers." The CID Agent told me.

"Now you told me his name, I did meet him once when I picked up Carol at the University but I don't know him beyond that." I responded.

"Let me lay this out for you. The Professor goes out to the islands and he packs the drugs in his sample cases and brings them to the University. Members of the National Guard missile site then picks up the drugs in an Army truck and they hold the drugs in their missile pits where the drugs are packed in the Hercules Booster Rocket's Igniters. The drug filled Igniters are then transferred to your Battery as the major drug storage location for Detroit.

We cannot get into the National Guard Missile pits without tipping our hand. Even if we could get in there the drugs could have already been shipped to your Battery and the drug smugglers at the National Guard Missile Unit, will know what we are looking for and they will change their operations.

When you think about it, your Missile pits with those Special Weapons and the "Two-man Rule" controlling them are the most secure place to hide these drugs. Even the President of the United States cannot gain access to them unless you escort him. Everyone else must be on your Access Roster and it still takes a minimum of two authorized men who must remain together to enter your Missile pits as no one is allow to enter that area alone. This is why we need you." The CID Agent explained.

"Okay I can understand why you need me as the Battery Commander but how does Carol fit into all this?" I wanted to know.

"That's a fair question. When we were watching the Professor, we were also watching those who regularly went with him on his Field Trips and we identified them to see what role they are playing in smuggling the drugs. We assigned one of our Agents to follow each of these people and when you were spotted with Carol, we had to find out who you were. When you turned out to be the Commander of Charley Battery, we thought we had nailed you as one of the major players in the Drug operation." The CID Agent explained.

"What makes you so sure I was not?" I asked.

First of all we had your Military Service Records checked and we were impressed by the activities you had been involved in at 8th Army and it was determined by what you had done, you would most likely not be involved with drugs.

We also have a man in your Missile Platoon living in the Missile Compound's Barracks and he established you were never near the Missile Compound when these drugs were being delivered.

Once you were cleared we realized, you were in the position we needed to control the distribution of the drugs." The CID Agent stated.

"You have not told me how Carol is involved in all this." I came back to my primary concern.

"We do not know for sure." He stated as he looked directly into my eyes.

"What if I told you she was legally blind, would that help your understanding?" I asked and I could see the surprised look on his face.

"Just how blind is she?" He asked.

"Carol has lost over 90% of her central vision in both eyes but she has refused to use it as a crutch in her life as she had learned to use her peripheral vision to navigate without a white cane. Most people do not know she is blind and she wants everyone to believe and treat her as if she is normal." I explained.

"To be honest with you, I don't think it does. What do you know about Jerry Panetta?" The CID Agent asked.

"I met him one time when I came back from South Korea and attempted to reestablish a relationship with Carol. I have him pegged as a cheap hood and a control freak." I responded as I remembered my first date with Carol.

"Did you know Carol was dating him?" The Agent asked.

"Yes I did and Carol told me she tried to break it off with him and he would not leave her alone. Is he still dating her?" I had to ask.

"I am not sure but his car has been spotted on the street where she lives. I will follow up with the Agent, who is following him and let you know? There is one thing I can tell you. Jerry Panetta is part of the Toledo Mob and they are involved with this drug operation. This is one of the reasons I told you, I did not know for sure if Carol is involved in this." The CID Agent told me.

"That's fair enough. So what is it you want me to do?" I asked him.

"First of all we need you to act normal with Carol and see if you can get closer to this Professor Peters. Although we have our own Agents involved it would be nice to know when he is planning his next Field Trip to the islands and Carol should be able to tell you.

See if you can get Carol to take you to one of the Professor's parties and keep your eyes and ears open so we can confirm who the real players are on those Field Trips. It would be ideal if somehow you were able to go along on one of these Field Trips as your experience in Vietnam with that Sniper Team has made you more keenly aware of what is happening around you.

Our plan is to get to the drugs stored in your Missile pits and exchange them with heroin that is cut to the point there is just enough heroin in it to make our bust legal in court. Between you and our man in your Battery, you can exchange these drugs stored in your Missile pits without anyone knowing you did it. Do you now see why I am talking with you?" He asked me.

"Let me think about this for a moment." I told him, as my mind was able to grasp his plan and the potential risks I could be taking. "Who else knows about your plan to use me? I can see where this might blow up in my face and I am not about to stick out my neck and ruin my military career if my Commander does not know of my involvement in your operation."

"Your Air Defense Group Commander and General Dean the Regional Air Defense Commander have been briefed on this and they have endorsed your involvement. We know General Dean was the 38th Brigade Air Defense Commander when you Commanded Alfa Battery's Hawk Unit and he believes you are the right man, to do this job for us. Does that answer your question?" He asked.

"Partly, but I would like something in writing." I told him and he understood I was not going to stick my neck out based solely on his word.

"I'll see what I can do." He responded. "Is there anything else?"

"Yes there is and it has to do with the timing of this bust. Is it possible it could be done after, I have left Charley Battery and someone else had assumed Command? I would not want to become a target of the Mob's revenge when they find out I was the one who exchanged these drugs.

I also have a better idea of just busting those who are involved at Charley Battery and those who are smuggling these drugs into the United States. What if there was a way of tracking these drugs after they left Charley Battery. Wouldn't it be better to trap the entire drug distribution net work?" I asked.

"Sure, but how can we do that?" He asked.

"Have you ever heard of radioactive particles being used to track medications in patients to see if the drugs were reaching the cancer in their bodies? If I understand this procedure correctly, you could salt the cut heroin you want me to exchange in Charley Battery's Missile pits with these radioactive particles. Then you could then track the drugs using a Geiger-counter no matter how they were being carried to the major drug distributors and you would nail everyone involved." I suggested and I could see his eyes light up with the possibility of making this major drug bust even bigger.

"Hell, that's a great idea, but isn't there some danger involved with radioactivity?" He questioned the idea.

"I wouldn't think so as it will only take a very small amount of the radioactive particles to register on a Geiger-counter. You probably have more exposure to radiation from the hands of your wristwatch than you would from the right type of radioactive particles you could use to salt these drugs. I am sure we could get the experts in the field of radioactive materials to recommend the right stuff to do this job." I suggested.

"General Dean was right when he said you were capable of coming up with solutions for problems other people would never think of and they worked. Let me run this idea past my boss and see what he thinks of it. If it works, I don't see a problem of you departing Charley Battery before the shit hits the fan." The CID Agent stated and I did not tell him about my decision to break up with Carol.

Within a week, an Army Helicopter picked me up at Charley Battery and flew me to a meeting at Selfridge Air Force Base with the Air Defense Group's Commander and General Dean. The CID Agent, his Commander and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics were also at the meeting. They had confirmed the idea of salting the drugs with radioactive particles. They also outlined the plan to conduct a major bust with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the five States where they believed the heroin located at Charley Battery was being sent.

General Dean gave me a letter endorsed by the Director of the Bureau of Narcotics acknowledging my participation with the CID and the Bureau of Narcotics in this Operation called "Hot Potato." I could not help but believe, whoever thought up this Operation's name had a sense of humor to consider the radioactive material as being "hot" as in radioactive and the "hot potato" the Mob would wish it had never handled.

The idea of using the radioactive particles in the drugs was too good to use just once. They wanted to salt an uncut batch of heroin with the radioactive particles to confirm the locations of the major drug distributors. Once they had accomplished this, they would be able to establish how many teams of Agents they needed to make the major bust when the salted cut heroin was sent through the drug distribution system.

The first run went off like clockwork and the Agents were able to track the heroin all the way to the drug users on the streets. By this time, my relationship with Carol was no longer necessary and when she issued her ultimatum that I get out of the Army or she would not marry me, I told her I would think about it and I never came back.

After I took command of Charley Battery, I rented a one-bedroom apartment above a furniture store in Milford, Michigan rather than live in the one room Officer's Quarters on the end of the barracks. Once I put an end to my relationship with Carol, I started dating a good-looking blonde I had met who work as a checkout clerk in the National A&P Grocery Store. One day she suggested we go swimming at a friend of hers who lived on Sylvan Lake. Little did I know I would meet a woman, who would stop me dead in my emotional tracks as if we were star-crossed lovers, who had finally met in this lifetime.

Jayne was a fiery red head with bright green eyes that looked like deep pools of water and I found myself completely lost in them when our eyes met. I cannot remember how long we stared at each other but I do remember blushing as if I were caught just looking at her with my mouth open. I smiled at Jayne when I noticed she was also blushing and then she lowered her eyes to break eye contact with mine but her smile broke into a wide grin.

There had to be a dozen children there with their mothers as Jayne was giving a beach birthday party for her seven-year old son, Roger. Jayne had hired a Clown to entertain the guests while they ate ice cream and cake. After most of the children and their mothers went home, Jayne and the rest of us had gone inside her home and she made a large pitcher of Margaritas.

Since I was new to their group, I was asked what I did for a living and I was able to tell them I was the Commander of Charley Battery. Everyone knew about the Army's Missile site that had been there for years, yet they were curious about what we actually did there. Charley Battery like most military bases around the country conducted Community tours of the Missile Site usually on Memorial Day but few of them had gone to see what was there.

As the Margaritas continued to flow, we talked about a wide number of topics from the war in Vietnam to when their children were born and what their star signs were. Jayne steered this discussion towards finding out if our star signs were compatible with each other. Jayne seemed pleased her own star sign of Capricorn was very compatible with my star sign of Cancer and my birthday was only a few days away.

Roger came in with a spear gun his grandfather had sent him for his birthday. Roger had wanted one since his last visit to Florida after his grandfather had taken him snorkeling off the coast and his mother thought he was too young to have one. Now that he had his spear gun, he did not know how to load it and shoot it. Jayne looked over at me and she did not have to ask me to help her son.

The next week at Charley Battery was particularly busy as we were on a One Hour Alert Status pulling the duty for another Hercules Missile Battery who was none operational due to a maintenance problem with its Acquisition Radar. We were also running the practice Bombing Missions for a B-52 Squadron out of Bangor Maine who had to complete their quarterly flight qualifications before the end of the month. A Hercules Battery with its Target Tracking Radar and its Computer could plot the B-52 aircraft's flight path through its practice-bombing run against the City of Detroit and record the accuracy of their maneuver to hit their target within a few feet if they had actually dropped a bomb.

This had taken three days of continuous tracking by Charley Battery's Radars. We were able to complete the B-52 Aircraft Qualifications of the Bangor Maine's Squadron without losing a single Radar Track, which meant none of their B-52 Aircraft had to make another bombing run to complete their Qualifications. The Squadron Commander sent 200 Maine Lobsters packed in Ice to show his appreciation for the job Charley Battery had done as normally several Hercules Batteries would have been involved in this Test.

On Saturday morning, I had slept late and I cleaned my apartment before I found myself driving to Jayne's place on the Lake. She greeted me at the door and she offered me a beer as if she were expecting me. She insisted I stay for dinner. She was surprised when I helped her prepare it and I grilled the three stakes. It was the start of a perfect evening. We talked about ourselves, what we had done before we met and I had to wonder if I had called her for a date, but I did not even have her phone number.

Jayne suggested going to a nightclub where we could dance and she was able to get a baby sitter for Roger as if she had already told the baby sitter to expect her call.

We had a great time and when we came back, Jayne asked me to drive the baby sitter home while she fixed a nightcap. When I came back, Jayne had changed into a silk jump suit and she had a fire burning in the gas fireplace. This was an opportunity, most men could only dream about having. We started kissing on the living room couch and ended up on the floor in front of the fireplace.

"Oh Mark I want to do this right, please take me into my bedroom." She whispered in my ear and I picked her up into my arms not sure, where her bedroom was located. Needless to say we found it and we made love until we were both exhausted. When I was holding her close in my arms she whispered, "Happy birthday, Mark" as she remembered it was today, June 28th although I had forgotten all about it.

The more time I spent with Jayne the more I felt drawn to her. There was only one problem. I was on orders for Vietnam and Jayne had lost her husband a Marine Captain, who had been killed three years ago in Vietnam. She was being very practical when she suggested this time away from each other would give us both a chance to get to know each other better and if we wanted to make a life together. I could not argue with her logic and I had the feeling she did not want to lose another husband to this War.

I was at Fort Benning Georgia and about to graduate from the special Infantry Course designed to prepare Officers for their tour of duty in Vietnam, when the story of the major coordinated drug bust in five states made Headlines in the Newspapers and on National Television.

# 8. GETTING MY TICKET PUNCHED

When I arrived in South Vietnam, I was assigned to the Sniper Training Unit I had originally set up. However, in less than a week I was pulled out of the Unit. I was told with my knowledge of Special Weapons, I could not be assigned to a Unit less than a Corps Headquarters and I was transferred to the Second Military Regional Corps Headquarters in Na Trang South Vietnam called the First Field Force.

I was assigned to the Fire Directional Command and Control Center in the Corps Headquarters located on the top floor of the Na Trang Hotel, as part of the Corps Artillery. We were responsible for maintaining Corps Artillery support from the Firebases scattered throughout the Region and for targeting B-52 Air Strikes on the Ho Chi Minh Trail along with coordinating Naval Gun Fire from the ships located off the coast of Vietnam.

My Boss was a personal friend of the Air Defense Group Commander at Selfridge Air Based who had asked him to look after me. I had barely learned my job when my Boss went home on an emergency leave and as the senior Captain in the section, I assumed temporary Command of the FDCCC.

By this time, the devastating effects of the Cambodian Incursion in the Spring of 1970, were being felt in South Vietnam. So much of the North Vietnamese Army and all their supply bases had been destroyed that North Vietnam was limited in the amount of supplies it could sending to the Viet Cong. As a direct result there were few attacks made on MAC-V's Units , the Hamlets or the South Vietnamese Army.

The FDCCC had two Officers and 26 Enlisted men assigned to its 24-hour operation on two 12-hour shifts Commanded by a full Colonel. Once the daily reports were logged-in and the after the Briefing to the Corps Artillery Commander was made there was nothing, for them to do. Every month a Viet Cong Unit had fired some long-range rockets into Na Trang from a mountainous area along the seacoast south of Na Trang and between Na Trang and Cameron Bay called the "Dong Bo." These rocket attacks made by "Dong Bo Charley" were never very effective and they were more of a monthly nuisance the US Army did not have time to deal with until now.

To keep the Center's men active and prepared to do their jobs I had the GI's plot each rocket's impact and establish the firing position in the Dong Bo for each Rocket. When the study was done we had established there were only three locations used by Dong Bo Charley to fire these rockets into Na Trang. For the last three months, Dong Bo Charley had not fired any Rockets into Na Trang. We concluded Dong Bo Charley was saving up his Rockets to give us a surprise gift for the Tet Lunar New Year.

Dong Bo Charley always shot his Rockets after MAC-V's mandatory 6 am ceasefire and it would take the Province Chief's approval before we could shoot back. The War in Vietnam was the first war where the US Commander's Rules of engagement established when our Military could not shoot back at the enemy who did not follow any Rules.

I believed Dong Bo Charley would light the fuses to his Rockets to fire several hours after the 6 am ceasefire and he was long gone when we might attempt to hit him. The Staff agreed with this opinion and if we were going to get Dong Bo Charley we had to shoot before 6 am when he was still there lighting his rockets fuses. Our logical plan was to target these locations with every Artillery piece from every Artillery Battery that could hit them. I wanted to shoot "Certified Artillery" rounds and have a TOT (Time on Target) Fire Mission to insure that all the Artillery Shells would all hit these three locations at one minute to 6 am. A "Certified Artillery" round was signed by the Battery Commander as being fired so the impact of the shells would hit the target at the exact time called for in the Fire Mission.

The first night of the three no moon nights prior to the Lunar New Year I was playing Double-deck Pinochle in the Tactical Operation Center in the Corps G-3 Office, when my Section Chief came in. He wanted to know if I wanted to shoot the TOT Artillery Fire Mission today. I told him to wait until the third night, which would be the darkest night before the new moon. I also told him to make sure each of the Battery Commanders sent us a copy of their Certified Artillery Fire Mission to prove every Artillery Shell fired landed on the targets before 6 am.

At 5:59 am, the morning of the TOT an Army Helicopter Pilot flying along the South Vietnam coastline from Cameron Bay reported 22 secondary explosions on the three locations Dong Bo Charley could fire his rockets. My Staff was thrilled with this report as all their hard work of plotting all the rocket impact locations had paid off and we had guessed right about when Dong Bo Charley would shoot his rockets next. Dong Bo Charley spent the last three months carrying in his rockets for his celebration of the Lunar New Year and we had caught him before he could shoot them into Na Trang.

I was about to write up the recommendation for the Award Citation for my Staff's outstanding performance when I was called into the Office of General Charley Brown the Corps Commander. However, instead of receiving congratulations for a job well done, I was being threatened with a Court Martial for shooting after the 6 am MAC-V Mandatory Ceasefire.

General Brown had received an Official Complaint from the Provence Chief claiming the First Field Force had fired their Artillery on innocent civilians in violation of the MAC-V Regulations. After reading my rights under the Uniform Code of Military Justice to remain silent, the General asked me if I had anything to say about my actions.

"Sir, if you intend to Court Martial me, you better include the 11 Artillery Battery Commanders who fired that TOT, as here are their certifications that claim every Artillery Shell they fired landed on those targets at 5:59 am, one minute before the mandatory 6 am cease fire." I responded and handed the General copies of their reports.

"Captain, that is too damned close to breaking the Rules and you know it." The General stated after he finished reading the Artillery Battery Commanders reports.

"Yes Sir. But the Rules are the Rules and the game isn't over until the whistle blows, Sir." I responded and General Brown's Chief of Staff smiled at my comment.

"Dismissed Captain" General Brown stated through his clenched teeth and as I was walking out of the General's Office his Chief of Staff stuck a cigar in my pocket and mouthed the words "Well done."

As the temporary Commander of the FDCCC, I attended both the Corps Headquarters and the Corps Artillery Staff meetings. The Corps G-3 had presented his next Planned Military Operation. After everyone else had asked questions and made their comments, I was wondering why the FDCCC had not been contacted by the G-3 about this new operation, as it was our job to coordinate and confirm the Corps Artillery's support for this plan. I rechecked the G-3's Operational Plan to make sure I had not missed the Corps Artillery's Support plan that should have been attached to it.

When the Corps Chief of Staff asked if there were any more questions, I made the comment my copy of the G-3's Operation's Plan did not have a copy of the Corps Artillery Support Plan. The briefing room went as quite as a graveyard at midnight until the Chief of Staff asked the G-3 about the Corps Artillery Support plan as his copy of the Operation's Plan did not have it either.

By calling the Chief of Staff's attention to the omission of the Artillery's Support Plan to my copy of the G-3's Plan I had embarrassed the G-3 and it had been an error on my part. My only excuse was I thought only my copy was missing the Artillery's Support Plan. I should have approach the G-3 after his briefing and asked him for a copy of the missing Artillery Support Plan. By failing to do this properly, I had unknowingly created a bitter enemy who would be waiting for me to make a mistake.

# 9. REVENGE OPENS THE DOOR TO COMMAND

With so little enemy activity going on in South Vietnam and in First Field Force my Staff was spending their time looking at the walls. I had each man study for his next promotion exam and cross train in performing other duties and functions in the FDCCC. I never believed in creating "make work projects" for my men and the greatest reward I could give them was time off. However, I could not do that as the moment I did, all hell would break loose and I would need them at their duty positions.

When I looked out the window at the Na Trang beach, I saw it was just as the Craft Shop had been at Charley Battery. If the Craft Shop had worked at Union Lake, there was no reason why some of my men could not benefit from a more relaxed manning requirement as the beach was less than 100 yards away from the Main Gate of the Corps Headquarters Compound.

After discussing the idea with my Section NCO's and the Corps Artillery Commander, I allowed the FDCCC to operate with a minimum number of men. The men would rotate their time on the beach and they would be in constant radio contact with the FDCCC. They could respond back to their duty assignments in full uniforms in less than 5 minutes. As in all good things, perhaps this was working too well.

It was in the middle of a quiet afternoon when Colonel Fear came into the FDCCC. That was his real name as it is too good for me to have made it up. He was the Corps G-3 I had embarrassed in the Staff Meeting and he was on the promotion list to become a General. The Chief of Staff had warned me to be careful around Colonel Fear after that Staff Meeting and he told me how I should have handled the problem of the missing Artillery Support Plan.

I immediately approached Colonel Fear and asked if I could help him. However, I was not expecting his response. He demanded to know where all my men were and I knew someone had told him about my beach policy. My Radio Operator clicked the Radio Key signaling the men on the beach who came running.

"Sir may I ask you again, if there is anything I can do for you?" I asked.

"You didn't answer my question about where you men are at." The Colonel snarled back at me.

"I am sorry Colonel, if there is nothing you need from me and with all due respect Sir. I do not work for you and if you have a problem with the way I am managing the FDCCC you should take it up with the Corps Artillery Commander." I told him. By than the first men from the beach came running into the FDCCC and they were asking me what the problem was. I turned back to the Colonel to see if he had anything to say and he turned to leave the FDCCC without saying another word.

Two days later I was again in General Brown's Office expecting to explain my actions with Colonel Fear. "Captain Corrigan, please take a seat." He began. "I have asked my G-1 to go through all the Officers Personnel files and find me a new Company Commander. As you may have heard, Captain Jackson was killed last night in a fragging incident where someone threw a hand grenade into his trailer.

General Anderson has selected you as being the most experienced Company grade Officer in the Corps. You have already successfully commanded a Hawk Missile Battery in South Korea, the 8th Army's Special Marksmanship Training Unit, the Headquarters Battery of the 517th Air Defense Artillery Battalion at Selfridge Air Force Base and the Hercules Missile Battery at Union Lake Michigan.

I have also talked with General Bonesteel and General Dean who have given you glowing reports on your ability to Command and accomplish great things. I need you to take over Corps Headquarters Company and straighten it out." The General stated.

When a General asks you to do something in the Army, you are expected to say, "Yes Sir" and just do it. However in a Headquarters the size of First Field Force there are a lot of Generals and full Colonels who feel since you are only a Captain you also work for them. If there is one thing a Headquarters Company Commander needs it is a clear line of Command Authority and the shortest chain of Command.

There was another factor, I had to consider before I agreed to take this Command. As an Officer in Vietnam, it was bad enough to be killed by the enemy and what just happened to Captain Jackson was even worse, as your own men could kill you. I knew the fragging of Officers in Vietnam was not an isolated incident and it only took one man who thought you were an asshole to blow you away.

When you are facing a fore gone conclusion that does not mean you should not try to improve the situation. "General Brown I have all the Command experience I need but I understand your situation. Let me make a deal with you, Sir. If I can straighten out Headquarters Company in 90 days I would like to choose my next assignment in Vietnam." I started to bargain as I had my eye on being the R&R Officer in Sydney Australia. Normally an Officer was reassigned after his first six months to somehow balance the fact there were some positions in Vietnam, which were less dangerous than other's and it was not fair to be stuck out in the Field for a full 12 month tour.

When General Brown did not say anything, I proceeded to ask for a little more. "General I need a clear line of Command with you and by that I mean I work for you and only for you. There is just too much Brass around here and I cannot serve more than one master, just as the Bible says." I said and the Chief of Staff shook his head as he snickered.

"All right Captain Corrigan, perhaps you have learned too much as a Commander. You will report directly to me and I will think about your reassignment when the time comes. If you ask for anything else I think I will need to review Colonel Fear's report of your insubordination." General Brown stated with a grin and looked over at his Chief of Staff who was shaking his head trying not to laugh.

I returned to the FDCCC and appointed Captain Benson as the acting Commander in the FDCCC before I went down to the Company Headquarters Building to see just what a mess I had just inherited.

I met the First Sergeant who had liquor on his breath and after I had talked with the XO and he felt comfortable with me, he offered me a part of his Black Market operation. I sent the XO packing to the G-1 for a new assignment after I told him he was a fool to admit he was involved in a criminal offence when I had not advised him of his rights to remain silent under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I also told him if I saw him, again I would Court Martial him.

I went into the Orderly Room and approached the First Sergeant asking him if he might have a bottle, as I needed a stiff drink after dealing with the XO. He made the mistake of opening his desk drawer and when he did, I saw the almost empty bottle of Jim Beam.

"First Sergeant I think you look sick and you need to go to the hospital." I told him. When he insisted he felt fine, I told him again he needed to go to the hospital to save his career as I picked up his bottle of Jim Beam.

The First Sergeant had just cleared the Orderly Room's door when the Company Clerk jumped up from his desk and ran out the door yelling, "I give up, I'm on drugs."

For a brief moment, I was in the Orderly Room alone until two MP's came in with the biggest black man I had ever seen. Sergeant E-5 George Johnson was hand cuffed and in leg irons and I was told he was charged with, First Degree Murder in the killing of five-men at his Fire Base and the Attempted Murder of two men he had wounded who would be testifying against him at his Court-Martial.

The MPs wanted me to sign for him, as his Division Commander felt with all the death threats made against Sergeant Johnson it was not safe for him to remain in his Brigg. All this seemed strange to me. The MPs should have taken Sergeant Johnson to MAC-V's Long Bin Jail in Saigon.

I asked Sergeant Johnson how long he had been in handcuffs and after I found out, I asked him if he could be trusted if I had the MPs take off his Handcuffs. After reading Sergeant Johnson's transfer Orders they did not say anything about this First Degree Murder Charge. I called his Unit to speak with his First Sergeant, as I was not sure what I should do with Sergeant Johnson.

The First Sergeant turned out to be Sergeant Honeycutt a man I had known in South Korea and he explained what happened at the Unit. Sergeant Johnson was the Sergeant of the Guard when he found seven men hiding in the barracks smoking pot when they should have been on the Defense Perimeter during a Red Alert.

The men had told Sergeant Johnson if he came back, they would shoot him. Sergeant Johnson reported this to me and when Sergeant Johnson came back, the men opened fire on him. Sergeant Johnson returned fire killing five men and wounding the other two. However, the two survivors claimed Sergeant Johnson just shot them and with two witnesses against him, Sergeant Johnson was in the Brigg pending an investigation of the charges.

According to Sergeant Honeycutt, the plan was to move Sergeant Johnson out of the Unit in handcuffs and leg Irons as if he were going to jail when he was actually being transferred. The two witnesses would be told they could be indefinitely extended in Vietnam until the Court Martial was heard on a date significantly after they were due to go home. Although we knew these two witnesses were lying, it might be difficult to prove it. However, the thought of staying in Vietnam indefinitely might convince them it was more important to them to go home than wait for the Court Martial. Then without any witnesses, the charges would be dropped.

All this was well and good, but they forgot to tell Sergeant Johnson. I thanked Sergeant Honeycutt and I ask if the Company Commander would send me this information in writing. Sergeant Honeycutt told me that would not be a problem.

I dismissed the MPs and I asked Sergeant Johnson to tell me what happened. His story was what I had learned from Sergeant Honeycutt and I told him I believed him. George was an English Major who had graduated from Tuskegee University in Alabama and then he was drafted into the Army.

"George right now I need a Company Clerk, are you willing to work for me?" I asked and he responded with a quick "Yes Sir."

When the phone rang, I answered it and it was General Brown. "What the hell are you doing Corrigan? My Sergeant Major has just told me your First Sergeant is in the Hospital and General Anderson has your XO in his Office requesting a transfer. Get your ass up here and you better have a damned good explanation." He yelled and the phone line went dead.

I looked at my watch and told George, "Somewhere on this Compound there should be the Night's Guard force forming up. Find them and make sure those flags in front of Corps Headquarters come down at 5 pm. I have to go to the General's Office." I told him as I left.

I was immediately escorted into General Brown's Office by the Chief of Staff. "All right Corrigan lets have it." The General began and I told him what happened and what I had found out. When I was finish the General agreed with everything I did.

"There is another problem that has been dumped in my lap. There is a man being sent here charged with First Degree Murder. I don't know why he was not taken to Long Bin Jail. When he gets here I want you to put him on the next plane to Saigon." He said as he got up, looked out the window, and then back at his watch."Well that's the first time this week those flags came down on time."

I got up and went to the window and there was George and the Flag Detail properly folding the National Colors. "Sir is that the man you want me to send to Long Bin Jail?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" The General asked.

"Sir, the man Commanding, that Flag Detail is Sergeant George Johnson. I have already talked with his First Sergeant. Sergeant Honeycutt and I served in South Korea and he told me the whole story behind the incident and the First Degree Murder charges brought against Sergeant Johnson." I told the General and filled in the details to the point I made Sergeant Johnson my Company Clerk.

"Hell Corrigan you did all this in what, less than 3 hours?" The General asked when he checked his watch again. "When I asked you to straighten out Headquarters Company I didn't expect you to do it all in a day." The General laughed.

The next morning, the Command Sergeant Major brought in my new First Sergeant and that afternoon a first Lieutenant James Corrigan came in for an interview as my new XO. He was from Breezewood Pennsylvania and we did not know of any common ancestor that could link us as being related beyond our last name.

He was also an Air Defense Officer who had served in a Hercules Missile Battery in San Francisco as the Missile Platoon Leader and he knew about Charley Battery receiving top honors in the Nation. I told him I would be the Mess Officer and what I expected him to do and what he could expect from me. When he said that would be no problem I asked him to be my XO.

Headquarters had 990 Enlisted men in 17 Sections with 17 Sergeant Majors running these Sections usually Commanded by a Full Colonel except for the Corps 4 Major Staff Positions that had a General Officer.

The way I had established my Chain of Command with General Brown I did not have any problems with the Officers, but the Sergeant Majors were a whole different matter. To them, the headquarters Company Commander may as well not exist except on one day of the month, Payday. In the Corps Headquarters of First Field Force, before I assumed Command of Headquarters Company the Sergeant Majors had grown to believe their Colonel was the only one they had to satisfy. This attitude could not have been more apparent when I called a Meeting of the 17 Sergeant Majors and none of them showed up.

For the first time in all my experience as a Unit Commander, I found myself in the position of not knowing how to deal with this deliberate indifference to my authority. The 17 Sections in Corps Headquarters would be like the Platoons in a Missile Battery with an Officer and a Platoon Sergeant. However, there was a significant difference between these Sections and a Platoon in a Battery. These Officers were not in my Chain of Command and the Sergeant Majors were acting as if they were not in my Chain of Command either. If I tried to "order", the Sergeant Majors to cooperate I could see them running to their Officers for protection and that could become a pissing contest I may not be able to win. I had to find a way of gaining these Sergeant Majors willing cooperation as I had a Command problem I could not solve without them.

Every Unit Commander in Vietnam was required to conduct a physical headcount of every man carried on his Unit's Morning Report once a month and this physical headcount was done in a Unit formation. Yet I could not find any evidence it was ever done. I could not find a single member of Headquarters Company who could tell me when he had actually stood in a Unit formation since he arrived at the Corps Headquarters. I concluded this Unit requirement and the past Reports claiming this physical headcount had been done, was the same, as the "Paper Weapons Qualifications" the Units had done in South Korea and I was not going to make any such false reports.

General Brown had asked me to straighten out Headquarters Company and he was expecting me to know how to do it. I could not go to him with all the problems, I was having with the Sergeant Majors and expose all the past Physical Headcount Reports as not being true without admitting I did not know how to correct the problem. During my weekly Company Headquarters meeting, I discussed my dilemma and I asked them for any suggestions they may have.

It was 5 am, two days later when Sergeant Johnson knocked on the door of my trailer and asked if I would come with him. He led me to a Guard Tower overlooking the back Gate to the Corps Headquarters Compound, which was only manned, on High Alert Status. We watched as 12 of the 17 Sergeant Majors, came into the Compound through the back Gate, before the Vietnam wide 6 am curfew was lifted. There was no legitimate reason for anyone of these Sergeant Majors to be outside the Compound. Therefore, they were most likely shacked-up with some Vietnamese prostitute and they were in violation of MAC-V's Regulations dealing with its curfew. After witnessing the Sergeant Majors coming through the back Gate Sergeant Johnson asked me if this might help me deal with the Sergeant Majors. I smiled and thanked him.

This small personnel Back Gate, was next to the Main Back Gate. It was manned by an MP who was position inside a smaller bunker which was part of a more elaborately built Bunker with a five foot sandbagged tunnel which make a 90 degree right turned into the main bunker's covered main chamber. The tunnel was designed to prevent any direct-fire weapons from shooting into the Compound and anyone coming through the Back Gate would be protected once he was in the main chamber as it was large enough to hold 20 men. There was another sandbagged tunnel leading from the main chamber to the Compound's perimeter defense bunkers or out into the main Compound.

On Monday morning at 5 am, I put a new MP on the Gate and I ordered him not to let more than one man enter the Gate until I gave him the signal to let the next man come through the first tunnel. I had a photographer in the main chamber with a flash bulb camera and I ordered him to snap the picture of each man when he turned into the main Chamber. I set up a small table where I had a Unit Sign-in Sheet for the entry of the time and the man's signature.

After each Sergeant Major's picture was taken I ordered him to read the time on my watch, and compare the time on his own watch and enter either time on the Unit Sign-in Sheet after signing his name. Anyone who protested "signing in" was told I would Court Martial him for disobeying a Direct Order. I caught 15 of the 17 Sergeant Majors and when I had my First Sergeant called the Sergeant Majors for a meeting in the Mess Hall at 1400 hours, all 17 Sergeant Majors where there.

0900 hours Saturday morning when I held the Company's formation, I had an accurate physical headcount for Headquarters Company's monthly Report. I also told the men of Headquarters Company since they were not living out in a Field Unit I expected them to have their Uniforms pressed and their boots spit-shined as by their appearance I would know they belonged to Headquarters Company. If there was any grumbling about this policy I never heard it as I knew the 17 Sergeant Majors would handle it and they did.

Sometime later, when one of the Sergeant Majors was about to go back to the United States he asked to see me and I had a good idea why he did. I put off seeing him until the morning of his actual departure and there was a Headquarters Company's Jeep waiting outside the Orderly Room to take him to the Airport.

"What can I do for you Sergeant Major?" I asked as if I did not know.

The Sergeant Major did not waste any time explaining he was very concerned about the incident where I had caught him coming in the Back Gate during Curfew and I had taken his picture. He did not want that incident hanging over his head when he reported to his next assignment as it could ruin his career and most likely his marriage.

"Perhaps you should have thought about that before you shacked-up in the Village." I admonished him. "However to put your mind at ease, if you agree on your honor not to tell anyone, I will tell you a secret." When I had his agreement I told him I could only get flash bulbs for that camera and not any film so I did not have his picture.

"Why you dirty son-of-a bitch," He stated before he added the word "Sir" and he smiled when he came to attention.

"Will there be anything else, Sergeant Major?" I asked.

"No Sir." He said as he saluted and I returned his salute and wished him good luck on his next assignment.

When I think back on what I had to do to get these Sergeant Majors to cooperate and help me do my job, I believe it was an act of necessity. I had to find a way to remind them they were still in the Army and they had a duty and responsibility to the welfare of their men beyond the work these soldiers did in their Sections.

The Headquarters Company's Mess Hall was feeding over 3,000 meals a day, which did not include the mid-night meal for the men who worked at night. Since I was the Mess Officer in every unit I was in, it did not take long to make it a show place that served the best-prepared food in Vietnam.

MAC-V as part of the new United States Economic Assistance Program to South Vietnam were looking for new areas to employ more Vietnamese without having the local Units come up with the money to pay them. I called MAC-V's Economic Assistance Director to see if my idea of using Vietnamese Waitresses in the Mess Hall would qualify for the new Economic Assistance Program. It was not a matter if my idea would qualify but how many Vietnamese I wanted to hire. When I suggested 50 girls should be able to handle and serve all the GIs who ate in the Mess Hall, he told me he was sending enough money to hire a hundred girls. The paper work was simple. I would need to file monthly vouchers to account for the Vietnamese money advanced to the Unit and if I needed any more money, I should ask for it. Managing this money was easier than the Sundry Fund in Alfa Battery.

That was the easy part, as now I had to hire these girls within the Regulations governing Vietnamese civilian employees in Vietnam. The South Vietnamese Government controlled the hiring of local workers through the Bureau of Contract Employment set up in each city and Province. This was an open door to bribes and corruption where a worker might pay half of his salary to the person who found him a job. There was a way around this, if the Vietnamese were hired directly by the local Unit Commander as casual day labor and once the workers had proven themselves they could become permanent employees. I had my XO time how long it took for a GI to get his food through the chow line, as I needed to know if my idea of using the Vietnamese girls would actually work and if it would not take any longer to feed the men.

I discussed this with Mr Cho, the Unit's Translator and I suggested he conduct the screening of potential casual day Labors. He suggested I hire a special assistant and he pointed out this would be a new job that would also qualify for the Economic Assistance Program. The fact the young man I hired was also his nephew would make sure he did not accept any kickbacks from the people I hired as that would disgrace his Uncle.

Anyone who worked in Food Service in the United States needed a health certificate signed by a Doctor. I also knew here in Vietnam just as it was in South Korea, a Doctor could be bribed and there was no guarantee the girls I hired would really be healthy. The solution was to have the girls I wanted to hire examined by the US Army and given a blood test.

For security reasons each Vietnamese applicant had to have a background check and the Chief of Police for Na Trang was responsible for conducting this background check and maintaining those records. Mr Cho and I went to meet the Chief of Police and discuss my plans to hire local Vietnamese girls for my Mess Hall. If every man has his price, the Chief of Police was no exception but I knew I could not bribe him with money, and still maintain my "face" as an American Army Officer who needed his honest evaluation of anyone I wanted to hire.

I notice he was carrying a snub-nosed 38 Caliber Revolver and even a trained shooter had trouble hitting something beyond 10 feet with it. I told him I had competitively shot in pistol matches and I had trained men to shoot as well as I did. When I saw his eyebrows lift ever so slightly, I asked him if he would like to go shooting with me, as I knew where I could get some 38 ammunition. I had found his Achilles' heel and I knew if I could teach him how to shoot that snub-nosed revolver I would have a friend for life.

What I did not expect was he wanted me to show him how good I was and he immediately took me to his Police Range out the back door of his Office. I asked him if he had any beer cans and he called back into his open Office door for someone to bring a beer can. I placed the beer can against the backstop and fired a shot from my Gold Cup 45 Automatic exploding the beer can that was still filled with beer. I asked if I could take a shot with his snub-nosed revolver and I hit the empty beer can again. When I looked back at him and smiled, I could see his eyes were as big as saucers.

"You can teach me to shoot as good as you?" He asked and I told him I could if he listened to what I told him and if he was willing to practice. When I saw the concern on his face, I reminded him I could get 38 Caliber Ammunition if he wanted it. The bargain was sealed with an unstated commitment I would teach him how to shoot his revolver.

Not only did I teach him how to shoot I became a regular guest at his monthly dinners he held for his special friends and senior Officials of the Government. As the Headquarters Company Commander with 990-men, I also needed a special favor. I wanted him to call me if any of my men got into any trouble so I could take care of it before the MPs had to make a report. He understood the reason for this special favor as if I could resolve the problem I would not have to explain it to my Boss.

I did not have to advertize for these Waitress positions as word of mouth spread through Na Trang like a prairie fire and over 200 applicants were waiting at the Main Gate the day after I hired Mr Cho's nephew. We had discussed the qualifications I was looking for. He was to tell each applicant that they could not be hired until the Chief of Police confirmed their background and they passed the health examination.

Mr Cho, his nephew and the Mess Sergeant helped me train these girls how to take a GI's food order and serve him. I told them wear their Vietnamese dresses and they would have their hands and fingernails inspected to make sure they were clean. I warned them if they failed the hand and fingernail inspection, they would be dismissed, as I had 50 girls waiting to take their jobs. My final warning was not to try to pick up a date with a GI, as that would also get them fired.

I tried out the system for the breakfast meal. Rather than have the men stand in the chow line they could go directly to a table and check off the items, they wanted to eat on the Menu Card. The Menu Card was in English and Vietnamese and the girls would pick up their order and then serve the food at their table as if they were eating in a Restaurant. The men loved the attention they received from the girls and the troop morale jumped 100%. It was not surprising that Headquarters Company won the Connelly Award for the best Mess Hall in the Army.

In less than 90 days, I had done what I told General Brown I would do to straighten out Headquarters Company. However, General Brown told me I was crazy if I thought he was going to let me go and have him, worry the next Company Commander would screw it all up again. I knew I could not press the issue and I had to admit this was now a very easy assignment for the months I remained in Vietnam.

# 10. UP POPPED THE DEVIL

Things were running too smoothly and I was enjoying the fruits of my labor when Colonel Rodmann the "Super Spook" I worked for when I was developing the Sniper Tactics in South Vietnam walked into my Office.

"Well Captain Corrigan, it looks like you have found yourself another cushy job in the Army." He greeted me and extended his hand toward me.

"Back, back, evil spirit from the past. Back from whence thy came" I exclaimed as I crossed my index fingers in the form of a cross, to ward off the devil.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?" Colonel Rodmann asked innocently, as if he were actually offended, by my response.

"It is when I know what I am dealing with. A Leopard cannot change his spots and you would not be here if you didn't need me for some picnic in the bush." I told him.

"Unfortunately you are right and I would not be here if I knew anyone else could do this job. With the Army's withdrawal from Cambodia after the Kent State incident where the Ohio National Guard had killed four student protesters and with the Paris Peace talks stalled, the North Vietnamese want to create another victory like Diem Bien Phu, when they defeated the French Army back in 1954.

There is a Special Intelligence Top Secret Briefing schedule in 20 minutes by General Taylor the new G-3 and I need you to come with me so you can understand the situation." Colonel Rodmann asked very seriously and I knew I could not refuse his request.

"All right, Colonel. That's just enough time to sample some freshly baked cherry pie in the Mess Hall." I told him as I grabbed my hat.

"First Sergeant, if anyone asks for me, tell them I am on the beach." I told him as we went out the door of the Orderly Room. I did not realize how quickly I had reverted to covering my tracks as if I were taking the Sniper Team on a mission.

"Captain, I am impressed with what you have done in this Mess Hall as I already had breakfast here this morning." The Colonel stated as we walked towards the Mess Hall.

"I am pleased with the way things have worked out and I must admit it was easy 'walking on water' as I already knew where the bricks are after turning Charley Battery's Mess Hall into a show place." I commented.

"Nothing, like experience." Colonel Rodman commented and I knew he was not just referring to running a Mess Hall.

During the Top Secret Briefing General Taylor outlined the trap he was setting for the 9th NVA when they attempted to capture Fire Base 5 and 6. The two Fire Bases had been deliberately left in place as bait along the Cambodian Border after President Nixon had ordered the Army to withdraw from Cambodia after the Kent State Incident.

"Our Intelligence has confirmed the 9th NVA has been reinforced with four Regiments of NVA Veteran Troops from along the DMZ and major Military Supplies from North Vietnam have been moving into the area in support of this Operation. Unlike the past tactics of the 9th NVA they have adopted a more European method of deployment used by the Russians and this influence comes directly from their Russian Military Advisor Colonel Jargar Bouchifvic who is acting more like the 9th NVA Commander than as a simple Military Advisor." General Taylor stated and Colonel Rodmann leaned over and told me I needed to come up with a plan to eliminate the Russian Colonel.

Knowing who my target would be did not tell me why his elimination was so important to Colonel Rodmann. I could only focus on the possibilities of making a shot from a position that would be created within the overall Operational Plans addressed in the Briefing. I would be looking within and beyond what others would see as important to the overall success of the mission as I was looking through the eyes of a Sniper.

General Taylor went on to introduce other members of his G-3 Staff who filled in the details of how they would use all their Military Assets to close the trap and destroy the 9th NVA.

The Briefing continued with the other Corps General Staff Officers providing their plans to assist and support General Taylor's Military Operation. The most valuable information to me was the current Military Intelligence Assessment of the location of the 9th NVA and their most likely avenues to approach these Fire Bases.

The Military Intelligence Aerial Photos were only hours old and it gave me a good understanding of just where Fire base 5 and 6 were located. This was in the same area my Sniper Teams had worked with the innocent sounding name of the Studies and Observation Group. These SOG Teams conducted covert military operations beyond the borders of South Vietnam in Cambodia and Laos to interdict and destroy the North Vietnamese Military Supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

I continued to make notes of the Aerial Photos I wanted to study more closely and if they did not show me, what I was looking for additional Aerial Photos could be ordered.

When the Briefing was over Colonel Rodmann took me to General Brown's Office where General Taylor and the General from G-2 Military Intelligence were waiting. I had the feeling they knew more about me even before the brief introductions were made.

"As we previously discussed with the importance of Colonel Bouchifvic running the show and this operation being his plan based on Russian Tactics, if we can eliminate him there is a good chance the 9th NVA Commander will revert to the Tactics he knows best. This will be like changing horses in the middle of the stream. There will be parts of Colonel Bouchifvic's plans he cannot change in time and the confusion between the two plans will give us the edge to defeat the 9th NVA." Colonel Rodmann summed up my mission.

"I have brought Captain Corrigan, who as you know, worked with me when he brought that Sniper Team from South Korea. I have asked him to come up with a plan to eliminate Colonel Bouchifvic once the Colonel has committed the 9th NVA to a plan of attack and all the NVA Units are moving into their attack positions."

"Captain, what do you need to accomplish this Sniper Mission?" General Taylor asked.

"Get me a clear shot at him within 1,200 yards using my own rifle and a guaranteed way to escape, Sir as I will not be involved in a suicide mission." I told them. "I have one other advantage as I have worked in this area with my Sniper Team when we were teaching the SOG Teams how to support their operations with long range shooters. I have made some notes of what Aerial Photos I need to study before I can establish my shooting position. I must tell you from what I have seen in General Taylor's Briefing the number of avenues of approach the 9th NVA could take, represents too many possibilities for me to cover them all.

If I could suggest based on my experience in the FDCCC, we might be able to use the small anti-personnel mines dropped from Aircraft to channel the 9th NVA Headquarters with Colonel Bouchifvic into my best killing zone." I found myself telling them. "We might also use those radio tracking devises we dropped along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to plot the next B-52 Air strikes, to monitor and confirm the location of the main body of the 9th NVA."

"Would you want a shooting partner like you had on the Sniper Team?" Colonel Rodmann asked.

"Yes Sir, if he was still in the Army but I would not want someone I did not know and could trust with my life as he could get us both killed." I told the Colonel and I knew he understood how close each of the Sniper Team's two-man elements were with each other.

General Brown suggested I work on a plan to make this shot until I came up with a problem I could not overcome as he reminded me he did not want to lose me as his Headquarters Company Commander.

Colonel Rodmann had my rifle and 100 special handmade Sniper rounds of Ammunition picked up from my parents in Milwaukee and flown to me in Na Trang South Vietnam.

Based on Military Intelligence Reports and the information reported from the tracking devises dropped by Aircraft we were able to channel the main body of the 9th NVA into a valley that was more than a mile wide. There was an isolated finger of land in the center of the upper end of the valley and that would be my shooting position. When I could not find anyone I knew, who was still in Vietnam to be my shooting partner I agreed to conduct this mission alone and I finalized my plans.

An Army Helicopter dropped me off on the backside of that finger of land in the dead of night. The next day several Helicopters flew over the area to mask the noise of my ranging shots, I needed to make to confirm the distances to a number of fix objects where I might have to shoot if the Russian Colonel came close to any one of them.

For 6-days, an Army Helicopter circled above me at 10,000 feet while I waited for the Russian Colonel to arrive. Mid morning on the seventh day, an advanced Party of the 9th NVA came into the valley and set up a day camp for the noon meal. I watched through my Sniper's Scope, as three folding chairs and a small table were set up under the same tree I had taken my last ranging shot and I knew that Russian Colonel would sit in one of these chair's.

As the Colonel was taking his seat, I fired my first shot that would travel over 1,400 yards before it hit him. While the first bullet was still flying towards the Colonel, I fired my second shot at what I judged to be the 9th NVA Commander. I chambered a third round into my rifle as the cross hairs of my rifle's scope settled back on the center of the Russian Colonel's chest. I was locked-on my primary target ready to fire the third shot if for some reason I missed him. I watched as my first shot smashed into the center of the Russian Colonel's chest and my second shot hit the NVA General in his left shoulder.

Having confirmed the kill, I immediately keyed my Radio for my pickup and all hell broke loose as every NVA soldier started to shoot in my general direction. My pickup Helicopter came over the backside of my position while the Army's Gunships came down from the sky burning up the valley with rockets and machinegun fire.

I had just climbed into the Helicopter when it was hit by NVA Machinegun fire. The smoking Helicopter limped for altitude and struggled to fly to the closest friendly unit, which happened to be Fire Base 6. We were less than 200 feet above Fire Base 6's hell-a-pad when the engine quit and the Pilot auto-rotated the burning Helicopter into an emergency landing.

Once the fire in the Helicopter was put out, we were taken to the Firebase's Command and Control bunker. I was able to radio the Corps Command Center and report the confirmed kill on the Russian Colonel, and the wounding of what could have been the 9th NVA Commander. I was congratulated on my successful mission and I was told another Helicopter would pick me up the next morning.

The only problem was the cloud cover descended to less than 10 feet above the top of the Firebase's Guard Towers as the night approached and this ceiling was too low for a Helicopter to land the next day. This low cloud cover did not improve the following day, which gave the 9th NVA enough time to begin their attack on both Firebases. I wrote about the Battle at Firebase 5 and 6 in my Books _Soft Touch,_ and the _Page of Diamond._

I was trapped at Firebase 6 and the determined 9th NVA would have overrun and captured the Firebase if it had not been for my knowledge of how the B-52's flew their practice Bombing Missions against the United States Hercules Missile Sites like Charley Battery. This knowledge combined with old friends from the Air Force B-52 Squadron at Bangor Maine broke the back of the final attack made by the 9th NVA and prevented their overrunning and capturing the Fire Base as there was nothing else that could have stopped the 9th NVA.

During the Vietnam War, all the United States Air Force's B-52 Squadrons, like Bangor Maine rotated to Thailand as part of a temporary duty assignment. I can only believe, it was not just a coincidence the Good Lord had planned for the Bangor Maine B-52 Squadron to be there when I needed them.

Military Intelligence had grossly under estimated the strength of the North Vietnamese forces committed to winning this "Victory." Since I did not have a duty position in the Firebase, I had taken up a shooting position in the watchtower above the Command and Control Bunker. My plan was to locate and shoot any NVA Officers and Sergeants involved in directing the assault on the Firebase. However, within the first hour I had shot all the ammunition I had brought with me. I mounted my Rifle's Scope on an M-14 Rifle and I made sight adjustments as I shot the NVA soldiers further and further away from my position, until I ran out of ammunition. The attack never let up as wave after wave of NVA soldiers continued to assault the west wall of the Firebase while their mortars pounded the compound trying to disable the Firebase's Artillery and Heavy Mortars.

The Firebase Commander had designed the Compound's Defenses extremely well building it with four interior section defense bunkers in five separated, pie shaped defensive sectors. The interior defense bunkers would be use as fallback positions, if the outer perimeter bunkers were breached. If the NVA overrun part of the Firebase's perimeter they would only have access to the first section of that pie shaped sector's area and they would not only face the next section's interior defense bunkers they would come under direct fire from both sides of that Sector's pie shaped defenses. Every square inch of ground outside the Perimeter Fence back through the 300 yard cleared area to the edge of the jungle, was targeted and covered by two Direct Support Artillery Batteries located at the surrounding Firebases.

After three days of continuous fighting, the Firebase had suffered a significant number of casualties including most of the Officers Commanding the Perimeter defenses. None of these casualties could be evacuated as the cloud ceiling had not lifted enough to bring in any helicopters to fly them out. Three of the five Defense Sectors had been breached to the second interior defensive bunker sections but the west wall had only one interior defensive bunker section remaining.

The helicopter pilot who flew me into Firebase 6 and I had taken over some of the duties in the Command and Control Bunker to assist the Firebase Commander's efforts to defend the Firebase's Compound. As each wave of NVA smashed into the last interior defense bunkers on the west wall it became evident to the Firebase Commander that even with more reinforcements the Firebase may not be able to hold the west wall.

While the 9th NVA Commander's expectations of victory increased the Firebase Commander's confidence to withstand the NVA's continuous attacks was becoming more doubtful as he had not anticipated his west wall's Sector interior Defenses would collapse this quickly. I could see the worried look on the Commander's face as the west wall's casualty reports reflected a significant increase as they tried to hold the position. He ordered another defensive line built as the last fallback position but he realized he did not have enough men to build it, in time before the west wall might be over run.

I suggested using the 105 Howitzer that had been hit in the end of its barrel by a NVA Mortar shell, like a shotgun and shoot sand bags filled with rocks at the attacking NVA on the west wall. He was willing to try anything at this point and he ordered me to have it done.

I cut off the damaged end of the 105 Howitzer's barrel with a welding torch and positioned the gun in the center of the last interior defensive bunker line with the gun's barrel depressed to hit the ground less than 30 yards away.

I had learned from shooting a rifled Civil War Cannon when we fired "grapeshot" it would spin the grapeshot out in a huge donut pattern leaving the center open and we would be lucky if one of those grapeshot hit a target 100 yards away. However if I aimed the rifled Cannon at the ground at a third of the way to the target the grapeshot canister would split open overriding the spin put on the canister produced by the rifled barrel and then all the grapeshot would ricochet in the same direction towards the target.

When the NVA made another assault on the west wall, they had already bunched up as the pie shaped sides of the Sector's defensive bunkers had channeled them closer together. The closer the NVA got to the last line of defense they were amassed more than ten men deep.

When the 105 Howitzer with the cutoff barrel fired its first bag of rocks, the rocks tore gaping holes in the lines of the NVA. The shock effect of the rocks hitting them had broken up their attack and the NVA quickly retreated from the west wall for the first time under the continuous firing of the 105 Howitzer.

When the NVA renewed their attack, they tried to destroy the 105 Howitzer with Rocket Propelled grenades and when they failed after heavy losses, the 9th NVA Commander shifted his Mortars to concentrate on the 105 Howitzer and increase the pounding on the Command and Control Bunker.

I did not know a NVA mortar shell finally broke through the top of the Command and Control Bunker and killed all of those who were inside of it while destroying most of the radios until the last Officer in the chain of command of the Firebase called and told me.

The Second Lieutenant was not sure he could command the Firebase and he suggested since I had already worked in the Command and Control Bunker I was in a better position to do it. I told him I would do whatever he asked me to do as the Firebase Commander and I suggested he move the defenders in all the Sectors back to their next Defensive Bunkers and send reinforcements to the west wall. When I approached the Command and Control Bunker, they were carrying out the dead and I realized if I had not been shooting the 105 Howitzer, I would have been killed along with all of the rest of them.

The cloud cover refused to lift, so Air Support was not available. We held off the NVA for two more hours and we were able to get one of the Radio's working so we could call in Artillery Support and talk with Corps Headquarters who had sent reinforcements and ammunition. However, the first convoy was ambushed and they had sent three more heavily guarded convoys with increased Air Cover. Whether they could get here in time was the question, as I knew we were short of ammunition and the next attack on the west wall would succeed unless we were granted a miracle.

We were desperate for any type of addition support and Corps Headquarters offered a B-52 Air Strike but their effectiveness would be limited by how close they could safely drop their bombs. I wanted to tell them this was no time to be considering safety margins when we were about to be over run but I asked to be patched through to the B-52 Flight Commander's radio frequency. The moment I heard the Flight leader's voice I knew I was talking with the B-52 Squadron from Bangor Maine.

"Rocky Coast Flight Leader, this is site 65, over." I told him, as Site 65 was the Air Defense Unit designation for Charley Battery at Union Lake Michigan.

"This is Rocky Coast Flight Leader, what the hell are you doing so far from home?" His voice came back.

"I need a precise bombing run just like you did on Detroit." I told him and I explained the situation we were in down here in Firebase 6. I went on to suggest how he could use Monkey Mountain Radio Station in Pleiku as his IP and Siagon's AFVN Radio to triangulate his position on the Firebase's Helicopter Landing Localizer Beacon as his target plus 250 yards due west of it.

"You are crazy Corrigan, but I will deliverer the mail with one bomb before we try it with the rest of us. You better hunker down, over." The Radio cracked.

The single 500-pound bomb hit 200 yards in front of the last interior Defense Bunker line of the west wall Sector, blasting tons of dirt and chunks of rocks high into the air sending shock waves and deep tremors through the earth.

"Nice shot Rocky Coast. Drop your load 50 yards towards the Firebase's Localizer Beacon and 100 yards north and south of that first bomb and don't argue with me." I told the B-52 Flight Leader as the NVA had launched a massive attack against the west wall and they were in their final assault on the last interior Defense Bunkers.

Some of the advanced NVA were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the reinforced defenders at the final bunker line, when the 500-pound bombs from the next B-52 aircraft started to hit the ground. The devastating effect of the 500-pound bombs on the massed attacking NVA soldiers was so great that a huge hole opened up in their ranks, vaporizing over 100 NVA. As each B-52 made its bombing run, their 500-pound bombs were blowing up huge portions of the earth and rocks across the center of the west wall's sector and with each pass of the next B-52's bombs deepened the trench making its sides too steep for the advancing NVA to climb them. For the first time, since the 9th NVA started this attack there was a silence on the battlefield. The North Vietnamese Army abandoned their attempt to capture Firebase 6 and they were gone when the Corps Reinforcements and Supply Convoys arrived.

First Field Force received a Presidential Citation for the defense of Firebase 5 and 6 and for breaking the back of the North Vietnamese efforts to achieve their "Victory" to improve its bargaining position at the Paris Peace Talks. For my part in this operation I received a 30 day unaccountable Leave, back to the United States.

I called Jayne when I reached San Francisco and she met me at Detroit's Airport in the tightest hot pants I had ever seen on a woman. I would use an event that happened during this visit as the bases for my Book _Soft Touch_. My unexpected arrival back in the United States also allowed me as a member of the 5th Virginia Cavalry who was one of the host teams putting on the NSSA's fall National Matches to serve as the Match Officer for the NSSA's Individual Matches. I personally scored every individual target and there were no protests filed based on my scoring.

# 11. NIXON'S PULL OUT

When I returned to Headquarters Company in Na Trang South Vietnam, there had been a significant change in North Vietnam's strategy to win this war. Since the North Vietnamese could not win this war on the Battlefield, they chose to use a subtle but highly effective weapon, Heroin. The major source for Heroin came from Southeast Asia, known as the Golden Triangle.

The original Golden Triangle in the Asian opium drug trade was established in 1750 by the British East India Company as a means of acquiring the popular English drink "Tea" from China. China demanded payment in sterling silver for the Tea exported to Europe and the English Colonies. However, by smuggling opium into China the British Merchants were able to acquire Tea at a fraction of the cost without the paying a single once of silver.

The Golden Triangle involved the shipment of English manufactured goods to India in exchange for the East India Company's monopoly on the production of opium and then the opium was shipped to China in exchange for Tea, which was shipped back to England to complete the trade triangle.

Opium was introduced into the west as a medication, Laudanum and later as Morphine and then as Heroin. With the great demand for opium, the British introduced the growing of opium into Burma in 1852 and in 1886 the British acquired the Burma State of Shan for the exclusive growing of opium. The demand for opium production continued to increase and by the 1950's the growing of opium established a new Golden Triangle located in Laos, Thailand and Burma.

This new Golden Triangle had become the major supplier of the highly addictive and internationally band illegal Drug, Heroin. More than a century ago, the medical community established Heroin to be more detrimental to its users, than any possible medical benefit it might have had. However, the international criminal elements had found the selling of Heroin to be very profitable and they were not concerned about the addiction of thousands of people who used it, as their addiction would create a higher demand.

Heroin addiction robs the individual of his self worth and destroys his desire to do anything other than to secure his next fix. He will do anything and to anyone to avoid going into heroin withdrawal as the more he becomes addicted the more heroin he must take. There is a point in heroin addiction when the goal of getting "high" loses any relevance to a heroin addict.

With the primary source of Heroin being readily available in Southeast Asia, the North Vietnamese decided to use heroin as a weapon to undermine the Combat effectiveness of the American soldiers in Vietnam. The use of heroin as a new weapon to win this war had the support of Communist China and the Soviet Union who were willing to subsidize to cost of the heroin. They saw the use of heroin as being in their best interests to see the United States fail after they had interjected themselves in Vietnam in the attempt to stop the inevitable spread of International Communism.

President Eisenhower had committed the United States to supporting the government of South Vietnam based on his belief in the Domino Theory that if South Vietnam fell to the Communist all of Southeast Asia would fall to Communism. President Kennedy continued President Eisenhower's support to the South Vietnamese Government with military advisors to South Vietnam's Army in the attempt to "Pacify" South Vietnam's countryside into becoming a free western type democracy.

When President Kennedy's commitment was not enough, President Johnson expanded the War into a major military conflict against Communism and now President Nixon was attempting to pull out of that conflict by reducing the size of the US Military in South Vietnam.

The actual war in Vietnam was on the edge of Victory after the Cambodian Incursion in the spring of 1970 as the United States and South Vietnamese Armies had severely damaged North Vietnam's ability to fight this war.

North Vietnam had used the western part of Cambodia as a safe haven for its Army and as the supply route to support the Viet Cong's military activities to isolate the South Vietnam government in Saigon from the rest of the country. This major military operation into Cambodia had surprise the North Vietnamese as it had come so quickly after the new Cambodian Government had approved it.

However, back in the United States before this "Victory" over the North Vietnamese Army could be fully realized, the Anti-Vietnam War student protests undermined its importance by claiming the United States had illegally expanded the war beyond the borders of South Vietnam.

This sparked additional anti-war protests across the country and when the 4-student protesters were killed at Kent State University in Ohio, President Nixon had been forced to withdraw all the US Forces from Cambodia and literally give the western part of the country back to the North Vietnamese.

Although the North Vietnamese regained the western portion of Cambodia, they no longer had the military means to carry on the war in South Vietnam. President Nixon had increased the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail to limit the amount of supplies coming from North Vietnam and President Nixon renewed and increased the bombing of Hanoi in the hope that the North Vietnamese would agree to end the war at the Paris Peace Talks.

The use of heroin as the North Vietnamese new weapon was base on their understanding of the drug revolution what was taking place in the emerging "hippie drug culture " in the United States.

The hippies thought it was "cool" to drop out on LSD, become "high" on drugs to expand self-awareness; use birth control pills, smoke "Pot" and participate in "love-ins" as an open defiance to the "establishment." They believed love and peace would steer the stars as after all this was all the dawning of Age of Aquarius, where man would take control of the earth and establish its own destiny as its rightful heritage not from God but from the peace and harmony of a global community.

It was easy for the hippies to join the Anti-Vietnam War movement and believe no one over the age of 30 could be trusted as the Industrial Military Complex of the previous generation was abusing its knowledge and science to maintain the "Establishment."

With the Hippie, drug-culture already established in the United States and the open use of drugs by this generation, the GI's were predisposed to the experimentation of other drugs besides marijuana. Prior to the introduction of heroin "Pot" was the "high of choice" to this younger generation just as the legal use of alcohol was the "high of choice" to the older generation.

When this heroin was first sold on the streets in South Vietnam to the GI's it was called "Coke" as if it were "cocaine." None of the GI's who bought it thought of where cocaine comes from or how it got here from South America. This was "Coke" and the GI's believed they could not get "hooked" or addicted on cocaine and that make it a "safe drug" to use.

If the North Vietnamese had tried to sell this heroin as it was normally used by injecting it, the GIs would know it was not "Coke" and they would not have even tried it. Although the drug-culture was into getting "high" on recreational drugs, there was a stigma against using hard drugs like heroin. Anyone who watched television or went to the movies, knew only the organized criminal elements sold heroin to profit from getting people addicted to it.

Thousands of GI's were easily hooked on heroin before they realized it was heroin. The heroin sold as "coke" was so cheap in South Vietnam the GIs smoked it on the end of a cigarette. They would drip their lit cigarette into the "coke" and then inhale it with the smoke of their cigarette.

The marketing and packaging of this heroin would have made Wall Street's Advertizing Agencies proud. A plastic capsule with a water tight cap designed to fit inside the flash suppresser of the US Army's M-16 Rifle contained 98% pure Heroin. This same amount of heroin could have sold anywhere else in the world for 20 dollars yet here in South Vietnam it was being sold like candy on the streets for only a dollar a capsule.

The North Vietnamese and their Communist allies were willing to absorb the cost of the heroin and they only needed a dollar to cover the costs involved in the selling and distribution of the drug. When you understand the value of this North Vietnamese strategy of using heroin to win this war it was cheaper than buying bullets and their Army would not suffer any casualties from the drugs used by the GI's.

The GI's, who were addicted to heroin needed to have access to their drugs especially when they were out on the Battlefield conducting military maneuvers. I do not need to tell you it rains in Vietnam. The US Army developed a "rain cap" that fit over the Flash Suppressor of the M-16 to keep rain from getting inside the barrel of this rifle. A GI could safely carry the Heroin Drug capsule inside the Flash Suppresser of his M-16 Rifle and with the Army's "rain cap" over the Flash Suppressor the GI's drugs would be hidden from view. If anyone stopped the GI to check for drugs, all the GI had to do was pull the trigger on his M-16 and the firing of the bullet would destroy any evidence of the Heroin.

The wide spread use of Heroin by the GI's had already become an epidemic throughout South Vietnam when the subject was brought up during a Corps Staff meeting. I listened as the older generation of Staff Officers discussed the actions First Field Force should take to deal with this problem.

Based on my experience working with the CID and the Bureau of Narcotics at Charley Battery I had learned about the people who used Heroin and what motivated them to continue to use it. I realized these Staff Officers did not have a clue about heroin addiction or understand how to deal with this Heroin problem. Court Marshaling Heroin addicts, busting them out of the Army and throwing them in jail was not the answer. These actions would drive the heroin addicts underground making it harder to find them.

Based on my previous "error" in dealing with Colonel Fear during a Staff meeting, I was reluctant to address the possible errors in the direction the Corps Staff had been proposing. However I knew I could not just sit there as they were about to establish the First Field Forces policies in dealing with these Heroin addicts as I had 990 men who could be affected if these policies were enacted.

The Chief of Staff noticed the concern on my face and he asked me what I thought about the actions being proposed. He must have remembered my error in dealing with Colonel Fear and the advice he gave me on how I should had handled it. "Captain Corrigan I sense you might have a problem with these proposals and since you are the Headquarters Company Commander may be you would like to share your concerns. This is no time to be shy." He added as if he were telling me it was all right to openly bring up my concerns in this Staff Meeting.

"Thank you, Sir. Let me say I had a heroin problem when I Commanded a Hercules Missile Battery in the United States and I worked with the CID and the Bureau of Narcotics to help resolve it. Although I do not claim to be an expert in how do deal with heroin addicts I do know what it takes for a person who is a heroin addict to want to kick their habit. The first thing is to know what a heroin addict looks like. I did not know what to look for until an Agent of the Bureau of Narcotics pointed it out to me.

I can walk through Headquarters Company and pick them out. They are not like the heroin addicts we identify from the Movies and Crime Shows on TV. These men are good soldiers who work for you every day and they are caught-up in a problem, they did not bargain for.

I do have a problem with the suggestions made here today. As what you are proposing would Court Martial a third of this Command and it would not solved the problem as you would drive the heroin problem underground and make the heroin addicts harder to find.

What we need is a way of identifying the Heroin users and then we must provide them with an incentive to get off the drug. A heroin user will not stop using it until there is a reason strong enough for him to want to stop. The Studies I have read about heroin users indicate when the addict is removed from his Drug Environment he has a better chance of kicking his habit and he will not return to using heroin. I do not know of a way to change a GI's environment here in Vietnam but we have one of the best reasons for a GI to want to get off heroin and that is the overwhelming desire to go home.

If a GI cannot go home when he is on Heroin we have a chance to deal with this problem here before it is carried back to the states." I told them and the Staff Room remained quiet.

The Chief of Staff broke the silence when he asked if I had any idea how we could positively identify those GIs who were using Heroin. My response was a blood test. However, the Commander to the Corps Medical Units who was also a medical doctor said we did not need to run a blood test, as a urine sample would give the same results.

Within a short time, MAC-V established the "Pee test" as a requirement for everyone when they were about the go home and all the GI's in South Vietnam knew they could not go home with "dirty urine." They now had the strongest incentive to get off heroin. This however did nothing to help the GI's who were already hooked on heroin and wanted to kick his habit.

MAC-V established a Heroin Detoxification Compound in Saigon under its direct command and control with medical supervision. This place had a number of different names like Silver City, NO GO Hotel, Cold Turkey Junction and Hell's Corner. Based on medically confirmed and statistically documentation that, no one had ever died from a heroin withdrawal. However, those who went through this "Cold Turkey" process thought they would die.

A number of GI's using Heroin knew they would be caught when they took the "Pee Test" chose to go "Cold Turkey" on their own. The result was the same as they went home without their addiction to heroin. I wrote about my further involvement in the effort to disrupt the North Vietnamese heroin business in my Books _Soft Touch_ and the _Page of Diamonds_. How many GI's were on heroin and how many were saved by the Pee Test is not part of any government records I know of but I assure you it was not an isolated case. I also believe the GI's heroin addiction problem was one of the major reasons we had to get out of Vietnam.

# 12. THE PULL OUT OF VIETNAM BEGAN QUICKLY

President Nixon was determined to pull out of the Vietnam War and to demonstrate his commitment he would publically announce that "x" thousands of soldiers would be leaving South Vietnam by a specific date. To leave Vietnam those Units had to dispose of all their Units property and clear their books of any assets they had. This problem was compounded by the fact the Military Supply system would only take certain types of property back.

When President Nixon announce the 5th Special Forces located in Na Trang would be coming home, they had over a million bags of concrete in water tight plastic bags on their property books and they had to get rid of it.

Any Unit Commander could get as many bags of concrete he wanted as long as he signed for them. I had lived through the Supply and Spare Parts shortages in South Korea. I knew if President Nixon was pulling the Troops out of South Vietnam there would be a shortage of Supplies coming into Vietnam. As I had learned to survive and accomplish my Mission in South Korea, I needed something to trade to get what I needed. That concrete would be in demand after it was gone and no more concrete would be sent to Vietnam.

My only problem was I had no place to put the concrete on the Corps Headquarters Compound. Sure I could get by with having a few truck loads of concrete but thousands of bags of concrete was out of the question. The value of what that concrete would be worth in a few months required an immediate solution I had to find before all the concrete was gone.

Through my relationship with the Chief of Police, I was well known in the City of Na Trang, as being the number "One" Di wee and the number "One" friend of the Police Chief. Being number "One" in Vietnam was the best there is.

He suggested I store this concrete with any Momason who had any space in her yard. I would need to pay her rent and as long as I did, none of that concrete would come up missing. That is just what I did. I had trucks running every hour before curfew and I had the concrete delivered and stacked up all over the City. I used a map of Na Trang to mark the locations where I had stored the concrete and every month I would check my inventory and pay the rent.

During the first month after the 5th Special Forces left Vietnam, I built concrete sidewalks throughout the Headquarters Compound, a basketball court and I traded a truckload of concrete for enough paint to repaint the Grand Hotel of Corps headquarters. It cost me another truckload of concrete to paint the Grand Hotel, and it was done over one weekend.

General Brown was impressed with what I had done and I told him how I did it. His only concern was the appearance I was involved in the Black Market and I should talk with the Commander of the Corps CID before any criminal complaints were made against me. When I told General Brown I had already discussed this with Colonel Brooks and I had given him a copy of my map showing the locations of this concrete, General Brown just smiled.

By this time, the concrete shortage I predicted in South Vietnam had come true and it did not take very long for Units needing concrete to find out I had it. When a Unit had a legitimate need for this concrete, I gave it to them. Those Units who only had the desire to gain "points' with their Commanders were told I did not know where they had gotten their information as I did not know what they were talking about.

As fewer and fewer Supplies, came into South Vietnam I had to use that concrete to get what I needed to support Corps Headquarters. When the Air Conditioner broke down in the Grand Hotel and it could not be fixed I had a new one installed and operational within 24 hours.

When the Chief of Staff mentioned all the dust from the driveway and the Headquarters parking lot, I told him the concrete was too valuable to be used for such a project and maybe I had a better alternative.

I explained when I was in the FDCCC, I was aware of a Firebase with major erosion problems and barrels of asphalt had been flown in to pave the Artillery site and build up dams to control the water runoff. Corps Artillery had abandoned the Firebase before they started that Erosion Control Project and I knew all those barrels of asphalt had been left there.

Normally anything in Vietnam, if it could be sold on the Black Market even if it was locked-up and in a guarded compound could disappear. However, those heavy barrels of asphalt would be difficult to move, as they were located on a remote hilltop with only a very steep road the Army had used only when the helicopters could not fly something in to the Firebase. Since the time and effort to move these barrels of asphalt when the local Vietnamese did not have a use for it, there was a possibility that asphalt would still be there.

I told the Chief of Staff it would be a simple matter to find out if that asphalt was still there. I would ask the FDCCC to request a Forward Air Controller to fly over the abandoned Firebase and report if those barrels of asphalt were still there. The next day I was able to confirm the asphalt was still there and I received the Chief of Staff's approval of my plan to get the Corps Headquarters driveways and parking lot paved with asphalt. While I was at it, there was no reason not to blacktop all the other driveways in the Compound.

The Engineering Company who could pave the Headquarters driveways and parking lots needed concrete for a questionable project involved with their Provence Chief's home. Their Battalion Commander had promised the Provence Chief he could do this favor for him before the Colonel realized he could not get any concrete through Supply Channels and how much concrete it would take.

I asked the Army Aviation Company I had given concrete to reinforce their flight line to fly out and pickup the asphalt. To sweeten the deal I offered the Aviation Unit enough concrete to build up their Helicopter tie-down areas above the level of the mud when it rained and it always rained in Vietnam.

The Aviation Unit brought in the Asphalt, the Company of Engineers paved the driveways and the parking lots of Corps Headquarters and the Engineer's had the concrete to do the favor their Battalion Commander had promised the Province Chief.

# 13. NOT EVERYTHING WAS IN SHORT SUPPLY

As President Nixon pulled more and more Units out of Vietnam, whole Commands under the Corps Headquarters left South Vietnam with all their Companies, Battalions and Divisions. With all this downsizing some of their functions that were still required in Vietnam were consolidated into other Units. As the Headquarters Company's Commander, I assumed Command of the Headquarters Transportation Company, the Marines Signal Detachment and the AFVN Radio Station located on an island off Na Trang.

I also faced another problem as the Commander of Headquarters Company. I became the Commander of anyone who had belonged to any of these former units that had gone home but these men had remained behind in Vietnam. Most of these men had been reported by their Units, as being "Absent-With-Out-Leave" or "Missing-In-Action.

When these men were caught by the MP's somewhere in Vietnam they were placed in MAC-V's Long Bien Jail in Saigon and once a month I was required by Army Regulations to visit them in Jail. It was my duty as their new Company Commander to investigate their Charges and take disciplinary action against them for any crimes committed under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Before I could even attempt to process any Charges against them, I needed to establish the true-identity of each of these men. Most of these men had multiple Military Identification Cards they had used to buy Post X-change goods they sold on the Black Market as a means to support themselves and their Vietnamese girl friends.

During my first meeting with one of these men, I would identify myself as their new Company Commander and have them sign their real name, Rank and Serial Number on my Visiting Form to establish the date when I had seen them. I then had them fingerprinted and I told them if they had signed my Visiting Form with a false name, it would really piss me off when their fingerprints sent to Washington came back with a different name. I also told them I did not want to hear what they had done until I knew who they were and if they were honest with me when I came back in 30 days, I would help them get back to the United States.

The Army just wanted to get these people out of Vietnam and not be liable for any back pay they might have earned. If the man had not been involved in a major crime, he would be given a Field Grade Article 15. This level of an Article 15 had the power to strip them of all rank with the forfeiture of all pay and allowances and have them Dishonorably Discharge after he served any time in the Brig.

To give the man a clean slate I was to get the man to tell me everything he did so it would be included in that Article 15 and he could not be charge again for those crimes. To make this work I had to gain the trust of the man as anything he told me could be used against him.

After I explained how I could help him get back home if he had not committed a major crime I asked him to think about it and use the next 30 days to decide if what I was offering him was worth the risk he would be taking. I would be the sole judge of everything he told me but if he had committed a major crime, he should not tell me anything. I gave him a list of major crimes that could not be included in this Field Grade Article 15.

When I was finished, I told him trust was a 2-way street and if he lied to me, all bets were off. I asked him again if the name he had signed on my Visiting Form was his real name, rank and serial number and if it was not he had 30 days to tell me who he really was. Most of the time a man who wanted my help, would admit who he was and change his name on my Visiting Form if he had given me a false name.

On one of my Visiting trips back from Saigon, the C-130 Airplane I had gotten a ride on was hit by enemy fire and we were forced to bail out. I had never jumped before and I only had a rough idea where I was in South Vietnam. The only thing I knew the Airplane I was on would eventually take me to Na Trang. As I went out the backdoor of the C-130, I grabbed an M-16 Rifle and a belt with a canteen on it that was hanging next to the door.

When my parachute opened, I was not prepared for the jolt it gave me. Not only did I have my parachute improperly adjusted the M-16 Rifle and the canteen were ripped from my hands. When I tried to relieve the excruciating pain in my groin by pulling myself higher in the parachute harness, it help enough to attempt to use the remaining altitude to get an idea where I was coming down in Vietnam. My best guess was I was in the Vietnam Highlands somewhere south of Pleiku, as more than likely the C-130 Aircraft was heading there before it took me to Na Trang.

When I hit the triple-canopy jungle, my parachute was caught in the tops of the trees while I plowed through it until I was pulled back up like a yo-yo when the tree top branches sprung back to their normal height. Each time I bounced in the parachute's lines I became more tangled in the shroud lines as if I were being wrapped by a spider for its future dinner.

During this yo-yo process, I had lost my 45 Gold Cup Automatic I carried in my belt in the small of my back as it had fallen through the second and third layers of the triple-canopy jungle. The only thing I had to cut the parachute lines was a fingernail clipper and it took me a long time to just get it out of my pants pocket. It was dark by the time I had cut myself lose from the parachute lines. As I was cutting these lines I realized I had no idea how far up I was from the jungle's floor and I began making a rope I could use to lower myself down. When I reached the end of that rope, a knot slipped and I fell another 20 feet.

I spent the rest of the night in the crotch of a tree, as I knew better to spend the night on the ground in a jungle where the Vietcong might find me or some jungle critter might take offense at my being there.

Stiff, sore, scrapped and bruised from the experience of my first parachute jump and my cramped sleeping arrangements I searched to find my pistol. The Good Lord and Saint Jude was with me as I was lucky to find it hanging in a bush. Having spent time in Vietnam I knew what was safe to eat and where to find water I could drink.

I started to work my way out of the jungle heading east when I came to a clearing and a fast moving stream. I knew I could not drink the water but I could use it to cool-off. I carefully check the area for any enemy activity before I went into the stream. I had just started to splash some water on my face when out of the jungle on the other side of the stream came a leaping German Sheppard. My left hand flashed up and into the dog's mouth only inches from my throat.

I grabbed the dog's lower jaw as it was chewing on my hand and shaking its head trying to break loose of my grip. I finally wrestled the dog down into the water and used my legs in a wrestling hold I had learned on my High School Wrestling Team to wrap around his body and keep the dog off his feet.

I knew this had to be a highly trained Military Guard Dog and my only chance was to drown the dog in the water as the moment I took my hand out of his mouth he would be at my throat. In spite of me trying to drown the dog he never stopped biting my hand and fighting to get me. When I was sure the dog was dead, I still had to pry my hand from his locked jaw. The dog floated down the stream and became wedge against a log while I crawled out of the stream and collapsed on the bank.

When I woke up, I found myself on a sleeping mat on the floor of a Vietnamese hut. My hand was bandaged and an old woman was sitting next to me.

"Bonsoir Di wee." The old woman said and that greeting was about all I could understand of the Vietnamese she said after that.

The old woman yelled something and a young girl came into the Hut and then quickly left. The young girl came back with a middle-aged woman who could speak a mix of French and English. She managed to tell me the water here was safe to drink as some missionaries had helped them dig their well years ago.

From what I could understand, the dog I had killed had been plaguing their village for months. The dog had killed and dragged off three children and a man. When they found their bodies, the dog had eaten most of them. They had tried to run it off and even trap it. However, the dog had avoided their traps and it seemed to disappear when they tried to find and kill it.

I also learned I had been unconscious for two days and they had hid me from the local Vietcong who were looking for a GI they had seen parachute into the area.

When I asked about my pistol, I may have lost in the stream the middle-aged woman told the young boys to go and look for it. Within the hour my 45 Gold Cup Automatic was presented to me by a smiling young boy and I gave him my fingernail clipper as a reward for finding it.

That evening I was given a bowl of rice with a large piece of meat in it and I was told it was part of the dog's heart, as they knew I had earned the right to eat the best part of the enemy I had killed.

I asked where the closest US Army camp was, as I needed to report in. The middle-aged woman did not say where it was but she would have someone take me to the Military Highway east of their Village the next morning. Two men went with me and it was almost noon when we reached the paved Military Highway that was running north and south. They gave me a jug of water and some cooked rice in a bowl before they disappeared.

I was picked up by a Military Convoy and taken to the 4th Division's Headquarters south of Monkey Mountain where I called Headquarters Company in Na Trang before they reported me as Missing-In-Action.

The rest of my Military Tour in Vietnam was relatively quiet except for two situations. The first was my meeting of the one armed 9th NVA Commander at one of the Police Chief's monthly parties. I immediately recognized him from the image in my Rifle's Scope and he knew who I was as my name was on my uniform I had to wear in Vietnam.

After dinner, he asked if I played Chess and suggested we play a game. I foolishly won the first game and I know I had better not win the next one. I played a very good game but not as good as, I could have. The NVA General won the game and we both declined to play a third game as the party had stopped to watch us play. I would later find out the Chief of Police was the NVA General's son-in-law.

The second situation was just 11 days before I was due to go home and the Vietcong had come into Na Trang. They had tried to blow up the CORDS Headquarters and every Unit in Na Trang was on high alert as the people were still not back on the streets. I was in the Guard Tower overlooking the Generating Power Plant that was just ten feet inside of the Compound's sand bagged wall. I was talking with one of the Guards who was scheduled to go home the same day I was and this was his last time he would be pulling any Guard Duty.

I did not have to be there as the Officer of Day was responsible for checking the Guards. I also knew he was staying in the Compounds Command Bunker and he was scared to leave it. While we were talking, I noticed one of those three-wheeled bikes the Vietnamese used as a Taxi coming down the street and I thought the danger had past as people were coming back on the streets. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the Taxi stop and the man riding in the front jumped out with what looked like a shoe box and he was about to toss it over the Compound's wall where the Generating Plant was located.

I fired my 45 Gold Cup automatic before I even realized I had taken it out from the small of my back and I had hit that shoebox. The explosion took out the Compound's wall in front of the Generator and the blast tilted the Guard Tower. All that was left on the street was a bicycle wheel from the taxi and a shoe with a foot inside of it.

"Great shooting, Captain!" My young friend yelled as blood ran out of his ears. He had suffered two ruptured eardrums from the concussion as he was wearing a helmet, which had captured the explosion's shock wave. I had not warn a helmet but this was the first time I wore a protective vest since I came to First Field Force Vietnam and there was a sliver of wood a half inch thick stuck in it just above my stomach.

Lieutenant Colonel Blankenship took over the Consolidated Command of Headquarters Companies of Corps Headquarters First Field Force as a Commandant and he was not interested in the concrete I still had stored in the City.

I tried to explain the increasing difficulties I was having as the Headquarters Commander to get anything through the Regular Military Supply and Support channels and with the dwindling amount of supplies remaining in Vietnam this situation would get worse as President Nixon continued to draw down the United States involvement in South Vietnam.

Although the Consolidated Command of Headquarters Companies justified a Lieutenant Colonel commanding it, I realized his experience in obtaining his rank was outdated and he was too far removed from the hands on requirements this job would demand of him.

"Colonel, you may not believe me now but you are facing the most difficult assignment of your Military Career. The Military Support system in Vietnam only exist on paper and getting anything by normal requisitions no longer exists in Vietnam. If what I had to do to get this job done depended on my ability to "horse trade" with other Units who had what we needed, so will you. If you rely on the traditional and the normal military supply channels, you will earn an early retirement.

That Commanding General will not understand or accept any excuses why his sedan is Deadline for parts or why you cannot feed the men in his Headquarters anything but "C" Rations three times a day. I have told you what I know works. I am leaving you the means to continue this almost impossible task. You have less than 20 days to pay the rent to those Momasans or by this time next month, all that concrete will be gone.

There is one more thing. Tonight the Chief of Police of Na Trang is giving me a farewell party and I would like you to come along with me. This you might say is part of my Public Relations responsibilities as you will find he is the one man in this city who can make your job easy or a nightmare you cannot wake up from. I also want you to know the Chief of Police is the son-in-law of the Commanding General of the 9th NVA and this General is the same man I shot before the Battle for Firebase 5 and 6.

# 14. MY TIME OF ADJUSTMENT

By the time I left Vietnam, I had accrued more than four months of Military Leave over the 60 days of Military Leave I carry forward. I could not take any Leave when I was at Charley Battery, as we did not have enough Officers to pull Alert Duty. Then I was delayed in Charley Battery while the CID and the Bureau of Narcotics were setting up their drug busts. After the drug bust, the Army did not want me to remain in the United States and my 30- day Leave after Firebase 6, was not on the Books as Leave Time. General Brown had requested my reporting date for my next assignment be left open so I could use up my Leave Time as if I did not take it I would lose it according to the Regulations.

The attitudes of the people in the United States become polarized since the Ohio National Guard killed the four students at Kent State University. The NEWS MEDIA had immediately found entire Ohio National Guard guilty, without knowing who actually fired those shots.

With all those TV cameras' running, surely one of them would have caught the National Guardsman who did not have his rifle at the position of "Port Arms" which has the rifle barrel pointed up and the rife was across the front of his body. A rifle at "Port Arms" could not have shot those Kent State students. I also knew it would be a simple task to find out who shot these students if someone in the Ohio National Grand had done it by inspecting their rifles to see which rifles had been shot.

When our Airplane from Vietnam landed in San Francisco, we were immediately taken to a temporary Terminal and told to change out of our Uniforms, before we took any airplane flights from the Main Terminal. If we did not have any civilian clothes with us, we could select some from the clothing racks. The reason for this special processing was to reduce the possible confrontations with the Hippies who had thrown rocks and rotten eggs at the returning soldiers who were in uniform while yelling, "They were all baby killers."

Walking through the Main Terminal I notice groups of Hippies passing a "joint" around and I thought of all those GIs hooked on smoking heroin. There was a smell besides Marijuana. I realized it was the Hippies themselves and I remember someone saying they were the "unwashed set."

I called home before I boarded a direct flight to Chicago and I would fly from there to Milwaukee. My mother was glad to hear I had made it back from Vietnam safely and she told me Jayne had called to confirm when I would be home. I tried to reach Jayne but she was not home. Her sister took the message and asked me to call back when I landed in Chicago.

I had just enough time to call Jayne and tell her how much I missed her before I had to catch my flight to Milwaukee. I stayed with my parents three days before going to see Jayne.

Although I wrote to Jayne every week, I understood her reluctance to commit herself to a relationship beyond the understanding we had before I left for Vietnam. I did receive a box of cookies for my birthday, a fruitcake at Christmas and she sent several boxes of "jelly." This "jelly" was really half pint jars of whisky under the wax seal. She must have thought all the soldiers in Vietnam were on the front lines as her husband had been on the DMZ and booze was not available to them. I did not tell her my position in Na Trang gave me access to all the liqueur I wanted and I always thanked her for her cleverness in sending it in jelly jars.

I also wanted to pick up my airplane I had bought when I found out how the flexibility of an airplane could be to me when I wanted to shoot on the 5th Virginia Cavalry's Civil War Rifle team. While I was the Commander at Charley Battery, depending upon the Alert Status of the Unit I could not be more than three hours away from Charley Battery.

As always, we were in neck and neck contention with the 6th Wisconsin for the Northwest Territory's Regional Championship and one of the season's critical Rifle Matches was being held in Eau Claire Wisconsin. There was no way I could drive to that Rifle Match in three hours. My request to take Military Leave to attend this shoot was denied. However, the Air Defense Group Commander was willing to let me be five hours away from Charley Battery. The additional two hours distance from Charley Battery was still not enough time for me to make this Rifle Match. As one of the Team's best shooters, my absence would place the 9th ranking shooter on the team and the difference in his ability to shoot and mine could mean the Regional Championship.

I had almost given up on going to this Rifle Match when Sergeant Halleck one of my Missile Section Chief's came to see me. He explained how I could attend this Rifle Match and still be within the five-hour distance away from Charley Battery. According to him if I was not afraid of flying over Lake Michigan, he could fly me in a private airplane to Eau Claire Wisconsin in less than five hours and it would take less than that time flying back as we could have a tail wind.

Sergeant Halleck was working on his FAA Instructor's Rating and all he was doing was burning holes in the sky to meet the required number of hours he had to fly before he could get this Rating. If I would pay for the Rent and Gas used in the airplane, he would be saving the cost to get in his flying hours.

While we were flying to the Rifle Match Sergeant Halleck taught me how to fly the airplane by first keeping the wings level. Then I learned how to maintain the airplane at the same altitude and keep it on the correct course.

The 5th Virginia Cavalry won the Rifle Match and we won the Regional Championship. I flew the airplane most of the way back to Pontiac Michigan's Airport. By Friday of the week after we returned, I bought a Piper Tri-pacer Airplane and I had my FAA Private Pilot's License in less than 90 days.

I had left my airplane with Sergeant Halleck while I was in Vietnam and I wanted him to use it, to finish his flight time to get his FAA Instructor's Rating, which he did.

Jayne and I had not changed our minds about being in each other's lives and we flew down to Tampa Florida with her son to spend some time with her father. Jayne's father owned a Plumbing Supply Business and he had lost his wife to cancer two years ago. He was now involved with a woman he would eventually marry. We had a great time getting to know each other and I was welcomed into Jayne's family.

With so much leave time I had to use before I took my next assignment, I stayed with Jayne in Michigan. My airplane became a valuable asset to help my brother repeal the restrictions on the use of Black Powder.

The 1968 Crime Control Act had incorrectly classified Black Powder used in muzzle loading firearms and our Civil War guns as an "Explosive" and the ATF Restrictions on Black Powder threatened the very existence of the NSSA and the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association.

Before my brother Dick entered the Army, he had been Lobbying Congress to correct the law and reclassify Black Powder as a propellant. The argument to change the law was base on the fact Black Powder was a mixture of potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal and not a chemical compound like the more powerful explosives.

Dick had organized the North South Skirmish Association's Teams and the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association's Regions into a grass roots movement to support his Lobbying effort to repeal the Black Powder Law. He set up a Lobbying pyramid with key men in each of the NSSA's Regions who would manage the united support efforts of each NSSA Team's membership in the States where they lived. A similar Lobbying pyramid was set up in the NMLRA. This combined effort would help to establish the repeal of this law was not an isolated issue but had a national interest supported across political party lines.

My brother Dick had obtained his Master's Degree in Political Science before he took his Commission as a Second Lieutenant in the US Army. By this time, I was already a Captain and he had visited me at Charley Battery before he reported to Fort Knox for his Officer's Basic Course in the Armor Branch of the Army. After he finished his Officer's Basic Armor School, he was assigned as an instructor to the Armor School at Fort Knox. Dick also became a member of the University of Kentucky's Staff teaching American History and Political Science at the Fort Knox Armor School.

The Colonel my brother worked for did not like my brother's efforts to Lobby Congress even though the Fort Knox Commanding General had given Dick permission to continue this political activity. To circumvent the Commanding General's approval, Dick's Colonel tried to send him to Vietnam. However since I was already on Orders for Vietnam only one of us could be in Vietnam based on the Sullivan Act. Thwarted by this Regulation the Colonel tried to limit Dick's off base travel to just the weekends and he refused to allow Dick to take any Military Leave, which Dick might use to Lobby Congress.

Dick had been the Northwest Territory Regional Commander for three terms and with all his Lobbying activities, he was being propelled as a candidate for the office of National Commander of the North South Skirmish Association in a three-man race. To help Dick meet with the NSSA Teams as part of his Lobbying effort and to campaign for the National Commander, I flew him to Skirmishes held out in the eastern Regions of the NSSA.

I would fly into Kentucky, pick Dick up and we would fly to a Regional Shooting Match. I would shoot in the individual Matches while Dick conducted his political campaign and held meetings for his Lobbying efforts. On Sunday, Dick would find a Team who needed shooters and because we were both good shots, we would have an audience watching us help that team win medals.

Being a good shot in a shooting organization reinforced Dick's position as a candidate for the NSSA's National Commander. As a result, of this flying campaign, Dick won the election as the National Commander and in 1973, Congress repeal the 1968 Crime Control Act to reclassify Black Powder as a propellant and not as an Explosive.

Having travel across the country in this flying campaign, I had the opportunity to meet and talk with a number of people and get a better idea of how they felt about the United States involvement in the War in Vietnam. Most of them had a narrow view of this War based upon what they were seeing every night on National Television. The National News Media was reporting the War as if it were a Box Score Sports event with so many Vietcong killed compared with the number of casualties the United States had suffered that day, that week and the total number of losses to date.

I could see the country had lost its prospective of why we had gone to war in Vietnam as a National effort to stop the spread of Communism, which was still a threat to our existence as the leader of the Free World. We were still involved with the Cold War and Russia had not given up on the Nuclear Arms Race. They were still flying their Bombers with Nuclear Weapons that could destroy the United States if they thought they could get away with it without being destroyed themselves.

The National News Media failed to report Russia's direct military support to North Vietnam. It seemed to me the North Vietnamese were using our News Media' coverage of the Anti-Vietnam War student protests as a further effort to influence our Nation's approval to the continuation of this war not against North Vietnam but against the poor innocent people of Vietnam. What surprised me the most was the News Media did not report the wide spread use of heroin by our GI's that was being supplied by the North Vietnamese as if this drug problem in Vietnam was not happening.

I was having second thoughts about staying in the Army as I realized I was only successful because I was willing to do what was necessary to get the job done and I had the General's support when I did it. I was feeling I had strayed too far from the operational main stream of the Army and I had become a maverick that would not be tolerated in a peacetime Army.

Colonel Rodmann had found me with Jayne in Michigan and he must have known how I was feeling about staying in the Army, as I had not notified the Army of when I would report for the Advance Officers Air Defense Course at Fort Bliss Texas. I had been asked to call in once a month while I was on this extended Military Leave and I had until December 3, to report in for this Assignment.

Colonel Rodmann explained my fear of being a maverick was groundless. "Honestly Mark you would not have received those two early promotions if you had been a maverick. What you did for me was nothing short of outstanding. What you accomplished at Alfa Battery in South Korea and Charley Battery in Union Lake, Michigan is the cutting edge of what the Army wants to use to change how it operates and deal with its soldiers in the proposed all Volunteer Army.

Corrigan, you have been recognized by far too many Army Generals, who have written Special Reports on your unusual ability to succeed. Once you complete the Advance Air Defense Officers Course at Fort Bliss, you will receive orders from the Department of the Army for a direct assignment to the Pentagon to work on the development of the New All Volunteer Army. Put it this way, I would not have been sent to see you because of your good looks." Colonel Rodmann stated with a smile.

I discussed this with Jayne and she had no problem if I made the Army my career. I called my Military Leave coordinator at the Personnel Office of the Air Defense Branch in Washington and asked to have my orders cut for my assignment at Fort Bliss Texas.

"Captain Corrigan I am glad you called as the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge has been looking for you. They have a special Patriotism Award they want to give you for a letter you wrote when you were in Vietnam." My Branch Coordinator told me. He went on to explain there would be an Awards Banquet at the War Memorial Center in Milwaukee on October 25, 1971 and they wanted me there. He gave me the phone number of Kenneth D. Wells the vice president for public affairs of the Freedom Foundation to confirm I would be attending.

When I called him I found out my mother had sent them a letter I had wrote to her. Part of my letter contained why I thought the Army had no choice but to fight for the freedom of the Vietnamese people against the Communists. Jayne flew with me to Milwaukee to attend this banquet. I was deeply honored by this unexpected recognition and I was glad I had chosen to remain in the Army.

With all the "holes," I made through the air, flying in my Piper Tri-pacer airplane at a 110 mph I realized I could cut my travel time by 60% if I bought a reasonably priced Model 35 V Tail Bonanza with a cruising speed of 165 mph. Since I had saved all the money, I made from the Army while I was in Vietnam I had the cash to make the best deal. I was able to sell my Tri-pacer Airplane for more than I paid for it.

I had taken Jayne to Winn Schuler's Bavarian Restaurant in Marshall Michigan the day after I received my Pilot's License. We flew into Marshal's small Airport where the Fixed Base Operator had closed down after 5 pm. However, if you announced you were going to Winn Schuler's when you made you VFR approached to the uncontrolled Airport they would send out a chauffeured limousine to pick you up before you could taxi to the Fixed Based Operator's Terminal.

The food was fabulous and the flight back to Pontiac Airport with the moon shinning in the night's clear sky and with all the lights twinkling below made a memorable impression on Jayne. We made the same trip in my new airplane before I returned to Wisconsin for opening day of Deer Hunting.

Deer Hunting was a family tradition for as long as I can remember. I would spend Saturday and Sunday hunting on the Family Homestead in Amherst, Wisconsin and then I would fly myself to Fort Bliss for my next assignment. With a Corvette and an Airplane to move to Texas I would fly back on a Commercial Air Line to get my car once I had reported in.

On Monday, it was beautiful flying weather all the way from Milwaukee to El Paso Texas and I would have plenty of time to fly my airplane to Texas with only one fuel stop. I was flying at 10,500 feet as I approached Fort Riley Kansas and I had burned off the gas in my left wing-tank. When I turned the fuel selector to my right gas tank my engine started to sputter and then it stopped. I had no idea what was wrong. I switched on the fuel pump to boost the flow of fuel to the engine and when that did not work, I turned the fuel selector to the Auxiliary gas tank. That did not work either and I knew I would need to make an emergency dead stick or no power landing.

I was losing altitude fast and I had a limited choice of where I could safely set my airplane down with the fewest risks to property and people who might be there. The open areas at Fort Riley Kansas was the logical choice and I made my "May Day" calls as I set up my gliding airplane for a landing in the Artillery Impact area safety zone. I was at less than 500 feet when I flew over a ridge and there below me was a new road. I lined up the airplane on the road and dropped my landing gear for a landing. I set my airplane down as softly as kissing a baby. I thought I had saved both my airplane and myself.

Unfortunately, it was a newly graded road and half of it was part of the old road, which was hard while the other side of the road was softly packed gravel. My left wheel dug into the soft gravel and my right wheel shot forward without any resistance causing the airplane to turn violently to the left until my airplane started to cartwheel and flip over.

As I was hanging upside down in the cockpit in my safety belt I looked over to my right wing and I saw aviation gas pouring out of the ruptured gas tank. When I unsnapped my safety belt, I fell into the broken windshield and cut my ear. I could not get the door open and I crawled out of the airplane through the windshield and I ran like hell away from the airplane which I believed was about to explode.

When it did not explode, I noticed the right wing had dug a trench in the gravel and the fuselage was higher than the wing so the gas drained off away from the hot engine and exhaust pipes. I thanked God I had walked away from my second aircraft crash.

My first crash was in a Helicopter just after I arrived in Vietnam from Commanding Charley Battery. The Helicopter had picked up my Sniper Team and it was only a few hundred feet off the ground when both the Pilot and the Co-pilot were killed by the same burst of bullets.

That lucky stitch of AK-47 bullets also hit the engine causing it to scream, cough and violently shake the helicopter as black smoke blew out the exhaust. I knew the basics of flying a helicopter from the Warrant Officer Pilot named J J Jones who picked me up once a month to attend the Brigade's Air Defense Staff Meeting at Selfridge Air Force Base. He knew I was taking flying lessons for my Private Pilot's License and he let me handle the controls much like Sergeant Halleck did when I learn to fly as we went to that Rifle Match in Eau Clair, Wisconsin.

As this damaged helicopter spun out of control, I jumped into the dead Pilot's lap and when I grabbed the controls of the helicopter, it was as if J J Jones was by my side telling me what I had to do. I yanked up on the collector, opened the throttle to gain altitude and fly away from the enemy's ground fire. The Instrument panel was lit up like Coney Island's Amusement Park. I knew one or more of these glaring red lights had to do with oil pressure and without oil, the engine would seize up.

But what is oil pressure, when someone was shooting at you as if you were a wounded duck. The engine was screaming even louder the higher we flew and with altitude, I attempted to steer the helicopter.

The Flight Crew Chief was able to unbuckle the dead pilot and pull him out from under me so I could sit down in the pilot's seat. With having better control over flying the helicopter, the Crew Chief told me which direction I should fly to the nearest Firebase. My Angel was working overtime when the engine seized up and I made a controlled crash landing on the Firebase's Helipad. All but the pilot and copilot had walked away from that landing.

I often wondered what the odds were of walking away from two crash landings and I felt sorry for my airplane that would never fly again. An Army Helicopter arrived followed by an ambulance. After being examined by the doctors at the Fort Riley hospital, I was released with a bandage on my ear. I rented a car and drove to Fort Bliss.

The FAA's Accident Report revealed that a Lock-Out Fuel Sector modification was not installed on my Airplane and when I burnt off all the fuel in the left tank, my airplane lost fuel pressure in all the other gas tanks. An FAA's Air Directive was issued for all 35 Model Bonanza Aircraft to verify the Lock-Out Fuel Sector modification had been installed and it was recommended as a further safety precaution that Pilots should not burn off all the fuel in any of the Aircraft's fuel tanks.

# 15. MORE THEN THE ADVANCED COURSE

Part of what happened after I reported in for the Advance Air Defense Officers Course at Fort Bliss, has been written and described in detail in my Book, _A FAST 50_. Although this book is fiction, the events that happened to the main character Captain Michael Patrick O'Neil at Fort Bliss Texas are true. Rather than rewrite these events I have copied what I wrote in the book _A FAST 50_. To keep the continuity of the story in the book _A FAST 50_ I have repeated some of what I previously wrote in this book.

When Captain O'Neil reported in for the Advanced Air Defense Officer's School at the Air Defense Center Fort Bliss Texas, he would have five days to settle in before his Class started.

They had his Registration packet and file completely prepared with the Authorization to live Off Post. Mike had planned to bring his 1966 English Racing Green Corvette Stingray down during the Christmas Holidays. He took the Automobile Officer's Post Stickers they had already prepared for it.

In the mean time he needed to buy something rather than waste money on a Rental car. What he had in mind was buying something to use just for local transportation. He needed something that he could easily get his money back when he sold it. Pick-up trucks seemed to be a 'hot item' here at Fort Bliss.

Having a truck would help move all his household goods that had been in storage since he left Michigan for Vietnam. It had been shipped here once he made up his mind that he would be staying in the Army.

Mike found a nice two-bedroom furnished apartment that afternoon and its rent was close to the amount he would be receiving for his Officer's Off Post Housing Allotment.

He had checked out a number of Pick-ups advertized For Sale by military personnel who were being transferred to a new assignment. He found a completely restored 1949 Chevy Pickup with a rebuilt 235 straight six engine and a 4 speed manual transmission. The Sergeant Major and his family were going to Germany and he hated to sell it. This was just what Mike had been looking for as its value would only continue to appreciate the longer he had it.

COMMAND RESPONSIBILITIES NEVER END

The next day Mike went to pick up all his household goods. When he saw it, he could hardly believe the amount of junk he had accumulated in his travels. As the boxes of his stuff, were being loaded in the back of his pickup truck he remembered what he had put in each of them. They were like old friends just waiting to be invited into his new home.

He noticed an odd shipping box that he could not remember packing, yet it had his name and Service Number printed across the top. The lettering on it was not the same as the other boxes and he did not recognize it or what he might have put in it.

Rather than just taking it, Mike called over the Property Sergeant and expressed his concerns. The Sergeant did not appear to be surprised stating. "Many times personal property shipped from Vietnam had been forwarded to a Property holding facility and it would remain there until it was transferred to your next duty station."

Mike did not remember shipping anything from Vietnam and was very suspicious of it. He was familiar with a number of decent GI's who had gotten themselves hooked on drugs in Vietnam. 98% Pure Heroin that was being sold on the Street in South Vietnam for only a dollar a plastic cap while its real value anywhere else in the World would be worth 20 dollars.

The sale of Heroin at such a reduced price was no accident. North Vietnam was trying to undermine the morale and combat effectiveness of the US Military's soldiers after the North Vietnamese Army had suffered a terrible defeat during the Cambodian Incursion in the spring of 1970.

These Plastic Capsules of Heroin had been designed to fit perfectly inside the flash suppresser of the standard US Infantrymen's M-16 Rifle. When the regular GI Issued plastic water protector was placed over the outside muzzle of the M-16 to keep moisture and rain out of the barrel, it also hid the drugs the GI might be carrying.

The individual hooked GI's were trying to get drugs home any way they could. One of the most favorite places to hide these drugs was inside the large Stereo Speakers that could be bought at a very reasonable price at the PX. Building a nice Sound system had become quite popular with the GI's overseas.

The major drug shippers found the safest way to ship drugs out of Vietnam was in someone else's household goods where the Drugs would be taken out when they arrived at the Stateside Storage Facilities. An Officer's Household Goods were less likely to be inspected and these Drug shipments were identified by some special marks put on these shipping boxes.

The more Mike thought about it the more he had a bad feeling about this box. He was glad now that he had come to pick up his Household Goods rather than just having it delivered to his apartment. If someone had shipped drugs under his Transfer Orders, he did not want to find that out after he had opened the Box in his apartment. For all he knew there could be several pounds of Heroin packed inside it, or it had been there before it was taken out at some Storage Facility.

Mike called the Post's Criminal Investigation Division, the CID to check this box out before it was opened. At first Mike felt a little foolish calling in the CID, based only upon his suspicions.

However, he had been a Unit Commander too long not to trust his instincts. If he were right, the CID would become involved anyway. To remove any suspicion from himself it was better to have the box opened here in front of witnesses than it would be if he called the CID after he had unpacked the box at his apartment.

As the Company Commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Company of First Field Force in Na Trang, Vietnam he helped to rewrite the Regulations on Shipping Household goods. This was an attempt to eliminate the Shipping of Household Goods on any Transfer Orders other than your own. It was possible this box could have been shipped before those new Regulations had been published.

A Lieutenant True from the CID Office arrived with a Sergeant Gomez from their Technical Staff. Once O'Neil explained his concerns about the shipping box and it was dusted for fingerprints before they opened it.

It was established Captain O'Neil's Household goods had remained in their original shipping containers and the box was inside a large shipping crate they had just opened.

That shipping Box was inside O'Neil Shipping Container and the only one handling it was one of their Enlisted men.

When they opened that shipping box there was another box inside wrapped in plastic and packed with dried hot peppers. This was a method used by Drug smugglers to defeat the Drug Dogs ability to sniff out the Drugs in these boxes.

That box was also dusted for fingerprints before it was opened. Throughout the procedure, the CID Investigation Officer's wore rubber gloves. Inside they found twelve plastic bags containing 98% Pure Heroin. Each bag was dusted for prints but there were none. Each bag was then weighed and they totaled 28.8 pounds.

Here was millions of dollars worth of pure Heroin and its value was worth ten times that amount when it was cut and sold on the streets. This represented the largest Heroin shipment recovered within the three State area surrounding El Paso, Texas.

Captain O'Neil suggested to Lieutenant True that they might want to keep this drug discovery quiet until he had a chance to discuss this with the CID Post Commander.

Colonel Mathew Link was having a difficult time understanding and dealing with this wave of drugs going through the Military and Civilian population across the Country. He was now the type of Officer who wanted his remaining months in the Army to slide on by without any hassles. Now here comes this Captain with his Lieutenant True and Sergeant Gomez carrying a big wooden shipping box that had trouble written all over it.

Captain O'Neil explained what his position was in Vietnam and how large quantities of Heroin were being shipped to the United States by using some other person's Transfer Orders.

It was Captain O'Neil's belief this Drug Smuggling Operation required someone who could obtain a copy of an Officer's Transfer Orders and they would need someone who worked in the Household Goods shipping facilities to make it work.

The Property Officer in charge of the Fort Bliss Household Goods facilities had informed both Captain O'Neil and the CID Officers, there were only two places in the United States that received and stored Household shipments from Vietnam. One was at Fort Lewis Tacoma, Washington and the other was at Travis Air Force Base San Francisco, California. This meant someone at each of these storage facilities had to be linked to someone in Vietnam.

The Drug smugglers could not have their own Drug Man at every Military Post across the Country. Lieutenant True informed the Colonel that the Property Officer had informed him about a number of misdirected Household Goods coming into Fort Bliss. What the Household Goods Officer told them, was they would have to wait for a Property Trace to come in before they shipped it to the correct location.

In Lieutenant True's opinion, these misdirected Shipments to Fort Bliss could have become an alternative method of delivery if those at Travis and Fort Louis had found themselves being watched too closely. Someone there would only need to know what Shipping Numbers that contained the Drugs, than ship the whole container here to Fort Bliss, where if could just disappear as if it never existed.

The Officer whose Orders were used would not know it and he would not be expecting to receive anything, as none of his Household Goods were missing.

Colonel Link was looking for a way to get himself out of the picture and one of the ways to do that would be to delegate his authority to his eager beaver Lieutenant and the nosey Captain.

Captain O'Neil thought about a Lieutenant Jordon who was working on the CID's Drug Taskforce in Vietnam. If O'Neil remembered correctly that CID Lieutenant should still be there and he was dealing with the Drug Problems in all of Vietnam with his Office in Na Trang. For some reason a great deal of Heroin had been coming through that City.

Lieutenant True contacted Lieutenant Jordon and he explained what was happening on his end of the Drug pipeline that was using the Household Goods method of drug delivery to Fort Bliss Texas.

This had been the first real evidence Lieutenant Jordan had, where he knew the Drugs from Na Trang was shipped to a final delivery point. He was also surprised to learn Captain O'Neil's Transfer Orders had been used.

Knowing Captain O'Neil had a nose for smelling out rats, he would suggest the connection between people who published the Transfer Orders and someone in the Household Goods shipping section.

One of the first things Jordon looked for was anyone who had extended their tour in Vietnam as such people would have wanted to milk the system for as long as they could as reliable Drug Partners were not always easy to find and keep.

Most GI's counted down the days he had left on special girly calendars where he filled in the days he had left. The closer he got to her crotch the closer his hitch was over and he was going home.

Now the Army offered special cash incentives to induce people to stay in Vietnam as it saved them money in sending someone else over there. People who had learned to survive in Vietnam had a greater chance of surviving another tour while a new man might get himself killed learning what the veteran's already knew.

Lieutenant Jordan had 27 men in the Corps Headquarters of First Field Force Vietnam that were part of the Rear Echelon Administrative types who had extended their tours.

He had eliminated those who had extended to complete their Military Obligations early so they would be discharged upon returning to the United States. They would serve another 3 months and get a discharge 6 months early, with some extra cash in their pocket. That brought the number down to 12.

Six of those had been senior NCO's who were career types who were trying to get another easy Promotion in Vietnam before going back home.

The six remaining soldiers were screened very carefully to see who might be living beyond his financial means. So far no one was standing out and this was not going to make his job easy, except only one of them worked in Personnel where he would have access to all the Military Orders that were cut.

Lieutenant Jordon sent Lieutenant True copies of all the information he was collecting as he knew Captain O'Neil would be given this information and maybe he knew who these GI's were. O'Neil was surprise to learn three of them were still in Vietnam and he suggested Lieutenant Jordon find out where they were living with their girl friends off the Compound better known as being 'shacked up in the Village.'

Four of the six were illegally living off post most of the time unless a surprise Head Count Inspection was conducted and they seemed to know when that was going to take place.

For a small amount of money, you could find out anything you needed to know about anyone in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Military Police known as the "White Mice" had to know what was going on just to keep their jobs.

Lt Jordan asked his friend in the Vietnamese Military Police to check out these four GIs and find out who their girl friends were and where they lived. For a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label, he hit pay dirt.

The Specialist 4th Class from Personnel was living with his girl friend in the same small housing compound with two other men and their girl friends. These two men were working in the Household Goods Shipping Section.

To make sure he had the right parties, Lieutenant Jordan needed some concrete evidence to nail them as being the Drug Smugglers. As in all criminal activities, O'Neil suggested the key was to follow the money.

A quick check produced nothing as none of them had sent any money home and their Bank of America Accounts were modest and did not show any large transactions.

However, that did not mean they were not involved, as many of the GI's who were involved in Black Market activities had a number of false Military Identification Cards they used to deal with the money they were making. The man from Personnel would have access to producing such false Military ID cards.

There was one thing the Smugglers could not control and that was a record of all financial transactions. Pulling the Bank of America's Records of these transactions gave Lieutenant Jordan the names being used to make those large transfer's of money and when the same names were coming up, they would know who they were looking for.

There was one more thing these Drug Smugglers had to have to make these money transfers and that was a uniform with those false names sewn on them. If they did not have the correct name on their uniform, the Bank Teller could quickly question the man with the name "Jones" on his ID card and the name "Smith" on his uniform.

Lieutenant Jordon assumed those uniforms would not be in their Wall Lockers on Post but in the hooches where their girl friends lived. Again, for a small amount of money, Lieutenant Jordon had someone go into their girl friends hooch's and take a picture of any uniforms that might be there. Lieutenant Jordon now had the evidence to establish their false Military ID cards and the Bank America transactions made in those names.

Lieutenant Jordon's friend in the Vietnamese Military Police produced one other key piece of evidence. It was the Vietnamese man, who supervised the building of the shipping boxes used by the two men in the Household Goods Shipping section to smuggle the drugs into the United States.

This Vietnamese man knew who was bringing in the heroin for the Household Shipping Section. There were three men. One was a GI Colonel and two high-ranking Vietnamese Officers. One of those Vietnamese Officers was the Vietnamese Commanding General for Two Corps First Field Force Vietnam.

According to this Vietnamese, the lower ranking GI's would not have enough money to pay for the drugs that were shipped. They were only being paid to ship it, but they were paid very well for just doing it.

Lieutenant Jordon knew he would need some real evidence if he were to go after them, as it would take more than just the testimony of a Vietnamese worker to stand up in court and point the finger at them.

The Lieutenant wisely took what he could get to shut down the Household Goods connection and waited for the opportunity to nail that American Colonel. Both Lieutenant True and Captain O'Neil sent their congratulations but pointed out that was only part of the problem as they still had to catch those who were working on the United States end of the drug pipeline.

O'Neil suggested Lieutenant Jordon make a deal for a reduced sentence with the men he caught if they told him how they operated the system. Once Lieutenant Jordon knew how the system worked, he should take over the Household Goods Shipping Operation and run through some additional "drugs" so that it could be track to the other rat holes in the United States.

Captain O'Neil told Lieutenant Jordon that had a similar situation at his Missile Site north of Detroit. A major Mafia Drug operation was using the highly secure Missile Launcher Sections to store their Drugs as it always took two men who had the right Security Clearances just to be in those areas. There was hardly a safer and more secure location anywhere else in the world.

When they were setting up the bust, the drugs stored in the Launcher Sections had been replaced with an equal amount of "drugs" that had only enough of the real Drugs to make a legal bust. There was one more element contained in these drugs and that was a fine low-grade radioactive powder mixed in with it. It was not harmful but a Geiger Counter could easily pick it up and track it no matter how small the amount of Drugs were shipped to any location.

The five-state Drug Bust had been made based upon the ability to track the radioactive particles implanted in the Drug bags. Captain O'Neil had left the Missile Unit 30 days before this bust took place.

Captain O'Neil passed on the name of the Drug Taskforce Commander who had supervised this stateside drug bust. O'Neil felt Lieutenant Jordon should be able to get the low-grade radioactive dust to salt the Drugs shipped from Na Trang.

Once the salted drug shipment was sent from Na Trang, the Household Goods Drug Operation was quietly shut down permanently. Within the next three months, the CID had netted 25 additional GIs who were operating this drug smuggling ring along with a number of Mob organizations across the country.

In appreciation for this successful operation, a Special Award was given to Lieutenants True and Jordon and of course Colonel Link received his Award during his retirement Ceremony.

Captain O'Neil received a Meritorious Service Award for his contribution in breaking up the Drug Smuggling Ring. However, his Award was presented in front of his Classmates as if it had been earned during his last Command Assignment in Vietnam. Colonel Rodmann sent a note for a job well done.

ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY

It is an unwritten duty and an obligation that all Officers in the US Military can be called upon to resolve situations, issues and problems for the Good of the Service. This duty can arise simply because he is there.

The Advanced Officer's Course in the Air Defense School at Fort Bliss was really an extended rest and recuperation period for those who had gone to Vietnam and witnessed some of the bloodiest battles that involved some of the greatest loss of life of their enemies the VC and the NVA.

In the early years of the War, the Air Defense Officers were seen as a duck out of water and they did not have the training needed to fight in this type of War. They made excellent Staff Officers as they had great administrative skills.

However when the Infantry and Field Artillery Units were short handed, the Battalion Commanders realized these Air Defense Officers had a better track-record for staying alive, as they had no desire to be the next John Wayne.

Many of these Air Defense Officers had ended up at Artillery Firebases in the middle in Indian Country where the Indians outnumbered the Cowboys. The VC thought they could over run them, only to find out after a significant loss of life, that the Fire Base had a secret weapon in the forward thinking of the XO. That XO was usually an Air Defense Officer responsible for the Firebase's Perimeter Defenses.

The Advance Course's day started at 900 hours with a lunch break and they were out by 1400 hours. The rest of the day was given over to sports activities such as basketball, tennis, handball or double team racket ball under jungle rules that meant anything goes as long as the ball is in play.

Others would just run a Cross Country Course that took in the Obstacle Course just to help keep them in shape. This was also a time, to rebuild family bonds strained by the uncontrollable factors in the War.

Mike was a tough Racket Ball player and he had teamed up with Captain Louis Hanson making them an unbeatable team. The rest of their Classmates tried to put together a team to beat them and they came close but also failed.

Being one of the few bachelor's in the class and not having an early class allow him to check out any nightlife that might exist. Across the street from his apartment complex was a Club called "Rock-on" which played a mix of Country Western and Rock and Roll music.

One of the Rock-on Club Managers was a girl who looked exactly like the Movie Star Shirley MacLaine and Mike was having a mental love affair with her. He had asked Cherry if she had been aware of her likeness to the Movie Star. She had of course had been and she took it as a complement.

Every Friday night Mike would stop in to have a drink to get his weekend started. He was a bourbon and water, man. In fact, he liked his water hard as in only ice.

Mike would tease and flirt with her and ask her to fly with him to Les Vegas for the weekend knowing she would be working and could not take off. She would always tell him she was sorry but her million-dollar boy friend was in town, but maybe she could work something out for next weekend.

The next weekend the two continued to play the game, with the same questions and the same answers. Mike would finish his drink and then head over to the Mexican City of Juarez, which was right across the Rio Grande River from El Paso Texas.

Mike would enjoy one of the finest steaks in North America at half the price he would have paid in the United States. Then he would go barhopping to see if any new girls had come in. Many of them were poor, simple and uneducated country girls who came into the border towns to make money. What little money they made was worth a lot compared to where they came from.

At first, they were able to say just a few words in English. Just enough words to get their "john" up stairs and into bed.

Mike had been coming into these clubs long enough that the girls knew he was not interested in going up stairs with them, but he would buy them drinks, real drinks if they wanted one.

Mike would find a table off to the side with his back to the wall almost as the gun fighter's did years ago where he could see everything and no one could sneak up on him.

He would have fun with the girls who were just waiting for a real customer who would pay for her permission to go up stairs for a half hour's worth of pleasure.

Mike was studying Spanish and he would practice it with them while he would teach them how to say the same words in English. For all they knew Mike was married and he was being faithful to his wife.

The Managers of these Clubs did not mind as long as the girls continued to work the "johns" who came in. When a group of GI's came in the girls would move away from O'Neil's table so the new men would know they were available. If they could not generate any action, they could come back to Mike's table for another drink.

Most of the girls were good-looking, but not beautiful. Most of them were short with a lot of breasts showing. The taller girls seem to attract the greatest number of customers.

Many of these taller girls already had a mix of Anglo blood in them. They could speak English a little better and were a business first type who knew just what they were and did not care what you thought about them, as long as you paid them.

Sometimes when things were slow, the Club Manager would come over and Mike would buy them a drink too. They already knew Mike was different than most of the Anglo's who came across the Border. The moment there could be trouble, Mike would take on a presence of being on high personal alert. He could feel a threat coming from someone, even though it may not have been directed towards him. He had not come in looking for trouble and he did not want anything to happen that might spoil his night out on the town.

The Club Managers had seen him just look at a man who was getting out of line, and that man would decide to take his business elsewhere. The 'look' Mike would give the man was like a rattlesnake that did not give you any warning before it would strike.

Somewhere after midnight, Mike would walk back across the Mexican American border, jump in his Corvette and ride back to the Club Rock-on for his "one for the road."

The more Mike had come in the friendlier Shirley Maclaine's look alike became. There were times the Club's owner had not shown up before the Club closed. She was not comfortable holding all those cash receipts and just waiting around until he did. One night she asked Mike if he would wait with her as she had gotten an uncomfortable feeling about a couple of guys who seemed to be hanging around and giving her a hard time about leaving after last call.

Mike did not mind, as he did not have any place he needed to go and tomorrow being Saturday was one of his lazy days where he would just sleep in. Since then, she had expected him to stay after closing until her boss finally showed up. They talked about a number of things and Mike was always a good listener. She knew he was in the military like her husband but she was not surprised to learn that he was an Army Captain.

Once this friendliness was established, she started to unload on him about all the problems she was having since she and her husband had left Germany.

Her husband Gerry had gone to Vietnam and had received several quick promotions to the rank of an E-6 Staff Sergeant before he came back. They had gone to Germany as his next assignment. Her husband had reenlisted to go to the Culinary Arts and Chef School at Fort Lee Virginia.

As good, as everything had been while they were in Germany everything was turning to shit when they came back. Somehow, her husband's Orders to attend the School at Fort Lee had been screwed up and they ended up being assigned to Fort Bliss. He put in some more papers and the Army would send him to Fort Lee in a year. She did not think that was fair.

Then Gerry was caught with Marijuana, coming back across the border. She did not even know her husband had any drugs on him when they came back to the United States. She had been with him all the time and never saw him buy it. The Drug Bust Charge was turned over to his Company Commander, who just did not do anything with it as he was giving her husband a break.

No sooner did he get past that, her husband was "Charged" with coming in late for work and the Battalion Commander wanted to Court Martial him this time. Part of the reason for making this a Court Martial offense had been her husband had received a break on the Marijuana charge and he had screwed up again.

The Battalion Commander wanted to make an example out of him and kick this bad apple out of the military. Garry was facing a Court Martial and the JAG Officer appointed for his Defense had not even talked to him.

Cherry had the idea Gerry's Defense Counsel was not making any effort to defend him as he knew the Colonel had been trying to get him since Gerry was let off on the Marijuana bust.

The Army will have its Prosecutor and the best Gerry could do was hire a Civilian Lawyer that would cost them money they did not have.

Gerry felt his best defense would be to call the Battalion Commander as his witness as he would not allow Gerry's Company Commander to deal with it. It had something to do with not following the Regulations. This has become a real 'hot potato' that does not seem right. She told him.

Mike had to agree with her that something did not sound right. He had been a Defense Council in a Court Martial when he had been in that Air Defense Battalion in South Korea so he had a reasonable understanding of how a Court Martial should be conducted. This was not the first story he had heard about some Vietnam Vet who did well over seas but seemed to have problems when they came back to a State side assignment.

Rather than trying to understand something second hand, Mike suggested he might talk with her husband and get a feel about what was really going on. Cherry agreed and she would talk it over with her husband. If nothing else, maybe Mike could help her understand what her husband was telling her.

The Owner of the Club "Rock on" came in and just picked up the money without even counting it. He knew she would have already counted the money and confirmed the amount against all the receipts. If she had not been an honest and good employee, she could have easily taken a couple of hundred dollars and he would never have known it.

The next morning Mike found his way over to the On Post Housing where Cherry and Gerry Franklin lived. Gerry met him at the door with a cup of coffee and invited him in. Their place was nicely furnished and their two children were playing on the carpet in the living room while the three adults sat at the kitchen table that overlooked the living room.

They looked like normal children as far as Mike could tell. They were about the same size even though one was two years older than the other one. The only exception between the two of them was their second child had a birthmark on his cheek. It looked just like the deer's bloody footprint in the snow he had track only a short distance from where he had shot it during last year's deer hunting season in Wisconsin.

The more Mike looked at the child the wider the child's grin was becoming. It was almost as if the child knew Mike had come to help Gerry and Cherry deal with their problems, problems that began after the youngest one was born.

Both of his parents could not help but see the strange look on Mike's face as he stared at their youngest child. They did not want to get into a discussion about Kevin and they wanted to get back on the possibility of Mike helping them with Gerry's Court Martial.

Mike listened to a straightforward charge, where Gerry was late coming into the Mess Hall. There were two other men assigned on that Shift and they had not shown up at all. The Mess Sergeant had not shown up either and he came in the Mess hall a half-hour after the Colonel did.

Yes, Gerry was the Shift Supervisor and yes, Gerry was responsible for making sure the breakfast meal was served. The way Mike started to look at the case did not make any sense, as Gerry was the only man being charged in the Court Martial. If anyone should have been charged, it should have been the Mess Sergeant as he is ultimately responsible for everything that goes on in his Mess Hall.

Gerry had at least made the coffee, mixed up the batter for the pancakes and had the bacon frying when the Colonel walked in and demanded his cup of coffee. Unfortunately, the breakfast meal Gerry was making was not what had been posted as the Menu for that day.

Gerry knew what he was preparing would be one of the faster and easiest meals he could make if he had to do it all by himself. Saturday mornings were slow enough that he could be frying the Pancakes and making eggs to order on the same grill. He also put out apples, bananas and dry cereal. Dry cereal was also popular among the men.

Garry's efforts did not matter as the Colonel had his target lined up in his sights and he was not going to allow him to get away this time. The only reason the Colonel did not have Gerry arrested and hauled off to the Brig immediately was there was no one else in the Mess Hall who could serve the meal if he did.

The moment his Shift ended Gerry had been escorted from the Mess Hall to the Colonel's Office where Gerry was formally charged with the Court Martial Offense. That had been two weeks ago and in the mean-time the Colonel had Gary doing the work of an assistant cook or a pot washer. The Mess Sergeant did not say anything and he went along with what the Colonel had ordered.

Mike asked Gerry a number of questions to see if he would add or change any part of his story. When Gerry continue to say that was all he knew, Mike believed him. Mike was not sure what he could really do for the man, but Mike agreed he would try.

The first thing Mike knew he had to do was establish himself as a possible advocate in Gerry's Case. Without it, he had no right to become involved with the man or in his case. With the name of the Army's Judge Advocate Officer assigned as the Prosecutor in Gerry's Case, Mike made an appointment for an unofficial meeting with him to confirm the facts in the case. Mike needed to know if Gerry was telling him the truth and if he had left out any other key elements of the Charges.

Monday after Mike's Class was let out, he was talking to the Army's Prosecutor who just listened to what Mike told him and after Mike was done, he did not add anything. Mike had not told him about the Mess Sergeant's failure to be on duty or the fact the other two men who should have been there but had not shown up either. Again, things did not make sense and maybe the Prosecutor knew he did not need to tell Mike anything, as Mike had no position in the case.

Captain O'Neil's next stop was with his Class Counselor to see what his position would be if Gerry Franklin requested him for his Defense. Technically any Officer could be called upon as a Defense Counsel, but those officers were usually within the same Command as the accused.

O'Neil told him the full story and the uneasy feeling he was getting about the facts he had obtained. Mike's Class Counselor asked him how he had become involved with this Gerry Franklin and Mike had told him. Mike was reading his mind so he answered the man's question before he asked it. "Hell if I wanted to get in his wife's pants, I wouldn't be trying to help her husband stay out of jail." Mike told him.

"Alright Captain I see where you are coming from. Are you sure you want to get involved in this?" Major Rodgers asked.

"Let me put it this way Sir. I am willing to conduct an investigation to see if I can help the man but I cannot help him if I do not have any legal standing in the man's Case. If I can get that legal standing than I have the right to conduct a proper investigation and get the answers to the questions I have." O'Neil told him.

"Fair enough, I have no problem with your doing this as long as you can do it outside of your Class Room time. If you end up Defending the man I can give you time off for the trial. If what you have told me is the real case, the trial will not last more than a few days." Major Rodgers told him.

"Thank you Sir." O'Neil responded.

"One question. How do you plan to get yourself in a position to handle this?" Major Rodgers asked.

"I was thinking I would need to be attached or assigned on Temporary Duty to Sergeant Franklin's Command in the Regiment above the Battalion he is in. That way if I decide to actually defend him I will be a member of his Command." Captain O'Neil told him.

"Well that sounds like you know what you are doing. I know Colonel Edwards, the Regimental Commander. Let me give him a call and tell him what you are trying to do." Major Rodgers suggested.

"Thank you Sir. I think there is a lot more to this case, but I will not know until I have the right to get some answers." O'Neil told him.

"Hold on a second, O'Neil. Let me make the call now so you know what I have told him." Major Rodgers stated.

Mike's TDY Orders to the Regiment were cut and the Regimental Commander issued Orders appointing Captain O'Neil as Gerry's Defense Counsel.

That afternoon Captain O'Neil was sitting in Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Buckman's Office after Mike had presented his Orders as Sergeant Franklin's Defense Counsel.

Colonel Buckman was a reasonably young man who had not been to Vietnam yet and he was only wearing the Occupation Service Ribbons everyone had for just having served in a Command somewhere.

Captain O'Neil knew he had to dance around the possibility of the Colonel's personal dislike for Sergeant Franklin and his desire to run him out of the Military.

The Colonel made it easy for Mike as he came right out and stated he did not like people who used drugs and thought they could get away with anything. "People like Franklin give the Army a bad named and I will run his kind out of the Army." The Colonel stated as if he believed he had Captain O'Neil's support in getting rid of this 'dead wood' as he referred to Sergeant Franklin.

"Just what 'kind' of a soldier do you see Sergeant Franklin to be?" Captain O'Neil asked but the Colonel did not answer. "Would you be surprised to learn he has two Purple Hearts, three Bronze Stars with a "V", a Silver Star, an Army Commendation Metal and he has the Expert Weapons qualifications in Rifle, and Pistol all of which he earned while carrying a Cook's MOS?" Mike asked.

The Colonel just sat there, not knowing what to say. He just wanted to get this smart assed Captain, out of his office. Captain O'Neil made it easy for him as he had learned what he had come here to find out.

"Sir I can see you are a very busy man so I will leave you with the fact Staff Sergeant Franklin has had an outstanding Military Record and you have dismissed him as if he had never served his Country in the Vietnam War." Captain O'Neil stated. Mike wanted to piss the man off so he would be off balance when he called him as a witness.

Mike quickly stood up, saluted and did a perfect about face leaving the Colonel standing behind his desk. As Mike walked out he realized the Command Sergeant Major heard everything that was said through the open door in the Colonel's Office.

"Excuse me Sir." The Sergeant Major stopped him. "You asked to interview the Mess Sergeant and the two cooks who were assigned to Staff Sergeant Franklin's shift. I have the Mess Sergeant in the day room and I will send in the other two men when you are done with the Mess Sergeant."

The fact that he did not use the Mess Sergeant's name might be a reflection about how he really felt towards the man. Friends you remembered but losers you forgot, as they are a waste of your time to know them.

Sergeant White was a short man who was almost as wide as he was tall. You could tell the man loved to eat and make good food to eat.

The story Sergeant White told Captain O'Neil was very close to what Sergeant Franklin had told him. The two Assistant Cooks should have started the coffee and break out the food for that meal.

They were to serve breakfast to any Officers who came in. In that way, the Officers would be gone before the majority of the Troops came in. "You know Sir, the Troops are not as uptight about eating when the Brass is not watching." Sergeant White told O'Neil as if he were letting him in on a trade secret.

Sergeant White admitted he also had the duty of being in the Mess Hall to make sure everything was prepared and served correctly.

He told Captain O'Neil."Sergeant Franklin putting out dry cereal was a brilliant move as many of the Troops like a good bowl of cereal with a banana and maybe a doughnut on the weekends. I know if I had been in his shoes, I doubt if I would have thought about using dry cereal to save my ass.

There is also one thing you may have remembered if you were a Mess Officer and that is 'All menu's are subject to change without notice or approval."

"Thank you Sergeant White it has been very refreshing to be back down in a line Unit's Mess Hall. I have been in several Units and I was the Mess Officer in every one of them. Two of my Units won the Connelly Award for the best Mass Hall in the Army. So I can believe either lightening can strike twice for me or I had a very good Mess Sergeant like yourself. In my last Unit we were feeding over a thousand men four times a day and we still won the Connelly." Mike told him.

"Congratulations Sir. If I ever got into any trouble I would surely like to have a man like you in my corner Sir." He said as he shook Captain O'Neil's hand.

"Good luck Sir. Sergeant Franklin is not a bad soldier. He just needs to be kicked back on the correct track and maybe you are the one who can help him do it." Sergeant White stated but he was close enough to Captain O'Neil, that Mike could smell the whiskey on his breath.

The two assistant Cooks came in. One was a Specialist E-5 and the other one was a Spec 4. Both had served in Vietnam. The E-4 had come through Headquarters Company First Field Force Vietnam after they had won the Connelly Award and he told Captain O'Neil what a wonderful breakfast he had before he reported out to his Field Unit. Captain O'Neil did not tell him he was that Company's Commander in Vietnam or that he had been a Mess Officer in any Unit.

Captain O'Neil was looking at these two men as being just as guilty of not showing up on time as Sergeant Franklin might have been in this case.

They had told Captain O'Neil the Duty Roster for the Mess Hall's Shift Assignments had been changed a number of times by just writing in another man's name on the same Roster. Who authorized those changes they did not know. However, Shift changes and duty assignments were allowed when there was a private agreement between the Mess Hall's Staff to swap their day's off.

On the day in question, Sergeant Franklin's name was added to the Roster as the Shift Supervisor with Sergeant Edward's name crossed off. That was not the only change to the Duty Roster, as their own names had been written on the Cook's Duty Roster and they had never been told about it. They claimed if they would have known about this change, they would have been there.

Both men liked working with Sergeant Franklin. He was the type of supervisor who taught them the little things to make the food taste better as they prepared the meals.

Mike had a number of key pieces for a good defense. The only question Mike had was did Sergeant Franklin know he was on duty for that shift and if he did not know it, then why was he there?

Before Captain O'Neil left the Unit, he went down to the Mess Hall and he found the Roster with all the crossed out names and added names as it was still hanging on the Cook's Bulletin Board.

O'Neil asked the afternoon Mess Hall's Shift Supervisor to look at it and asked him if this had been the same Roster that had been posted two weeks ago? He said it was and he was going to retype it.

"Then you don't mind if I take it?" Captain asked him. When the Sergeant said it was alright, Captain O'Neil had him sign and date it with the statement "This is the same Duty Roster that had been posted on 1 February 1972." Captain O'Neil gave him a receipt for it and told the Shift Supervisor he might be called as a witness in Sergeant Franklin's Court Martial.

Mike had dinner that night with the Franklins. Gerry had made a great meal. He could easily have been the Top Chef at any Five Star Restaurant in the world.

Over coffee and dessert, Mike told them he had found out some interesting things today but he needed to do a little more digging before he would be able to tell them if things were looking any better.

"Say Gerry did you know you were on the Duty Roster to Supervise that meal?" O'Neil asked.

"I can't remember as many times we switch off and trade with each other. Sergeant White does not care as long as the Shift is covered." Gerry told him.

Mike pulled out the Duty Roster he had taken from the Mess Hall's Bulletin Board and showed it to Gerry. "Have you seen this before and what can you tell me about it?" Mike asked.

That's the Roster from the morning the Colonel has charged me with being late in preparing the Morning Meal." Gerry stated.

"Can you tell me anything about, who and when these names have been scratched off and the others penciled in?" Mike asked.

"Well you can see I was not originally assigned that Shit, John Edwards was. He called me late Saturday night and asked if I would take his shift. He is the type of guy who always wants to be off and never remembers he owes you a shift back. I told him I could not help him this time. He called Andy Foster who agreed to help John out for 20 bucks. That was the last I had heard until I showed up the next morning and no one was there so I tried to get everything started until someone else could come in and help me." Gerry stated.

"So, why did you go to the Mess Hall if you were not scheduled to work?" Mike asked him.

"Well I like to make sure everything is going all right. I am the second in Command under Sergeant White and sometimes he is late himself." Gerry said.

"What about the fact that you were in your whites?" Mike asked to clarify the issue.

"We all keep an extra set of Whites at the Mess Hall so if you spill something you can clean it up and change into a clean uniform and no one knows you had a problem." Gerry told him.

"All right I have heard enough and if it is true I should be able to save your butt. I have one suggestion and that is you demand to be sent to Fort Lee and the school you reenlisted for as quickly as possible, because after I get done here, both our names will be covered with mud and shit as high as they can pile it. And don't take no for an answer. They owe it to you and that is why you reenlisted.

If I understand the numbers right, you would not even be in the Army now if you had not reenlisted." O'Neil told them."Thank you Cherry for such a nice home cooked meal." Mike added as he forgotten it was Gerry who had made it.

"Oh you have it all wrong Mike, Gerry cooked this. I have trouble boiling water." She stated giggling as she said it.

"Well if this is the quality of food you have been putting out to the Troops you should go into the restaurant business for yourself." Mike told them and they knew he meant it.

Mike continued to dig into Lieutenant Colonel Buckman's background and issues affecting the case against Sergeant Franklin. He had found a number of interesting facts in both their Personal Records that would have a significant bearing on the case itself.

They had three days before the Court Martial and Mike was feeling confident until his telephone rang. "Just who the hell would be calling here at 11 o'clock at night? He hoped there was not a death in the family." Were Mike's first thoughts when he answered the phone in his apartment.

"Captain O'Neil?" A voiced asked.

"Yes Sir." O'Neil said.

"Please hold for the Post Commander." The voice said and Mike knew this was not a good sign to be getting a phone call from the Post's Commanding General at his apartment seven minutes after 2200 hours.

"Captain O'Neil this is General Holden, the Fort Bliss Commander. I understand you are defending a young man named Staff Sergeant Gerry Franklin in his Court Martial on Thursday." The General stated as if you were supposed to correct him if he were wrong.

"You can imagine why I am calling you at this late hour. You apparently have one of my Colonel's all upset over this matter and he wants me to talk to you so he does not end up being embarrassed if this court Martial does not end up the way he feels it should. Do you know what I mean?" The General asked.

"Yes Sir. I believe I am getting a very clear picture of the situation the longer you talk Sir. Maybe we should not even be having this conversation Sir." Mike let the General know he was not going to roll over and play dead or feed Staff Sergeant Franklin to the wolves at the JAG Office. Mike did not have to reference the Regulations about Command interference in such matters or the attempt to use undue influence in helping the parties decide the outcome of a Court Martial.

"Sir I am going to do the best I can to defend the man and I believe the Court Martial Board will look favorably upon Staff Sergeant Franklin." Mike informed the General.

"O'Neil can I ask you a very serious question?" The General asked.

"Yes Sir. I will answer anything you wish to ask me and I will respond to the best of my abilities without compromising Sergeant Franklin's Defense."

"Why are you involved with this particular young man's case? From what I can find out you never knew him before you met him here at Fort Bliss and there are no blood relationship between him, his wife or you and your family." The General was making his point.

"You are right Sir, there isn't any." O'Neil said.

"All right let me put this as straight as I can. What is it going to take to get you off this man's case?" The General asked and that was pretty gutsy on the General's part, especially if this conversation was being recorded as it was.

When Mike became Sergeant Franklin's Defense Counsel, he had installed a tape recorder on his phone to record everything that was said unless he shut it off. Normally when Mike answered his phone, he would turn the recorder off when he knew who was calling.

"Sir that is a very inappropriate question for you to have asked and I will make believe you never asked it. Now if you want the problem to just go away, I would suggest you advise the Colonel who has brought these charges to withdraw them for further investigation. If not, than the matter should be best decided in the Court Martial." Captain O'Neil advised the General.

"I have been told you are a very hard headed Irishman and I would love to know what evidence you intend to use to plead your case as you have not disclosed it yet?" The General was poking around looking for a weak spot in the Defense.

"Sir, you will note my evidence is due after the Prosecutor has presented his and so far he has not served anything on me or the Defendant. If you can encourage him to do so, I will respond accordingly." Captain O'Neil politely responded to the General.

"So you are going to be a tough nut to crack are you?" The General said as he was letting things get away from him.

"Again Sir, I must caution you on what you are saying on this open telephone line as it may be recorded by your Military Police who are responsible to monitor phone calls from time to time as part of our National Security requirements." O'Neil said. Mike did not want to come right out and tell the General his phone call was being recorded as if necessary the content of this conversation could be used in an Appeal.

"So you feel this young man's Court Martial is worth your career, do you?" The General may have regretted saying that the moment it passed through his lips.

"If this young man cannot receive justice in the Military and in this country, I believe I would have to rethink my own oath of Office and my duties I have pledged to defend." O'Neil stated and it was at the point he knew if he said one more word, he would tell the General to go 'fuck himself.' But that would be a dumb thing to say to the General who could do some really nasty things to you before you would be able to deal with him." Mike concluded to himself.

"So what do you suggest?" The General asked.

"I believe the Battalion Commander has not verified the facts in this case and he has singled out Staff Sergeant Franklin rather than insuring the US Army honored its commitments. Sergeant Franklin Reenlisted to attend the Culinary Art and Chef School at Fort Lee, Virginia but he was sent here. It is still not too late to make everyone happy. If we go forward with this Court Martial there are going to be some losers who will pay a heavy price for not carefully thinking about all the possible consequences of their actions." Captain O'Neil stated without referencing the Battalion Commander's name.

If you were going to play "chicken" with a General who already threatened your career you better let him know you were not going to be the first one to blink. "I see." The General said slowly as if he wanted to say something else but he did not.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, General?" Mike asked.

"No Captain. I am seeing an irresistible force meeting an immovable object or two physical objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time." The General was saying perhaps more to himself.

"I am sorry you feel that way Sir as I will be doing my best to confirm Staff Sergeant Franklin is not guilty of the Charges made against him. Good night sir." O'Neil said ending the phone call. Mike was not absolutely or completely certain about the correct protocol of hanging up on a General. However hanging up on a General was still a lot better than telling a General to go piss up a rope.

In the General's Quarters at Fort Bliss, the Post Commander turned to General Dean who had been drinking with him since diner.

This was the same General Dean, who was the Commander of the Detroit-Cleveland-Pittsburgh Air Defense Region when Captain O'Neil Commanded Charley Battery. General Dean had also Commanded the 38th Air Defense Brigade in South Korea when Captain O'Neil as a Second Lieutenant had taken over a none operational HAWK Air Defense Battery. This Unit was in a strategic Air Defense location on top of the mountain in the center of the air corridor known as "MIG Alley" since the Korean War.

General Dean had heard one side of General Holden's conversation with Captain O'Neil and felt his friend needed to understand just what type of Officer Captain O'Neil was.

"John, Captain O'Neil has that magic touch other men only dream about.

"When I commanded the 38th Brigade in South Korea O'Neil was just a Second Lieutenant when he took over a busted HAWK Battery that could not perform its Air Defense Mission.

When O'Neil had made Alfa Battery fully Combat Ready in less than 60 days, I could not believe it. As one of his Missile Sections had a "Deadlined" High Power Radar for months as we had to wait for better weather to be able to pull it out and replace it.

As you know without a High Power Radar, the whole Missile Section was None Operational and they could not be 100% Combat Ready. What I found out was Alfa Battery had a very bright young man in Radar Maintenance who told O'Neil he could fix it and the only thing he needed was for O'Neil to Order him to do it.

We are talking about performing Manufacturer's Level Repairs. Not only did the young man fix it he had completely rewired it so it was capable of tracking Aircraft flying into Tokyo International, and you know that is way beyond the Effective Range of that Radar

As you know a HAWK, Unit normally has four Officers and a Warrant Officer. O'Neil with only a Warrant Officer and a new Second Lieutenant passed the Unit's IG Re-inspection with the highest score in the Battalion within 60 days after he assumed Command to make Alfa Battery an Honor Unit. I have never seen anyone who could get his men to work harder for him than they did for Captain O'Neil.

The day they Passed that IG Inspection and while O'Neil had given the Unit a Victory Party, General Bonesteel, the 8th Army Commander pulled him out to Run a Special Marksmanship Program.

O'Neil was the only Officer within 8th Army who had ever Competed in Rifle Competition, as he had been on the 5th Army's Advanced Marksmanship Team while he was still an ROTC Cadet.

Bonesteel needed someone who could teach someone else how to shoot. There had been an incident on the DMZ where an Infantry Company had expended their entire basic load of Ammunition trying to hit a North Korean who was less than 300 yards away.

The investigation revealed the Unit had never actually shot their Rifles and had been "paper qualified". Even worse their Rifle's elevation was still on Zero meaning their bullets where hitting the ground less than 50 yards from their shooting positions. Heads rolled after that incident.

You also have to remember at the same time, there was an attempt on the South Korean's President's life by a North Korean Suicide Death Squad and the USS Pueblo was captured by the North Korean's. As a direct result of these incidents, all of South Korea was at a high state of alert.

O'Neil received an early promotion to First Lieutenant and he had an impossible mission. He had to form a Unit, find a range, establish a supply system and find a place to house 60 men in 10 days.

You know what type of men he would get when a Unit is required to send a man and that Unit is already undermanned. They sent the men they can afford to do without, their 8 Balls, misfits and screw ups.

In 10 days, O'Neil had to turn these 60 questionable GI's into skilled shooters, who would be the Instructors to insure every soldier in South Korea was re-qualified in his primary weapon. When O'Neil did it, I was only one of the few Commanders in 8th Army that was not surprised.

When those men returned to their Units' they looked and acted as model soldiers who were "experts" who could actually teach people how to shoot. Within the first three days, 3 of these 60 men had made one shot kills on North Koreans beyond 700 yards using only open iron sights on their M-14 Rifles. Within a month, North Korea stopped sending their men into the DMZ.

General Bonesteel was impressed and he asked O'Neil to show him what he did to teach these men how to shoot and actually hit what they were aiming at. O'Neil used the opportunity to show the General what a trained shooter could do with the Scoped Sniper Rifles that were still sitting in 8th Army's Armory since the Korean War.

O'Neil and three of his students put on a shooting demonstration in shooting Clay Pigeons at 600 yards. That's right, the same 3 inch diameter Clay Targets they shoot with shotguns. He mounted 16 of them on a white target backer and then proceeded to shoot them all in 18 shots. From what I understand two of the clay pigeons were hit twice as the bullets from the Sniper Rifles were going fast enough that they could punch a hole in the Clay Birds rather than break them. O'Neil and the three other men had hit a target half the size of what the Manufacturer thought was possible.

Normally if a Rifle can shoot a group within a minute of angle it is shooting as good as the manufacture can make it. That means a one-inch group at 100 yards and six inches at 600 yards. We are talking head shots at twice the distance of the effective Rifle Range used on a battlefront.

If General Bonesteel was willing to give O'Neil anything he wanted when he formed this Marksmanship unit, he was now giving O'Neil the blessings of the gods. Bonesteel was so impressed with O'Neil he told the COMCINPAC Commander that maybe this use of Snipers might help expand the effectiveness in stopping the North Vietnamese Supply Trains coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Within a week 60 men came up from Vietnam and O'Neil taught them all how to become Effective Snipers with the Model 70 Bolt Action Scoped Sniper Rifles in the 8th Army's supply system.

It was one thing to produce an effective tool on the Battlefield but it was another thing to teach the Commanders in Vietnam how to use it. To prove O'Neil's Sniper's theory he took seven men and when to Vietnam. The idea was to control the same area as an Infantry Battalion does when it is on line with only 8-men. As you know a Battalion occupies between 1,000 to 1,200 yards the battlefield.

O'Neil's Sniper Team set up on the same position that an Infantry Battalion who had been on line as part of a classic Hammer and Anvil Operation for the last 30 days. They were in place before the Battalion moved out and did not make any shots for the next 24 hours giving the VC and the NVA time to verify the American Battalion had indeed left the area. For the next three days, O'Neil's Snipers claimed 103 Confirmed kills." General Dean told General Holden.

"Please continue while I refresh your drink." General Holden said.

"From what I understand the Battalion Commander, who had been replaced by O'Neil's Snipers claimed that number of kills was bullshit. The 4th Division Commander also said that report was impossible and even General Westmoreland would not believe it.

All three Commanders flew out to confirm the results. The bodies were still there as there were no living VC or North Vietnamese to carry them off. When they counted the bodies they found four more dead, North Vietnamese soldiers and they asked O'Neil to explain it. He simply told them they only counted confirm kills. If the Spotter had not seen the kill or if they could not see where the body had fallen it was not counted.

O'Neil went back to Vietnam several times and he expanded the effective use of Snipers. O'Neil was transferred to Command a Special Operations Unit in Vietnam and they trained the SOG and Special Forces Units to use Snipers in both Cambodia and Laos. They had become so good that their effectiveness had to remain highly classified. The Commander of MAC-V was not sure how the News Media would report such an operation. You could just see the story where the poor VC were being killed at a distance they could not shoot back. We could not let the enemy know just how effective these Snipers had been either.

When O'Neil came back to the States he Commanded a Hercules Unit. I was again his Commander when he was in Command of the Most Outstanding Air Defense Unit in the United States. His Mess Hall received the Connelly Award for the best Mess Hall in the US Army and he and every member of Charley Battery received a Presidential Citation.

He went back to Vietnam and ended up being the Headquarters and Headquarters Company Commander of First Field Force in Na Trang, Vietnam. That Unit of 990 men also won the Connelly Award. If anyone knows how to run a Mess Hall O'Neil does, as he has been the Mess Officer in every Unit he has been in." General Dean concluded.

Hearing all this General Holden knew this Battalion Commander had bitten off more than he could chew, and this O'Neil was the type of man to force him to choke on it during the Court Martial trial. General Holden was starting to feel comfortable that O'Neil was not a lawyer and he was in over his head until he realized the way O'Neil had responded to his phone call reflected someone who knew what he was doing.

"Say Jerry, Did this O'Neil have any experience with Court Martial's when you were his Commander?" General Holden asked.

"Funny you should ask. He does. He was the Defense Counsel for a young man in Bravo Battery, who was accused of stealing a camera. The kid was always in trouble and the Battalion Commander wanted to put him behind bars.

O'Neil was the assistant Counsel and when the Kid admitted he had done it, the Primary Counsel refused to defend him. There was no doubt the man was guilty but O'Neil chewed up the Prosecution's witnesses to the point he did not even put on a defense.

You would not have recognized the accused when he walked into that Court Martial. He could have been the Soldier of the Year and O'Neil won the case. I also understand O'Neil scared the hell out of the man. After the Trial O'Neil had the man transferred to Alfa Battery, where he became a very good soldier and he is still in the Army.

He also defended a man who had been in his Unit before he took over 8th Army's Marksmanship Unit. The man requested him and O'Neil went to General Bonesteel after he talked with the accused and he asked for the time off to help the man.

O'Neil got the charges reduced and convinced the Prosecution to allow the NCO to take a Field Grade Article 15, which saved the man's Stripes and he did not serve any more time in the Brig." General Dean told his friend.

"Thank you Jerry, you have been a wealth of information. I believe I might drop in and watch this Captain O'Neil as he is defending a young man in a Court Martial this Thursday." General Holden stated.

"So that's why you wanted to know about Captain O'Neil. God help the Prosecutor." General Dean stated and laughed. "If I had the time I would like to watch that trial myself."

"Why don't you as if what you told me about Captain O'Neil, it could be a very interesting show." General Holden commented.

The night before the Court Martial, O'Neil was getting Gerry ready. He wanted Gerry's mind on that razor's edge you lived with, when you were in Vietnam and "Victor Charles" was in the area and up to no good. O'Neil had gone over every possible question Gerry might be asked. They worked on the answers improving his word choice so Gerry was confident in everything he said and did.

O'Neil gave him a GI hair cut himself so the longest hair on his head was part of a short yellow fuzz left where the white sidewall haircut ended.

O'Neil had gone to the Military Uniform Supply store and bought new Campaign and Award ribbons for Sergeant Franklin's chest. He bought New Weapons Qualification Badges and they both polished his brass. Gerry's shoes glowed with a spit shined as good if not better than when O'Neil had been on the National Championship Pershing Rifle's Drill Team.

Gerry had sent his Best Class A Uniform to the Cleaners to be pressed and cleaned. O'Neil checked it over several times to make sure there were not any lose threads hanging on it. O'Neil had done the same thing with his own Uniform, as he wanted to impress the Court Martial Board that they were both professional soldiers who had excelled in their duties in an actual Wartime environment.

The JAG Office had received the word this Captain O'Neil was not to be taken lightly and there might be some serious problems in the foundation of the Case against Staff Sergeant Gerry Franklin. Heeding the General's warning the JAG Office replaced their Prosecution Counsel with Major Charles W. Wakefield III.

Major Wakefield was a Harvard Law School graduate and the son of Judge Charles W. Wakefield back in Virginia. The Major had been a JAG Officer for 13 years and even his friends knew him, as a "big badass". He had the reputation of being able to cut a witness to ribbons by just looking sideways at them.

Seeing the change of the Led Counsel at the Prosecutor's table, O'Neil realized someone must have figured out who he was and the JAG Office was not taking any chances of losing this one.

O'Neil reminded Gerry what he had told him last night about looking at the Prosecutor and whatever he did, he was to take everything slowly and not act surprised by anything the Prosecutor does. "He is here to put you in jail if he can. Treat him with respect, as he is very good at his job, but treat him as you would anyone who you already know is the worst enemy you ever had since you were old enough to walk. If he laughs, you frown. If he is serious, you laugh. And remember, it is only the members of the Court Martial Board who holds your future in their hands. If you do not understand something, write me a note. Ok Sergeant Franklin shall we go and slay the dragons." O'Neil said.

Before the Court Martial Board was set, Captain O'Neil made a peremptory challenge of the second Ranking member of the Board. In making this challenge, the Defense Counsel does not need to state a reason.

Then O'Neil challenged the Ranking Officer for cause, claiming he was a personal friend of the Battalion Commander who had brought this case and played cards with him in a weekly Thursday night Poker game. Rather than create a possible shadow over the proceedings O'Neil asked him to recues himself and the man did. That left only three members of the Board and it would eliminate the Trial Counsel from dismissing the Senior NCO from the court unless he wanted to request a new panel.

The JAG Officer who was sitting in on the Court Martial as the Post Commander's representative was impressed by O'Neil's actions and he wondered how O'Neil had found out about that Poker Game.

Major Wakefield's Opening Statement followed what the Battalion Commander had told O'Neil. There was nothing new except the attempt to introduce what happened on the Mexican Border. O'Neil quickly objected to the unproved rumors as not being relevant to the Charges brought against Staff Sergeant Franklin.

When Major Wakefield concluded Captain O'Neil informed the Court he would withhold his opening Statement until after the Trial Counsel had rested his case.

The Prosecution's first witness was the Battalion Commander Lieutenant Colonel Buckman. After being sworn in Major Wakefield started leading the Colonel through the case spoon feeding him so he would say what was an obviously well rehearsed testimony. The Colonel's Testimony established the basic framework of the Case against Sergeant Franklin.

O'Neil felt he needed to discredit the man and pick apart the Colonel's ability to understand the way things were actually being run in his own Battalion's Units. The best way to do that would be to slam a meat hook into the Colonel's heart and yank it as hard as he could.

"Lieutenant Colonel, we have met in your office before, have we not?" O'Neil asked making sure each time he addressed Buckman that he would reinforce his rank as a Lieutenant Colonel rather than the commonly accepted title as a "Colonel."

"Yes we did, Captain." Buckman responded with an edge of contempt in his voice and O'Neil knew he was right the man was sensitive to the fact he was only a Lieutenant Colonel."Strike one for the weak side." O'Neil thought.

"Lieutenant Colonel, do you happen to recall we discussed the accused Service record?" O'Neil put more emphasis on the Lieutenant part of his rank.

"Yes. Captain we did." He responded.

"Lieutenant Colonel, would it be fair to say you did not know the service record of the accused?" O'Neil asked.

"I was not totally familiar with his record." Buckman responded.

"Lieutenant Colonel Buckman would you say you were surprised when I told you what Sergeant Franklin's Military Service records showed?" O'Neil asked him as he put the emphases on the word "surprised."

"No I was not surprised." Buckman answered.

"So you would say that now you have reviewed his Military Service records and all the Awards and Decorations he has earned, you know what type of soldier the accused is?" O'Neil asked.

"Yes, Captain." Buckman responded with a little frustration in his voice.

"Good. How many Purple Hearts did he receive while he was a Cook in Vietnam?" O'Neil asked.

"What does that have to do with his failure to report for duty?" The Colonel asked as if he wanted to get to the issues in the case.

"Now Lieutenant Colonel Buckman, you know or at least you should know you are here to answer my questions, and we are not here to answer yours. I would ask the Court to direct the Lieutenant Colonel to answer my question." O'Neil requested as a way to tell Buckman that the weight of his testimony was not based upon his rank.

"The witness will answer the question." The President of the Board stated.

"I will tell you what Lieutenant Colonel Buckman, and with the court's permission, I will have the accused come forward and stand before the Lieutenant Colonel and he can tell the court what each of his Decorations on his chest represents."

"Objection," Major Wakefield stood up saying. "This is not a circus."

"You are right Major, this is a very serious matter that has some unusual foundations and I would ask the Court to allow this demonstration. Unless the Lieutenant Colonel wants to admit he does not know the Military Record of the accused and he cannot identify the awards Sergeant Franklin has received." O'Neil countered.

"I will allow it." The President of the Court stated."Staff Sergeant Franklin come forward and stand on the other side of the witness, so the members of this Court can see your awards while Colonel Buckman identifies them."

"All right Lieutenant Colonel if you please. Would you point out and state the name of the awards that are displayed on Sergeant Franklin's chest." O'Neil directed him.

Buckman had this confused look on his face as he studied the ribbons on Gerry's chest. When he did not say anything O'Neil asked. "What's the problem Lieutenant Colonel you just told the Court you were not surprised by his record and you have reviewed his record of Military Awards. Let me make it easy for you Lieutenant Colonel Buckman, tell this court which Combat Ribbon represents the Silver Star he won for Valor?" O'Neil asked.

"The one with the "V" on it " Buckman took a guess.

"I am sorry Lieutenant Colonel Buckman the Ribbon with the two pips and the "V" on it means he had received the Bronze Star three times.

You don't know what a Silver Star looks like, do you?" O'Neil asked quietly that the Board had to strain their ears to hear it. It is funny about a whisper people hear it and remember it better than if you would have shouted it at the top of your voice.

When Buckman did not answer, O'Neil said. "I am sorry Lieutenant Colonel I did not hear your response. Would you mind saying it again?"

"I am not sure." Buckman finally said and O'Neil knew he had made his point loud and clear.

"Lieutenant Colonel Buckman are you wearing all the medals and awards you are authorized to wear?" O'Neil asked to put him in a deeper defensive position.

"Yes." Buckman answered cautiously knowing that O'Neil was setting another trap for him.

"And only those you are qualified to wear?" O'Neil asked.

"Of course." Buckman answered.

"Lieutenant Colonel Buckman, would you stand up and face the Panel?" O'Neil asked and Buckman looked at the Trial Counsel for some direction. Seeing none, he stood up and faced the officers of the Court.

"Now Buckman correct me if I am wrong but you are wearing a Weapons Expert Badge and I note the Missile, Pistol and Rifle qualification bars hanging from it. Is that correct?" O'Neil asked.

"Yes" Buckman responded.

"Would you please tell the court when you last qualified with the Rifle and the Pistol?" O'Neil asked.

"I don't remember." Buckman responded.

"Was it any time with in the last 12 months?" O'Neil asked not even looking at Buckman as he was scanning the audience looking for the General's Spy if not the Post Commander himself.

His eyes stopped on a man in a suit that looked out of place. He was out of place because he was not in uniform and he was not used to being in a Civilian suit. It was the JAG Colonel O'Neil had seen when he had stopped in to pick up the Trial Counsel's witness list that morning. Captain O'Neil smiled at the man and gave him a slight bow before he turned around to face the witness.

"I am waiting Lieutenant Colonel Buckman? Was it in the last two years? O'Neil asked.

"I am not sure." Buckman said.

"Was it in the last five years Lieutenant Colonel Buckman?" O'Neil asked but the Colonel did not answer.

Lieutenant Colonel Buckman, do you know how long an individual is authorized to wear those Weapons Qualification Badges, before he must Re-qualify for them?" O'Neil asked him.

"I object to this line of questioning." Major Wakefield stood up slowly.

"Make your Point Captain O'Neil." The President of the Court Martial Board told him.

"Very will Sir. Lieutenant Colonel Buckman you are out of uniform as I have a copy of your 201 File. Correct me if I am wrong but I fail to see anywhere in your 201 File where you qualified for any of the Weapon Qualification badges you are wearing since your Officer's Basic Course. Yet you have chosen to isolate and pick on a highly decorated Vietnam War Veteran, who was wounded in battle, twice while he was serving as a cook."

O'Neil paused to reinforce the emotional effect and took a deep breath. "Would you care to explain why you have a dislike for Sergeant Franklin and you would like to run him and his kind out of the Military?" O'Neil asked.

"I don't understand your Question Captain." Buckman tried to dance after the music had stopped.

"Don't hand me that Buckman, just three weeks ago you told me and I quote "I have a dislike for Franklin and I would like to run his kind out of the Military. Unquote." O'Neil stated.

"Do you deny making that statement, Buckman? I have two witnesses that heard you make that statement through the open door of your office. Would you like me to call them as a witness in this court?"

"I might have said that, but that was just you and me talking." The Colonel came back sinking the hook deeper into his own jaw.

"Prior to my coming into your Office had we ever met?" O'Neil asked him.

"No" He responded slowly.

"So you were willing to degrade a highly decorated Vietnam Veteran of the United States Army to a perfect stranger?" Captain O'Neil asked him.

"You weren't a perfect stranger. I knew who you were as I received a phone call from the Regimental Commander about You." Buckman quickly stated.

"Oh boy would I like to have been a fly on the wall when you took that call." O'Neil said as he turned back to look at the JAG Officer in his civilian suit.

"Objection, inflammatory." Major Wakefield stated.

"The Major has a valid point. And I apologize to the Court." O'Neil quickly said which only reinforced the point he wanted to make.

"By the way Lieutenant Colonel Buckman are you a Regular Army Officer or just a Reserve Officer on active duty?" O'Neil politely asked.

"I am a Reserve Officer." Buckman answered.

"And what is your permanent rank?" O'Neil asked.

"An E-7." The Colonel responded.

"Do you know what Staff Sergeant Franklin's permanent grade is?" Captain O'Neil followed up.

"I do not know." Buckman responded.

"I object to this line of questioning as it has no bearing on the case." Major Wakefield was back up on his feet.

"Captain O'Neil could we stick closer to the case at hand." The president of the Court Martial Board asked.

"Sir if you will allow me a few more questions I will make this very relevant Sir." Mike said but did not wait for the response and bore back into Buckman.

"So Lieutenant Colonel Buckman if we level the playing field you and Sergeant Franklin are almost the same rank and I believe you felt threatened by that fact. Didn't you?" Mike asked.

"Objection. Badgering the witness." Major Wakefield was still on his feet, said.

"I withdraw the question." O'Neil stated.

"Now Lieutenant Colonel Buckman, could you tell the Court how the Batteries in your Command assign their Duty Shifts in their Mess Halls?" O'Neil asked.

"The Duty Roster is posted for the week and everyone has a duty to read the Roster and to know when he is expected to report to work." Buckman responded confidently.

"So once the Duty Roster has been posted for that week it is solid as if it were made of concrete and it cannot be changed?" Mike asked.

"Well no. Some of the Shift members switch off and exchange duties with the Mess Sergeant or Mess Officer's permission." He responded.

"Does this permission need to be in writing or is it just a verbal understanding?" O'Neil asked.

"A verbal understanding is enough." Buckman responded.

"Who is the Mess Officer in Staff Sergeant Franklin's Unit?" O'Neil asked.

"The Mess Officer?" The Colonel asked. "I am not sure." He added.

"So we have an Officer who could have allowed a Shift Change or others to switch duty assignments, but you don't know who he is or whether he did or did not approve a Shift change for Staff Sergeant Franklin." Mike asked. "Is that right?"

"I suppose so." The Colonel responded rather lamely.

"Did you just take over the Command of this Battalion?" O'Neil asked knowing when the Colonel assumed command. "Maybe things are different in the Units I commanded as I knew every man in my unit within 10 days after I had assumed Command of that unit.

According to your 201 File, you have been in this Battalion as its commander for almost 7 months. Is that correct, Buckman?" O'Neil asked as he was setting him up for a knockout in the first round.

Who else in that Unit is authorized to approve the Shift Changes?" Captain O'Neil asked.

"Well the Mess Sergeant." Buckman stated.

"And how long has Sergeant Jenkens been the Mess Sergeant there?" O'Neil quickly asked him.

"Over a year." The Colonel responded.

"Lieutenant Colonel Buckman, there is no Sergeant Jenkens in any position in your Battalion and Sergeant White has been the Mess Sergeant there for over three years." O'Neil told him.

"I took the liberty of obtaining a copy of your Battalion's Regulations and a copy of the Unit's Mess Hall Regulations. Have you seen these before?" Mike asked as he gave a copy of the Regulations to Major Wakefield and the President of the Board.

"Yes Captain." Buckman responded.

"Good. Let me give you this to read and I call your attention to page 138 dealing with the Manning Requirements of your Mess Halls. Do you see Subparagraph c and I ask you to read it aloud for the Court please?

"The Shift Supervisor will have the same duties and responsibilities as the Mess Sergeant." The Colonel said as he was reading it.

"Are these your Battalion's Current Regulations?" O'Neil asked him.

"They are the current Battalion and the Unit's Regulations." He stated.

"So then Sergeant Franklin as a Mess Hall Shift Supervisor could have authorized a shift change. Is that right? O'Neil asked.

"I suppose so." Buckman responded.

"I have a copy of the Mess Hall Duty Roster that was taken off the Mess Hall's Bulletin board and it is signed by a Shift Supervisor as being the same Duty Roster on the day in question." O'Neil said as he gave Major Wakefield and the Court Martial Board a copy.

"Please note that this Duty Roster is not dated and it was still posted as being current Duty Roster as of three weeks ago." O'Neil stated.

"Lieutenant Colonel Buckman have you seen this Duty Roster before?" O'Neil asked.

When Buckman did not answer, O'Neil asked him if he could use this Duty Roaster to identify all those who were required to be on duty in the Mess Hall on that Saturday morning. O'Neil was sure Major Wakefield and the members of the Court Martial Board were asking themselves the same question when they looked at all the crossed out and changed names of the Duty Roster.

"Now back to my original question. Did Sergeant Franklin have the authority by your Battalion Regulations to make Duty Roster Shift changes? However if you believe, the accused Sergeant Franklin would have the authority to approve Shift changes in that Mess hall you would be wrong.

I have a set of Orders I would like you to read." Captain O'Neil stated as he handed a copy to the President of the Board and one to Major Wakefield.

"These Orders deal directly with Staff Sergeant Franklin. Do you see what Unit he is actually assigned? As you can see this is a certified Copy from Sergeant Franklin's Personnel Records. Now Lieutenant Colonel Buckman is that a Unit within your command?" O'Neil asked him.

"I aha, no it is not." Colonel Buckman stated in a shaky voice trying to get some help from the Trial Counsel Major Wakefield.

"I believe in light of this evidence, Major Wakefield will agree Sergeant Franklin is not in your command. Isn't that right Major?" O'Neil stated. "Lieutenant Colonel Buckman you have no jurisdiction over Sergeant Franklin as he is not legally in your Unit."

"Well he has been working there since I took Command of the Battalion. Maybe he was assigned there on Temporary Duty." Buckman offered in his defense.

"Are you aware of any Temporary Duty orders as there is nothing in Sergeant Franklin's official Personal Record." O'Neil stated.

No I am not aware of any Temporary Duty orders." Buckman stated.

"For the record, I submit that Sergeant Franklin is not a member of Lieutenant Colonel Buckman's Command.

Colonel Buckman you have anything you would like to say to this Court Martial that you required to be formed on the Charges you brought against Sergeant Franklin? Perhaps I can help you. You can withdraw these Charges." Captain O'Neil pointed out to the Colonel.

"Yes I believe that would be the correct thing to do." Buckman reluctantly stated.

"Sir," O'Neil addressed the court."I would ask this Court to find Staff Sergeant Franklin is 'Not Guilty' of these charges." This quick move would prevent someone else from bringing new charges against Sergeant Franklin for the same offence.

"Objections, Major Wakefield?" The President asked and hearing none, he declared "So Ordered."

Gerry shook Mike's hand and his wife gave Captain O'Neil a big hug. Just after the last spectators left the courtroom, the Post Commander and General Dean came out of the side door of the courtroom. They had been watching Captain O'Neil's performance.

"I want to thank you for saving three Army careers today. Staff Sergeant Franklin's is obvious but Colonel Buckman's will depend on what he has learned from this experience. As for you, Captain I am proud you are in my Command." The Post Commander stated. "I also want to apologize for my own behavior. Sometimes I need a gentle reminder of what is right and what I should have done.

General Dean and I would like to buy you a drink if you have time." General Holden stated.

"I would like that sir. As you know Sir, when us Irishmen start talking we can become mighty dry Sir." O'Neil said accepting the General's hand.

DANGER CLOSE

_"Danger Close" is a term used by the Army's Artillery Units when the Fire Mission has friendly forces close to the coordinates where those Artillery shells will be landing. It is asking the Artillery Unit's Gun Crews to double check the accuracy of their guns and be extra careful in the delivery of each shell fired. This also tells the Artillery Unit this is a very serious mission as the enemy is almost on top of the position of the friendly forces_.

The next Friday night Mike stopped in at the Rock-on Night Club, just as he always had been doing and Cherry was behind the Bar. Mike notice the lights behind the Bar were dimmer than normal.

Mike also sensed that something was wrong as Cherry did not give him a hug as she usually did and she was standing back from the Bar for some reason.

Mike's military experiences in Vietnam had fine-tuned his senses to become aware of any changes in his environment as those changes could be an indication of a danger to him and his men.

"Cherry what's wrong?" Mike asked. "Do I have bad breath or something?"

"Oh no it has nothing to do with you." She said lowering her head and then turning her back to him. Now O'Neil knew something was really wrong.

He moved around the end of the Bar to get a better look at her. However, she moved away from him trying to get even more space between them. Mike reached out and took her arm, forcing her to turn around and look at him.

Even in the dimmed light behind the Bar, he could see the bumps and blue bruises on her face in spited of all the make-up she was wearing. The fact she was wearing a long sleeved blouse covered those same types of marks on her arms. It looked as if someone had worked her over and left her in a back alley with the rest of the garbage.

"Wow, what in the hell happened to you?" Mike asked. "Did your husband do this to you?"

"Oh No, He would never do something like this. He was given his orders to attend that School at Fort Lee Virginia the day after the Trial. He was also given the time off and he left that evening to check out the Base Housing at Fort Lee and see if he can get a place for us to move into right away." Cherry told him.

"Well then who in the hell did this to you?" Mike demanded to know.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." She said with tears about to flow from her eyes. "Come back before closing time and you can take me out for a cup of Coffee. I will tell you everything as you have done so much for us already and deserve to know." She said turning away as she did not want Mike to see her crying.

"All right I will see you then as I really want to know who did this to you." Mike told her and he was reluctant to leave her, without knowing the truth.

"I said I would tell you but I don't think you are going to believe me. Nobody does." She stated and turned back towards Mike so he could see she meant what she was saying.

Mike was back earlier than normal. Maybe he wanted to make sure she did not leave early. "A busy night?" He asked.

"It was busier earlier but the crowd did not stay very long. Maybe it was the way I looked. I am sure everyone thought the same thing you did when you came in. That Gerry had beaten me up." Cherry said as she placed his usual drink down in front of him.

"The way things were going tonight I don't think I will have any trouble running the last customers out." She added trying to smile but stopped as it hurt her split lips.

"She was right there was no one left in the place and it wasn't even closing time." Mike thought to himself.

Mike sat and watched her count out the till and put the cash in the Bank Deposit bag along with the cash register's tally sheets from each Shift that worked today.

The owner had come in early and he just nodded his head towards Mike without speaking. He took Cherry into the back room to count the till. This was a little unusual but he must have known by the way Cherry looked the customers would not stay around long and they would take their business elsewhere. The way she looked would affect his business.

When they came out Mike knew he was right as the owner was suggesting she take a few days off. He was telling her, she needed a vacation and she should not worry about her job, as he would still pay her as if she had come in. Although this sounded fair, he was not really paying her all that much as her tips made up the majority of her wages.

As Mike and Cherry walked out the door of the Club, he asked her where she would like to go. She told him she was not sure she should go anywhere the way she looked. Mike offered her some coffee and doughnuts he had in the refrigerator at his place and they went there.

Mike had told her where he was living a long time ago and she had no problem following him in her car. There were a number of parking spaces still left open next to his and he knew these people would be gone for the weekend.

He lived on the second floor in a two bedroom sparely furnished leased Apartment. The spare bedroom was his Office, workshop and gunroom where he cast his own bullets and loaded his ammunition for the Civil War firearms he had been competing with for years.

He had picked up a few pieces of furniture at the Auctions he loved to attend. You never knew what you might find at an Estate Auction where treasures came out of cubbyholes and attics that held valuable things for years.

Once inside the apartment she hung her jacket over the back of a kitchen chair, while he reached into the refrigerator for both the doughnuts and his fully prepared percolator coffee pot.

Every night Mike set up his coffee pot. He kept it in the refrigerator to keep the coffee fresh but it was ready to go while he was still stumbling around in the morning trying to get that first fresh cup of coffee to get his heart started.

He had bought a fresh box of doughnuts yesterday when he did his weekly shopping and the coffee would be ready in less than 15 minutes.

As the coffee perked, Cherry walked about the apartment looking at the various pictures of places Mike had been and she picked up a number of collectable items Mike had bought in the different countries he had been in since he joined the Army. She asked questions about some of them as she was getting a feeling about who this Captain O'Neil really was.

She could hardly believe what he had done for her and her husband, as he just seemed to be there when they really needed someone. During the preparations and the Trial, she had started to call him "their angel." Then when he won the case, she knew he had to be. Yet she did not really know him beyond what she had learned when they talked at the Club.

When the coffee was ready, Mike asked how she took it.

"Black." She responded somewhat guardedly as she realized this was the first time she had been in his apartment and it just made her feel a little funny to be in a strange man's apartment when her husband was 2,000 miles away.

Mike brought her a mug of black coffee and handed it to her. "Well let's hear it." Mike started out as if their conversation were just continuing since he left earlier that evening. "If your husband did not do this to you, who was it? It wasn't a boy friend?" He asked not knowing what to think.

"No I do not have a boy friend and I knew you are not going to believe this. It was my Devil." She stated with a straight face then looking back at him with her eyes fixed on his, told Mike she was not kidding.

"You have seen my second son Kevin. He is the one with the birthmark on his face. The Devil works through him and when I will not do what the Devil wants me to do he turns Kevin loose on me and that kid will beat the shit out of me." Cherry told Mike without moving her eyes from his.

"Devils and a hoof print shaped birthmark seems to be stretching matters don't you think? Kevin is hardly old enough to walk much less beat someone up the way you look." Mike stated.

"You don't have to believe me, but you are the one who asked me to tell you what happened and I am here telling you.

My husband and I became involved in some witchcraft over in Germany and we belonged to a Coven. A Coven is 13 people one of which is the leader sometimes called the Devil himself.

Anyway, we had several Quarterly Sabbaths and then the Coven Leader informed everyone that we would be celebrating a Black Mass with a live offering. I did not know what they were talking about but Gerry seemed to know a lot more about it.

However, Gerry did not believe it was his place to tell me. He said I should go and talk with the Coven Leader.

I did and he told me all about bringing in a spirit into this world through the "Old One." He never called him the Devil or Satan or any of the other names the Devil has been called since the beginning of time. The leader also told me there would be a sacrifice and as the result of this sacrifice, the whole Coven would experience his or her death orgasm.

The reward of this sacrifice was each time any member of the Coven has sex thinking about the person who made the sacrifice they would experience the death orgasm. He made it sound like something way beyond any sexual experience any normal person could ever have.

When I asked him if the sacrifice had already been selected he must have thought I wanted it to be me. He told me he was sorry I was not eligible as I had not been in the Coven long enough to make such a commitment for such a Black Mass.

Gerry and I went to this Black Mass and they passed around a golden cup, which had the drink of the "Old One" in it. Whatever was in it, hit me like a hammer between my eyes.

When I became conscious again I was standing around the Pentagram, that is the sign of the Devil and I was chanting some words I have never heard before." Cherry was telling Mike.

"The sacrifice was lying on a white alter covered with blood. It was a young man lying on his back with his arms hanging over the sides. His wrists had been cut and he had bled out into large pots and there was a dagger with a crooked pig's foot handle driven into the man's heart.

I do not remember how long this lasted but it was almost daylight when we got back to our apartment on Post. From what I had seen and could remember, I did not want to attend any more of these services or even meet any of those other people who were a part of the Coven.

I refused to go anymore. Gerry continued to attend these meetings until he said they had brought in three new members in the Circle of their Coven. One was for the man who was sacrifice and two would replace Gerry and me.

I was scared every time I went out of our apartment and soon after that, I found out I was pregnant with Kevin. I wanted to get out of the area and begged Garry to do something as I was going crazy. In order for us to get a military transfer, Gerry had to re-enlist.

Part of the deal of his re-enlistment was to be reassigned to Fort Lee Virginia to attend that Culinary Arts Class and Chef's school. The Class would start in 60 days, which would give us plenty of time to make the move and settle in at Fort Lee.

We had packed everything and we took some time to see parts of Europe before we left. Then just before we boarded the Airplane, the Army reassigned Gerry to Fort Bliss instead. He tried to protest but no one would listen to him.

Once he got here, no one would even deal with it. Then everything just went to hell. We were having problems in bed. He just could not get hard no matter what I did to help him.

I was getting so frustrated I would go in the bathroom and use a vibrator to make up for what I could not get from him. When he found out he threatened to kill himself. I talked him out of that and even got him some psychiatric help, which was showing some improvements.

When Kevin was born with that birthmark, Gerry when crazy and he was stopped on the highway doing over a 130 mph before he could kill himself when a tire blew out or he hit an animal trying to cross the road in front of him.

Gerry was given a break after the Cop called Gerry's psychiatrist who explained some of the problems Gerry was having and the doctor agreed to meet them at some crossroads out in the desert somewhere.

After that, Gerry was doing better as he focused on trying to get the Army to live up to their Reenlistment agreement. When Colonel Buckman took over the Battalion he refused to see Gerry, telling him he had to go through his Battery Commander. Gerry was not doing so well there either as they were replacing Battery Commanders so fast Gerry did not have enough time to type up the papers before the next Commander took over.

When Kevin got older, he developed this superhuman strength. He could lift Gerry or me off the floor and toss us around like a rag doll. When Gerry tried to discipline Kevin Gerry got the worst of it.

One night Kevin beat Gerry up so bad that Gerry was afraid to go to work. He was sure they would believe he had gotten into a fight and got the shit kicked out of him.

I went to the Catholic Chaplin here at Fort Bliss and I told him what happened and what we were living with. Although he said he believed me, he asked me to bring Gerry for an appointment the next day.

When Gerry told the Chaplin the same thing I did, he asked us some very specific questions about the Coven's activities and the Black Mass where the human sacrifice was offered.

The Catholic Chaplin blest us, telling us if we were not strong willed good people, we would not have been able to escape the Coven when we did. He prayed with us for God's help to overcome this evil as the devil hates to lose someone's soul that he once had. He told us the devil would be testing and tempting us to get us back on his side but we were not alone in this fight.

He told us the Catholic Church had a special Department to deal with Demons, the Devil or Spirits of Satan. Base upon what we had told him he felt our situation would justify the Catholic Church's involvement. There were special priests assigned to perform Exorcisms, however before they could do that they needed permission from the Bishop, which for the Army was in Washington DC.

The Catholic Chaplin at Fort Bliss agreed to write the letter to Washington requesting the Exorcism and once it was approved, the Catholic Church's special Priest would come and drive the Devil out of Kevin.

In the mean time, the Catholic Chaplin gave us some holy water blest by the local Bishop who controlled the El Paso area. The Chaplin also gave us some blest chalk. He wanted us to use these things to defend ourselves from the physical harm Kevin might inflict on me, Gerry and our other boy Mark.

He taught us how to draw a circle around us with the blest chalk and then draw a second circle about four inches outside the first circle.

The Chaplin gave us a list of signs and symbols used by the early church to help ward off evil spirits and devils. What this became was our safety circle that Kevin could not enter. We could talk freely inside that circle as neither Kevin nor the devil could not hear us.

The Chaplin told us Kevin was just the host for this Devil. Kevin was still the lovely child I brought into the world and the Devil was only using him to punish us for leaving the Coven back in Germany.

The Chaplin told us any time Kevin became aggressive toward me, Gerry or Mark, we should toss some Holy Water on him. He said I would see red and blue spots where the Holy Water hit him and he had to get this holy water of him before he could do anything else. The devil needs to get the holy water off Kevin as quickly as possible. When he is doing that, we would have time to get into the safety circle.

Even though Gerry and I were not Catholic's the Chaplin had us fill out a family membership card for the Post's Catholic Parish. With the feeling, we had a way of dealing with Kevin and protecting us from him and the devil I drove back home and Gerry went to work. I paid the baby sitter the extra two dollars I had promised her and felt that was the best two dollars I ever spent.

Kevin immediately put up his resistance to me and he would not let me get close to him, as he knew I had the Holy Water and Blest Chalk. I left the children playing in the living room and I went into my bedroom to start drawing my safety circle on the floor. I had just completed the outside circle when Kevin showed up at the bedroom's door.

"You don't believe that little piece of chalk is going to stop me do you?" Kevin said in a raspy voice.

I told him, "We will just have to see won't we."

After I made the second circle I put in the Crosses, the signs of the fish, the P sign with an "x" on the leg of the "P" along with the initials of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the open areas between the other signs that seemed to balance the circle.

When I looked up Kevin was back at the door with a wooden block in his hand. Many times in the past, he would throw that wooden block so hard he could knock me over onto the floor so he could physically hit and kick me without my ability to stop him.

Kevin wound up and hurled the wooden block but it missed. This was the first time Kevin ever missed. He picked up another block and throw it at me but this time I did not try to duck out of the way as I wanted to see where it went. It bounced off what was like an invisible shield around the Safety circle. The Safety circle was working and for the first time I felt I might have a chance to deal with this Devil.

I took out the Holy Water and doused Kevin good, which caused him to scream and roll on the floor. He grabbed the bed sheets to wipe off the Holy Water as he was screaming in a graveled voice, 'You're going to pay for this you can bet your bottom dollar on what I will do to you and your precious little Mark.'

The Holy Water must have seeped through his outer clothes and reached his body causing him even more pain. I went and got Mark and brought him into the circle with me.

I made it without any problems as Kevin left the bedroom and went into the bathroom. I could hear the bathwater running and that convinced me that the Devil or some evil spirit with a higher than normal intelligence was using my son Kevin, who was just over a year old at the time.

Once I had Mark safe with me inside that Safety Circle we both fell asleep and I had slept so well I almost did not wake up to go to work. I woke up when the baby sitter was at the door ringing the bell.

Since then I have been sleeping in that circle as that was the only way I could get any sleep. It was hard to convince the baby sitter that Mark would sleep much better on the floor than in bed with Kevin.

Just so you understand Kevin is smart enough not to show his ass in front of other people who might become witnesses sometime in the future." Cherry concluded. She had told Mike what he had asked to know about who had beaten her up. She just sat there waiting to answer any other questions Mike might have.

"Well that sure is one hell-of-a story. I will tell you that." Mike told her. "I have been around the world and I have seen and heard many strange and crazy things but I have never seen a devil or had any experiences with one, so I don't have any idea how to compare it.

You are either totally convinced you are dealing with some super natural Being, a Devil or you are crazier than a bed bug. I will also say I have no way to find out just which one you are." Mike told her.

"Well why don't you take him for a while and after he scares the living shit out of you, maybe you will believe me?" Cherry challenged him.

"Okay, I will try him for a short time." Mike responded in a mocking tone in his voice. However once I said it, I thought, "Now why would I say a dumb thing like that?"

Once Cherry had pawned off her Devil on Mike she was very anxious to leave before Mike could change his mind. Mike was surprised they had been talking that long about her Devil as it was already 4:30 in the morning. Mike was glad it was Saturday and he could sleep in.

Mike cleaned out his coffee pot and set it up as he always did so all he had to do was put the pot on the stove after he woke up. After he took a nice shower, he slid in between the crisp bed sheets his cleaning lady had put on his bed. Mike had just started to dose off or he had been awaken from his light sleep when he felt someone was in his room.

His first thought was to remind himself he was not in Vietnam but in his apartment in El Paso Texas. However, this did not mean there was not someone in his bedroom.

There had been a series of burglaries in the neighborhood and it usually happened on the weekends. They were breaking into places such as his looking to take TV's, guns and anything else of value they could find. He had been there long enough that people knew he was a shooter and a hunter, so he would have guns in his place.

Mike tried to feel the presence in his room as he had learned how to locate people close to him. He had met a man they called the "Russian" who had explained everyone projected a physical presence, just like when someone comes into a room everyone turns to see who it was. The idea was you could also withdraw that projection so your enemy could not find you and it worked.

O'Neil had taught his Snipers how to use this method so they would not be found even if the enemy were only a few inches away. He was feeling an enemy now and he was getting closer.

Mike knew he was not in the best defensive position lying on his stomach in his bed. But it wasn't all bad as he could reach under his pillow where he kept his cocked 45 Gold Cup Automatic.

This was the same pistol, he had shot in the National Pistol Championship Matches and he had carried with him everywhere he had been while he was in the Army. It had saved him more times than he wanted to remember. His hand found it and his thumb flipped off the Safety. He faked a roll in his sleep and turned over on his back.

Now through just the slits of his eyes he could scan his bedroom. His bedroom was not completely dark as there was some filtered street light coming through his curtains, but it still left a good sized darken area off toward the inside corner of the room he could not see into. If someone was there he could not see him, but that was the only place he could be.

With a quick roll, he was off the side of his bed onto his knees and his weapon ready to fire at whatever was there, nothing. He double checked the corner of the room before he turned on the light next to his bed and its light filled the room.

No one was there, yet he knew he could not have been wrong as someone had been there or he had been dreaming about something he had done in the past when someone was there.

Mike did not put the Safety back on his Automatic pistol and he got up to check the rest of his apartment. No one was there. The door was locked all his windows were shut and locked.

He went back to bed and put his pistol under his pillow. He was almost asleep when he felt that presence was back in his room. He again rolled out of bed with his weapon cocked and ready to fire. He immediately turned on the light. It was as if someone had been standing at the foot of his bed then he ran over to the dark corner of the room as if it felt it could hide there.

This time Mike knew he was not dreaming, as everything was just too real. He made a conscious decision to deal with the threat rather than just watching himself as if he were in a dream interacting with the other characters of this dream.

Mike was lying on his back and pretended to fall asleep with his Gold Cup in his hand. He must have fallen asleep and turned on his stomach as this time he woke up feeling someone breathing on the back of his neck. It had a foul odor as if it was coming from an open sewer.

Twice Mike jumped up and turned on the light and twice he had that same feeling of a presence moving quickly away from the light into the darken corner of his bedroom.

A chill ran up and down his spine as if he might be dealing with a real Devil just as Cherry had told him. "Boy you are really dumb to belittle things you don't understand." He quickly thought. Then he suddenly remembered the Bible story where Jesus ordered an unclean spirit to leave a possessed man's body.

Mike remembered the Bible story about the devil tempting Jesus Christ, after he had spent the 40 days in the desert. The words "be gone" stuck in Mike's mind.

"Devil, Demon or unclean Spirit I order you to leave and be gone from here." Mike commanded loudly.

It was as if whatever was in the corner of his bedroom was walking back and forth to make sure Mike was really throwing him out.

"I said be gone in the name of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. I am ordering you to leave now." Mike yelled in his best command voice.

Something past between him and the bedroom door and went out into the living room and then it turned into Cherry Franklin. There she was taking off her clothes. "Gee Mike I wished you would have asked me to stay. Since you didn't, I just invited myself back in. I know you wanted me from the first day we met and I wanted you. I am here to give you the best piece of ass you have ever had in your life." The image stated as most of her clothes had already fallen to the floor and her body glowed with all the sexiness any woman could possess.

"Nice try Satan. I know all your tricks. I have commanded you to leave and take this impure image with you." Mike again ordered it.

"Boy you are a real spoil sport. I have brought several of my friends so we all can have some fun. Gorgeous and strikingly beautiful naked women of all shapes and sizes appeared all over the room. Any one of these women could have been the best wet dream any man could have. Mike almost forgot just who these images really were and he knew he was not dreaming.

Mike knew if he entertained this temptation even for a moment longer he would have been lost and damned forever. Mike went to the outside door of his apartment and opened it. He commanded the devil and his playmates to leave now and forever in the name of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.

Cherry in the form of the Devil was walking back and forth in the living room knocking over the furniture and tossing things all over the room. When she finally disappeared, Mike felt something had passed by him and stop in the doorway. He heard Cherry's voice say, "You will be sorry."

Mike went to his dresser and pulled out the Rosary he had carried everyday in Vietnam. There was also a wooden cross one of the orphan's had made for him. It was a gift to thank Mike for all the support Mike as the Headquarters Company Commander of First Field Force had given the Orphanage in Na Trang.

Mike remembered the young boy's clear English words saying what he had rehearsed a number of times to get it right. "It is already blest and it represents the true cross just like Jesus carried. Only this is your cross and only your cross. You will need it one day to defeat Satan and all his lesser devils. Once you display this cross where it can be seen when you come in your place, the devil cannot come in."

It did not seem to be important at the time, but now maybe that boy had seen the danger Mike might face just as he did a moment ago.

Mike had not even closed the door when Mike's phone began to ring. He looked up at the wall clock noticing it was just after 5 am and he wondered who could be calling him at this hour. "Hello." He said.

Cherry did not even say hello. All she said was "He is back" and she hung up.

EFFECTIVE FIRE

Just shooting in the direction of the enemy is relying on blind luck but a well-aimed shot, becomes "Effective Fire" that insures a kill.

It was almost 10 am, when Mike's phone rang again. It was Cherry calling from inside her Safety Circle wanting to know how Mike had gotten rid of her Devil so quickly.

Mike told her about the Bible stories he knew. He told her how Jesus had dealt with the Devil after his 40 days in the desert and how he cast unclean spirits out of the minds and hearts of men.

Cherry asked Mike to come over as she needed to talk with him and she would have a fresh pot of Coffee when he got there. Mike agreed but he did not know why. He had just gotten rid of her Devil and now he was going back to where it lived.

"Bullshit. You wanted to get in her pants since the first moment you saw her as you have this fascination for Shirley MacLaine." However, Mike now knew where this thought and temptation was coming from. Mike knew he had to resist this temptation at all cost or he would lose his soul in the process.

Cherry met Mike at the door and he followed her into the bedroom. The bed was made with a nice bedspread and some decorated throw pillows. There on the open wooden floor in the center of the room was the hand drawn Safety Circle she had told him she had made with the Blest Chalk the Catholic Priest had given her.

"Come on in the coffee is ready and I have some doughnuts. Let's get a cup and come back in here where we can talk in the Safety Circle. I want to know everything that happened at your place and what you did to get rid of the devil." Cherry told him.

Mike told her what happened in great detail and what he did to get rid of her Devil. Even though he had experienced all this, he told Cherry that he was still not sure he believed it.

"I'll tell you what, if you need any further convincing I will give you anything you want if you can pick up Kevin and carry him into this circle." Cherry told him.

Mike went into the front room and asked Kevin if he wanted to be "up." "Up" was one of the early words he remembered his younger sister and brother using when they wanted to be carried around.

Mike picked up Kevin who did not seem to be very heavy at all. He carried Kevin around the house and approached Cherry's bedroom door. The closer he got to that door the heavier Kevin felt as if he was putting on 20 pounds for every step Mike took. Mike was having a problem holding him and he was afraid he would drop him.

Just outside the bedroom door Kevin felt like he weighed 200 pounds and Mike had to put him down. As soon as Mike let go of him, Kevin ran past Mike and picked up a wooden toy block. He snapped the block like a sidearm pitcher, which came so fast Mike did not have time to protect himself as the block hit him in the center of his chest and knocked the wind right out of him. Kevin had disappeared and Mike was slowly getting up.

"Lady I do not need any more demonstrations and I am sorry I ever doubted you. Your Devil was in my apartment the moment you left." He said as he moved back into her bedroom.

Mike retook the chair he had been sitting in inside her Safety Circle. Mike was feeling trapped much like the time he had been at Firebase 6 when he was surrounded by the 9th NVA.

Mike had defeated the 9th NVA with weapons he knew how to use but here the only apparent effective weapons they had were the Blest Chalk and the Holy Water the Catholic Chaplin had given her.

Mike just sat there thinking as he ate doughnuts. When he finished his third one, an idea came into his mind and he asked her. "What would happen if Kevin were trapped inside of a blest chalk circle?"

"I never thought of that. How would you do it?" She asked.

"Here is the idea, give me half of your blest chalk and we will need that holy water just in case Kevin wants to stop us when we go out the front door. I will start the circle around the house going to the right and you go to the left. If we do this fast enough, we will have Kevin and the Devil caught inside the house. We might be able to negotiate the release of the Devil on the condition he will agree to leave Kevin behind unharmed and your family alone." Mike explained his idea asking her to correct any misunderstanding he might have about dealing with the Devil.

"It just might work. Waiting for the Catholic Church to approve the Exorcism could take forever. I want to take both my children with me to Fort Lee so I can be with Gerry and we can start all over again." Cherry stated. "Let's do it."

They both jumped up and ran through the house and out the front door. They both started drawing that Blest Chalk circle with each of them going in the other direction. The earth around the house was dry and hard making the chalk mark was easy.

As they moved around the house, a Military Police siren was blaring and coming into this section of the Post Housing. Mike and Cherry had just finished crossing over each other's Chalk lines in the back of the house when the MP Cruiser pulled up in front of the house. They ran back to the front of the house to see two large MPs jumped out of the car and ran into the Franklin's house.

They came running out carrying Kevin who had stopped screaming. Kevin was carrying two wooden toy blocks and he fired them at Mike and Cherry. Mike knocked down both wooden blocks with a piece of wood that just happened to be laying there. The MPs never stopped as they ran with Kevin to their car and wasted no time driving away.

The MPs had moved so fast that Mike and Cherry were looking at each other trying to think about what they might have done wrong. "How did they carry Kevin out of the house?" Mike asked Cherry.

"I don't know. We did what the Priest told me to do and we should have been able to trap him before those MP's came here. That is another thing, who called the MPs? There is no one home here on this street during the day. Even if there was, how could the MPs have gotten here so fast?" Cherry was saying as she was shaking her head trying to think.

"Oh shit." She said. "Look, we did not start with an overlap of the circle to begin with. There is no Chalk marks on the sidewalk so those MP's were able to just run into the house and pick up Kevin like they were handling an emergency and they came to rescue the kids."

"You said kids. What happened to Mark?" Mike asked and they both ran back into the house and found Mark sitting on the floor chewing on one of the wooden toy blocks the two kids had been playing with. He was just sitting there with no idea of what had just taken place.

"Let me call the MP Station." Mike told her. He dialed the number and the line was busy. He tried several more times and the line from the Franklin house could not get through.

Mike saw one of the neighbors drive into their driveway across the street and he when over to use their phone. The MP Station answered immediately on the first ring. Mike identified himself and asked if they were having any telephone difficulties today.

When they said they did not, Mike asked if they had dispatched any MPs to handle a problem on the street where the Franklins lived. The answer was no again. He then asked if any MPs had reported picking up any children in the last hour and the answer was no." Captain O'Neil thanked them and hung up.

Mike turned to the woman who had allowed him to use her phone and he asked if she had seen an MP's Cruiser come to or leave the Franklin house across the street.

She responded the Franklin's had moved to Virginia over a week ago and no one had been assigned to that house yet. She asked Mike if he was an NCO who was checking out the house for his family and planned to move into it.

Mike thanked her and told her he was looking at the house for a friend and it looked like a nice place to live but the house was not big enough for his friend's family.

Mike walked back across the street to the Franklin house and told Cherry what he had learned. Whatever happened in the last 20 minutes no one else had seen it and whoever took Kevin was not part of the Military Police at Fort Bliss Texas. With Kevin gone and everyone believing the Franklins had already moved to Virginia, Cherry could not just stay there as the only person who might believe her was the Catholic Chaplin.

Mike suggested she should pack up what she could carry, take her other son and head for Fort Lee Virginia. Cherry did not say anything and only nodded her head in understanding.

While Cherry started to pack, Mike reached for the phone without thinking and it was now working. He called the Catholic Chaplin and gave him a brief report of what had just happened. The Priest said he would be right over.

The Priest recorded Mike and Cherry's complete story about his meeting her last night after work, his encounter with her Devil and what took place here less than an hour ago. He agreed with Mike's suggestion that Cherry should not stay here any longer and now that he had recorded their story, he could deal with anything that might come up.

The Chaplin called the Fort Lee Chaplin's office and asked them to locate Cherry's husband and tell him she was coming to Virginia. The Chaplin wanted them to call him back with a phone number where Cherry could reach Gerry. He told Cherry to call his office once she was safely on the road and he would give her Gerry's phone number. He then asked Cherry if she had any money to make the trip.

Cherry claimed she had almost two hundred dollars in her purse. She also claimed there was five hundred dollars saved in the Bank from Gerry's Reenlistment Bonus and the money he had saved while he was in Vietnam.

The Chaplin suggested she let him and Gerry deal with moving their household goods as Gerry would have to come back anyway to clear the Post.

When Cherry had loaded her car with what she needed to take, she told Mike she would be all right now. She gave him a big hug and kissed him on the cheek. At least now, she knew her chances of keeping Kevin no longer existed. He was gone and she would never see him again.

# 16. THE STRANGER WHO IS MY BROTHER

My younger brother Patrick who had gone to the Seminary to study to be a Priest had dropped out during his first year at the Major Seminary. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and he had followed in Dick's and my footsteps into the ROTC. However, the accomplishments Dick and I had made in Pershing Rifles and on the Rifle Team had grown into Paul Bunion type legends and no matter how good Pat was he could not be as good as we had been.

With the Vietnam War winding down, fewer Officers were needed in the Army. When Patrick graduated and received his Commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Air Defense Branch of the Army, he was given only 89 days of Active Military Duty. Pat had gotten married just before I left Vietnam but due to his limited time on Active Duty, he would not receive any On Base Housing for him and his wife. However, Fort Bliss would allow Pat as my brother to live off Post with me.

What came as a surprise to me was a visit by a Captain William Jacobs in Military Intelligence who wanted to know how well I knew my brother, Patrick. I had to admit although we were brothers I really did not know him well as he had gone into the Minor Seminary right out of Grade School. He never wrote me a letter or sent me a birthday card all the time I had been in the Army.

I was asked if I knew of any organizations, Patrick had been involved in while he was at the University of Wisconsin or if I had any idea, he might not be a loyal American Officer who would divulge military secrets to his friends.

"Captain Jacobs you can save us both sometime if you would come to the point of this meeting as you would not be here if there wasn't a problem." I told him.

"Very well Captain Corrigan." He said as he took out a classified folder and started to explain the Anti-Vietnam War student protests Patrick had been involved in while he was at the University of Wisconsin. He had a number of photographs of my brother actively participating in Anti-war student demonstrations. In one photograph, Pat was wearing his ROTC Uniform with flowers tucked in his hat and he was surrounded by Hippies, who were hugging and kissing him. The Army had considered disciplinary action and denying him a Commission. They would have, if it had not been for Dick and my outstanding reputations in the ROTC Program at the University and our accomplishments while on Active Duty in the Army.

Captain Jacobs went on to explain the reason why the Army was limiting Pat's Active Military Duty to less than 90 days and why the Army was allowing him to live with me.

"So you are asking me to spy on my brother?" I asked very pointedly.

"Putting it bluntly, Yes." Captain Jacobs stated. "We need to find out if your brother is worthy of keeping his Commission. With his Active Duty limited to less than 90 days the Army can revoke his Commission without making any public justification and there is not anything he can do about it

What the Army is asking you to do, is to keep your eyes and ears open and evaluate him as you would evaluate any other Officer under your Command. If you do not feel you can do this, please tell me now and we will not allow your brother to live with you. He will be required to live in the BOQ and he will be evaluated by a member of his Basic Air Defense Class, who will be assigned as his roommate." Captain Jacobs informed me.

"Let me get this straight, if I don't do this, someone else will. If Pat is a screw-up, he more than likely will not know he is being evaluated to keep his Commission by me and if he is not allowed to live with me he will know something is up. Is that what you are telling me?" I asked.

"Yes Sir." Captain Jacobs responded.

"Do I have any time to think about this, or do you need my answer now?" I asked.

"I can give you 48 hours. If there is anything you need me to cover again or discuss in more detail please ask." He replied and my mind jumped to the possibility this was not about Patrick at all. It was a test of where my loyalties were, as I knew Colonel Rodmann had already told me where I would be going when I left Fort Bliss. It was possible the "Brass" in the Pentagon did not want a Captain telling them how to run the Army and if I failed this test, they could use it as justification for having me assigned somewhere else.

"Captain Jacobs I would like to talk with your boss. I will also need written orders assigning me to this duty and the purpose of this assignment. If that can be arranged I will do what the Army is asking me to do." I laid it out on the line.

"Colonel Rodmann said you would ask for something like that. I can arrange a meeting with my boss and the Post's Commanding General for tomorrow in the General's Office." He replied with a grin on his face.

My brother Patrick reported into the Basic Air Defense Officers Course and he moved in with me in the two-bedroom furnished apartment I had rented off Post.

I had been using the other bedroom as an office where I would study for my classes in the Advance Course in Air Defense and for the classes I was taking for my Master's Degree in Human Relations and Marketing at the Fort Bliss Education Extension of the University of New Mexico. I had also set it up as a work shop where I would cast bullets and make my ammunition to shoot with the 5th Virginia Cavalry when I flew back to attend the Northwest Territory's Regional Skirmishes. I bought a Piper Comanche 250 Airplane to replace the Bonanza 35 I had lost in the accident over Fort Riley.

Although Pat was receiving his Officer's housing allotment for living off Post, he never once offered to share the rent. Patrick was a Business Major at the University of Wisconsin. He thought of himself as a World Class entrepreneur who could turn any opportunity into a personal profit as long as he was using someone else's money.

After the first time we went to Juarez Pat would spend most of his off duty time across the Mexican border buying cheap Chess sets and leather goods he had his wife take orders for in Milwaukee. I did not realize what a wheeler-dealer Pat was, until after a Corvette Hunting Crew came through El Paso and stole every Corvette in town.

My beautiful English Racing Green Corvette was one of 17 other Corvettes stripped clean of all their parts and their empty shells were left in the desert like some dead animal's bones bleaching in the sun.

With all the Corvettes gone in El Paso, I could not find another one within 200 miles of Fort Bliss. Those Corvettes I looked at were way over priced as they had been in an accident and the repairs looked as if they were done by some want-a-be auto fix it guy who was still learning how to do it.

I ended up buying an Italian Alfa Romeo as I had already sold the pickup truck and I needed something to drive. However, having once owned and driven a Corvette this Italian Sports car was a poor substitute for a car I wanted to drive.

The following Tuesday, my class in the Advance Air Defense Course was let out early and when I picked up a copy of the News Paper I saw in Used Auto for sale section an ad for a 1967 Corvette. I immediately called the listing party and based on his description of the car I wanted to see it.

I carefully inspected the immaculate White Hard topped 1967 Corvette Convertible with a red interior for damage and I found the car to be as perfect as the day it was made. With only 32,121 miles on the speedometer, this Corvette was still under the original Factory Warranty. It had the same 327 cubic inch 365 horsepower engine with a four-speed transmission and a 4-11 rear end as my other Corvette did

The test drive established there was nothing wrong with the car and I found it handled even better than my 1966 Corvette. Even though the car was reasonably priced the horse trader in me sought to make a better deal. When I wrote the check for the full price of the car the owner was not sure what he should do as he did not know me and he was concerned my check might not be good.

I suggested he sign the Title with my name on it and hold the Title and the Car until my check cleared his Bank. That way if there was any problem with my check, he would still have the car in his possession and he could get a new Title from the Department of Motor Vehicles. His mother understood what I was suggesting and she thought it was a reasonable way to proceed. After she explained to her son how we both were protected in this deal, he agreed to sign the Sales Contract and take my check.

This would work out nicely as I was planning to see Jayne and attend the Skirmish at Greenfield Village that weekend and I would not be able to pick the car up until the following Tuesday. This should be more than enough time for my check to clear his bank.

When I picked up the Corvette, the young man almost cried, as he had a list of people who wanted to buy his car for more money than I had paid him.

Pat started to fish around about what I planned to do with the Alfa Romeo and he offered to buy it for what I paid for it. I had no reason to keep it and I agreed to sell it to him. He then suggested we drive the Alfa Romeo to Wisconsin over the long 4th of July weekend, as he wanted to bring his wife back to Texas.

I thought it was a good idea, as we would be spending almost 24 hours on the road together as we drove back to Wisconsin. This would give me the opportunity to discuss what my brother thought about being in the Army and establish what his opinions really were on our Country's involvement in the War in Vietnam.

What he told me was he really like the Army and he would like the opportunity to stay in the Army beyond his current 89 days of active duty. Pinning him down on his opinions of the United States involvement in the War in Vietnam was not as easy.

He danced around the issues of the Anti-Vietnam War Student Protests and the Ohio National Guard shooting of the four Student Protesters at Kent State. I found he was very naive about the influence the National News Media had on the public's opinion of the War and how the North Vietnamese were using that created opinion to further their ends during the Paris Peace Talks.

When I discussed the effect the Kent State's shooting had on forcing President Nixon to order the withdraw from Cambodia after the United States had destroyed the North Vietnamese Army's ability to support the Vietcong in South Vietnam, Patrick seemed surprised. He was even more surprised after I told him about North Vietnam supporting the Heroin addiction of our soldiers in Vietnam.

The more I told my brother about the history of the United States involvement in South Vietnam since President Eisenhower's commitment to stopping the expansion of Communism based on the Domino Theory, the more questions Pat asked. By the time, we reached Milwaukee I believe Pat would not have become involved with the Anti-Vietnam War Student Protests if he had just studied the facts and the real history why the United States had made the commitments it did to protect South Vietnam from a Communist takeover. I concluded he had just been a foolish young man taken in by the News Media.

This was the first time I met Pat's wife, Andy. That was her nickname for Alexandria. She was a longhaired blond doll baby who could have been the Playmate of the month in Playboy Magazine and a major contender for the Playmate of the Year.

What came as a surprise to me, was Andy had advertized the Alfa Romeo and she already had a buyer willing to pay considerably more for the car I had sold to Pat. Pat made nothing of the fact he had done this as in his mind he was just a clever business even if it were at my expense.

The next day the three of us drove 24 hours back to Fort Bliss in her Mustang. Pat planned to sell her Mustang in El Paso, as it would bring a better price than he could get if they sold it in Milwaukee. I now knew what a really slick operator Pat was and he had taken advantage of me.

Pat's 89 days of Active Military Duty would end about the same time as my Advance Course. By this time, Pat had bought so much stuff in Juarez that he would need a U-Haul Trailer to take it back to Milwaukee. He had it figured I would need to move both my Airplane and my car from Fort Bliss to my next assignment in Washington DC. He offered to do me a favor by driving my Corvette to Milwaukee for a hundred dollars plus the cost of the gas.

He may have tricked me once but I was not going to be tricked twice. When I delayed giving him an answer, he said he would drive my Corvette back to Milwaukee and I did not have to pay for the gas. A week before the end of our Assignments at Fort Bliss, he offered to drive my Corvette back to Milwaukee at no charge.

I thanked him for his kind offer and I simply told him driving my car to Milwaukee would not help me, as I would need to fly back from Washington to get it. If I needed to fly somewhere anyway, I might as well fly back to El Paso to get my Airplane, as I would need my car to settle into my new assignment. I did not mention I did not want my Corvette pulling a trailer loaded down with who knows what it weighed. I never asked Pat how he got his stuff to Milwaukee.

# 17. WHEN TO CUT AND RUN

I went on to my Assignment to the Pentagon and I quickly found out being a Captain in the Great Puzzle Palace on the Potomac was like being in charge of the coffee pot without the authority to plug it in. A full Colonel would normally be assigned to the position I was given but even full Colonels in the Pentagon were a dime a dozen and their real authority to do anything was questionable.

The first week I attempted to read the Regulations and the Office files just as I always did when I assumed a new position in the Army. However, I found I had little time at work to read anything as all I did was shuffle paper work someone had rejected based on the word choice rather than content of the document. I had to rewrite it based on the guidance suggested by someone I never met in another Department who had reviewed a curtsey copy of the document. When I did resubmit the document through the required distribution channels, it came back with someone else's suggested guidance on the language used in the document.

I have never been one who wanted to handle something more than once and when I talked with my Secretary about holding a meeting with all these parties on the required distribution she laughed and claimed it was never done.

"Captain you have a lot to learn. This is the Pentagon and it thrives on creating paper work on things no one wants to be on record of favoring or opposing until someone of higher authority makes a decision. This document, you are working on has been passed around for months and I must have retyped it a dozen times." She told me. "I would suggest you leave it on your desk for at least a week or until someone asks for it."

Having gone through the Office files, I could not find any files dealing with the current activities this Section was supposed to be working on. My Secretary told me those files were kept by the Civilian Director and her Secretary handled them. I was surprised to learn when I asked to have those files sent to my office I could not have them without the Civilian Director's permission.

This would become my first lesson in the Puzzle Palace's power politics, as I was the appointed Director of this Section. It did not matter what rank I had in the Army I still had the power of the Position and that G-15 who out ranked me still worked for me.

I had my Secretary pull her Civilian Personnel Record before I would attempt to deal with her. She was a Career Civil Servant Employee who did not have a single Performance Award in 27 years of Service and she had gained her promotions by time in grade. She had homesteaded in the various departments in the Pentagon and built her fiefdom in her current position since this Section was established.

It was actually easy for her to do as the Military Directors came and went out of the Section as if they were playing musical chairs. Maybe those past Military Directors had abdicated their duties to her but until I knew what she had accomplished in her position, I was not going allow her to control my efforts to help the Army become an All Voluntary Force.

I had my Secretary confirm when this GS-15's schedule was open and I called her to make an appointment to meet in my Office. When I was told she was not in, I left the message with her Secretary that I wanted the GS-15 to bring the Section's current activities and project files for a meeting in my Office knowing the Civilian Director did not have anything scheduled at that time.

Our appointment time came and went and the GS-15 never bothered to inform me why she had not attended our scheduled meeting or suggest another time. Having confirmed the Civilian Director was in her office and she was not involved in any other meeting, it was time for a shot into her powder-magazine as the shot across her bow had no effect. I had my Secretary type up a Formal Letter of Reprimand and it was sent with the request the Civilian Director reply by endorsement as to why it should not be placed in her permanent Personnel Records.

She made the mistake of barging into my Office with my Secretary coming in right behind her. I asked my Secretary to remain while I proceeded to read the Civilian Director her rights to remain silent. She never stop to listen and proceeded to tell me I had no authority as an Army Captain to require her to do anything as she out ranked me.

I politely listened as she dug a deeper hole for herself and threatened to take this matter to my boss. I already had heard the rumor she was shacked-up with him and I was surprised she had not gone to him first.

To establish the fact she was not involved in another matter at the time of the schedule appointment I asked if she simply forgot about the meeting. I took her lack of response to mean she had not forgotten about the scheduled meeting. The fact she had not even send a memo suggesting another time would be more convenient was a major error to cover her ass.

"Is there anything else you would like to say for the record?" I asked and when she did not respond I pulled out a copy of the Section's Position and Manning Chart and handed it to her. "If you will notice my position as the Director of this Section is above yours which means you report and work for me. If I am wrong in this understanding please correct me." I stated and I waited for her response, which did not come.

"It has come to my attention that the office you are currently occupying belongs to the Military Director of this Section. By 0900 hours tomorrow morning you will have cleared out all of your personal belongings from my office and the only two things remaining on the center of the desk will be the files that show what this Section has done as of this week and a copy of any proposals and issues under consideration. All the Section's files will remain in my office where they belong. You and your Secretary will occupy this office as the correct office for your position as the Civilian Director. If this is not done you might as well take your personal belongings home, as you will not be working here."

"You cannot fire me." She blurted out.

"I am not firing you. I have just given you a direct order I expect you to obey. Any disciplinary action resulting from your failure to comply with a direct order will be someone else's responsibility. Do you have any questions? If not you are dismissed." I told her and my Secretary stood there with her mouth open.

I expected her to run to my Boss and cry on his shoulder to reverse what I had done. When that did not happen, I was surprised until I was told my Boss was out of town with his family and he would not be back until next week. This would give me time to establish I knew what I was doing and I deserved his support.

Now that I had established myself as the Director of this Section, I needed to find out who each of my Staff Section leaders were and what they were working on. There were 17 people in my Section and I could not identify those who were in the Army from those who were civilian employees by looking at them. None of the members in the Army wore their uniforms to work and everyone had longer hair than the Military Regulations would allow.

I had my Secretary schedule a meeting of the Section's Staff in the conference room at 0800 hours the next day. They were asked to bring any project files they were working on and to come in their uniforms if they were in the Army.

The word of what happened to the Civilian Director had the desired effect, as those in the Army had gotten a GI haircut, their uniforms were pressed and their shoes were spit-shined. Having used the "stick" to get their attention I now had to offer the "carrot" to show them I was not a power hungry ass-hole on an ego trip.

After introducing myself, I told them why several Generals thought I should be sent here to help the Army become an all Volunteer Force. This gave me the opportunity to discuss some of the things I had done as a Company and Battery Commander. I asked them to consider these ideas and come up with their recommendation on the feasibility of using any of these ideas as an Army wide suggestion or if these ideas had only worked in my particular situation.

I had the feeling this was the first time someone ask them for their opinions and wanted to use their years of experience in the Army to make things work better and a more attractive career for Volunteers. My Secretary took notes during the meeting as I had each Section Chief report on what they were working on and what recommendations were under consideration to make the United States Army an attractive opportunity for Volunteers. The discussions went so well we returned after lunch to focus on specific obstacles to making the Army an all Voluntary Force. The primary obstacle we all agreed on was the amount of money soldiers received.

The next day when I walked into the Section, I could not help but notice a number of the people who were busy working at their desks. The conference room was busy holding meetings all day. The next day the Section was almost empty and I was told the men were involved in conducting research on the suggestions we had discussed.

The next week I was in a meeting with one of the Section's Staff leaders when I receive a call from my Boss who wanted to see me immediately in his Office. When I reported to his office, the General had me standing in front of his desk and he was telling me he did not think I fit into his Department as I lack the experience he was looking for.

I was tempted to ask him to clarify what experience I was lacking since I Commanded seven Units in the Army and each Unit had performed in an outstanding manor and two of them had received Presidential Citations but some battles even if you won you would lose the war. My only regret was I had not been able to meet the expectations of those Generals who had recommended me for this position.

"I understand Sir. I will request another assignment from my Air Defense Branch. I have only one request Sir. Since I have not been assigned here for 60 days and you are not pleased by my performance, I would ask that you not submit an Efficiency Report on me." I stated and I hoped he realized I knew why I was being relieved and I would challenge an unfavorable Efficiency Report in a way he might not like to become public knowledge.

"Take all the time you need to find a new assignment Captain Corrigan and I will not submit an Efficiency Report. Good luck Captain." He stated before he dismissed me.

My Air Defense Branch Personnel Office had two positions available. One was in Fort Eustis as part of their Cadre who would teach Air Defense Tactics to the Advanced Officers Transportation Course and the other assignment would be as the Director of Public Relations for the 20th NORAD Region located at Fort Lee Virginia.

I took the NORAD assignment as I could use my experience as a Battery Commander of a Hawk and Hercules Missile Units to further my Career. The only problem was the Army would not pay the relocation costs for my move to either assignment. This personal cost was insignificant as my Household Goods were still in transit and with my new duty assignment, they could be redirected to my permanent residence in the Fort Lee Virginia area.

When I came back to sign out of the Pentagon there was a message from the General who had dismissed me as the Director of that Section in the Pentagon. I did not have the foggiest idea why he wanted to see me and I was afraid that GS-15 had somehow retaliated against me with some bullshit.

What I did not know was all the reports and recommendations on making an All Volunteer Army from my Section's Leaders had come across the General's desk, and he could not believe all the good work they had done.

This time when I reported to the General, he asked me to have a seat and had coffee brought in."Corrigan I must admit I made a mistake by dismissing you and I have written a special Efficiency Report which I hope you will approve of. I have also made a recommendation for you to receive the Army's Commendation Medal for your Meritorious Service to the Army. It is already approved for presentation when you report to the 20th NORAD Region at Fort Lee." He told me and the only thing I could say was "Thank you" as anything else would have spoiled the moment.

Coming into the 20th NORAD with such an Award set the tone for my new Assignment. I had a great time setting up Quarterly Civilian VIP tours of SAC Headquarters in Oklahoma, NORAD Headquarters in Cheyenne Mountain Colorado and taking them to see a missile firing at White Sands New Mexico. This was all done to remind the Country's leaders we were still in the Cold War with Russia and all the Units in the North American Air Defense Command were standing guard to protect Canada and our country from the continuing Russian threat of a Nuclear War.

The 20th NORAD covered a thirteen State area from New Jersey down the Atlantic coast to Key West Florida and around the Gulf of Mexico to Charles City Texas. Throughout this area of my Public Relations responsibility, there were Early Warning Radar Sites, the Air Force's Interceptor Aircraft Squadrons and the Army's Air Defense Missile Batteries that gave the 20th NORAD Region the capability of providing the in-depth Air Defense against the Nuclear Threat of the Soviet Union's bombers.

Once I understood my duties and responsibilities as the Director of Public Affairs for the 20th NORAD Region, I decided to use these Units as my Public Relations assets into the local communities. One of the reasons Charley Battery had been so successful came as the result of my efforts to include the local community in the activities of the Battery. I also encouraged the men of Charley Battery to become involved in social, civic and church groups so they would not be strangers in the area.

I had an Italian Missile Section Sergeant who would literally invade someone's home and cook rigatoni for the community. Once the word was out Sergeant Brigatty was cooking "Regies" people would show up hungry. So many people would show up that they had to eat in shifts. As soon as someone was finished, their plate was washed and someone else sat down to eat.

I remember the first time I ate "Regies" I ate so much I could not roll over on my side to go to sleep that night. His sauce was so good it made the noodles leap into it. It was an honor to have Sergeant Brigatty use your home for one of his "Regies Parties" and that give the host bragging rights until the next Regies party.

If I could achieve 10% of that success in the Units of the 20th NORAD, I would feel I was doing my job. General James the Commander of the 20th NORAD liked my plan to get these Units more involved in their communities and help me generate the grass roots support for not only the 20th NORAD Region but also for the combined forces of the Military as every Branch of Service was part of NORAD.

General James issued a Command Directive requiring each Unit to appoint a Public Affairs Officer and I conducted classes to instruct them how to become more involved in their local communities, issue News Releases about the activities in their units and hold open houses to bring in the public to see what they did to help protect the Nation.

I set up Public Speaking engagements through the Unit Public Affairs Officers for General James and other Officers in the Command. Having a real Jet Pilot in his flight suit that had flown intercept missions against the Russian Bear Bombers, when they came too close to our coastline added realism to the importance of NORAD's Air Defense Mission.

As a Pilot with my own airplane, I had the flexibility to fly directly to meet with leaders in the Unit's local community and invite them to attend a 20th NORAD sponsored VIP Tour in half the time someone else could do it. Since I understood the flying times it would take to bring all these VIPs together, I could have as many as seven different military aircraft carrying VIPs and arrive at Richmond's Airport at the same time.

These VIPs would be given a tour of the 20th NORAD's Block House Command Center at Fort Lee and they could see just how General James Commanded the Air Defense for the entire 13 States which also contained the Nation's Capital in Washington DC. General James would host a cocktail party and a banquet at the Fort Lee's Officers Club. The VIPs would be introduced to the NORAD General who was their host for the rest of the 5-day tour of the major Military Commands that were defending the Country.

My job was to coordinate everything and make sure things ran smoothly from the time the VIP accepted the invitation to join the 20th NORAD tour until each of the VIP's were safely back home. Once all the VIPs arrived at 20th NORAD the actual Tour Schedule was establish by NORAD Headquarters and I worked with each of the Major Commands to set up all the cocktail parties, select the hors-d'oeuvres, hired the bar tenders and planned the banquets with a wide selection of main entrées to include any special meal requirements of any VIP.

As a former Commander, I had learned the importance of delegating responsibility and relying on good people to do their jobs as they made my job look easy. I could gage how successful the tour was going, by the number of drinks the VIPs offered to buy the Host General and me. There was no way we could refuse their token of appreciation and remain sober. Since I set up the cocktail parties and hired the Bartenders, I could control the amount of alcohol I would consume. When I ordered a drink with my left hand, it contained no alcohol yet the bartender would charge for the drink as if it were a real drink.

"Dam it Corrigan, how can you be so chipper every morning?" The new Host General asked me at breakfast as he was suffering from a major hangover. "I know you are Irish and the Irish are known to be able to hold their liquor but you drank as many drinks as I did, how can you remain sober?"

"General the only way I can do my job is to remain stoned cold sober. Like you, I am not in the position to refuse a drink offered by one of our guests. It is not how many drinks, I drink but what is in them that counts. I am sorry General. I forgot to tell you about the system I have set up with the bartenders." I told him and I explained how it worked. From then on, anyone who was counting the drinks we had could only believe we were both Irishmen with two hollow legs.

The success of each VIP tour strengthened the relationships of the Units in the local communities and more people wanted to become part of the next tour.

The only thing that was not going well was my relationship with Jayne. I wanted to marry her and have her come to live with me in Virginia. However, something had changed since I came back from Vietnam and the magic we once had, finally faded away after my last visit to Michigan. For the life of me, I could not figure out what had changed or what I had done, as I still believed I loved her.

I can only say looking back on it now I was not the only one who came back from Vietnam to find himself out of step with his loved ones. We now realize that many casualties of the Vietnam War have left scars that are not visible wounds. However when this relationship ended, I was convinced I was not the type of man who would ever get married.

# 18. FIXING AN NSSA PROBLEM

Living in Virginia and having an airplane allowed me to become more active on the 5th Virginia Cavalry Rifle Team. With my brother Dick still on active duty at Fort Knox and as the current NSSA National Commander, I found myself on a number of his special committees to help improve the NSSA. Under Dick's leadership the NSSA had had built the Home Range in Winchester Virginia and constructed all the Range and Camp Ground facilities As a direct result the NSSA had experience a huge growth in the number of new membership teams in the organization.

This NSSA Team growth however had created a problem running the National Skirmishes. The NSSA's Home Range in Winchester Virginia could only accommodate so many Musket Teams on a shooting relay and adding more relay's had reached the point there was not enough time to hold the Musket Team Matches on one day. There were proposals to shoot the Musket Team Matches on both Saturday and Sunday.

However, the weather in Winchester could be significantly different from one day to the next. Since this difference in the weather conditions could affect the fairness and the outcome of the competition, the NSSA Team Commanders were fighting the proposal to hold the Musket Team competition on two different days.

However, the NSSA Board of Directors felt they did not have a choice unless they limited the number of Musket Teams an NSSA Unit could enter at the NSSA Nationals. This possible alterative had the individual members in each NSSA Unit Team protesting that they were being denied the right to shoot in the NSSA's National Musket Team Matches.

Once I understood the problem and the issues involved, I asked Dick if I could come up with an alternative solution, would he present it to the NSSA Board of Directors before they voted on the two-day Musket Team shooting proposal.

While I flew out on a 20th NORAD VIP Tour I wrote what would become the NSSA's Two Phase Musket Team plan that would allow all the Musket Teams to shoot on the same day. To me it was a scheduling and efficiency problem created by the number of shooting relays in between each of the five Musket Team events. Shooting two phases of a two-relay Musket Team Skirmish on the same day was three times faster than shooting a four relay Musket Team Skirmish.

The only thing I could not control was the unpredictable weather that might exist during each of the two phases of the Musket Team competition. To make the competition fair, all of the top fifty NSSA Musket Teams and their B and C Teams from the last Nationals would be on the First Phase. Having gained time during the First Phase would allow the Second Phase of the National Skirmish to shoot a third relay and still complete the National Musket Team Skirmish in less time.

I also realized when the other shooting activities, such as the Individual matches, the Cannon and the Carbine Team Matches were scheduled during the Nationals could be changed to gain Team shooting time. The NSSA Board of Directors approved the two-phase Musket Team plan and it has worked well ever since.

# 19. UP POPS THE DEVIL FOR ME AND THE COUNTRY

Things in my military life were going too well and without saying that changed when Colonel Rodmann showed up again. This time he wanted me to take out a major Drug Lord located in a fortress high up in the Golden Triangle.

This Golden Triangle was located along the Red Chinese, Burma and Laotian borders and this fortress was in the north east corner less than 5 kilometers from China. This man was responsible for supplying the North Vietnamese with all of the 98% pure Heroin that was being sold to the GIs in South Vietnam.

If the Heroin addiction had been a problem with the GIs when I was in Vietnam, it had reached epidemic proportions now. I wrote about this mission and the shooting of this Drug Lord at 1,487 yards with a custom built single shot bolt-action rifle made from a 50 Caliber machinegun barrel in my Historical Fiction Book, _Soft Touch_.

After the US Military pulled out of Vietnam things were not going very well for President Nixon as the Watergate was over shadowing President Nixon's accomplishment to end the War in Vietnam. Nixon had opened the door to trade with Red China and neutralized the Soviet Union's support for the North Vietnamese with the first SALT Agreements to limit the number of Nuclear Warheads each country had.

The Mission of the North American Air Defense Command was changing to deal with the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that had become the primary threat replacing the Manned Bombers carrying Nuclear Bombs. The United States had built the Sprint and Spartan Missiles system as part of the planned Safe Guard Missile Defense System to protect the United States from these ICBMS. Several of my Classmates from the Advance Air Defense Course at Fort Bliss, were involved in the training to Command these Missile Units, until President Nixon had scrapped the Safe Guard Missile Defense System as part of the Salt Treaty with the Russians.

In spite of my efforts to promote the Military and NORAD's defense of the Country, the Anti-Vietnam War movement fueled by the Anti-Government News Media continued to crystallize public sediment into two hostel camps. The "unwashed set" was pitted against the "silent majority" President Nixon claimed existed throughout the country. Yet the average citizen in the United States was caught in the middle not sure what or who to believe.

President Nixon's, growing Watergate problems were over shadowed by the events in the massacre at My Lai South Vietnam and the March 29, 1971 conviction of Lieutenant William Laws Calley of premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians. Many in America were outraged by Lieutenant Calley's sentence to life in prison.

Jimmy Carter the Governor of Georgia instituted an "American Fighting Man's Day" and asked Georgians to drive a week with their lights on. Indiana's Governor asked that all state flags to be flown at half-staff and the Governors of Utah and Mississippi publically disagreed with the verdict. George Wallace the Governor of Alabama publically requested President Nixon to pardon Calley.

The legislatures of Arkansas, Kansas, New Jersey and South Carolina requested clemency for Lieutenant Calley. The White House received over 5,000 telegrams in favor of leniency in the ratio of 100 to 1. A Survey of the American people revealed 79% disagreed with the verdict, 81% believed the life sentence was too harsh and 69% believed Lieutenant Calley had been made a scapegoat for the entire war.

The members of the Anti-Vietnam War groups jumped on the conviction not because Calley was found guilty but because he was the only one in the Chain of Command who was convicted. The News Media carried stories about other "war crimes" that did not start with My Lai. The stories claimed the incident at My Lai it was not an isolated occurrence but it was part of the continued policy of the Marines and the entire Army to produce "body counts" which became the National Television's "kill ratios" as if the War in Vietnam were a national sports event.

I was surprised to learn Lieutenant Calley was my age and only twenty days older than I was. After reading everything I could find on My Lai I started to have my own doubts about Calley's Conviction when I learned about the United States House of Representatives holding their investigation of the My Lai incident in executive session and the results of these hearings were denied to Lieutenant Calley, during his trial.

If there was one idea that crystallized the Anti-Vietnam War feelings in America it was the belief South Vietnam was not worth one GI's life and Congress reflected that sentiment when it refused to even consider sending any more military aide to South Vietnam. I was caught in the feeling, that I could be in some god-forsaken corner of the world fighting for my country and Congress would decide not to send me any more bullets.

As the News Media continued to hammer President Nixon on the Watergate more and more information was coming out it was something bigger than I first believed. The My Lai massacre and the apparent cover up by the Army continued to fester in my mind as I could not resolved the inconsistencies between the statements made by senior military officials and what I thought I knew about the War in Vietnam.

When President Nixon ordered Lieutenant Calley transferred from the Fort Leavenworth prison to house arrest I had the feeling this was a political move to defend the United States involvement in Vietnam and it challenge the integrity of the Army's Court Martial system to conduct a fair trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

There were 26 Officers and men initially charged in the My Lai incident and Calley may not have been the only one in his Chain of Command who should have faced a Court Martial. However, President Nixon's action was sending a message to the Army not to proceed with any more military trials. If I had been one of these 26 men, I would have wanted my name cleared of the charges rather than having any doubts hanging over my head.

All my doubts came to a head when South Vietnam fell on April 29, 1975. I knew I would have a problem following orders of my superiors as I was questioning the elected officials in the Government I had given my oath to defend. With such doubts about my risking my neck for a government, which did not reflect or share my beliefs, I chose to resign my Commission and leave the Army. Colonel Rodmann could not talk me out of leaving the Army this time as he was also having mixed feelings about the future of the Army.

# 20. CHANGING CAREERS

My long love of shooting and being involved with the study of the American Civil War open the door to the creation of Harpers Ferry Arms Company. I used part of my discharge money to buy a store in Hopewell Virginia with three apartments above it. I rented out the other two apartments for enough money to pay the Mortgage and cover all the utilities on the store and my own apartment.

I had served on the NSSA's Small Arms Committee that approved the reproduction fire arms used in its competitions. I knew from my own experience with the 8th Army's Marksmanship Training Unit I could build a better reproduction Civil War Musket and offer it at a better price. Most of the Civil War reproductions were coming from Italy and Navy Arms Company had that production market sewed up. I wrote to my friend Mr Song in the South Korean President's Security Section and asked him if he could find a South Korean Company that might be interested in manufacturing and exporting American Civil War reproduction firearms. It did not take long before I was involved with a potential South Korean manufacturer.

Arrangements were made to send a mint conditioned three band original 1861 Springfield Rifled Musket to him and the South Korean manufacture would use it as the pilot model to conduct their reverse engineering to make an exact duplicate of their reproduction of this 1861 Springfield. I also sent a copy of the original parts manual for the 1861 Springfield and the Engineering specifications I wanted for each part.

I made one change in the type of metal used in the 40-inch barrel, as I wanted to make it with 4130 Nickel Chromium steel rather than the soft iron originally used to manufacture this Rifled Musket during the Civil War. I knew from my shooting experience that the harder the metal was in the barrel the better the rifle would shoot and the National Match grade barrels of the M-14 Rifles had the inside of their barrels chrome plated. If chrome plating made such a difference in the M-14's performance than a barrel made of hard steel would shoot even better and I could eliminate the chrome plating process.

It took over 3 months for Mr Pock the South Korean manufacturer to make the pilot model and when I test fired it, it shot better than any Rifled Musket I ever shot. I flew to South Korea to negotiate the production contract price of 75 US Dollars for each of the 200 reproduction 1861 Springfields. I used my building in Hopewell as collateral to issue the 15,000- dollar International Letter of Credit.

I resigned from the NSSA's Small Arms Committee before I presented my reproduction 1861 Springfield for approval. Once my reproduction Springfield was approved for NSSA Competition, I took orders for my 1861 Springfield with only $50 dollars down to preserve the special introductory price of $150.00. This price was $50 dollars less than the competition's guns and the response was unbelievable as I had over 1,000 advanced orders.

I had not expected this response. With over 50,000 dollars in the Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Trust Account and the original 15,000 Dollar Letter Credit, I still needed 10,000 dollars to open another Letter of Credit to fill these orders. The Banks were reluctant to loan any money on Civil War reproductions, as they had no idea how they could protect their depositor's money if I defaulted on the loan. I was able to get a 10,000- dollar bank loan on my Airplane but that would not be enough to cover any new orders. My only alternative was to find a private investor.

My advertisements for a Harpers Ferry Arms Company reproduction Springfield after the special introductory offer, was 200 dollars. This new retail price created an attractive 30% profit margin for the Gun Dealers who bought my Springfields at the wholesale price of 150 dollars. The success of my company's National Marketing Plan was base on protecting the profit margin to my dealers and giving them an incentive to sell my reproductions.

My competition Navy Arms Company owned by Val Forgett would give anyone the dealer's price if they ordered more than three reproductions directly from him. This practice may have sold more guns direct by him but it undermined the inducement and the profit motive to become a Navy Arms Company Dealer. However until there was another Gun Company the Dealers who wanted to sell Civil War Muskets had no choice but live with Val Forgett's business practices.

A Federal Firearms License is not required to deal in Black Powder guns and with all the advanced orders on my Springfields I could be selective in who I allowed to become a Harpers Ferry Arms Company dealer. At a minimum, my Dealers had to have a local and state Business License and a Federal Tax Identification Number to get the 150 dollar, Dealer's price on my company's Civil War Muskets. Once these Dealers understood I would not sell my reproductions less than the advertized price of 200 dollars their orders came rolling in with 50-dollar deposit on each Springfield they ordered.

With the number of orders coming in I need even more money to increase the South Korean manufacturer's production levels to meet the demands. I never realized how difficult it was to attract an investor and I learned a hard lesson that those with the Gold made the Rules. Most Investors wanted to take 80% of my Company even with all the confirmed orders I already had.

George Carpinski an investment broker introduced me to A R Dixon who had investment money out of Germany. A R Dixon's main interest in investing in Harpers Ferry Arms Company had to do with the International Connections that required the use of Bank Letters of Credit. However how he proposed his investment would not work in South Korea, as I had no way to change the South Korean Trading Company's financial arrangements with the manufacturer to meet his investment requirements. All of South Korea's export trade had to go through one of their government licensed Trading Companies.

While I continued to search for an Investor, I had expanded the base of Harpers Ferry Arms Company into making authentic reproductions of Civil War Uniforms and equipment. Harpers Ferry Arms Company also became involved in the United States manufacturing of a Maynard Civil War reproduction Carbine.

I found an investment casting company in Waterville Ohio who made the receivers and all the parts. I would have the castings machined in Yorktown, Virginia. I made a contract with Numrich Arms in West Hurly New York to make the complete finished barrels and Guy Owns who was a friend in Winchester Virginia agreed to make the gunstocks.

I had put this Maynard Carbine Project together in less than a month using my airplane to fly to each location to finalize the specifications of the production contracts with each of my suppliers. The NSSA Board of Directors approved the production model of my Maynard Carbine for competition so quickly that few people knew I was making it.

With my finances already stretched to produce the 1861 Springfields, I could only rely on the income from Civil War Uniforms and equipment sales to support a limited production run of 100 Maynard Carbines at a production cost estimate of less than 90 dollars a copy. To insure I would have at least 100 complete Maynard Carbines I had ordered 110 sets of parts knowing that some of these parts would be lost in the machining and during the production process.

The response to Harpers Ferry Arms Company's _Skirmish Line_ Magazine advertisement of the Onetime Special Offer to NSSA Members of $150 Dollars on the Maynard Carbine brought in 69 orders. This meant I had already covered my estimated costs for the first production run and turned a gross profit of over 1,500 dollars. If I could sell the remaining 31 Maynard Carbines at 200 dollars, I would have enough money to finance the next production run of 100 Maynards.

The first sign of trouble came when Numrich Arms backed out of the contract to produce the Maynard Carbine's finished barrels. They shipped 110 rifled barrel blanks without machining the barrel to the proper outside dimensions or attaching the barrel's lugs yet they were billing me the full amount for completing the contract

When my efforts to resolve this contract dispute failed and when I refused to pay for these barrels Numrich Arms hired a local attorney who sued me personally rather than the Virginia Corporation, Harpers Ferry Arms Company. Although I was confident that I would prevail in this lawsuit, without a barrel my Maynard Carbine production was dead in the water and I stood to lose my investment.

I found a local machine shop who agreed to machine the barrels to the correct dimensions and attach the barrels lugs. He produced 15 barrels and then quit without any warning and he refused to talk to me. I would find out from the man's wife that Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company had promised her husband a larger contract on machining gun parts that would require the immediate use of all his metal turning Lathes and Milling machines.

My efforts to convince the man's wife that her husband was being played for a sucker as he did not even have a contract and would never get one, would not be believed until months later.

It now made sense why Numrich Arms failed to make the finished Maynard barrels as specified in the contract. Val Forgett who was a friend of the manager of Numrich Arms had sabotage my company's ability to produce the Maynard Carbine. When I filed a counter lawsuit against Numrich Arms for breach of contract their attorney agreed to settle the matter out of court.

I found another Maynard Carbine barrel maker in Eastport Idaho who was a direct descendent of John H Hall who made the Hall-North Breech loading Carbine in 1833 at the original Harpers Ferry Arsenal locate at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers . His finished barrels were outstanding. They shot as good as the original Maynard Carbine and his price was lower than Numrich Arms. I set up my factory in the back of my store in Hopewell and my first employees were willing to work to polish the parts and assemble the reproduction Civil War Maynards to buy one of the first 100 Carbines.

Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company had also tried to put me out of Business by flying to South Korea and offering them a major contract if they would not make my 1861 reproduction Springfields. Val Forgett had no way of knowing I had the only license to make any reproduction of firearms made before 1898 in South Korea.

I earned this license when I gave the South Korean Government a way to train their soldiers and their reserve forces without having to shoot live ammunition. South Korea still did not have the money to buy training ammunition and they could only afford 5-shots for each soldier to shoot his annual qualifications. On one of my trips to South Korea, I was asked by the International Shooting Federation to inspect the South Korean shooting ranges for their bid to hold the 1979 World Shooting Matches in their Country.

After I had inspected their individual ranges and I had actually shot some of the shooting events, I attended a formal luncheon with the members of the South Korean Shooting Federation. My friend Mr Song who was the Secretary of the South Korean Shooting Federation and part of the Blue House Security Force wanted to know what my recommendations would be.

I had shot on this range when I was training the men on the 8th Army's Marksmanship Unit. The South Koreans had vastly improved it since then to include all the shooting events offered in the World Shooting Matches. I told Mr Song and the members of the South Korean Shooting Federation that I was impressed with their ranges and I would highly recommend and indorse their bid to hold the 1979 World Shooting Matches.

It was then I learned of the South Koreans still had financial problems in buying training ammunition not only to practice for the World Competition but also to train the men in their Army. The primary weapon issued to their Army and their Reserve forces was the US Army's M-1 Carbine used during World War II and the Korean War. Once I understood the problem, I suggested they consider using Air Rifles made by the company who was making my Springfields.

I went on to explain how the recoil could be enhanced by turning the recoil suppressor around in the gunstock to increase the recoil and the Air Rifle could be made to resemble the recoil of the M-1 Carbine. By the time I was finished, I had designed a popup shooting range and its backstop on the backs of several napkins. It would have targets set up proportionally scaled from 25 yards to the 300-yard range the South Koreans would shoot in their annual qualifications.

To save on the cost of producing the Air Rifle pellets a small plate the depth of a pellet could be heated up with the lead recovered from the backstop. I then designed a cookie cutter press to remake the pellets from the cooled plate of lead. When I was done designing all the parts to make this training alternative, I explained that shooting was shooting and it was the experience in shooting was what they needed and not the ammunition they could not afford.

I was immediately taken to meet with South Korea's President Park Chung Hee and I was asked to explain my idea to him. Once he understood what I was proposing, he asked how long it would take to make this Air Rifle and this popup shooting range.

I told him I believed the Air Gun Company had several Air Rifles it could use to make this air gun into the M-1 Carbine and if I had a few men who worked in sheet metal it would not take a week to make the popup shooting range. I was taken back to the company that was making my Springfield's and with the help of Mr Pock's Engineers, I built the Air Rifle copy of the M-1 Carbine with the recoil suppressor turned around in its gunstock.

The hardest part was designing the popup target's range to reflect the effective range of the real M-1 Carbine. We had to experiment with the locations of the popup targets to reflect the correct proportional distances of shooting the popup targets to reflect the range of 25 to 300 yards using the trajectory of the pellets fired from the M-1 Carbine Air Rifle.

Once those distances had been established we built the size of the popup targets to look as they look to the shooter if he was shooting at them at 25 to 300 yards. To make it easy to reset the popup target range, a lever was added to the popup target range and with a single pull of the lever, all of the popup targets were back into position to be shot again.

I finished the project ahead of schedule and Friday evening in the Blue House Ballroom, I put on a shooting demonstration for the South Korean President, the distinguished members of the South Korean Shooting Federation and the South Korean Generals. After dinner, many of the guests wanted to try this M-1 Carbine Air Rifle shooting at the popup targets. The competition among the South Korean Military became fierce and it proved the worth of my suggestion.

When I was asked what I wanted for this idea, I told the President of South Korea I was happy to do it to help his country. The next day I was given an exclusive license in South Korea for the production and the manufacturing rights for any reproduction of a firearm made before 1898.

Having failed to derail my Maynard Carbine Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company produced the Gallager Civil War Carbine to challenge my Maynard Carbine but he made the mistake of allowing the manufacturer to use modern fast twist rifling in its barrel. This type of rifling would tear up the soft lead bullets fired in his reproduction Gallager Carbine making them, shoot erratically in competition.

After failing to coop my South Korean manufacturer Val Forgett then produced the reproduction of the 1863 Model Springfield in Italy to compete with my South Korean 1961 Springfields. However, he had made the mistake of using a false breach rather than copying the original 1863 with a removable breach plug. The barrel inside the false breach left a gap where the rifling ended and where the chamber of the Black Powder charge filled the breach. When it was shot the base of the soft lead Minnie Ball expanded in this open space of the chamber and part of it ripped off when the Minnie Ball engaged the bottom edge of the rifling. No matter what anyone tried to do to make this 1863 Springfield shoot accurately did not work. This just made my 1861 Springfield more attractive and the shooters were willing to wait to receive one of my Springfields.

I was having my Springfield's made as fast as I could send the next Letter of Credit. With over 3,000-orders waiting for delivery this was a problem I could do little about until I could find an Investor. I was almost at the point where if I could increase the amount of my next Letters of Credit by 20% I could catch up with all my back orders by the end of the year and I would not need an outside investor.

Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company became desperate to find a way to stop me. He had five of his dealers on the Board of Directors of the NSSA and his nationally recognized Dealer Bucky Malson led those directors and my brother's political adversaries of Frank Schoch, John Roby and William Jordan to withdraw the Approval of my 1861 Springfield without giving a reason.

Within days of the NSSA's Board Meeting, I received hundreds of cancelations on my Springfield. Not knowing why the NSSA had withdrawn the Approval on my Springfield I was at a loss to defend my Musket. As my Harpers Ferry Arms Company's trust fund account started to drop the Bank informed me they were canceling my Letters of Credit.

Not only was my Bank cancelling my Letters of Credit they had informed the South Korean Bank that they would not honor any payment drawn against any of my Letters of Credit. This was an unreasonable decision as the Bank still held the 15,000-dollar note on my Hopewell building and the 10,000 dollars from the loan on my airplane I kept in the Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Trust Account at the Bank. If Val Forgett had a "Rat" in the Bank, I could not find him.

The South Korean manufacture had increased his production and he was ready to send them when he received the notification of my Bank's refusal to honor any part of my Letters of Credit. I had no choice but to sue the NSSA for damages when they refused to provide a reason for withdrawing their approval, of my Springfield. The NSSA Board of Directors tried to black ball me from shooting in their Skirmishes because I had sued them. When that did not work, Bucky Malson manufactured a cheating charge that he claimed took place at the NSSA's National Matches two years ago.

Frank Schoch as the NSSA Commander violated the NSSA's Corporate By-Laws by conducting an illegal mail ballot of the NSSA's Board of Directors to suspend me from shooting in the NSSA competition. Even when the mail ballot did not produce the result they wanted, Frank Schoch arbitrarily discounted two NSSA Directors votes to achieve a plurality of votes in favor of my suspension from the NSSA. This time Val Forgett and his Navy Arms Company's principal dealer Bucky Malson used the NSSA to damage me personally and I had no choice but to initiate another Lawsuit against the NSSA and those Directors who had voted to illegally suspend me in violation of the NSSA's By Laws.

My personal shooting performance was the most effective Marketing tool I had for selling the reproductions made by Harpers Ferry Arms Company. By this time, I had won over 5,000 shooting awards in NSSA Competition and my reputation while shooting Harpers Ferry Arms Company's reproductions had increased where I won over 260 metals last year. I was receiving free publicity as the results of my "wins" were published in the NSSA's _Skirmish Line_ Magazine for everyone to read every month.

I was using the underlying mistaken belief among shooters when someone beat them, it was not that shooter was better than they were it was he had a better shooting rifle that was superior to what they were shooting. What Bucky Malson and Val Forgett had done by these false charges was to give those shooters I had beaten a better reason why I had won. It was not the fact that Harpers Ferry Arms Company's reproductions were better it was that I had cheated.

Fortunately Harpers Ferry Arms Company's business had expanded to make authentic Revolutionary War Uniforms and Equipment for the growing interest in the Country's Bicentennial. I landed a contract with the Department of Defense to provide a representative Uniform complete with all the necessary equipment and the correct firearms for the soldiers who fought in the French and Indian wars to the First World War. I did not need to produce any uniforms, equipment or firearms after the First World War as the Department of Defense still had these in its warehouses. However Harpers Ferry Arms Company became the Official Supplier to Military Posts across the Country for anything they did not have.

I also was involved with the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company in St Louis, who wanted to have 5,000 American made Revolutionary War Flintlock Muskets produced for the Bicentennial. The only reproduction Revolutionary War Muskets currently on the market were the Brown Bess used by the British and a Charleville 1766 French Musket used by the Americans that were imported by Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company.

I was fortunate to find an original St Etienne French Flintlock carried by one of the 250 men of General Lafayette's Body Guard. The owner had all the documentation of its authenticity and the name of the French soldier who was her ancestor who had passed the St Etienne Musket down through his family. She agreed to let me used this historical musket as a pilot model for an exact reproduction of the only American made Revolutionary War Musket.

Anheuser-Busch was delighted with this Musket and the documented authenticity of the Flint Lock that was actually use by General Lafayette's men. My previous experience in manufacturing the American made Civil War Maynard Carbine made the project easy and the first reproduction model of the St Etienne was sent to Anheuser-Busch for approval of the production contract.

However, my problems with the NSSA and the withdrawal of its approval of my 1861 Springfield adversely affected Mr Pock my South Korean manufacturer. Based on South Korean law he could not keep any guns in his factory unless they were under a delivery contract supported by a current Letter of Credit. Without my Letter of Credit Mr Pock had to turn over all the Springfield's he had made, to the South Korean Government and they just disappeared.

The South Korean manufacturer was in financial trouble. Mr Pock had borrowed money against my company's Letters of Credit to produce the Springfields and now he did not have them to ship even if I could come up with another Letter of Credit

# 21. A POWERFUL ALLIANCE

My angel of mercy and the sword of vengeance came in the form of a South Korean International Businessman named Tungsten Park. He was a relative of the South Korean President Park Chung Hee and if Texans had the bragging rights on Texas, this man had the bragging rights on South Korea.

I need to point out the Koreans last or family name comes first and we in the United States and the rest of the western world put the family name last. This is why we mistakenly called the President of South Korea "Hee" when it should have been President Park.

In spite of my legal problems with the NSSA, I made a deal with Tungsten Park to sell 75% of Harpers Ferry Arms Company for 1.5 million dollars. Five Hundred Thousand Dollars was sent to Tungsten Park's South Korean Trading Company to open a Letter of Credit for over 6,500 Reproduction 1861 Springfields from Mr Pock's Company. I went to South Korea to help Mr Pock restart his 1861 Springfield production line and I brought a mint condition Sharps Carbine that would be used to make a reproduction of both the Civil War and Cartridge Models. I planned to offer the Cartridge Sharps in a wide verity of calibers and cartridges with a number of traditional of barrels.

Having resolved the most pressing problem of the South Korean Springfield manufacturer, Tungsten Park turned over the NSSA Law Suits to his legal department. They also investigated Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company's involvement in using the NSSA, as a vehicle to eliminate fair market competition. Tungsten's lawyers established there was enough evidence to make winning the case against the NSSA a sure thing and as the new owner of Harpers Ferry Arms Company Tungsten had the justification to bring Anti-trust Actions against Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company to put them out of business and make a sizable profit in the process.

Tungsten Park was so confident in the outcome of the lawsuit against the NSSA he had the property of their Home Range in Winchester Virginia surveyed for a golf course. The first time I saw the preliminary drawings of the Gulf Course it took a moment for me to recognize its location. I had served as the Co-Chairmen of the NSSA's Bivouac Committee that assigned permanent Unit Campsites and I knew the layout of the property well. It came as a shock to me when I saw the 9th Hole's location of the Gulf Course was the Camp Site of the 5th Virginia Cavalry.

Reality over came my shock as I realized by selling Harpers Ferry Arms Company to Tungsten Park I had lost control of the Company's lawsuit against the NSSA for withdrawing its approval of my Springfield. I never wanted to hurt the organization or the membership of the NSSA. My fight was with Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company who had used selective members of the NSSA's Board of Directors in the attempt to destroy Harpers Ferry Arms Company and me.

I made the biggest mistake in my life when I bargained with Tungsten Park to give me 30 days to resolve the problems with the NSSA. The hardest bargain to make is when you did not have anything to bargain with and you are letting your emotions override good judgment. Had I been more like Tungsten Park I would have went for all the marbles, won the Lawsuits and then decide what I would do with the marbles I had won. However, I no longer owned Harpers Ferry Arms Company and I had sold the right to decide what would be done with the spoils of this war with the NSSA.

All I could see was a shooting organization I loved and had been a member since 1957 was about to be sacrificed to protect a few members of the NSSA's Board of Directors who were using the NSSA as a shield to protect their wrongdoing and hide their real motives as stooges of Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company.

I had to decide if my reputation was more important than nailing those bastards and I decided it was. I met with my brother Dick and I told him what Tungsten Park was planning to do with the NSSA's home range. My brother already knew the NSSA was in trouble and when I told him Tungsten had some of the best legal minds that money could buy to win these lawsuits; Dick agreed to help me resolve the problems with the NSSA.

The original Settlement Agreement was to deal with both the NSSA's actions against me and hold a hearing on the cheating charges. This hearing was to be held within 30 days and if this hearing were not held, then all the issues on both sides would be dropped. The NSSA delayed scheduling the date of this hearing past the 30-day deadline and a week later, I went to South Korea to inspect the next shipment of 1861 Springfields and approve the pilot model of the Civil War Sharps Carbine for production.

Things were just starting to look good at the manufacturing plant when I received a call in South Korea from my brother telling me the hearing had been set and I needed to come back immediately. I did not understand how the NSSA could change the agreement without my consent as the time had already elapsed a week ago. Dick said he would explain it when I got to Philadelphia where the hearing was to be held the next day.

The only advantage I had was I would gain a day by flying back across the International Date Line to the United States. I took the next International flight I could get to New York, which was the closest airport to Philadelphia and I landed at Kennedy International Airport in New York at 1 am the morning of this hearing.

After flying for more than 36-hours, I rented a car and drove to Philadelphia arriving just before breakfast. It was then I learned this would only be a hearing on my cheating charges. Dick claimed he was only acting in my best interests when he agreed to the extension of time to hold this hearing and limit the hearing to the cheating charges.

I told him he had no right to do that even if he was my brother and I did not understand how he had been manipulated into this corner. He claimed this would be the only chance to clear myself of the manufactured cheating charge.

"Bullshit, I am going to bed. The agreement I signed to settle the NSSA's lawsuits was based on holding a settlement hearing within 30 days. As far as I am concerned, the NSSA never intended to honor that agreement as it would have exposed their wrongdoing. Tungsten Park was right when he told me I was making a mistake trying to save the NSSA." I told him.

"Mark I have never asked you to do anything I did not think was right. I am asking you now to believe me when I tell you this is in the best interests of you, your company and the NSSA." Dick laid it on the line.

"No Dick it is not. It only benefits the assholes on the Board of Directors who have violated the NSSA's Corporate By-laws to bring these false charges and Val Forgett's Company. We both know Val Forgett and Bucky Malson are the real players in this ball game and they thought they had me and my Harpers Ferry Arms Company on the ropes until Tungsten Park got involved.

Tungsten Park has both the money and the legal position to put Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company out of business based on the violation Anti-trust Laws. Tungsten's lawyers have investigated Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company's illegal activities to put other reproduction gun companies out of business using his gun Dealers on the NSSA's Board of Directors.

Frank Garret's reproduction Mississippi Rifle is a prime example. The same Italian company is making Garret's Mississippi Rifle and Val Forgett's Zouave Rifle. As you and I both know, the barrels of the Mississippi and the Zouaves are interchangeable and there is nothing wrong with those barrels. Yet the NSSA made Frank Garret recall all his Mississippi's and have their bolsters welded and be stamped with a "W" before his Mississippi's were approved for NSSA competition.

I have talked to the manufacturer and I know he never welded those bolsters. He simply used those Garret barrels on his next shipment of Zouaves to Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company. This all started when one of the new members on the NSSA's Small Arms Committee made the undocumented claim of faulty bolsters on Garret's Mississippi.

As a member of the Small Arms Committee, I asked him how he established the bolster on Garret's Mississippi was defective and what tests he had used to blow off the bolster as he claimed it had happened. When he refused to present his methods of testing, I smelled the hand of the rat, Val Forgett.

With the lack of test results and factual evidence, I suggested the Small Arms Committee conduct its own testing before we took any action to ban Garret's Mississippi from NSSA Competition. The man became highly indignant over the fact I was challenging his word. He and the other new members of the Small Arms Committee rammed though the recommendation to have Garret's Mississippi ban for NSSA Competition until the bolsters were welded.

This was not to first time Val Forgett tried to use the NSSA to ban the reproductions of other gun companies. If you recall Val Forgett had tried to claim, the Zouaves imported by other gun companies were defective and dangerous to shoot. He almost succeeded in having the NSSA ban any Zouave Rifle not imported by the Navy Arms Company and he would have, if I had not been a member of the NSSA's Small Arms Committee. I was able to get the Small Arms Committee to recommend that the Board of Directors establish its approval of any reproduction firearm base on the manufacturer who made it and not the individual Importer.

Why do you think this settlement hearing had been changed to deal with only the NSSA's charges against me? It is to find me guilty and after I am found guilty, Val Forgett will have the perfect defense against Tungsten's Anti-Trust Lawsuit.

It will also vindicate the NSSA's Board of Director's illegal actions and I will never be able to convince the NSSA's Membership I had a legitimate right and legal reason to defend myself and sue the NSSA for withdrawing the NSSA's Approval of my Springfields without providing a reason for the denial." I tried to explain.

"Mark, you and I both know these charges have no merit. I have prepared a sound defense with witnesses who watched you shoot your targets. When the truth is presented, you will be exonerated." Dick claimed.

"It does not matter what you think you believe. The cards have already been stack against me. Please tell the NSSA to go to hell, as I am too tired to argue with you. I am going to take a shower." I said, as I stood up to go and register for a Hotel Room.

"Here use my room." Dick said as he tossed me his room key. "What do you need from the NSSA so we can proceed with this hearing?"

"Tell them to honor the Settlement agreement we signed to hold this hearing in the first place?" I responded.

"We are past that point and if you do not attend the hearing they will hold it in your absence." Dick admitted.

"So I am damned if I do and I am damned if I don't." I could only say.

The hearing went well and Dick did a good job destroying the NSSA's witnesses accept for the claim made by a line judge who had sign my 100 yard Musket Target after he had circled all the bullet holes in it. He had submitted his claim in writing and he was not available to be cross-examined. The reason for holding this Hearing in Philadelphia was the NSSA's claim that the Skirmish Teams who had hosted this National Match lived in the area and all the witnesses would be available to give their live testimony at the hearing. And we would have a chance to cross examine them.

The Line Judge who was the NSSA's primary witness offered no reason why he could not attend the Hearing or why he had submitted his claim in writing when he knew a written statement would not be acceptable according to the terms and conditions of the Settlement Agreement with the NSSA.

Dick cited the terms and conditions of the Settlement Agreement when he objected to allowing this man's statement to be considered as testimony by the Hearing Panel but he was over ruled.

The issue over the Line Judge's need to circle all the holes in my target before I shot it would not exist if Val Forgett and Bucky Malson where not trying to prevent me from earning enough points to qualify for the Distinguished Skirmish Shooter Award.

The NSSA had adopted the Award I had designed to give recognition to the best individual shooters in the NSSA. An individual shooter could qualify for the Award by winning points by his placement in the top ten in the Grand Aggregate Match. The Grand Aggregate Match is the total score of six individual shooting matches, fired at three distances using a Musket, Carbine and Revolver. A shooter needed to win 25 points to qualify for the Distinguished Skirmish Shooter Award and the maximum number of points he could earn at any one time was 10 points for First Place in the Grand Aggregate Match. Shooters earned points in descending order until the 10th Placed shooter in the Grand Aggregate Match received just one point. A shooter could only win points towards winning this Award at the two NSSA National Matches held in the spring and fall of every year.

Before I started Harpers Ferry Arms Company and became a competitor of Navy Arms Company, I was one of the leading shooters to win the Distinguished Skirmisher Award. After I started my business, I would have a major problem winning any more points during the National Matches. I would have my individual match targets peppered with extra holes fired into them by the friends of Val Forgett and Bucky Malson in the attempt to disqualify my targets and prevent me from winning any Distinguished Skirmish Shooter's points.

Complaining to the National Match Skirmish Officials and the NSSA Board of Directors did little good. I found out years later some of them had encouraged their 'friends" to shoot into my targets and even today, William Jordon and a former National Commander of the NSSA John Roby bragged about doing this.

My only defense against this range harassment was to shoot when few other shooters were shooting next to me and shoot a distinctive bullet that could be easily recognized from the excessive other holes in my targets. I even painted to nose of my bullets with a color paint that would leave a colored ring around my bullet holes in my target to identify my shots from the rest of them. When my "friends" learned how I had placed in the last Grand Aggregate Match, my targets at the next National Match were peppered with bullet holes containing rings of every color in the rainbow.

At this particular National Skirmish, I had hung my 100-yard Musket Target and I was late in going to the firing line. The shooting relay had already started and when I check my target in my spotting scope, it was already peppered with bullet holes someone else had shot into it.

I stopped the National Skirmish Individual Match Officer and asked him to look at my target. When I pointed-out I had not even snapped a Musket cap on my rifle to clear it before loading it, and therefore I could not have fired any of those shots in my Target, he asked me what I wanted him to do about it.

I told him I wanted a new target. When he explained according the NSSA Rules that could not be done, I asked him to go with me after the relay was over to mark the bullet holes so I could shoot the match. He thought this was a reasonable request but he told me to get the Line Judge to sign the target and mark the holes so he could identify them when the target was scored.

The NSSA Individual Match Officer talked with the Line Judge and the man went with me down range to identify the bullet holes. This was the Line Judge, who submitted his written statement to this hearing. There was nothing in his statement about the Match Officer telling him to identify those bullet holes and the Individual Match Officer who was listed as one of the NSSA witnesses also failed to show up for this Hearing. Without either of the NSSA's witnesses available for cross examination the Line Judge's statement was accepted as evidence.

I testified in my own defense and Dick had brought my NSSA Shooter's Record Log Book I had used to record for every Match I shot. I had developed this NSSA Shooter's Log Book based upon the Log Book I used when I was keeping a record of my shooting with the 5th Army's Advanced Marksmanship Unit and the Log Book I had designed for the Army to record Sniper activities.

This NSSA Log Book had two targets drawn on each page. I use the first target to mark my "call" of where I believed my shot would hit. I would mark the second target where my shot actually hit. The more my hits were where I had "called" them the more confident I was in shooting my next shot.

I opened my Logbook to the page I had recorded that 100-yard Musket Match and I presented it to the Hearing panel. My Log Book clearly identified each of my 10 record shots I fired into that 100 yard Musket Target and only those 10 bullet holes had not been circled by the Line Judge.

I was found guilty of "Influencing a Line Judge" as if I had been Svengali with hypnotic powers to make free willed men do my bidding. I was stunned by this verdict. Yet I knew I should not have been surprised by the outcome, when the Hearing Panel allowed the Line Judge's written statement to be used as evidence in violation of the signed Settlement Agreement.

Of course, a shooter would ask the Line Judge to inspect his target if there are any questionable shots before the target was removed from the target's cardboard backer. One of the functions of the NSSA's Line Judge was to insure each shooter received the score he shot. Once the target is removed from its backer, bullet holes clearly visible in the target's backer might not be visible when it is scored on the scoring tables in the Stat shack.

The Line Judge is also in the best position to identify bullet holes fired from a different gun than the bullet holes made by the shooter's gun. In my case, there should not have been a question about the cross-fired bullet holes in my target identified by the Line Judge since my musket was still clean, so I could not have fired them. However, since the Individual Match Officer did not show up for the Hearing his testimony was not available to collaborate my own testimony.

The greater surprise came from a member of the Hearing Panel when he protested the Panel's decision claiming he was not part of this railroad job. The Settlement Agreement required a unanimous decision just like in a trial court jury to find me guilty. However, with the shock of the guilty verdict I did not grasp the significance of what the Hearing's Panel member stated.

I learned years later from another member of the Hearing Panel that Frank Schoch had already influenced him to find me guilty for the sake of the NSSA. Frank Schoch had also entered into the closed deliberation room. He told them this Hearing was like a Court Martial where only 2/3 of the Hearing Panel was needed to find me guilty of influencing the Line Judge. He also claimed the NSSA Board of Directors would review the extenuating circumstances as stated in my testimony before making a final ruling on any punishment I might receive.

If there was any consolation to the outcome of this Hearing it was my Springfields were approved. Unfortunately, this NSSA Approval did not replace all the advanced orders Harpers Ferry Arms Company had lost as a direct result of Val Forgett's Navy Arms Company and Bucky Malson's interference. Having been found guilty in what was believed to be a fair trial none of the NSSA members who had canceled their Springfield Orders would reorder them or buy any Harpers Ferry Arms Company's firearms.

However, the Anti-Trust Lawsuit war with Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company had just begun and this time Tungsten Park had chosen the battlefield in Federal Court with Harpers Ferry Arms Company on the offensive. Although Val Forgett and Bucky Malson had done their best to destroy me, the NSSA's Settlement Agreement did not protect Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company or the individual NSSA Directors named in Tungsten Park's the Anti-Trust Lawsuit.

# 22. SET BACKS TO HARPERS FERRY ARMS COMPANY

Harpers Ferry Arms Company had outgrown the facilities in my store in Hopewell, Virginia. I made a deal with the owner of Berkeley Plantation on the other side of the James River to move the assembly plant of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's reproductions of the St Etienne Revolutionary War French Musket and the Civil War Maynard Carbine to this ideal historic location.

Berkeley Plantation is one of the oldest plantations on the James River and it was the home of William Henry Harrison the 9th President of the United States. It was also General George McClellan's Headquarters in 1862 for the Union's Army of the Potomac during the Civil War.

The employee's of Harpers Ferry Arms Company lived in Hopewell and Petersburg and the drive across the James River's Ben Harrison Bridge was a reasonable commute to work for me. Many of the employees were highly skilled workers who work part-time for me and full-time for the Chemical Plants in Hopewell. The Chemical Plants ran three rotating shifts and so did I.

All my experience in the Army to obtain the necessary supplies to keep my Units operational helped me in Harpers Ferry Arms Company to keep ahead of the production line. However, all that effort came to a screeching halt, when a Sulfur Tanker took out the Harrison Bridge. It would take two years before it could be repaired and reopened for normal vehicular traffic.

Although a small river ferryboat had been, establish to carry people across the James River it only ran during daylight hours. This meant my employees on the second and third shifts would be required to spend two hours driving to the James River Bridge at Richmond and then back down the other side of the James River to Berkeley Plantation. This would add four hours commuting to the 4 hours they worked for me making it an unacceptable 20 hour day. Since my employees on the first shift could not bring their cars across the James River on the small ferryboat, I set up transportation at the ferry's boat dock next to the Harrison Bridge to carry them to and from work. This James River boat trip added two extra hours to their commute, which made working 4 hours for me a 16-hour day and I could not pay them enough to make this trip. I hired some local Charley City employees to keep the production lines open but I had to spend too much time teaching them how to make guns. Under the circumstances, I knew I could not stay at Berkeley Plantation and I was making plans to move Harpers Ferry Arms Company's factory back to Hopewell Virginia.

The second blow came when there was a shooting in the Anheuser-Busch family mansion in St Louis. The adverse publicity of this shooting made anything to do with any type of guns an issue that had to be avoided at all costs. Harpers Ferry Arms Company's one million dollar contract with Anheuser-Busch for the 5,000 reproduction St Etienne Revolutionary War Flint Lock Muskets was abruptly canceled.

When I threatened to sue for a breach of contract, Anheuser-Busch claimed I did not have a contract with them but with the Anheuser-Busch Advertizing Agency who had negotiated and signed the contract. Tungsten Park's legal department established the Anheuser-Busch Advertizing Agency was a wholly own subsidiary of the brewing company and the contract was clear that the Adverting Agency was acting for their parent company of Anheuser Busch. However, Tungsten Park's lawyers decided that suing the multimillion dollar company of Anheuser-Busch could take years in the unfriendly St Louis court and the estimated costs to litigate Harpers Ferry Arms Company's contract was not worth the risk if the court decided the contract relationship was limited to the Advertizing Agency.

Fortunately, before I signed the contract with Anheuser-Bush, and sold Harpers Ferry Arms Company to Tungsten Park I could only afford to produce 250 reproductions of the St Etiennes. Just as I did with the Maynard Carbine Project, I would order the parts for next the production run of the St Etienne's after selling enough of them to cover the cost of the next 250 Muskets.

After Harpers Ferry Arms Company lost the contract with Anheuser Bush, I went back to the company's original promotional campaign to market the St Etiennes. I numbered the first 250 St Etiennes from 1 to 250 to represent the 250 St Etiennes carried by General Lafayette's Body Guard during the Revolutionary War. I would use copies of the authentication documents to support the claim that Harpers Ferry Arms Company's reproduction of the St Etienne was an exact replica of the original St Etienne and the only American made Revolutionary War Musket sold for the Bicentennial.

Many of the Harpers Ferry Arms Company's St Etiennes were sold to the National Rifle Association as presentation pieces to Congressmen. The members of Revolutionary War Reenactment Organizations who actually shot the St Etiennes in competition loved them. During the Revolutionary War, the maximum effective range of a musket was 50 yards and therefore if a man hit by a musket ball shot at him, beyond 50-yards made him a very unlucky man. Yet I could shoot a five shot group with my St Etienne at 75 yards you could cover with a pie plate.

I had made the St Etienne's reproduction barrels from modern steel Mossberg 12-Gage Goose gun barrel blanks initially for liability reasons with the added benefit of the modern steel Goose gun barrel would make the St Etienne shoot better, than any other Revolutionary War Reproduction Musket on the market

The breach plug on the original St Etienne was very short with only a few screw threads on it. Although black powder would not create the high pressers of modern gunpowder, the short breach pug could be a design flaw I could eliminate in my St Etiennes. I redesigned the breach plug to fit over the barrel that was screwed into it, making the St Etienne as safe to shoot as a modern firearm.

When I made the lock of the St Etienne I used to highest grade of steel in its frizzen and no one claimed their St Etienne had ever misfired. Flint lock's, have a reputation of misfiring and the saying "A flash in the Pan" means the gun did not go off. I shot my St Etienne for years using the same flint without a misfire.

The third blow came, when the US Government indicted Tungsten Park for Income Tax evasion, bribing government officials and taking an unauthorized commission on a United States Rice deal to South Korea. When Tungsten left the country to establish his business in London England the United States Government seized his mansion, the Georgetown Club and they tried to take Harpers Ferry Arms Company.

What saved Harpers Ferry Arms Company from the United States Government's seizure was the fact that not all of the payments in the sales contract to buy Harpers Ferry Company had not been made. Based on the terms I wrote in the sales contract, Tungsten Park did not own Harpers Ferry Arms Company until he made the last scheduled payment

I reorganized the company as the majority Stockholder and filed the Corporation's papers with the State of Virginia that replace Tungsten Park as the President of Harpers Ferry Arms Company. This did not set will with Tungsten Park's lawyers and former key employees who were attempting to grab anything the Government had not seized. They tried to grab the money in the Harpers Ferry Arms Company's bank accounts but I had already changed the signature cards and their names were no longer on them.

While I was gone to Ohio to pick up replacement castings, the vultures sent a truck to Berkeley Plantation. They stole all the assembled reproduction St Etiennes and Maynard Carbines along with the inventory of their parts. They took everything in the Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Berkley Plantation manufacturing plant but the company safe and the gun making equipment as the machines and the safe had been bolted into the concrete floor.

A bribed secretary of Harpers Ferry Arms Company had let them into the factory and she made the mistake of leaving the Company's checkbook out after she took her postdated paycheck. I immediately stopped payment on her check and I had her arrested for stealing her paycheck, as it was the only paycheck missing and she was not entitled to receive it for two days.

Although I believe the adverse publicity of the attempt to steal Harpers Ferry's equipment was the great motivation, I was able to negotiate the return of all Harpers Ferry Arms Company's property if I agreed to drop the charges against the secretary who had helped them.

Tungsten Park called me from London and apologized for the actions of his employees and he promised to issue new Letters of Credit to South Korea to honor his personal commitments to me. Tungsten Park explained he had told his South Korean Trading Company not to ship any Springfields on the current Letters of Credit as the US Government would seize them.

This did not make any sense to me, as the Letters of Credit to the South Korean Manufacturer were issued by Harpers Ferry Arms Company and not by his main company of Pacific Development Corporation. I did not believe he did not know I had already reorganized Harpers Ferry Arms Company after I had saved it from the Government's seizure. On the other hand, Tungsten Park had always been straight with me and he did give me the opportunity to save the NSSA. As in playing the game of poker when in doubt, play the safe hand and just call the bet to stay in the game.

I called my friend Mr Song in the Blue House Security Force and told him about what was happening with Tungsten Park and my company. Since Mr Pock the South Korean Springfield Manufacturer was a friend of Mr Song I wanted to make sure Mr Pock knew what was going on so he would not be mislead and taken in by Tungsten Park's Trading Company.

I told Mr Song I may not be able to reopen the 500,000 US Dollar Letter of Credit and he should encourage Mr Pock to send as many Springfields as he could before the current Letter of Credit expired. Since I had every Springfield the Manufacturer shipped already sold I would use those sales to open my next Letters of Credit.

Mr Song thanked me for my call and he said he would meet with the manufacturer before the week was out. Unfortunately, Tungsten Park's "word" as a South Korean carried more weight than mine and Mr Pock did not ship any Springfields, before the current Letter of Credit expired.

I was again trying to find an Investor for Harpers Ferry Arms Company and I was spending most of my time making Business Presentations to anyone who would listen. I made a Business Proposal to A R Dixon and he was interested if I could prove Tungsten Park did not own Harpers Ferry Arms Company or Tungsten Park was not a silent partner with me as his front man. The fact I had used the Government's position on not seizing Harpers Ferry Arms as one of Tungsten Park's assets only proved I owned the company on paper. However, this did not disprove Tungsten Park still owned the Company through me.

What A R Dixon was asking me to prove was prove a negative and use the laws of logic to convince him conclusively beyond a reasonable doubt that something does not exist. Perhaps if I were a world-class salesman, I could have convinced him that Tungsten Park was no longer involved based solely on my "word." However, when it comes to money and using someone else's money based only on your "word," you are unrealistically expecting them to take a financial risk supported by nothing but thin air. A R Dixon was right there was no way of proving this negative. I knew the was no point in asking him what documentation or evidence I could provide that he would find acceptable so I thanked him for his time.

"Do you mind if I ask a personal question? I heard a rumor the NSSA found you guilty of cheating. What can you tell me about that?" He asked.

His question and the speed bad news travels caught me by surprise but I knew I had to answer it. If he already knew about my problems with the NSSA the rest of the investment community would also know it. At least A R Dixon was fair minded enough to ask me for my side of the story and how I responded to this problem would determine if he would ever be interested in any other investment proposals I might have.

"I can, if you will tell me why you believe Tungsten Park still owns Harpers Ferry Arms Company." I responded.

"I have a friend who is a friend of one of Tungsten Park's lawyers and that lawyer claims he was left in charge of all Park's businesses he had hidden from the Government." A R Dixon stated.

"That would be Larry Huntsman who tried to steal everything that was in Harpers Ferry Arms Company." I stated. When he confirmed it was the same man, I told him about the raid on Berkeley Plantation. He particularly enjoyed how it ended.

There is an old saying you never want them to see you sweat and it applies doubly in business when they think they have you in a tight spot. I have always operated on the belief telling the truth only hurts once, while trying to defend yourself with shades of the truth will only produce more questions and cast further doubt's that you are telling the truth.

By switching the focus from my problems with the NSSA, to what happened with Larry Huntsman's failed attempt to grab the assets of Harpers Ferry Arms Company gave me time to gather myself into my competitive shooting psyche and present the image of my coolness under fire.

"As for the NSSA it is true, although I knew the NSSA would not follow the agreed upon terms and conditions of how that hearing was to be conducted. This hearing was almost the same as what you are asking me to do with Tungsten Park. I cannot prove a negative when my accuser was not present for cross-examination." I told him and it was up to A R Dixon to read between the lines that this had not been a fair trial, without claiming I had been railroaded.

"Please understand I could give you a blow by blow account of what happened but that will not change the outcome. On the other side of the coin, I did accomplish two things that were more important to me. First, I have removed any doubt that my Springfields are approved for competition without going through a long drawn out Court battle, which could take years.

The other issue is a little more complicated. I could not go after the assholes on the NSSA's Board of Directors without severely damaging the organization these bastards were using as their shield. Having separated them from the protection of the NSSA, Tungsten Park had made them individual codefendants in his Anti-Trust Lawsuit against Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company.

Now with Tungsten Park gone, I do not have the money it will take to bring this Anti-Trust Lawsuit. However, within the next two years I hope I will be in the financial position to bring this Anti-Trust Action and I will laugh all the way to the Bank after I have sold everything they own." I told him and I could see a grin cross his face as he shook his head with the understanding this fight was not over.

When Tungsten Park did not renew the Letter of Credit, I did not have the money to issue a new Letter of Credit to the South Korean Springfield Manufacturer who was in financial trouble, and he had been thrown in jail.

Under the provisions of South Korean law, the Major Creditor has the right to determine what happens to the debtor and how his assets are to be divided in the South Korean Court. With the help of Mr Song, I used Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Letter of Credit as a debt claim and I became the Major Creditor in South Korea.

I had the Springfield Manufacturer release from jail while Mr Song and I processed my Company's claim in the South Korean Court. I was able to save Mr Pock's house, his personal property and his factory along with the gun making equipment and machinery necessary to make my Springfields.

Technically, I own his company and all his assets the other creditors did not take. Since we were both victims of Tungsten Park's untimely departure from the United States, I did not feel I should be the only one to benefit by using Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Letter of Credit that had been financed by Tungsten Park.

I signed a contract with Mr Pock to manage our South Korean factory and if I could not reopen a Letter of Credit to produce my Springfields, he would get his company back. As advanced compensation for managing our factory, I returned all his personal property. Before I left South Korea Mr Pock and I had negotiated a production contract to manufacture Auto Parts using the Metal Milling Machines that once produced the Springfields.

I moved the Harpers Ferry Arms Company's assembly plant back to my store in Hopewell from Berkeley Plantation, but I did not have the money to invest in another production run of the Maynard Carbines or the St Etienne French Muskets. I worked alone in the back of my store on the remaining parts of the last production runs of the St Etienne and the Maynard Carbines to sell these reproductions.

The American Bicentennial had been good for Harpers Ferry Arms Company's reproduction uniforms and historically accurate equipment business. As a side benefit to locate sources all over the world to produce the wide variety of items marketed by Harpers Ferry Arms Company, I had established companies who could make common and everyday products. Companies that produced the cartridge boxes and leather goods for Civil War and Revolutionary War Units were in the position to make leather purses, handbags, belts, and work gloves. The Uniform makers and the historical accurate period costume manufacturers offered suits, shirts, coats, blouses, shoes, dresses, hats and even underwear.

Having established myself as a person who could have things reasonably made overseas, I would entertain proposals to find reliable manufacturers for products someone wanted to Import to the United States. I formed the Virginia Company, James River Imports and Development Corporation to handle items not related to Harpers Ferry Arms Company's business.

Based upon my experience as the Commander of Charley Battery in Union Lake Michigan and as the Public Affairs Officer for the 20th NORAD Region at Fort Lee Virginia I knew the value of becoming involved in the local Community as part of my Company's Public Relations. When I formed Harpers Ferry Arms Company, I register to Vote in Hopewell and I joined Hopewell's St James Catholic Church, the local VFW, the Moose Lodge, the FOP and the Jordan Point Country Club.

One of the best ways to know what is going on in a community was to attend the Hopewell City Council meetings and hear about the issues and problems facing the local citizens. At first, I would sit back and listen to what other people had to say and then I would introduce myself to those people who had expressed their concerns to the City Council. When I knew more about the issues affecting my business I would address the City Council and offer possible solutions the City Council might consider.

Due to my active participation at the City Council meetings, the Hopewell Mayor asked me to consider becoming a member of the Hopewell Democratic Party. Shortly after I joined the Democrat Party, I was elected, as one of their 25 Committee Members. Although I declined being an elected Delegate from Hopewell, I participated in the selection of Virginia's delegates to the National Democrat Party's Convention that nominated Jimmy Carter for President.

The election of Jimmy Carter as the 39th President of the United States was seen by a wounded nation, as a man with high moral principles who would bring back truth and honesty to the Office of the Presidency.

The fall of South Vietnam, followed by the fall of Cambodia and Laos to the Communists undermined the United States credibility to be the leader of the free world against International Communism. Nixon's fall over the Watergate break in and President Ford's pardon of President Nixon had left the country wondering if any politician could be trusted.

However when President Carter pardoned all the draft dodgers who ran to Canada or Europe, I had a bad taste in my mouth. It was a slap in the face to every American, who faithfully served in the Military during the Vietnam War. It was if they had been suckers, duped by the Military Industrial Complex to defend their country.

The country's economy was experiencing the international ripple effect from the unreasonable oil price hikes of OPEC in 1973. President Carter's inability to deal with these economic issues had created a huge rise in Inflation and a slowdown of industrial production costing people their jobs. When people are concerned about feeding their families they are not spending any money on luxury items such as reproduction firearms and equipment made by Harpers Ferry Arms Company. The number of new items imported by James River Import and Development Corporation had dropped off dramatically, with few reorders for the products the companies were already importing. My 7 day a week of 18 to 20 hour workdays became more like a part time job.

# 23. WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES ANOTHER DOOR OPENS

Every morning I went to the Chesterfield Hotel to have coffee and eat my breakfast of French toast. I knew Mary was selling her Hotel and one morning when I went to have my breakfast I found Mary cussing and swearing as if she were a drunken sailor. This was so unlike Mary who was a very religious woman.

My waitress told me, the Hotel buyer had backed out of the Sales Agreement and then he came back to suggest she should screw the Realtor and sell the Hotel to him at the value she would get anyway after the Realtor took his Commission on the sale.

When I went to Mary to pay for my breakfast I asked her what the problem was and she told me using a cussword between every other word she spoke. I told her I would buy her Hotel for the price she was asking, if she would agree to take a second mortgage for the amount of money the Bank would not lend me on the Hotel. With Inflation on the rise, the interest rates on Mortgages had reached 10% but just renting the Hotel Rooms would cover the monthly Loan payment.

A day later, Mary accepted my offer to buy her Hotel, "lock, stock and barrel" for everything in the Hotel. The only thing excluded from this sale was Mary's personal property in her apartment and the wall clock behind the cash register.

Although I understood food service from my experience as the Mess Officer in the Army, I did not have the foggiest idea how to run a Hotel and manage a Country Western Red Necked Bar.

I knew my sister Marion was a beer joint waitress back in Milwaukee Wisconsin and I offered her 1,000 dollars a month and a 10% share in the Hotel if she would come and manage the Chesterfield Hotel. She agreed and came down to Virginia the day I took possession of the Hotel. The news of a new owner of the Chesterfield Hotel spread quickly. When the customer's came in all of Mary's religious symbols and crucifixes were gone from the walls.

The Jukebox was turned up loud enough it could be heard on the streets. My sister Marion's nickname was "Cory" short for Corrigan. She was a very attractive woman who could have been a fashion model at five foot eleven inches tall with long brown hair and ample curves in all the right places. She was not only beautiful she had a quick wit who knew how to manage and work the customers in a bar.

The crowd came in and they stayed. Cory had transformed the Chesterfield Hotel's Bar from a place run like a church into an exciting entertainment destination where its customers could drink beer and listen to loud Country Western Music. It did not matter if the records on the jukebox were out of date as the crowd treated them as "oldies but goodies" and the records were played loudly way beyond what Mary would have allowed when she ran the place. All day long as more customers came in and stayed. They fed quarters into the Jukebox while drinking more beer. The more beer they drank the more the Chesterfield Hotel became a party place.

Normally few women come into a beer joint unless they are hustling a man for money. Two women came in and asked if it was all right for them to come in and have a beer, as Mary would not allow unescorted women to stay in her bar. I did not see that as a problem and women in a bar would attract men to stay and drink. I told them if anyone bothered them to let me know and I would ask the men to leave.

Before I knew it, several more women came into the bar to join them and they were having a great time. Loud music, laughing women and cold beer made an unbeatable beer joint business combination. By the 2 am "last call for alcohol" the place had been packed all day, the crowd did not want to leave and we were almost out of beer.

The next day at 6 am when the doors of the Chesterfield Hotel opened the crowds came back and the place was packed. With three shifts working at the Hopewell Chemical Plants, many of these new customers were just getting off work and this was their happy hour.

Cory quickly ordered "Happy Hour" snacks and the Chesterfield Hotel would hold three "Happy Hours" to accommodate each Working Shift. With such business crowds, coming in three times a day we needed to hire additional waitresses.

The beer joints in Hopewell paid most of their help "under the table." If they were made an employee they were paid only a dollar an hour and they were expected to make up the difference in the Minimum Wage in tips. Beer drinkers are notoriously lousy tippers and a waitress could bust her butt and not make anything close to the Minimum Wage.

Cory and I agreed we would not pay anyone under the table and we would pay the Minimum Wage and let the girls keep their tips. As a result, we had a waiting list of girls wanting to work for us and the cash register drawer usually totaled out correctly at the end of each shift.

Theft is normally a big problem in a bar and I knew when someone was short of money it is easy to be tempted by all that money in the cash register. If someone took money out of the cash register if was costing us twice as much, as we not only lost that money, we lost the product that was sold to make that money.

When we hired a new girl, we told her, we were paying her better than anyone else in town would pay her and if she stole from us, we would put her in jail. I also told them if they needed money for a legitimate reason, I would give them an interest free loan until payday. However if she lied to me about the reason she needed the money I would fire her.

After the first week, business was so good I had already made enough profit to pay the Bank Mortgage and Mary's note for that month. Most of the Hotel Rooms were rented by the week, to the out of town workers who had been brought in to repair the damaged Harrison Bridge.

After Cory and I totaled up the first month's receipts, we could not believe what a gold mine the Chesterfield Hotel was. We decided to show our appreciation to all of our regular customers' support of the Chesterfield Hotel by throwing a party we called a "Polish New Year's."

We asked our customers to select a year which had been good for them and that would be the year we would celebrate. Based on a straw poll it was agreed, we would celebrate Polish New Year's for the year of "1961." Much to our surprise, our customers took over much of the planning for the party and they arranged to bring in all the food.

As a Hotel under the Virginia ABC Laws, we could hold a private party that did not have to end at normal closing time for the serving of alcohol. I met with the Police Chief to confirm the City of Hopewell did not have a local ordinance prohibiting the serving of alcohol in a private party after hours.

The Chesterfield Hotel had a private dining room in the back of the Hotel used by the local Civic Groups to hold their monthly dinner meetings. We would hold our Polish New Year's Party in the private dining room while a small number of our employees ran the main bar during normal business hours.

Saturday night was chosen to hold this party as the normal drinking hours ended at midnight rather than the usual closing time of 2 am. A three-piece band showed up to provide live entertainment and the party was going strong when the Police came to the Private Dining Room's door. The Police Officers asked why we were still open after midnight and told me to close it down.

After I explained this was a private party and we had a Hotel License to hold such parties beyond the normal closing time they asked if they could come to the party as their shift was about to end. Free food and beer brought most of the Police Officers who had just gotten off their Shift. The party roared until dawn and the main restaurant part of the Chesterfield Hotel opened for Sunday Breakfast at 6 am. By noon when the Chesterfield Hotel could serve alcohol again many of those who attended the party where back, not just to drink beer but to help clean up the Private Dining Room.

Every other month we celebrated another Polish New Year and we picked a Saturday night where the Shift who had been working during the last party would be able to attend the next one.

As part of my purchase agreement to buy the Chesterfield Hotel, Mary was to keep her ABC Hotel License until I received mine. For some reason my application to the Virginia State Alcohol Beverage Control Board for my own ABC Hotel License was not being processed.

I would learn later that once I had made the Chesterfield Hotel a success, someone had approached Mary with an offer to buy the Hotel for considerably more money than I had paid her. They had convinced Mary that if she removed her ABC Hotel License, I would default on her note and she would get the Hotel back. When Mary tried to remove, her ABC Hotel License I pointed out, she would be liable for my losses as there was no time limit in the sales contract when I had to have my own ABC Hotel License.

When I foiled Mary's attempt to get the Hotel back, ABC Agent Peterson sent in three under aged teenagers with false Virginia Drivers licenses they used to buy beer. When Agent Peterson and his Agents came in they easily established my waitresses had served the three underage persons. Once the ABC Agents had sprung their trap to catch me Agent Peterson was about to let the three underage teenagers go when I said I was making a citizen's arrest on the three young men and I called the Police.

I presented the Police Officers with a copy of ABC Agent Peterson's report that identified the three underage young men drinking beer. The fact the ABC Agent's report had established these three young men had broken the ABC Laws using false Virginia Drivers licenses and since they were underage in Hopewell, they were also in violation of the City's curfew law.

The Police Sergeant was not sure how he wanted to handle this and I was sure the ABC Agents had not expected me to bring charges against the boys. I suggested the Police Sergeant give the boys a choice of going to jail or having them call their parents and have them come here to get their children.

It took most of the night before the last boy's parent came to get their son. I made sure each parent sign for their son when they assume custody of their child. I did not need to say anything to the ABC Agents or these parents about the liability they could be facing if their child was found guilty of drinking beer underage. I was hoping their parents would hire good lawyers who would get them off, as if they were found not guilty than I could not be found guilty by the ABC Board. It is amazing how the behind the scenes politics works. My ABC Hotel License was issued. The case against the three boys was postponed and I do not think it was ever heard, as I was never called as a witness.

My practice in the Army of using Monday night as an Open House to be available to my men while I was their Commander was still a good idea in running the Chesterfield Hotel and I would work as a bartender every Monday night. One Monday night, a well-dressed black woman came in and asked if I would consider hiring her as one of the Hotel's waitresses.

Marie claimed she had been fired from her job as a cook at one of the restaurants in town after the owner had demanded sex from her and she had refused. This was not the first time I had heard this about the man and I had no reason to doubt what Marie had told me.

Although the Civil Rights Movement had opened a number of doors of opportunity to the Black Community, Hopewell was still old south and there were no black waitresses employed in any of the restaurants in Hopewell. The fact she was a black girl did not bother me and my only concern was if Marie knew what she was getting into when she worked in a Red Necked beer joint. About that time, several Construction workers came in and asked if the kitchen was still open. I turned to Marie and asked if she could fix them something to eat.

Marie found an apron, took their orders, cooked and served them and she earned a 5-dollar tip. Seeing other people eating created more interest in the other customers to get something to eat and Marie handled them all. When Marie closed the kitchen, it was spotless. She had put away the food, washed all the dishes, pots and pans and she even mopped the floor. Marie had done all this without knowing what I would pay her, as she never asked.

The customers had seen Marie cook and serve the food but they did not expect her to become their waitress and serve them beer. Marie took a lot of heat from the beer drinkers as they teased her about being "hot brown sugar" in a beer joint. Marie just smiled and sometimes she would come back with a quick remark to put them in their place. I knew I could not interfere in her defense if she was going to be one of our waitresses and if she could not handle it now with me watching the crowd she would not be able to deal with the customers when I was not there to protect her.

The word got out quickly there was a new girl at the Chesterfield Hotel and she was a black girl. The bar filled up with customers who had come to see if it was true. Marie hustled her buns off serving the customers and the usual Monday night business had nearly tripled.

After we closed the Hotel, I asked Marie if she still wanted the job. She told me it was not as bad as she thought it would be and she said it had been fun as she had made more in tips than she made working as a cook for a week at the other restaurant.

I counted out the cash register as Marie filled out the Employment application. The cash register came out to the penny and I offered to exchange her tips for larger bills. Marie turned over 50 dollars in change and small bills and I had to ask how much she made as a cook. I was shocked to learn she made only a dollar an hour.

I never regretted the day I hired her. Marie would become one of my shift managers who would open the Hotel in the morning. She and two other girls would handle the breakfast crowd and the Chemical Plant Shift workers who came into the Chesterfield Hotel to celebrate their Happy Hour.

# 24. WHEN THINGS ARE NOT RIGHT

The downtown of the City of Hopewell had been going through a long Redevelopment in which only a few buildings remained depending on who owned those businesses and properties. The Hopewell Housing Authority had appraised the Chesterfield Hotel years ago at $60,000, as part of this Urban Redevelopment Plan for demolition. However, in spite of all the time that passed since this appraisal Mary was never approached by the Hopewell Housing Authority to sell the Hotel.

Since I bought my store in Hopewell, I had seen empty broken down buildings suddenly reopened with a new business just before the Hopewell Housing Authority bought the property. The new business owner's would receive relocation money for a business that never started up again. The property owner would receive a higher price for his property based upon the length of the lease he made to the new business, which usually had been made for 5 years or more. 60 months times a month's rent of at least 250 dollars, was a nice 15,000- dollar bonus Federal Government subsidized to the property owner, who could not have sold his building for that much.

With owning two properties scheduled for demolition in this Urban Renewal plan of the Hopewell Housing Authority I wanted to know when I could expect to be included in the plan and if I remodeled the Chesterfield Hotel would the Hotel's appraised evaluation change. The Director of the Hopewell Housing Authority informed me the Hotel's appraised value would not change and I could now understand why no one was making any repairs or improvements to their properties in Downtown Hopewell.

Who would spend money on improvements if the value of their property was already established? That would make sense if the last property owners in downtown Hopewell knew when the Hopewell Housing Authority planned to complete this Urban Renewal Project. They did not and according to the Director of the Hopewell Housing Authority, they did not have any more money to complete the Redevelopment Plan

This did not make any sense to me. How could they not have any more money for an approved Federally Funded Urban Renewal Project that had not produced a single new permanent business? It did not take a financial genius to review the Hopewell Housing Authority's books and records to understand how they had blown away the money.

There were numerous Urban Renewal Consultant Studies performed even though the City was paying the Director and his Staff of Assistant Directors unreasonably high salaries who were supposed to be experts in Urban Renewal. There were a significant number of multiple reappraisals' on selective properties where there were the highly questionable increased payments were made to property owners who had just leased their properties to a new business that disappeared once the property was sold.

The worse part seem to be the same new business owners or their wives had been used by the same property owners for a different new business on another property sold to the Hopewell Housing Authority. How this had been missed by the Federal Auditors was beyond me until I found out the same two local Accounting Firms had receive the contract from the Federal Government every other year to perform the Annual Audits.

The relationship between the two Accounting Firms was not apparent until I checked their Virginia Corporation records and found the same Attorney was their Registered Agent who also owned Corporation Stock in both Accounting Firms. The significance of this relationship was further in question when this same attorney represented the owners when they sold their properties to the Hopewell Housing Authority.

It was one thing to question a possible wrongdoing when I did not understand all the facts and circumstances involved but it quite another matter to take any action based only on my suspicions. I was not a Public Accountant and I did not have the legal expertise to fully understand the significance of what I had found in the Hopewell Housing Authority's records.

My interest in the Redevelopment of Hopewell's Downtown and my active participation on the Committee of the Democratic Party had attracted several businessmen who were interested in making investments in actually developing business opportunities to redevelop Hopewell's downtown. They were also concerned about the lack of any new businesses and all the efforts of the Hopewell Housing Authority had been focused on buying properties and demolishing the buildings. If there was a real Redevelopment Plan to justify obtaining Urban Renewal Federal Funding for the Hopewell Downtown, the Plan was not being followed and there did not appear to be any effort on the part of the Hopewell Housing Authority to attract any new businesses.

Based on the common business interests of these businessmen, we would usually meet in the Chesterfield Hotel after the City Council meetings. These men had considerable experience in a wide range of businesses and they were willing to share their knowledge as a "Think-tank" and as a sounding board to discuss any business ideas anyone of them might have. These discussions were priceless and freely given. In a relatively short time, this group of experts could dissect a business proposal and establish the possibility of it being worth more time and investigation.

Once I felt comfortable with these businessmen, I shared what I had found in the records of the Hopewell Housing Authority and my concerns about not having the knowledge and expertise to evaluate what I believed was going on in these property sales. When they shared my concerns, I went to my office to get the notes I had made on the Hopewell Housing Authority's records.

After presenting my findings to the group, it seemed to explain why there had not been any redevelopment activities in downtown Hopewell. If this was true, their primary concern was the idea the deck had been stacked against us and maybe we were wasting time in our efforts to develop new businesses in Hopewell.

I disagreed with them and I pointed out the business proposals we had been discussing were still good ideas that did not depend on the Hopewell Housing Authority to be successful. One man disagreed claiming if this redevelopment game was rigged, as I believed it was, what was stopping the Housing authority from blocking us as outsiders.

Another man suggested it might be to our advantage to confirm the possibility of fraudulent activity in the Hopewell Housing Authority and use the information against them as these crooks will do just about anything to hide what they did. The only question is if you are willing to use the evidence to our advantage rather than turning it over to the authorities.

"I don't know about you, but I don't think becoming involved in a pissing contest with the Housing Authority will help us." I stated.

"It's not the pissing contest but the threat of it becoming a pissing contest that will give us the edge to gain the Housing Authority's cooperation." Another man stated. He used the example of the building the former City Councilmen Butterworth had just sold to the Hopewell Housing Authority. "If we made a proposal to renovate the building if the Housing Authority gave us the building, what choice would the Director of the Housing Authority have? The cost to renovate the building into decent apartments would be less than half of the cost to build a new apartment building, which would make it a very profitable business venture." He suggested.

It was agreed we would confirm the evidence I had found to make sure I had all the facts right. That way there would be more than one person who would know what the Hopewell Housing Authority had done even if their records disappeared. I was surprised to hear someone say something like this but with all the possible corruption in the Housing Authority anything was possible to conceal what they had done to protect themselves. I made copies of my notes on the Hopewell Housing Authority's records and using them made it easy for the Accountant in our group to verify what I had already found.

Our group inspected the building, took detailed photographs and we obtained copies of the building's blue prints from the Hopewell Building Inspector's Office. With this detailed information, we had an outside Construction Firm bid on the cost to renovate the building to current Building Codes. As predicted the initial cost estimates to renovate the building were below half of the cost to build the same number of apartments in new construction.

The next step was to secure financing for the project, as we would need to be able to demonstrate our capabilities to complete the renovation if the Hopewell Housing Authority were to take our proposal seriously. Although it would take a number of months, we not only found reasonable money in this tight economy, we had a committed buyer for the building once it was finished. We then submitted our well documented proposal to the Hopewell Housing Authority and they did not know what to do about it.

# 25. OVERCOMING PROBLEMS ON THE HOME FRONT

Cory lived in Mary's Hotel apartment as part of our business arrangement and what Cory did in her own personal life was her own business until she linked up with a real loser who had moved in with her. Ron was an alcoholic taking anti abuse medication to control his alcohol addiction and he was an industrial painter who could not hold a steady job. This anti abuse medication was designed to make him sick if he drank any alcohol.

Either Ron's medication was not working or Ron was not taking it as he would come into the Chesterfield Hotel and drink free beer all day until he was drunk out of his mind. Then he believed he could win every fight he started. Fighting for any reason in any bar is bad for business as it would scare away customers and the Bar owner could lose his ABC License. Drinking in a Bar was not a protected right but it was a "privilege" under Virginia Law.

A Bar owner or anyone of his ABC Managers could deny that drinking privilege to anyone and even deny anyone admittance into the ABC Licensed drinking establishment. This authority under the ABC laws allowed the Bar owner to protect his business and his customers by excluding undesirable patrons from even entering his property. Anyone involved in a fight was ample justification for the Bar owner to permanently ban them from your establishment.

When I banished Ron from the Chesterfield Hotel, Cory tried to defend him by claiming I was picking on him. Although I did not like Cory's boyfriend Ron I never said anything against him until now, as Ron had become a threat to our business. Cory tried to make my purely business decision to banish Ron from the Hotel, a personal one and we had our first argument about Ron and it was never really resolved.

Just because I had banished Ron from the Chesterfield Hotel did not stop Ron from drinking at the other Bars in Hopewell and then coming back to the Chesterfield Hotel to start another fight. When Cory tried to defend him again, I told her the next time he came into the Hotel I would have him arrested.

I would not tolerate Ron's type of behavior from any of our other customers and neither would she. Ron behaved himself for about a week and one night he came after me on the street as I was coming back from a City Council Meeting. I nearly killed him before I realized this was not Vietnam. I had spent too much time in Vietnam where I learned you did not stop until whoever attacked you was dead as a dying man can still kill you in his last breath.

Fortunately, several men in a passing car jumped out to stop the fight. This was the last straw and Cory knew it. What I did not expect was Cory packing up her things and leaving Hopewell with him while I was away on business. When I returned, I found none of the Hotel's daily deposits were made since I left a week ago and somehow Ron had gotten three Hotel checks with Cory's signature on them. Ron had gone to three different Branches of our Bank and cashed the three checks for five hundred dollars, which was the limit to Cory's signature authority on the Hotel's Checking Account at the Bank.

Without Cory making the Hotel's Bank deposits for a week, the three 500 dollar checks bounced and the Bank would not assume any responsibility for honoring the bad checks. I did not want to believe my sister was a willing accomplice to these criminal acts until I realized the 12-year age gap was enough of a difference between us and maybe I did not really know her that well. When the arrest warrants were issued, I had to include Cory and it would be up to the Court to establish her guilt or innocence.

It was less than a month before I found out where Cory went. My sister Sue Ann called me from Wisconsin to tell me she had wired Cory 500 dollars in Florida to get back home. Cory's boyfriend had gotten drunk and totaled her car. When they ran out of money, he left her in a Motel Room after he had beaten her up so badly the Motel Clerk found her unconscious on the floor. Until Sue Ann received Cory's phone call she had no idea Cory had left Hopewell. Under the circumstances of how Cory had left Hopewell, I did not believe it was my place to tell Sue Ann about all my problems with Cory's boyfriend and her decision to leave Hopewell.

The main air-conditioner for the Chesterfield Hotel's bar room broke down and it was estimated it would take a week to get it fixed. I shifted the Bar into the Hotel's Private dining room and I put a sign on the door to tell our customers the Hotel's Bar was three doors down from the main entrance. Three doors down was close enough to Dolly Pardon's popular song " _Two_ _Doors Down_ " where she sang the lyrics claiming they were having a party and the Chesterfield Hotel's private dining room became " _The Three Doors Down_."

However, after the Air-condition repairmen attempted to fix it he said I could have a new one for the cost to get the old one fixed. With the Hotel's customers happy with the Three Doors Down, I used this opportunity to remodel the old bar into an attractive restaurant and renamed it the "Landmark. Restaurant." I needed to find a new Manager to run the Landmark restaurant and hotel as even with my reduced hours managing Harpers Ferry and James River Imports and Development Corporation I did not have enough time to keep up with running the day to day business of the Chesterfield Hotel.

I was discussing my Hotel problems with Joe Huey and his family while I was their guest for dinner. Joe was a member of the NSSA Team the Richmond Volunteer Militia and he had an attractive daughter who was looking for a job. She had been an assistant restaurant manager at a Richmond Restaurant that had recently closed.

I had met Tiffney when I first came to Virginia at a Skirmish held on the rifle range of Fort Lee. I had no idea how old she was and I had flirted with her between shooting Team relays. She was not only good looking, she had a quick mind and a sharp tongue, who could dish it out as well as she got it.

I did not know the Team I had joined as an extra shooter was in a neck and neck tie with her father's team going into the final event of the skirmish. Her father's team, the Richmond Volunteer Militia had won the Spring Nationals and they were shooting on the first relay while my team was on the third relay.

Water-filled beer cans was the final event of the Skirmish. I had just loaded my musket when I heard Tiffney yell out "You don't have a chance to beat the RVM." When I turned around and yelled back "It ain't over until the fat lady sings." I noticed Tiffney standing next to her father who I had known for years and he was holding a stopwatch to verify my team's time.

Shooting water-filled beer cans had always been one of my best shooting events in Team Competition and I had been shooting well all day. Within a second after the whistle blow starting the event my first beer can exploded. 17 seconds later my next beer can blew up taking another beer can with it. My third shot came 16 seconds later and I clipped the bottom of the beer can enough to see it was hit and leaking water. My last shot took out the Team's last beer can 16 seconds later for a 51. 2 second Team Event.

When I looked back at Tiffney and her father, he was shaking his head in disbelief as my Team had beaten the RVM by more than 6 seconds to win the Skirmish. When my Team cleared the firing line, Tiffney's father came over to congratulate me on my fine shooting and he wanted to know how I could shoot so fast.

I shared a trick I had learned with him. During the Civil War, the musket cartridges were wrapped in paper and a soldier would tear open the paper with his teeth, pour the black gunpowder into the barrel of his musket and then ram the bullet down the muzzle with his ramrod. As the methods of making cartridges evolved in the NSSA's shooting competition, a reusable cardboard tube replaced the paper cartridges and then plastic tubes had replaced them.

However, the traditional method of separating the bullet from the black powder in the plastic tube using his teeth had not changed. A musket shooter would separate the bullet from the black powder in the plastic tube by bringing up the cartridge to his mouth and using his teeth to extract the bullet from the plastic tube. He would hold the bullet there while he poured the black powder down the barrel. The shooter would then grab the bullet from his teeth and load it into his musket.

My loading procedure separated the bullet from the cartridge tube just below the muzzle of my musket and I held the bullet in my fingers while I poured the black powder into the muzzle. I did not need to reach backup to my mouth to get the bullet as it was already next to the muzzle. I was saving the 4 second loading time it took for other shooters to bring the cartridge to their mouth and then retrieve the bullet they I had put in their teeth.

I kept my ramrod in my left hand, rather than leaning it against a bayonet most shooters placed in the ground next to their shooting position. By holding my ramrod in my left had I saved another 2 seconds it took to reach for it and replace the ramrod against the bayonet stuck in the ground.

Tiffney's father had been one of the first 8 men on the southern musket team to compete against a northern 8-man musket team in the competition called a Skirmish. Their Skirmish competition attracted other 8 men teams, which grew into the formal organization of the North South Skirmish Association.

After that Skirmish at Fort Lee, Joe and I became better friends. Joe had invited me for dinner a number of times. After dinner, we would talk about shooting and what it was like as the NSSA grew to become a National Organization before I became a member in 1957.

Tiffney loved hearing our stories about shooting and she was a very good shot just like her brother, who was on the A Team of the RVM. However, the NSSA had not allowed women to become members yet.

Joe had been one of the people who influenced me to make the reproduction of the 1861 Springfield in Harpers Ferry Arms Company. He was a major supporter in my fight with the NSSA over the approval of my Springfields. He bought one of my first reproduction Maynard Carbines and his shooting it very well had promoted more sales.

On this particular night after talking about the changes I was making in the Chesterfield Hotel, the conversation shifted into a strange job interview. It was more like a round table discussion where Tiffney, her father and her mother would interject questions. When I knew Tiffney was seriously interested in working for me I told her what I expected my manager to do.

"What I am looking for is a Hotel and Restaurant Manager who is capable of running the place whether I am there or not. By that I mean, you will have the authority to hire and fire the kitchen's staff, all the waiters and waitresses you will need to make the business work. You will be responsible for ordering all the food, preparing the menus and making sure the Kitchen staff follow the recipes and prepare the meals correctly.

You will be responsible for the profit and loss of the Hotel and the Restaurant. When I am not in town, you will supervise the three Shift Managers of the _Three Doors Down_ Bar. They have the same independent authority to manage their Shifts as you would have in managing the Hotel and Restaurant but someone still needs to be in charge of everything.

I am renovating the Hotel's dining room while the new air-conditioner is being installed and I would like you to help me decorate the Landmark Restaurant. We need to pick out the carpet and the furniture and make it look like a really nice place to have dinner as there will not be any other place like it in Hopewell." I said as I offered Tiffney the job.

Tiffney told me she could do that, based on her previous experience and the only question she had was what I was willing to pay her. I offered her 1,000-dollars a month to start and when she made the restaurant profitable, she would receive a 10% monthly bonus of the profits. Both Tiffney's parents seem to think that was fair but Tiffney wanted an extra 5% bonus when the restaurant's profits reached a specific amount.

I was pleased to accept Tiffney's counter offer, as she was already thinking ahead like a businessperson who wanted to profit from her efforts and Tiffney came to work the next day.

Tiffney brought several decorators sample books, which contained the available drape and carpet materials to help us establish the right color combinations for the dining room. After studying, the dining room she suggested adding a covered salad bar, built around the center column in the dining room. The walls and the ceiling of the Landmark Restaurant had been repainted an antique white but with the removal of the old bar the wall behind it was now an empty white space. Tiffney suggested covering that wall with 1-foot square mirrors above the wainscoting to add depth to the room.

We had just started to discuss color combinations when the man from the Carpet Shop Tiffney had called came into the Hotel. He brought a number of Carpet samples he had in stock as Tiffney had told him she was only interested in the Carpet he could install this week. When we selected a brown and beige mixed deep piled carpet he told us about a woman who had made chocolate colored drapes for a client of his but once the drapes were installed the client did not like them. He measured the windows in the Landmark Restaurant and he claimed the drapes would fit as if we had ordered them. He called the woman and she arrived before I signed the Carpet order.

The woman wisely brought not only the drapes and the valances but she also brought all the fixtures to hang them. When she hung the drapes and the valance on one window, the dark chocolate color made the white walls take on a rich glow. I could see by the look in Tiffney's eyes she really like them. Tiffney took me aside and told me the material alone in these drapes would cost twice as much as she was asking for them.

Two days later while Tiffney and I were buying furniture for the Hotel's dining room the mirrors were install on the wall behind where the old bar had stood. None of the chandeliers we looked at looked right or the stored did not have enough of them.

The next day while the carpet was being installed Tiffney and I went to Richmond to the Antique Emporium known to have unusual fixtures and lights. We found the perfect chandeliers made with large thin slices of pink seashells held together with brass wire. The light from the 6-small electric candles made the whole chandelier glow. They had one more chandelier than we needed but the price was right and we bought them all.

When we installed the chandeliers, we had them put on a dimmer switch to adjust the lights to create the proper atmosphere in the Dining Room. Friday afternoon after the delivery of the Dining Room furniture, we covered the tables with the Ivory tablecloths and put out the chocolate colored napkins. We then added the new dishes, glass wear and place settings to each table to see how it would look and it was impressive.

Over the weekend, while I worked on the advertizing campaign Tiffney planned to conduct job interviews to hire her Staff. The response to our local "Help Wanted Ad" in the _Hopewell News_ brought hundreds of people looking for a job, any job where an employer would take their application. If this was a reflection of the economic conditions in the Hopewell community, where the Chemical Plants paid top salaries to their employees than what was the financial circumstances of the rest of the country.

Tiffney was overwhelmed with the number of applicants waiting in line outside of the Chesterfield Hotel. She came to me for my advice on how to deal with them, as she could not interview all of them and she did not have enough applications. While Tiffney went to the Office Supply Store to buy more Employment Applications, I copied the Kitchen Staff Applications on blue paper to make them easy to identify.

I made an announcement before we handed out the Employment Applications. I thanked them all for coming and asked those who were applying for Kitchen positions to step forward. I gave them a blue form and told them to go inside the Hotel and complete it.

As Tiffney and I passed out the applications, we told everyone we would contact them if they had the qualifications we wanted. Those we were only putting in an application to keep their Unemployment Benefits kept the applications as proof of their job seeking efforts and did not turn them in.

The customer's first impressions of the restaurant staff can make or break a new business. One of the best ways to judge an applicant was to look at them and ask yourself if you would feel comfortable with this person serving your meal. If the person presented a good image, we would sign our full name on the top of the application and we would ask them to come back and wait. If they did not have this image, we would only sign our first name to the application and say nothing about coming back. These employment applications would not receive a second look.

Tiffney spent most of Saturday afternoon interviewing Cooks and Cooks helpers, while I screened out the applicants we did not want as our dining room staff. Any applicant who could not fill out a readable application would not be able to write a Dinner Order and anyone that did not sign the application might have trouble following instructions.

Employment histories that lack the name and telephone number of the applicant's previous employers was a reflection of an unfavorable working relationship with their supervisors and those applications were also discarded.

When I finished screening all the Employment Applications there were less than 20 candidates I would pass on to Tiffney. Tiffney was exhausted after she finished her last interview but she was excited about two candidates she felt were well qualified to manage the Hotel's kitchen. I had the feeling Tiffney wanted some guidance on choosing the right person for the position and I suggested we go out for dinner to discuss the merits of each candidate.

By dessert and coffee, Tiffney had shared her impressions of each candidate and she still could not decide which person would be better suited to manage the kitchen for the Landmark Restaurant. My suggestion was to check out their references and then have them prepare a complete dinner much like an audition for the position.

The Grand Opening of the Landmark Restaurant was the next Saturday night with over a hundred distinguished guests from the State and surrounding community. The next day the Landmark Restaurant held an all-you-could-eat buffet from noon until 6 pm and it was a roaring success.

Monday through Friday Tiffney attracted a sizable lunch crowd with a soup, salad and make your own sandwich buffet. The real test of a successful new restaurant would be next weekend as we would be open Friday and Saturday night for dinner. Friday was reasonably successful but Saturday, which had been a slow day in the Hotel due to the midnight closing hour for drinking had a packed house. Confident Tiffney could manage the Hotel on her own I left for Germany on business.

A client of James River Imports and Development Corporation was interested in producing aluminum arrows like the ones made by the Easton Company. These aluminum arrow shafts had an extremely high tinsel strength beyond the normal capabilities of aluminum and they were perfectly round making them the most sought after arrows on the market.

After Peter Norman came to me about making these arrows, he took me to meet Frank Carter an Archery Sports Dealer. I shot these arrows with a Compound Bow in the indoor Archery Range set up in the back of his establishment. To me shooting was shooting even if it was with a bow and arrow. After I had shot another arrow into the center of my first arrow, I was impressed with my shooting and how well these arrows shot. This feat was like the stories of Robin Hood when he shot his arrow through the center of an arrow that was already in the center of the target to win the archery match held by the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Frank Carter retrieved my two arrows and he placed them in a special wire hanger he made. My name and the date was inscribed on a card on the hanger and he carried it to a trophy wall where hundreds of other centered arrows where on display. Frank told me I had done well for the first time I shot these arrows but it was not all that unusual, as evident by all the others who had done it. Frank explained the combination of the Easton arrows and the Compound Bows had change the level of archery competition to limit the Archers to shoot only one arrow in each target much like the individual targets shot in a 22 Rifle Match.

Frank gave me a dozen Easton arrows, as examples of what the manufacturer had to produce to be competitive in the Archery Market. We discussed the quantities of aluminum arrow shafts for the first production run and the price they were willing to pay for them. Peter and Frank had additional marketing numbers and their anticipated market share that went into the millions of dollars.

Big numbers and millions of dollars did not impress me as everyone who came to me with a great idea could claim how much money we would make if I could produce the product they wanted. The real question was if they had the money to pay for this great idea, as I would not invest any more time in this deal or have a manufacturer invest in the development of these aluminum arrows without their proof of financial backing. I never lost a dime in any project that had financial backing and I found it was better to walk away from a deal until the client had the money to finance it.

Since I had established a number of contacts with potential investors when I was looking for money for Harpers Ferry Arms Company I knew what types of investments they were willing to consider. If the client needed an Investor to support their project, I would offer that service in a separate prepaid contract to cover my time and efforts.

"All right gentlemen I am impressed with the aluminum arrows and the numbers you have presented. How do you suggest we proceed?" I said setting the stage for what I needed to find out.

I let them talk about what they wanted me to do and when they were finished, I asked them how they were going to pay me and finance their project. This was reality time and it was the point in any deal where it was time to cut bait or fish. Far too many clients were operating on the mistaken belief their project was so good there would be investors standing in line to give them money. The reality was an Investor would not risk his money unless the Client had already risked everything they owned and they were willing to pledge their assets to the Investor as collateral against the success of the project.

As expected, Peter Norman and Frank Carter had focused on how great their product was and not how it would be financed. It was time to give them a lesson on International business, the ways to attract Investors and the ultimate costs to make their project a success.

Once I established their net worth, I used their own Marketing numbers to come up with the amount of money they would need to get their project started. I offered to find an Investor as a separate agreement if they were willing to risk everything they owned. I explained if they were not willing to risk everything they owned as a demonstration of their faith in the success of their project than no Investor would be willing to risk his money either.

When I had their verbal agreement to the terms and conditions of my offer to find an Investor, I gave each of them a Financial Statement Form and I asked them to complete it and attach a copy of their last three years Income Tax Returns. I advised them to seek legal counsel before they signed my company's Contract Agreement to find an Investor for a fee and I made sure they understood my Contract required a conditional financial lean on any real property they owned.

The only question I could not answer was how long it would take to find an Investor and I advised them to seek an alternative Investor while I was attempting to find them one. Three days later, we met in their attorney's office. When I told them, the terms and conditions of my Contract to find an Investor were not negotiable they signed it.

I already had a business relationship with a German Company that had a subsidiary company involved in aluminum products and they were interested in the aluminum arrow project. With A R Dixon's past relationship with a German Investor, he was the first person I contacted.

Time is money and it is the most important rule in the investment community. When you had the opportunity to present an investment, if you could not outline the amount of money you were looking for, the risks involved to the Investor and how much money he would receive for his investment in the first 15 minutes, your chances of selling the deal was lost.

A R Dixon liked the numbers in the aluminum arrow project especially since a German Company was involved and I had already secured my Clients assets. The investment deal was made within a week and the German Company made two dozen test samples that were as good if not better then the Easton Arrow Shafts.

This trip to Germany was to negotiate the final terms and conditions of the Production Contract and once the Contract was signed, we would have 10 days to open the International letters of Credit to the manufacturer.

However, the World International Economic conditions had forced the German Government to devalue their Doutsche Mark to 1. 64 Marks to the US Dollar. At this rate of currency exchange, the manufacture could not make the aluminum arrows at a price we could sell them and be competitive with the Easton Arrows. A conditional Production Contract was signed and we would open the International Letter of Credit when the Doutsche Mark reached the currency exchange rate of 2-Marks to a US Dollar. Unfortunately, the currency rate of exchange never reached the 2-Marks to a US Dollar during the period of the conditional Production Contract.

Although I was able to get a 6-month extension on the Production Contract, the World Economy along with the United States Economy was heading for a disaster as interest rates continued to climb and more and more people were out of work. Some deals no matter how good they might be, fail for reasons beyond our control and this arrow project was one of them.

The roof of the Chesterfield Hotel started to leak and then the leak turned into a flood that dropped the ceilings in the Hotel's rooms and took out the ceiling in the Landmark Restaurant closing the main Hotel down. The kitchen and the Three Doors Down bar were separate buildings attached to the main Hotel building and this roof damage would not affect them.

The roofing company who had installed the roof had gone out of business and the company who guaranteed the roofing material used by the roofing company claimed the roof was installed improperly and therefore they could not be held responsible. The Insurance Company claimed this water damage was the result of improper installation and they rejected my claim. While I was fighting with the Roofing Material Company and with the Insurance Company, the Bank would not consider a loan to repair the damage.

I sold my store at a loss and I moved all of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's tools, machinery and equipment to a friend's barn in Winchester Virginia. I move my things from my apartment above my store to the empty apartment on the second floor above the _Three Doors Down_ Bar, Cory had used before she left Hopewell.

The Roofing Material Company finally agreed to replace the Hotel's roof for the cost of their Roofing Company installing it. Once the roof was repaired, I concentrated my efforts on repairing the Hotel Rooms, as their income would pay the Mortgage. The price of building materials to fix the Hotel Rooms had doubled even for cash money as the Building Supply Companies could make more money charging high interest rates on their Accounts.

With the Landmark Restaurant closed, Tiffney decided to go back to college and she agreed to come back to work when I had fixed the restaurant. I had just repainted the Landmark Restaurant when the ceiling fell in again. It was not the roof this time. Someone blocked up a toilet in one of the Hotel Rooms and it had continued to overrun sending water through the floor and into the ceiling of the Landmark Restaurant until the weight of the water became too much and it fell in.

Economic conditions across the Country continued to decline by the time, I reopened the Landmark Restaurant. No matter what I did, the magic of what Tiffney had done in the Landmark Restaurant was lost. Even the Hotel's Sunday "All-you-could-eat-buffet" did not make enough to pay the salaries of the Kitchen's Staff who prepared it or the people who served it. After a month of losing money, I discontinued the buffet. The only break-even business in the Landmark Restaurant was the daily morning breakfast trade with Sunday being the best day as the Hotel could not serve any alcohol in Hopewell until noon.

Over the next few months, several people thought they could operate the Landmark Restaurant better than I could. I was more than willing to let them try to make the Landmark Restaurant a success as keeping the Hotel's ABC license was depended upon food sales. I gave them the opportunity to run the Landmark Restaurant under a favorable short-term month-to-month lease agreement. After three people failed, no one else was willing to try it.

I was not the only one to feel the effects of the tight money and poor economic conditions, in my Hotel's Bar and Restaurant. One of the city's other Bars closed and I did not see any increase in my beer sales. When people do not spend money in a Bar it is a reflection of just how serious the people were about spending their money even in Hopewell.

# 26. HIDDEN DANGERS

The customers of the Three Doors Down Bar were like most people who used a local bar to socialize and interact with their neighbors. To me they were my source for gathering information and my sounding board to understand what was going on in the community as they represented a cross section of the city that reflected the concerns of the people of Hopewell over the news and events of the day. I could know from just listening to their conversations what actually happened in the surrounding area of Hopewell within hours of when it occurred.

Since 1974, a grayish-white powder was blowing through parts of downtown Hopewell. No one outside of those who worked in the Life Science Products factory knew what it was and even the employees who worked there did not know how dangerous it was.

In 1975 Hopewell made the National News when Dan Rather of 60 Minutes exposed the grayish-white powder as the insecticide Kepone and the cause of the mysterious sickness of 29 employees of the Life Science Products factory. The further exposure of the wide spread contamination of Kepone of the James River caused Virginia's Governor Mills Godwin to shut down the River to fishing and Hopewell received a Federal Grant of 43 Million dollars to build a Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant. This Wastewater Treatment Plant was sold to the people of Hopewell by the City Council, as a solution to deal with Kepone and I knew this claim was not true.

My brother Dick was a Federal Lobbyist for the largest Private Engineering Firm in the World and they were experts in the field of Wastewater Treatment Plants. I had discussed this Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant with Dick and he sent me the design specifications of a wastewater treatment plant. There was no way this Regional Wastewater Treatment plant could be redesigned to treat chemical waste. The treatment of Chemical waste required a special processing to break down the complex chemical compounds into harmless properties before they entered any waterway or wastewater treatment facility.

If these chemical wastes were not broken down, the harsh chemical compounds could kill the bacteria necessary to process the normal waste in a Sewage Treatment Plant. Killing the bacteria would render the Waste Water Treatment Plant useless, as it would be dumping raw sewage in the James River along with the untreated chemicals.

If this Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant could not treat Kepone then there had to be another reason why the Hopewell City Council had pushed it through. The Allied Chemical Corporation had manufactured Kepone in Hopewell since 1966 and 12 years later the Federal Environment Protection Agency would establish Kepone contamination existed in the James River since 1967. Unfortunately, Kepone was not the only untreated chemical Allied Chemical Corporation was dumping into the James River and they were buying "time" in the hope of avoiding further exposure.

Surely, Allied Chemical Corporation had to know how dangerous Kepone was when they dumped the untreated chemical in the James River. I have always speculated as I do now Allied Chemical Corporation knew of this danger and it was the reason why in 1974, two former Allied Chemical employees, a Plant Manager and a Leading Chemist of Allied Chemical established the separate Life Science Products Corporation.

The Life Science Products Corporation had legally put Allied Chemical Corporation at arm's length to the manufacturing of Kepone in the back of an abandoned Gas Station. This legal loophole was exposed for what it was, as all the Kepone Life Science Products produced was under an exclusive delivery contract to the Allied Chemical Corporation.

Many of the workers and some of the Supervisors who were building this Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant became regular customers of the _Three Doors Down_ Bar. They like the other customers would talk about their work and the pressure they were getting from the City to complete this job.

I would find out later the company who actually built the 43 million dollar Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant was only responsible for its physical structure and it had no contractual obligation to insure it functioned properly. Apparently with all the pressure Allied Chemical was putting on the City of Hopewell to build this plant no one in the City checked the terms and conditions of the Contract. When the City took over the operation of this Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant, none of the instruments and gages used to monitor the wastewater treatment process were hooked up.

In spite of this known faulty condition of the Wastewater Treatment Plant, Allied Chemical Corporation insisted on testing the Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant and sent their sewage and untreated chemical waste into the Plant. However, this was a legal trick as once the Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant allowed one of the Regional users to send their waste the City of Hopewell was responsible for treating it.

I was told according to the law, which I could never find, the city could not shut off the flow of waste from the Allied Chemical Corporation. What Allied Chemical Corporation had done was transfer their responsibility to treat their chemical waste to the City of Hopewell.

As expected, the chemicals killed the bacteria necessary to treat sewage and after the huge sewage processing lagoons of the Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant filled up, the raw sewage and untreated chemicals flowed directly into the James River.

When the EPA confirmed this, the City of Hopewell was forced to hire another Sewage Treatment Company to come in and fix the nonoperational plant. To pay for the use of this nonoperational Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant and the additional cost to fix it, the City Council passed a Sewer Tax on the people of Hopewell. This new Tax was imposed on the citizens of Hopewell during an emergence meeting in Executive Session of City Council in violation of the law, which required the City to hold Public Hearings before any new Tax could be legally assessed.

I was not the only one to challenge this new Tax but our voices and objections did not change the City Council's Action. Little did I know by speaking out against this illegal Tax and presenting evidence the City Council did not have the authority to pass this new Tax during an Executive Session, I was seen as a serious threat to exposing the illegal actions of the officers and managers of Allied Chemical's plant.

The exposure of Allied Chemical Corporation's deceptions could create a huge financial liability for them. Facing this financial liability that could bankrupt the company, became the justification for the Officers and the Directors of Allied Chemical Corporation to do what they believed was necessary in the increasing misuse of government agencies to protect their Hopewell Chemical Plant at all costs.

The simplest way to remove me as a threat would be to buy me out. However, they first used the wrong man and I did not take his offer to buy the Hotel for 20,000 dollars more than I paid for it seriously. When a Hopewell lawyer made a similar offer, I started to wonder what he knew that I did not as he was one of the attorneys involved in some of the questionable sales to the Housing Authority. I told him the hotel was not for sale hoping he would raise his offer. When he increased the offer 5,000 dollars I told him I would think about it.

To increase the pressure on me to sell the Hotel they tried to get my ABC license revoked by sending in an old man they claimed I had served when he was drunk. After the ABC Agents had written their complaint and left the Chesterfield Hotel, I took the old man to the hospital for a Blood test. When the Hospital Blood Test found there was only a trace of alcohol in the old man's blood and that trace was the equivalent of drinking one beer, the Virginia Alcohol and Beverage Commission dropped their complaint without a Hearing.

The Alcohol and Beverage Commission then sent in their Auditors to establish my food sales were not enough to maintain my Hotel's ABC License. Food sales were determined by the sales receipts of the food purchased and not what you sold the food for as the Hotel was just breaking even to cover the cost of the food. Fortunately my experience in keeping the books and accounts for the Sundry Fund in the Army and in my other Companies clearly established my food sales were more than enough to keep my Hotel's ABC License.

The IRS came next to seize all my personal, business and Corporate Income Tax Records for a detail audited of my Income Tax Returns since 1972, when I formed Harpers Ferry Arms Company. When the IRS Agents saw all the boxes of my Income Tax Records' they sent for a truck to pick them up.

This delay gave me a chance to call my Corporate Attorney. He told me to cooperate with them but make sure I got a receipt for everything they took. However, when he understood the number of Tax years and how many boxes of Tax Records where involved he changed his mind and told me to call him when the truck arrived as he wanted to be there.

When the truck arrived and the IRS Agents were about to load my Income Tax Records I asked the senior IRS Agent how he intended to document and give me a receipt for everything the IRS intended to take. He claimed he did not need to give me such a detailed receipt until my Attorney arrived and he corrected the IRS Agent's opinion with the referenced IRS Regulation.

We ended up weighing and putting a number on each sealed box before they were listed by weight on the IRS inventory sheets. 5 months later, the IRS claimed I could not take the Federal Highway Fuel Tax deduction on the Gas I used in my Airplane to conduct my business, as I was not a Commercial Airline. My Attorney resolved that issue using the IRS regulations and the IRS return my Income Tax Records a year later when they could not find anything else wrong in my Tax Returns.

# 27. CAROL CAME BACK INTO MY LIFE

One Saturday afternoon while I was filling in at the Three Doors Down for the girl who had called in to say she was coming in late, I received a phone call from Carol. She had tracked me down after finding a Harpers Ferry Arms Company advertisement in a Gun Magazine in her dentist's office.

Years ago, Bob Bandyk who was now the current Commander of the 5th Virginia Cavalry had told her I had a Civil War gun company and seeing the advertisement she just knew Harpers Ferry Arms Company had to be my company. When she called the company at Berkeley Plantation the phone company gave her the Hopewell number and no one answered she called the Hopewell Police Department who told her she could reach me at the Chesterfield Hotel.

It had been over 12-years since I last talked with Carol but hearing her voice flooded my mind and heart with memories and emotions I thought I had permanently locked away in the past. I told her I would call her back as the girl who should be working the bar had not shown up yet and I needed to change the empty Beer Keg in the Bar.

By the time I called Carol back, she had booked reservations on a Flight to Richmond Airport arriving at 11 pm. She said if I did not meet her fight she would stay at the Airport's Hotel and fly back home the next day. This was so unlike the Carol I knew. It was as if she believed seeing me, was one thing in her life worth risking everything and she was not going to waste another moment to determine if we belonged in each other's life.

After Carol hung up, I started to argue with myself about meeting her as I thought I had put her out on my life for good after the second time we broke up. My heart won out over all my doubts and apprehensions as I convinced myself if she was willing to take this risk to see me again, I had nothing to lose by meeting her.

I did not know what to expect as I anxiously waited for her at the Arrival Gate for Carol's fight into Richmond's Airport. I was having some serious doubts about even being here to meet her as people can physically change a lot in 12 years and for all I knew Carol could weigh 400 pounds and I would not recognize her. I was looking for a redhead when Carol, as a gorgeous blonde woman flew into my arms as if we had never parted and the years we had missed never happened. As we drove back to Hopewell, Carol told me about what happened after we parted.

She had gotten married again and completed her Master's Degree but her marriage had fallen apart five years ago when she realized she did not love him. I was surprised to learn because of her long hours involved in her position as a Vocational Rehabilitation Coordinator with the State of Ohio working with the deaf, blind and profoundly disabled, her son Scott was living with her parents.

In the back of my mind, I still had a major concern about our basic philosophical and political differences over the United States involvement in the war in Vietnam and my military service in that war. Although the United States was no longer involved in Vietnam, the repercussions of how we had pulled out of Vietnam were affecting our ability to deal with the Communists and the loss of prestige with our Allies. These differences were as the bad seeds sown among the good that grew up and choked out what otherwise had been a great relationship. I could not think of an easy way to approach our past differences without upsetting the apple cart before we had a chance to invest any time to see if we belonged in each other's lives.

"Carol I need to lay my cards on the table." I began.

"Oh no, you're not married are you?" She exclaimed.

"No, I am not married." I told her and I noticed a sigh of relief. "But I do have a problem I need to discuss with you. Do you have any idea why I broke off our engagement?"

"I think I do. It took me a long time before I realized I was expecting you to give up your career in the Army if you loved me. After I divorced John, I went into therapy to find out what was wrong with me, as I had two failed marriages and I lost the man I really love.

It was not easy to admit I had been swept up in the Peace Movement and the Anti-Vietnam hysteria more as a challenge to my parents who had build a cocoon around me and told me I was not good enough to do anything. It did not matter I had overcome my blindness to attend college like everyone else and go on to get my Masters Degree. I am not even sure they believed I could get a job and support myself. When I did, they still treated me as if I were the poor little blind girl the State of Ohio took in as a charity case.

I have learned I am not here on this earth to win recognition from my parents or live my life to gain their approval, as no matter what I do, I am the only one who needs to feel satisfied with my life. If I am lucky I will find someone who loves me for what I am and not who they want me to be.

You have been the one consistent person in my Life. You did not find me worthless as my parents did and you loved me in spite of my blindness. You faithfully stood by me and gave me encouragement when I needed it the most. I am sorry I did not recognize how valuable you are in my life until I realized how unselfish you were.

It took a while to realize how foolish I had been to demand you give up your career to prove you loved me. This is why I needed to find you and nothing else matters until I know if we are star crossed lovers as you once claim we were and we are destined to be together again in this lifetime. Does that make sense?" She asked.

"I believe it does." I said slowly as my mind dissected what she said.

I have always believed things happened for a purpose and we may not fully understand the reasons when they happen but we would, when the Good Lord wants us to know it.

The idea of star crossed lovers and the way people react to us, is influenced by the Stars, the Good Lord put in motion to affect our behavior. I made a point in my business dealings to establish when a person I was negotiating with was born. There is no question, we tend to establish relationships and gravitate toward people we get along with and avoid those we find for some unknown reason in spite of our best efforts to establish a relationship does not happen. I found individuals born under certain Star Signs in the Zodiac got along better while those born under other Star Signs did not.

When I knew, what Sign of the Zodiac the person I was dealing with was born under I would know if I had to be extra careful and make sure I was very clear in my negotiations with someone who had a Star Sign that would be at odds with my Star Sign. That simple insight was enough to overcome our tendency to be opposed to each other and I was able to make a fair and honest deal with them.

In my relationship with Carol, we should not have gotten along as I was born on June 28th, which made me a Cancer, and she was born on September 26th, which made her a Libra. This should have put us at right angles to each other in the Zodiac Chart. The only explanation was maybe the bases for establishing your birth sign was wrong and it was the time of conception when you became a living independent soul established your Star Sign. Carol had been a 10-month baby who should have been a Virgo and Virgo's and Cancer's were highly compatible.

"I am glad you came, Carol and I admire you courage to follow your convictions." I quickly added as I was satisfied she had somehow known how to respond to relieve my doubts about our past philosophical differences.

Normally I would have been in the Hotel when the Bar was closed and I would count out the receipts, verified the totals and take the money upstairs to my apartment. I had asked Marie to come in and close out the cash drawer while I went to the airport to pick Carol up. Marie did not like taking the money home and when I needed her to close out the Hotel she would leave the cash in a special hiding place in the bottom of the Hotel's freezer.

Picking up the cash receipts to night gave me the opportunity to show Carol the Landmark Restaurant and the Three Doors Down Bar in the Hotel. It also gave me a chance to tell her about my life since we parted. As we talked, I realized I did not have a room in the Hotel for her to stay in. I did not want her to assume I was taking advantage of her if I suggested that she should stay with me in my apartment.

My concern quickly evaporated when Carol said, "Mark, let's go to bed. I cannot wait any longer to feel your arms around me.

As tired as we both should have been this was an invitation I could not refuse. As soon as the door of my apartment closed behind us any attempt to delay or restraint ourselves' was lost. Our mutual hunger, passion and desire quickly took over us as we left a trail of discarded clothes from the door into the bedroom. Falling on the bed Carol pulled me deep inside her and she screamed as she experienced her first orgasm. I lost count of how many times Carol came before I did and we continued to make love the rest of the night like there was no tomorrow. There had never been any problem in our lovemaking as it was as if we could never get enough of each other.

Sometime after dawn we fell asleep locked in our embrace until I was awaken by a flutter from deep within her and we made love again. This time we made love very slowly as each time I moved Carol would explode with a chain of orgasms and I had to wait until she caught her breath before I moved again.

While we were taking a shower together, Carol admitted she had not experience an orgasm with another man since we parted. I wanted to tease her by saying she had made up for it last night but I knew she was confessing something that had deeply troubled her and I better let her tell me about it.

"My marriage to John was a disaster and it was not his fault as he was a handsome man who was an experienced lover as he had a number of girl friends before he met me. At first, I thought our lovemaking would get better once we were married and when it did not, I stopped faking I was having an orgasm.

We went to a Sexual Awakening Seminar, which exposed us to the complete gambit of human sexual activities from other cultures around the world. I can tell you when we completed that Seminar there was nothing I did not know about sex and how to derive sexual pleasure. John and I tried everything and I still could not have an orgasm. John became so frustrated he gave up trying to please me and he started to accuse me of being a coldhearted bitch, who would never have an orgasm.

I knew that was not true and I told him about you. He did not believe me when I told him I could have an orgasm when you walked in the room and you could drive me nearly insane with multiple orgasms all night long, just as you did last night.

Things went from bad to worse and when I found out he was seeing other women, I did not care as long as he was leaving me alone. Then he asked for a divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. There was no use fighting it, as he was right we did not have a marriage in the true sense of having a sexual relationship.

After the divorce, I became obsessed with proving I was not a coldhearted bitch and I am ashamed to admit I slept with a number of men and I even went with a few women. When nothing worked, I joined a Therapy group and saw a psychiatrist twice a week.

Two months ago, I learned my sexual repression and dysfunction was the result of my feeling guilty over demanding that you leave the Army when I knew you were making the Army your career. By this time, I had told my psychiatrist about everything you had done in the Army and all your fast promotions. He told me he had been in the Army and if he had been in your shoes, he would have made the Army his career. I had to admit you had always been honest about your intensions and I was being unreasonable and selfish to expect you to give it up.

He said I was lucky I had found someone who loved me. He then told me we seldom could choose someone who would love us and we surely did not have a choice in choosing what occupation that person had. He also said it was never too late, if I wanted to be happy and it was up to me to do something about it.

I tried to find you through the Army's Locator Service and they told me you were no longer in the Army. The last address they had for you was back in Milwaukee Wisconsin but your family had moved years ago and the phone company no longer had their new telephone number.

One day when I was in my Dentists Office, I picked up an old shooting magazine and I found an advertisement of Harpers Ferry Arms Company for Civil War and Revolutionary War guns, uniforms and equipment. Somehow, I just knew you were involved with this company.

I tracked down Bobby Bandyk, as I knew he had belonged to the 5th Virginia Cavalry years ago. He told me about your gun company Harpers Ferry Arms and he gave me the Company's phone number at Berkeley Plantation. When I called it, the phone company gave me the Hopewell number. The rest you know as I am here." Carol concluded as the water from the shower continued to spray over us.

I was at a lost as to what I should say about what Carol had told me. I just kissed her and that kiss was the best response I could give her now. Carol stayed a week and the next Sunday I took Carol back to the Richmond Airport.

She came back three more times before we agreed to live together. By then we both had become comfortable in our relationship and neither of us could come up with a reason why we should not test our relationship further. The deciding factor to making this commitment came when she agreed to do the laundry, as she knew I hated to do laundry. Carol only asked if we broke up, I would help her find a job before she had to leave the Hotel. That was more than reasonable and Carol quit her job with the State of Ohio. Carol packed up all her things and her dog, Sugar Bear in a U-Haul truck. She had a girl friend drive it down to Hopewell. She arrived on Valentine's Day and we always consider February 14th as our Anniversary.

Carol wanted to help me run the Chesterfield Hotel and manage the kitchen. I told her she did not know what she was getting into and the first time a customer pinched her buns or used course language she could only smile back at them. She insisted she could handle it, as she would not be working the bar.

Carol thought she was really helping a woman she had hired as a morning cook who had been out of work for over five years and had been referred by the Department of Virginia State Rehabilitation. The Virginia State Rehabilitation Coordinator brought the woman for a job interview and confirmed the job Carol was offering the woman was within her doctor's work restrictions.

However, Carol was now on the other side of the rehabilitation table as the employer and she did not notice the woman's attempts to sabotage the job interview. Carol kept telling the woman she would work with her and ease her into doing the job. The woman knew with the Virginia State Rehabilitation Coordinator at the interview she had no choice but to take the job, Carol was offering to her.

Carol had shown the woman how to make breakfast biscuits that were puffed up and as light as a feather. However, the next morning the woman deliberately made flat, tough and tasteless lumps of dough, which were more like used hockey pucks than like the biscuits Carol had made. Carol wanted to fire the woman when she had showed the woman again how to make the biscuits and the next morning the woman made hockey pucks.

This was Carol's first rehabilitation experience in dealing with injured workers, who had learned how to live off the Workman's Compensation system. These people did not appreciate the job opportunity an employer gave them to return to work, as a job would end their Compensation checks and they had no intensions of losing those free benefits.

I suggested rather than firing the woman, Carol should contact the Virginia State Rehabilitation Coordinator and file a complaint that the woman was deliberately sabotaging her job to get fired. I had to show Carol the amount of Workman's Compensation Insurance the Hotel was paying before she understood what it was costing the woman's former employer for the last five years when the woman was fully capable of going back to work and maybe she had never suffered an injury in the first place.

The next afternoon a different Virginia State Rehabilitation Coordinator was in the Hotel when the woman made the biscuits just like the biscuits Carol had shown her how to make. Carol offered the hot biscuits to the customers in the Bar making sure the State Coordinator had one. He and the other customers loved them.

The next morning both Virginia State Rehabilitation Coordinators came into the hotel to order biscuits with their breakfasts and they were served hockey pucks. When the two Virginia State Rehabilitation Coordinators confronted the woman, she walked off the job.

# 28. TESTING THE POLITICAL WATERS

Carol was not surprised when she learned about my involvement in the Community and my interest to help rebuild the Downtown of Hopewell. She already knew what I had done when I was the Commander of Charley Battery in Union Lake Michigan to make it a better place for everyone to live.

What had started out as an informal gathering at the Chesterfield Hotel of Businessmen interested in the Redevelopment of Downtown Hopewell after the City Council meetings had expanded to include other concerned Hopewell citizens in these meetings.

These other people had good ideas but they were afraid to stand up in a City Council meeting and express their views as they might embarrass themselves. In many ways Hopewell was still Old South where the man on the white horse told them what to do and how things would be as if this was a Pre Civil War Plantation.

This fear of speaking out and questioning the "man on the white horse" was not just a black thing as many white people in Hopewell had come from places where having an education did not mean much and they were limited to the value of their labor which had kept generations of their people at the mercy of their betters. Just because they now had higher paying jobs at the Chemical Plants, did not give them any more confidence in expressing their opinions in a public forum.

However, in the Landmark Restaurant of the Chesterfield Hotel they were not afraid to speak their minds as they thought of themselves as being with their equals. The fact I would listen to them and do the researched to get answers for their concerns about things going on in the City, gave me a greater understanding of the real issues facing the city and how to address these concerns to the City Council.

There were times after a City Council meeting I could have 20 to 30 people show up and ask to be included in the informal discussions held in the Landmark Restaurant. The hot topic for the last two City Council Meetings had been the issue of raising Property Taxes in the City. The City Manager had published the Hopewell City Budget as required by law with the recommended Tax Increase to pay for the budgeted items.

Unfortunately, the way the City Budget was published and presented in a 500 page document, it would take a skilled Accountant to understand it as the Budget's Income and Expense numbers had not been consolidated on the same page. To the average person it was like looking up a telephone number when only one number was listed on a specific page and you need the codebook's key to know what page the next correct number was located.

It took me hours and hours to establish where all the Budget's number belonged to create a spreadsheet for the City of Hopewell's proposed Budget and finally come up with a bottom line for all the City's Expenses and Income listed in the Budget. When I found out the City of Hopewell actually had over a million dollar surplus I had my Hopewell Redevelopment Business Partners review my findings to make sure I had not made a mistake.

At the next City Council Meeting, I asked to address the Council on the City's Proposed Budget. I simply stated, "After reviewing the Propose City Budget I am concerned about the proposed increase in Property Taxes when the City has over a million-dollar surplus" and then I sat down.

I had already shared my findings with three City Council Members and I had asked for their guidance on the best way to address this issue. To support my claims I gave them a copy of the spreadsheet I had made from the Published Hopewell City Budget and suggested they should have their own Accountant confirm my findings.

The next City Council Meeting was a packed house of concerned citizens who forced the City Council to reconsider the proposed Property Tax Increase when the City had a million dollar surplus. (To put this one million-dollar surplus in proper prospective it would have a current buying power equal to $3,584,229.31 for a city of 20,000 people.)

The City Council directed the City Manager to study this Property Tax increase before the City Council would review the Budget again. The people attending this City Council meeting took this as a victory for the Tax Payers and the rumors running throughout the City were as if I were David killing Goliath. If I was seen as David the giant slayer then the managers of the Hopewell Allied Chemical Plant saw me as an even greater threat when I ran for City Council.

# 29. A VERY COSTLY ELECTION

The City Council elections were coming up and one of the incumbents announced he was not seeking reelection. The City of Hopewell would elect three Council members and the two other incumbent Councilmen had become entrenched in Office so long that they were virtually assured of being reelected.

With one seat open on the City Council, I was encouraged to run for City Council. I took their encouragement seriously, when I was offered money to help finance my campaign. After discussing running for City Council with Carol and what it would take to run my Political Campaign she told me to do it.

Carol felt confident she could manage the Hotel while I ran my Campaign for City Council. I believed her as she had gain a new understanding of how business really operated. Carol's hiring of that cook had been a real business education for her as it directly challenged her working experience in the sheltered environment of the State of Ohio's Rehabilitation system.

My view of running a Political Campaign was the same as being a Military Commander who is ordered to take and hold a hill from an entrenched enemy. To accomplish this mission you needed to spend 10% of your time conducting an in depth reconnaissance of the objective and the enemy's position to establish the enemy's strength and weakness. Then you needed to spend another 10% planning how you would attack the objective with all your forces using the all of the committed direct support to win the battle.

In a Political Campaign, once you understood the strengths and weakness of your opponents you had to objectively evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses. I may have lived in Hopewell since 1971, owned two-business properties in the downtown and I had been active in Community affairs, I was still an outsider facing a politically stacked deck in a citywide election.

The black community would only support Reverend Curtis Harris even though there had not been a black elected to City Council since the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. Being a Catholic put me in the minority and running a Bar would put me at odds with the Baptists and the reminisce of the Temperance League. The one thing I had going for me politically, was 80% of all the people who lived in Hopewell were also outsiders when they came to work in the Hopewell Chemical Plants. As an outsider, I had challenged the questionable actions of the entrenched Hopewell leaders and established myself as having the knowledge and the facts to back up the positions I had taken to protect what was right and fair for all the citizens of Hopewell. If I could establish I could get things done right in Hopewell, I would have a good chance of being elected to the City Council.

My first test of the political waters was to see how quickly I could get all the required voter signatures' on my Election Petition. I knew just signing my Petition was not a real indication of actual political support as signing my Election Petition did not mean they were obligated to vote for me.

My campaign objective therefore had to be converting those who signed my petition into my voters on Election Day. The first indication of my grassroots support was easily made, as the customers of the Chesterfield Hotel took my Election Petitions to their friends and neighbors and I had more than enough voter signatures to have my name placed on the Ballot in less than a week. Rather than file my Election Petition I continued to have people gather more signatures as an inexpensive way to let more of the citizens of Hopewell become more aware I was running for City Council and that I needed their voter support.

With the names and addresses of those who had signed my Election Petition, I was looking for individuals who would be willing to become members of my Election Campaign Committee. I would need them to canvass their neighborhoods to gain additional voter support and then insure these supporters actually voted for me. I also needed to find influential volunteers to be a visible presence in each Voting Ward to hand out my campaign literature when the voters came to cast their ballots.

Every political campaign needs a campaign slogan to crystallize the key issue I represented if the voters elected me. The ideal slogan would be simple enough to reinforce why I should be elected, yet short enough to be easily recognized on my campaign buttons. I ordered 1,000 campaign buttons with the words "Corrigan Can" on them. I planned to start passing them out after I filed my Election Petition to establish my official candidacy.

So far, three other non-incumbent candidates had entered the race for City Council. It was time to do my reconnaissance on the new opposition and establish my potential of actually winning this open seat on the City Council. In studying the last ten years election results for the City Council it became evident that usually only 5,000 people had voted and each voter could vote for three candidates on their ballot the total number of actual votes in each election was significantly less than the total possible 15,000 votes. When I thought about it, if a voter only voted for his favorite candidate he was not giving his candidate's opponents any votes.

I could create a mathematical advantage if I could convince those voters who would reelect one of the two incumbents' to give me their second vote as then I would gain more votes than those candidates who were also running to fill the vacant seat and using the "Vote only for me" strategy. I also realized if the two incumbents would individually receive the largest number of votes and their supporters did not vote for the other incumbent, then getting the "second vote" from their supporters represented the largest number of votes in this election.

However, gaining political support from the two incumbent candidates to encourage their voters to support me would not be easy unless I could create some political capital I could use now or my promise of sometime in the future when they needed my support when I was elected.

In politics, to gain the support of the people it is more important to appeal to their perceptions and beliefs than to rely on logic and reason to support the facts you might present to justify receiving their vote. This same appeal also applied to gaining the support of the two incumbents running for reelection. However, I would not know how they perceived my chances of being elected to the City Council, until I asked each one of them privately. The best I could get from either of them was an understanding they would consider offering their support when they knew who else was in the race as the deadline to file an election petition was still open.

This early move to gain the support of the two incumbents who were running for reelection may have been a mistake. When these two Councilmen approached their supporters with the idea of casting a second vote for me it confirmed the rumor I was running for City Council and I had a good chance of being elected base on who the other none incumbent candidates were. My chances of being elected had scared someone when they also realized their control of the Hopewell City Council was lost. To maintain control of City Council a former retired City Councilmen announced his candidacy.

I went to the Hopewell News to read everything they had printed about this former City Councilmen. He had won reelection a number of times years ago, as he was a popular City Councilmen. His only apparent weakness was a decline in the number of votes he received in his last election. This decline in popularity may have been the reaction of the voters to his being in league with the two Council Members who were not up for election. All three of them were on the City Council when they approved the faulty contract on the Wastewater Treatment Plant and they had passed the illegal Sewer Tax in Executive Session without a public hearing.

If those examples of heavy handedness were the reasons for his decline of voter support than those issues would still be his weakness and maybe the two incumbents running for reelection would rather see me on the City Council as their allay then be faced with a known opposition if he were elected.

My research through the back editions of Hopewell News on the two Council Members who were not up for reelection reinforced my opinion they had an established alliance with the Councilmen who had decided not to run for reelection. This lost threatened their majority on the City Council and they had gone for the sure thing by encouraging the former Councilmen to make a political comeback.

Just because the two Councilmen who were not running this time opposed the election of any other candidate other than the returning Councilman did not make the two Councilmen running for reelection my allies but I could approach them as a Political Ally if they supported my election.

In making this private proposal, to each of the Councilmen seeking reelection I claimed I had already demonstrated my value as a Political Ally when I gave them the information of the million-dollar budget surplus they used to overturn the Property Tax Increase supported by the other three council members. I also pointed out when I addressed the City Council I had supported their positions more often than I opposed them. It was a convincing argument and I found them both to be receptive to the idea of an alliance and their willingness to urge their supporters to consider voting for me. This would be a major departure from their "vote only for me" policy in the past elections and how much support they would really give me remained to be seen as the candidate with the most votes could be the next Mayor. If the current Mayor who was running for reelection and the other councilman who was seeking reelection encouraged their supporters to vote for me the total number of "extra" votes from both candidate's the supporters would elect me to City Council and maybe the next Mayor.

Marie set up my meeting with Reverend Curtis Harris in his home rather than at his church or some public place, as I wanted to establish this was a personal meeting for our mutual benefit. Marie told me he was surprised that I as a white man wanted to talk with him privately and ask him for his support in my election campaign.

Normally in Hopewell when a white man wanted something political from a black man he made a public display to show how he was reaching out and helping the black community. It did not really matter if the white man gained any support from the black community, as it was only a half hearted gesture reported in the newspapers, to show he was not prejudice.

In my research of Reverend Harris's efforts to run for City Council, he had always received a sizable contribution for his election campaign from all the Chemical Plants in Hopewell and especially from the Allied Chemical Corporation. I also knew from Marie, Reverend Harris would urge all the black voters to cast only one vote for him yet the black vote was not enough to win.

What these Chemical Plant contributions did was limit the possibility of any other black candidate entering the race and knowing how Reverend Harris ran his election campaign, it would eliminate the black vote from any other candidate on the ballot. It was an effective strategy to not only keep a black candidate from winning a seat on the City Council it also eliminated an outside white candidate from effectively challenging their "established friends on the City Council" in a close citywide election.

I knew I had to tell Reverend Harris how the political deck was stacked against him even though the man believed by running his election campaign as he did he was representing the black community in its best hope of gaining a seat on the City Council. My approach to Reverend Harris was not just about this election but the future elections where he or some other black candidate had a 90% chance of winning a seat on the City Council.

I explained if politicians had one consistent goal throughout history, it is to have a sure thing that they would win the election. The best way to do that is to establish a gerrymandered election district that eliminates effective competition by isolating the opposition to insure the majority of the voters will support him. I pointed out that in Hopewell with all the candidates running in a citywide election for City Council gerrymandering was not necessary as the whole city was set up to isolate the black vote.

If Reverend Harris did not understand how he had lost the elections before, he knew it now. I made the suggestion if he would consider supporting me for City Council I would support him and if either of us were elected we would propose the city elect a Councilmen from each of the five Election Wards. To make this work the three odd numbered Wards would elect their Councilmen on odd years and the two other council members would be elected on even years. The Council would be expanded to seven members with a citywide election in all the Election Wards for the Mayor on odd years and the Assistant Mayor on even years.

Although Reverend Harris agreed with the idea of offering mutual support, he was concerned if he campaigned with me, I might suffer a white backlash from those who still harbored inbred prejudice against the blacks. I respected his judgment as he had lived in Hopewell all his life and I was the outsider from Wisconsin who had not been raised by my ancestors to view blacks the way the South did.

Marie who had come with me to this meeting brought up the subject of Reverend Harris's single vote policy. Marie suggested if we both privately campaigned with a two-vote objective for each other, Reverend Harris stood to gain a larger percentage of the white votes.

Seven candidates would be on the ballot for this City Council Election for three seats. There were two candidates, who had run in a number of City Council elections almost if they viewed themselves as the loyal opposition to the establishment. They enjoyed the attention they received when they were a candidate no matter how many people actually voted for them.

Winning an election is hard work and the more people you have working for you the easier it is on the Candidate. I needed public exposure and the ability to show I had citywide support. There are only so many Campaign Posters, you could put up on someone's lawn or put in a public place. My Campaign buttons with the slogan "Corrigan Can" made every person who wore them my walking campaign advertisement.

I made sure everyone who had signed my Election Petition had at least one of my Campaign buttons for every member of his family. My door-to-door campaigners would hand them out as if they were collector items as no other Candidate had made any campaign buttons. As I went door-to-door throughout the city, I would sign the campaign buttons with a special bright orange ink pen making them a highly prized item. Someone had tried to ban the wearing of my campaign buttons in the schools. This failed attempt only made having one of my campaign buttons and wearing it more important so I ordered 1,000 more.

As the early results of the Election came in the Radio Announcers' at the Hopewell Radio Station continued to report I had received almost a uniform percentage of the votes in all the Election Precincts and I had received almost as many votes in the Black Ward as Reverend Harris did.

I ended up fourth in the Election behind the two incumbents and the returning Councilmen. The celebration in the Chesterfield Hotel was as if I had won the election and it was the best way I could thank all those who had supported me. It was evident if the former City Councilmen had not been in the race I would have won a seat on the Hopewell City Council. What I did not realize by doing so well in my first effort to run for the City Council I had become a major threat to those who held the delicate balance of power in the City of Hopewell.

Our group of independent businessmen's pending apartment renovation proposal to the Hopewell Housing Authority had challenged the authority of "the man on the white horse" and it had raised a number of serious questions about how the city was managing the Redevelopment of the downtown. Those who controlled Hopewell for years did not know how to deal with our proposal had the Housing Authority sit on it since it was submitted.

During my political campaign, I challenged the illegal Sewage Tax and the effectiveness of building the Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant. My efforts to have chemical tests done on the water discharged from the Wastewater Treatment Plant to establish the lingering effects of the Kepone produced by Life Science Products and Allied Chemical Corporation had made me a 'thorn' in Allied Chemical's side. Their claim I was threatening the jobs in Hopewell had become a dividing issue among the Hopewell voters who would have otherwise voted for me. When people vote their pocketbooks, it is hard to appeal to the greater good of holding their employers accountable.

Without any evidence of the real damage done by their Chemical Company employers to the community and the whole environment of the James River below the City of Hopewell, it was easy for Allied Chemical Corporation to scare the voters into believing they would lose their jobs if I were elected.

Although I may have lost the election over this issue, Allied Chemical Corporation pleaded no contest to 940 Federal Criminal Charges and they were found guilty of discharging Kepone into the James River since 1967. The $13.2 million dollar fine Allied Chemical Corporation paid was a pittance for the amount of damage done to Hopewell and the James River compared with the millions of dollars the company made selling Kepone around the world.

The $25,000 dollar fine to each of the alleged owners of Life Science Products was a joke and so was the $4 million dollar fine assessed to their bankrupt company. With all this new concern over Kepone, no one was checking the amount of chemicals Allied Chemical Corporation was still sending into the Hopewell Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant. I renewed my efforts to obtain the chemical test results of the water discharged from the Wastewater Treatment Plant. If Hopewell ever done these tests, the results were not made public and my continuing efforts to check on the chemical pollution of the James River, was seen as rocking the boat by the Allied Chemical Corporation.

# 30. USING RUSSELL MINTER TO REMOVE THE THORN

During all this time, there had been a regular customer at the Chesterfield Hotel named Russell Minter, who fell in love with Cory. Russell had quit his job at the Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant and moved into the Hotel after his wife filed for a divorce. Cory would have him do odd jobs for her in the hotel and pay him with beer at the Bar. The girls who worked at the Bar just assumed Russell had the beer coming when he ordered another one and did not pay for it.

When Cory took off with Ron and Tiffney came in to manage the Landmark Restaurant, Russell fell in love with her and he would follow her around like a lost puppy. When I had been forced to close the Landmark Restaurant after the water damage and Tiffney had gone back to school, I did not realize Russell was not paying for his beer, until I asked him about his overdue Hotel bill.

Russell volunteered to work off his Room Rent but when I told him, the Virginia State ABC Laws did not allow anyone to run a tab for the beer he got angry and stormed out the door of the Three Doors Down. The next day when I came in the Three Doors Down, Russell was giving the bartender a hard time when she was doing what I had told all the bartenders that they could not serve anyone on credit. She had asked to see Russell's money for the beer before she served him. I tried to reason with Russell until he admitted he had not done the work I had asked him to do to pay off some of his Hotel Room bill. I told him if he was not going to work off his overdue Hotel bill than he left me no choice but to ban him from the Bar until he paid it.

When Russell tried to pick a fight with me, several customers got up and stopped him before he could reach me. I had the feeling those who had stopped him were hoping Russell would start something with them so they could clean his clock. As the customers escorted Russell out of the door, Russell yelled back. "You will be sorry you banished me from the Hotel's bar as my uncle is the Hopewell Chief of Police and he will close this placed down."

Russell moved out of the Hotel without paying his bill and then he filed a complaint in the lower Court of Hopewell claiming I had no right to banish him from the Hotel's Bar and I owed him money. I filed a counter claim for his back room rent. When Russell lost his lawsuit and he could not establish I owed him any money, the court ordered him to pay his Hotel Bill. Russell appealed the lower court's decision to the Hopewell Circuit Court. His appeal was very well written and it reflected the legal sophistication of a high priced attorney I knew Russell could not afford.

While the case was waiting to be docketed in, the Circuit Court Carol came back into my life and I had run for City Council. After I lost the election, the Case was scheduled for Russell's Appeal. Russell came into the Chesterfield Hotel several times while his appeal was pending and he refused to leave demanding he be served a beer. I had to call the Hopewell Police to have him removed. Rather than have Russell arrested after the fourth incident I went to see his uncle the Hopewell Police Chief and told him I did not want to embarrass him but I would have no choice if Russell came into the Hotel again.

Russell tried to pick a fight with me on the street because I had gone to his uncle to complain about something he claimed was just between the two of us. He was so drunk he missed when he took a swing at me. As I was backing up to avoid a fight with Russell, when two men grabbed him before he could take another swing at me. Russell turned his attack on them as I walked away without looking back. I would learn Russell tried to get me arrested for attacking him and putting him in the hospital. Fortunately, when the Police investigated the complaint too many people had seen the incident and they knew who had put Russell in the hospital.

When Russell lost his case again, I asked the Court to assess Russell the Courts Costs and order him to pay his overdue Hotel Bill the lower Court had found as a legitimate debt. If Russell was angry before he lost his case in court, he became enraged in the courtroom to the point the Judge threatened him with Contempt of Court and jail time if he did not behave himself. The Court issued a restraining ordered against him to stay 500 feet away from me and the Chesterfield Hotel.

I thought this had put an end to my trouble with Russell Minter as no one had reported seeing him in Hopewell after he lost his court case. When I saw Russell coming out of the City Attorney's office I thought, Russell had been using their law books to appeal his case to the State Supreme Court.

When I casually mentioned seeing Russell to Carl Pigeon's secretary who was a regular patron at the Three Doors Down, she told me the City Attorney had encouraged Russell to sue me and he had been giving Russell free legal advice on how to keep his lawsuit in the courts.

Now that she told me this, I recalled seeing Russell in Carl Pigeon's office before the Hopewell Circuit Court hearing. This would explain the source of the sophisticated appeal Russell had filed in the Hopewell Circuit Court. What I could not understand was why Carl Pigeon would help Russell or why he was helping Russell now.

As you continue reading my story in this book, the answer will become clear that there was a conscious and deliberate effort to run me out of Hopewell and even put me in jail before I could established the evidence to seriously damage the Allied Chemical Corporation.

# 31. THE REBIRTH OF THE LANDMARK RESTAURANT

Carol was really trying to make the Landmark Restaurant a profitable business in the Hotel and she wanted to know how Tiffney had done it. I explained Tiffney's success was offering the majority of her customers the basic meat and potatoes they were accustom to eating and added a number of more sophisticated entrees to those with a more discriminating palette. Tiffney made sure all her servers had sampled the special entrees so they could enthusiastically represent them and Tiffney had taught her servers to listen to their customers. If a customer expressed an interest in what someone was eating, the server would offer them a sample. That small taste was usually enough for the customer to order that entrée when they came in again and they would tell their friends about the great dinner they had at the Landmark Restaurant.

Carol was a great cook who enjoyed making excellent meals from unusual recipes. Carol felt if she could expose potential customers to more interesting foods as Tiffney did, they would be willing to come into the Restaurant and order it. The problem was Carol only had a few customers coming into the Landmark Restaurant to taste her special entrées.

Carol started to offer the customers in the bar an opportunity to taste something new. Carol found if she did not tell them what it was before they tasted the new dish and got their opinion of how well they liked it, they were more likely to consider eating it in the Landmark Restaurant.

When Carol had exposed a number of favorable entrees to the customers in the Bar, she asked them what night of the week they would consider coming to the Landmark Restaurant for dinner. She explained if she knew they were coming and what they wanted to order she would make sure she prepared enough of each entrée for them. This was a polite way of asking them for reservations and knowing the food she had prepared would be sold.

The next Friday night 12 customers had made reservations and they were delighted with the service and the quality of the food. Carol made a special treat of Baked Alaska served as a complementary dessert. The next Friday night the Landmark Restaurant had 21 reservations and we had to turn away five couples as Carol had only made enough entrees for those who had made reservations. I had called back several employees who had worked for Tiffney and they were delighted to have their jobs back. I acted as the maitre d in my black tuxedo and Carol received a standing ovation when she came into the restaurant to ask if they enjoyed their dinner.

On Monday, I ran a new advertisement in the _Hopewell News_ listing the special entrees and the requirement to make reservations at the Landmark Restaurant by noon on Thursday. We served 63 people that Friday night and the Baked Alaska had become the expected dessert.

With this success, Carol wanted to run the all-you-could eat buffet next Sunday and I ran that announcement along with the Friday Night advertisement. However, there was someone in Hopewell who did not want to see the Landmark Restaurant make a comeback and Friday afternoon a fire was set in one of the room's on the third floor of the Hotel.

The fire was poorly set in the wastepaper basket and it had gone out before the Fire Department arrived but that did not matter to the Fire Chief who insisted he had to close the Hotel Down. I argued with the Fire Chief that closing the hotel was unreasonable when he admitted the fire had been contained in the wastepaper basket and there had been no smoke damage.

What was even more suspicious was the Fire Department's immediate response to the Hotel's fire when none of the Hotel's fire alarms in the rooms had gone off and no one in the Hotel had reported the fire. When I tried to determine who called in the fire, the Fire Chief refused to answer me and he threatened to have me arrested for interfering in his official investigation.

Police Detective Sergeant Tate who was not an electrician or a building inspector had taking pictures of some of the wiring in the Hotel's boiler room and he was claiming the entire Hotel was a firetrap to reinforce the Fire Chief's decision to close the Hotel Down.

I had been warned about Detective Tate when I was dating his ex-wife, Sandy years ago. She had told me her ex-husband was extremely jealous and he had run off anyone who expressed any interest in her. Detective Tate had even arrested some of them on trumped up charges. I did not take Sandy's warring seriously until one night Detective Tate tried to arrest me.

I had just dropped off Sandy after we came back from a movie and Detective Tate must have been following us. I never saw his headlights as he followed me from her place until he stopped me two blocks from the Chesterfield Hotel claiming I had run a red light. I laughed at him and told him to look at the traffic light as it was blinking yellow. He walked to the back of my car and busted out my tail light. Then he tried to arrest me for a broken tail light. He might have gotten away with it if another Hopewell Police Officer had not seen the flashing lights of Tate's Police Cruiser and he had come to investigate.

I quickly explained what happened and I pointed to the broken glass of my tail light that still lay on the street beneath my car. The other Police Officer asked if I wanted to make an Official Complaint against Detective Tate or if I would allow him to handle it.

Now I wished I had filed the complaint. However at the time, I thought with Detective Tate having been caught abusing his police authority he would leave me alone. I did not want this to become a public incident where Sandy might be dragged into it. I told the Police Officer he could deal with it, if Detective Tate paid for my tail light. The other Police Officer then waited until Tate handed me a 20-dollar bill.

In spite of the fact, the Fire Chief had closed the Hotel, Detective Tate and two other men in suits, I had assumed were Arson Investigators took me back into the Hotel to interrogate me about who I thought might have set this fire. Detective Tate had a long list of names he claimed were my known enemies and continued to question me about why they were out to get me.

When I continued to claim I did not know what he was talking about, Detective Tate added more incidents he claimed had happened with these same people. The Two other men were playing good cop, bad cop as they repeated the same questions about the same people. What was surprising to me, they never mentioned Russell Minter who would have been my prime suspect.

When they insisted these people were out to get me, I asked them if they were so sure these people were involved in setting the fire why were they wasting their time questioning me and not them. When the three men looked at each other and they did not answer my question, I felt I was back in Vietnam as a prisoner of war being interrogated by the North Vietnamese Commander after I was captured at the Arnnette Plantation. The North Vietnamese Colonel also had his own agenda he was trying to prove. I wrote about this Vietnam incident in my book _Blackmoon Rising._

After two more hours of giving the same answers to their questions, they finally left the Chesterfield Hotel. However, they came right back in when they found the Three Doors Down Bar was still opened and Defective Tate demanded I close it down.

I politely told him the Fire Chief had only closed down the main Hotel and the Three Doors Down Bar and the kitchen were completely in separate buildings attached by a single door with the main Hotel building. When Detective Tate did not receive any support from the other two men he told me he would be back with the Fire Chief. Apparently, the Fire Chief did not support Detective Tate's opinion as no one came back that night. While I was being interrogated by the three men, Carol did not want to see all the food she made go to waste. She set up a free buffet in the Three Doors Down and it became an impromptu party with wall-to-wall customers.

When the Fire Chief insisted the Chesterfield Hotel remain closed, I had to ask for a hearing to get it reopened. During the hearing Detective Tate presented all the pictures of the out dated electrical wiring he had taken in the Chesterfield Hotel's boiler room claiming this was a fire hazard. The Hopewell Fire Chief supported Detective Tate's contention this wiring was an immediate danger and it had to be corrected before the Hotel could be reopened.

I presented copies of all the Fire and Safety Inspections made by the Hopewell Fire Department and the Virginia State Hotel Licensing Department with their last Inspections having been done within two months before the fire. I then used Detective Tate's own pictures to show the old wiring he claimed was a fire hazard were cut off and they were not connected to anything therefore the old wire could not be a fire hazard.

The Hopewell Building Inspector confirmed the Chesterfield Hotel had been re-wired and the old wiring had been cut but he had not required the removal of the old wiring. Without any other Safety issues under review the Hearing Panel ruled in my favor and the Chesterfield Hotel was allowed to reopen immediately.

However, whoever was behind all this was not finished. They raised the ante by having me arrested and thrown in jail without bond on criminal charges. I was charged with conspiracy to commit Capital Murder, three counts of Arson, running a house of Prostitution, a Gambling establishment and operating a Loan Sharking business. Carol knew these were all false charges and she went to the best Lawyer in Hopewell, Hardaway Marks. When he came to see me in the Petersburg Regional Jail, he told me he could get me off on a plea bargain where I would serve five years in jail, if I signed over the ownership of the Chesterfield Hotel to him.

I asked him if he had a copy of the Charges, as I had not seen them and I had no idea who I was trying to murder. Hardaway Marks told me the Virginia State Bureau of Investigation had two witnesses claiming I had hired them to kill Russell Minter. The three charges of Arson involved the hiring of a friend of the murder for hire witnesses to burn down the Café on West Broad Street, the old City Point Inn and my own Hotel.

The charges of running a house of Prostitution and Gambling had come from Russell Minter who claimed he could prove it as he had seen it and so did a former bartender who claimed I had fired her after I falsely accused her of stealing money from the cash register. According to Hardaway Marks, I knew Russell Minter was going to testify on these charges and that was the reason I had hired the 2-murder for hire witnesses to kill him. The Loan Sharking Business was the weakest charge as the SBI had a number of witnesses who had seen me loan money to people.

However, after further investigation by the SBI, none of those I had loaned any the money to, would claim I charged them any interest and they had been grateful I had given them the money when they really needed it. Yet the Hopewell Prosecutor Dan Aldridge was not willing to drop the Loan Sharking charges.

A man named Frankie Moneymaker whose wife worked in the Landmark Restaurant stepped in to help Carol run the Hotel. Frankie was huge man of 6-foot 10 and close to three hundred pounds without an ounce of fat on him. He was also street-smart, as he had gotten into trouble with the law since he was a teenager and he knew what I would be going through, as I sat in Jail as he had been there and done that. When he brought Carol to the Petersburg Regional Jail, she asked me what she should do as she had gone to see Hardaway Marks who told her I knew what his fee was and he would not represent me without it.

I told Carol to call my brother Dick and tell him what was going on and that I needed a good Criminal lawyer who was not tied to anyone in Hopewell. Dick found a Criminal Attorney in Richmond who would agree to represent me for $10,000 dollars if I passed a polygraph test.

While the arrangements were made for me to take this polygraph test, the two murder-for-hire witnesses were kept in hiding by the SBI in some cheap motel in the Tidewater Area of Virginia. These two witnesses were lead to believe by the SBI that they were going to get a lot of money and be relocated into a new life and since I would take a plea bargain they would not have to testify.

When that did not happen, they called the Chesterfield Hotel and talked with Frankie Moneymaker. They told him if I gave them $5,000 dollars they would disappear and they would not testify against me. Frankie played them and told them he would have to talk it over with me. When they called back, Frankie told them they were asking for too much money. The two SBI murder for hire witnesses offered to disappear for $2,500 dollars. Frankie played them again and when they called back, they told Frankie a $1,000 dollars in cash was their final offer.

During all this time, Frankie Moneymaker never attempted to contact me or tell Carol what was going on. As I said, Frankie Moneymaker was not only street-smart he had enough experience with the Police to know how they operated and how they think. Frankie had the feeling these contacts by the SBI witnesses' was a setup by the SBI to trap him as my accomplice. Once the SBI arrested him and put him in jail, they would have removed him from effectively helping Carol successfully run the Hotel without me.

When the SBI came to arrest Frankie for offering a bribe to their witnesses, Frankie laughed at them and told them to try it. When they claimed they had the recorded evidence on the Hotel's phone they had tapped, Frankie told them he had also recorded their witnesses and he gave them a copy of the tape. He told them not to worry about giving his tapes back as he had several more copies he gave to trusted friends and his lawyer.

The SBI did an about face and arrested their own witnesses as the SBI had them on video tape shop lifting a carton of cigarettes at the 7 11 store around the corner from their Motel. With this new turn of events, my new attorney was able to get me released on Bond to my brother's home in Springfield Virginia. I left the Hotel with Frankie Moneymaker and his wife when Carol and I moved in with Dick and his wife, Mary.

After I passed my attorney's polygraph test, we were preparing for the first trial when we learned the embarrassed SBI had back out of all the cases but the Hopewell City Prosecutor Dan Aldridge refused the drop any of the charges. Dan Aldridge's objective was to keep me bottled up at my brothers place in Springfield Virginia and the longer he kept me away from the Chesterfield Hotel I could not do anything to save my business. He had deliberately scheduled a four-month period to hold a separate Court Trial on each one of the charges.

After we easily won the first Trial, my attorney believed me when I told him this was not about justice but it was a plan to make sure I was financially bankrupt and to run me out of Hopewell. We waved my right to a jury trial in all the rest of the scheduled Court Cases. The Judge found me not guilty of all the other charges. Years later I would learn that Russell Minter had paid the two SBI witnesses to make the false charges against me and he had convinced them the SBI would give them some serious money and pay to relocate them.

During the time I was dealing with my criminal defense the new Hopewell Chief of Police was running a campaign to harass all the loyal customers of the Chesterfield Hotel. After the Police ran off all the regular customers, a Motorcycle Club moved in to claim the place as their Bar.

Frankie was big enough to handle them and the Hopewell Police knew better than tangle with the Motorcycle gang. When the final trial was over, I realized what the Chesterfield Hotel had become. I gave Frankie a Real Estate Contract stating the Hotel was his when the mortgage was paid off.

With less than 1,000 dollars Carol and I along with Sugar Bear, packed everything we could carry in my car and headed down to Atlanta Georgia where Carol hoped to find a job teaching sign language to gorillas at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at the Emery University.

# 32. PULLING THE PIECES BACK TOGETHER

We stopped in to see Henry Brake as he was the current Commander of the 5th Virginia Cavalry living in Charlotte North Carolina. He was happy to hear the news I had beaten all the charges in Hopewell. While we were having supper, Jim Brake, Henry's paternal twin brother showed up.

Jim was managing the Volkswagen and Mercedes Dealership in Hickory North Carolina. After learning about our plans, Jim suggested we come and live with him as he claimed, "He was living in a huge house that had rooms he had never been in." He offered me a part time job delivering Mercedes all over the Country. His car Dealership was allotted a number of new Mercedes he was selling to other Dealerships in better Market areas.

We ended up in Hickory where I took over the Management of the Professional Recruiting Office that found positions for Engineers and Banking Executives. The owner of the Management Recruiter's Office had suffered a heart attack and he needed someone with business and management skills to run it until he was well enough to return to work. Carol was hired as the Director of the Youth Enabling and Crises Intervention Center for the city of Hickory.

While we were living with Jim, he became interested in my Civil War Gun Company and we explored the possibility of making a popular reproduction of the original Brass Mounted 1855 Harpers Ferry Rifle here in the United States. We started to hand make these reproductions using original parts and reproduction parts from some of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's sources.

Although the economy was showing some signs of recovery under President Regan and we were able to sell a number of these 1855 Rifles, the market for any full-scale production operation by Harpers Ferry Arms Company to make them was not there. The Civil War reproduction musket market could not improve unless the whole Country's economy did. When and if the economy improved it would justify looking for financial backing to restart Harpers Ferry Arms Company.

Then one day when I came home, I found Jim had moved out leaving the house for us to take care of. Jim had quit his job and moved back to Kinston North Carolina. Carol and I were not making enough money to pay the rent on that house without Jim and we moved to a modest apartment in Hickory. I would always be grateful to Jim as he treated me like a brother and he gave us an opportunity to get back on our feet. Jim had been true to his word as I did deliver a number of Mercedes across the country for him. I continued to do it for the Dealership on the weekends after I found the job with Management Recruiters.

Although Carol was doing an outstanding job for the community, she was not happy with her job. Carol could not stand the red-necked attitudes of the local North Carolinians. Due to budget cuts, the community was planning to consolidate the City's and the County's services into one agency and Carol had recommended her deputy Director for the new position. The city and the county accepted Carol's recommendations, if she would agree to remain as the Director while her Deputy established she was capable of doing the job.

I was just making enough money at Management Recruiters and running cars on the weekends to cover our basic living expenses. I encouraged Carol to take a part time job with American Rehabilitation Inc out of Charlotte North Carolina. The small private Rehabilitation Company performed Medical Management Services for Insurance Companies on their Workman's Compensation cases. Normally the Company hired Registered Nurses but with Carol's background in handling deaf, blind and profoundly disable Rehabilitation cases in the State of Ohio she had an extensive back ground in managing the medical treatment for her clients.

Carol was very good in doing this part-time job and her caseload with American Rehabilitation Inc continued to expand to the point it could be full time if she wanted it. With Carol's plans to leave her position with the City of Hickory, I encouraged her to pursue the full time opportunity in Private Rehabilitation. Once the City and the County appointed the new Director of the Youth Enabling and Crises Intervention Center, they released Carol from her employment contract and she resigned.

Carol's duties in this job required her to visit injured workers and assist them in their medical recovery. Since she was legally blind, she needed to hire a driver who would take her wherever she needed to go. Within three months, Carol had made more money than she made in a year working for the City of Hickory.

Carol had problems keeping a reliable driver and one day when her driver failed to show up, she called me at the Management Recruiting office crying as she had an appointment she could not afford to cancel and I drove her. This had been an unusual referral from a Virginia Insurance Company as it dealt with an injured worker they wanted Carol to help find new employment.

As I drove Carol to the Doctor's Office, she explained the nature of the case. She had to meet with the Workers Compensation Client's Doctor to establish the injured worker's physical limitations and based on those limitations she needed to find the injured worker a new job within those physical restrictions.

I sat in on the meeting with the Doctor. I listened to him dance around with his vague description of the physical limitations of the injured worker and his questing Carol what type of work did she think his patient might be able to do. Carol tried to explain she would need to know the man's physical limitations and then conduct an interview with him to determine his transferable job skills before she could answer his questions about the type of job she could find for him.

I had the feeling the Doctor was being overly protective of his patient and reluctant to provide the documentation Carol was asking for. The more I listened to their discussion I realized the Doctor's reluctance may have been more to do with the fact the Doctor was being paid very well by the Insurance Company to continue to treat this man.

From what Carol had told me about the objectives of the Insurance Company if Carol did not have the physical limitations as prescribed by the Attending Physician, she would not be able to work with this injured worker and find him a job. Sensing the impasse that had developed over the Doctor's reluctance to provide work restrictions, Carol turned to me for help.

"Doctor perhaps you need to understand your patient needs your help if he is to make a full recovery. He has been out of work for over three years and his condition did not warrant any surgical intervention. The Insurance Company is obligated to assist the injured worker in his Rehabilitation if he cannot return to work in his former occupation." I told him and explained his other role in helping his patient reenter the work force.

"Your professional opinion of his physical limitations, are the guidelines Ms Stewart will use to find the patient employment he can physically do. She is an expert in Vocational Rehabilitation having worked with the deaf, blind and profoundly disabled with the State of Ohio and if she can find employment for these people, she can surely help your patient find work. Please understand when she finds a new job for the patient, she will provide you with a written outline of the physical requirements of the job and she will ask you to approve it before he goes to work." I told him and I could see I had given the Doctor the reassurance that he was not blindly authorizing a job the patient might not be able to physically do.

When we walked out of the Doctor's Office with the Work Restrictions Carol thanked me for helping her get them. The meeting with the injured worker was not as easy, as he did not want to meet with Carol. He tried to avoid giving her his employment history she needed to establish his transferable job skills if she was going to find him a new job.

"Maybe I can help you." I said as I took out an employment application we used in the Recruiters Office when we were representing a Client for a Professional Placement. I handed it to him and helped him fill it out while Carol asked him questions about each job he admitted doing. With the completed employment application, Carol discussed what types of jobs he liked best.

While she was trying to establish his employment interests, I found myself looking over the room and things that seemed to be out of place. This had become a habit of mine when I was involved in teaching Army Snipers to constantly observe every possible danger to themselves and to be totally aware of what was going on around them. More than once when I was out in the field in Vietnam a small change in a shadow became a target and seeing it saved my life and the members of my Sniper Team.

My eye caught a part of a white apron tossed over a chair in the kitchen with a man's coat over it. I could not help but notice the apron had blood on it. The more I looked at it I realized it was not an apron, a woman would wear in the kitchen but what a butcher might wear in a store.

"Excuse me, does your wife work?" I asked.

"No, she took the kids over to her folks place." The man responded and I had eliminated the possibility that the apron was hers. If the apron was not hers, it had to be his, but that still did not mean anything yet. I had to eliminate any reasonable reason why there was a man's apron with blood on it in their kitchen.

"How's the hunting around here? I am always looking for a place I can go deer hunting. Do you deer hunt?" I asked.

"No." He quickly responded and Carol was giving me a strange look as I was interrupting her work. However, with his answer he had eliminated the possibility he had been butchering a deer and got its blood on the apron. I sat back and waited while Carol finished her interview with the man.

"What was all that about? Why did you ask him about deer hunting?" Carol wanted to know when we were back in the car.

"I have a feeling this man is working in a butcher shop or maybe at a local store." I told her and explained my interest in asking those questions after seeing the white store apron with blood on it in the kitchen.

The Insurance Company put a Detective on the case and they established that the man was indeed working in the butcher shop of the local store and he had been working there for over two years. It turned out the man was doing quite well with a paycheck at the Store and money coming in from the Insurance Company year round. This financial advantage had made him one of the best paid men living in that mountain community.

The Insurance Company was delighted to expose this Workman's Compensation fraud and more of these Physical Rehabilitation Job Placement referrals came in from the Virginia Insurance Companies. The combination of my knowledge and job placement skills to find positions for Engineers and Bankers at the Management Recruiter's Office and Carol's Rehabilitation expertise we established a very effective system to quickly find new jobs for injured workers. Carol's reputation to resolve difficult Workman's Compensation cases quickly spread to the point where most of Carol's Insurance Company referrals were coming from Virginia for Vocational Rehabilitation in Selective Job Placement.

The dynamics of this business was based on the Worker's Compensation Laws in a return to work states such as Virginia. In Virginia, an injured worker was entitled to 500 weeks of Worker's Compensation benefits if he could not physically return to any type of work. This meant the Insurance Company was required to set aside their financial exposure of 500 weeks of benefits in their trust account and this money could not be used by the Insurance Company until the Worker's Compensation Claim was settled.

95% of all the Worker's Compensation cases were resolved without a problem when the injured worker had return to work. The Insurance companies spend 98% of their money on the 5% who did not go back to work. The reasons for this high percentage of money spent on this 5% of injured workers could be linked to Worker's Compensation fraud, the less than honorable interference of the injured worker's legal counsel or medical miss management and many times, it was a combination of all three.

Some doctors became known to be "patient friendly" to injured workers as long as the Insurance Company continued to pay them for ultra conservative treatment and for the injured worker's regular biweekly visits. The Insurance Companies needed a Rehabilitation Expert to evaluate the true medical condition of the Worker's Compensation Claimant and obtain his physical limitations to work in another occupation if he was not physically able to return to work at the job he had at the time of injury.

Once the attending Physician established the injured worker's physical limitations the Insurance Companies needed an expert in Selective Job Placement to find the Worker's Compensation Claimant a job he was physically capable of performing.

If the new job did not pay as much as the job he had at the time of his injury, the Insurance Company, was obligated to make up the difference. Once the injured worker had his new job within his physical capabilities, the Insurance Company could financially settle the Workman's Compensation claim and save the balance of the 500 weeks of benefits they were required to hold in their trust fund account.

This whole process could be delayed by the actions of the Claimant's legal counsel whose own financial interests improved the longer the case dragged on. A whole group of Lawyers made a lot of money representing injured workers and taking as much as 50% of their Insurance Company's settlement money.

Although the State of Virginia had its Rehabilitation system, their Rehabilitation plans usually called for extensive retraining, advancements in education for a number of years while the Insurance Company continued to pay the injured worker his weekly benefits. However even after all this time and cost to the Insurance Company there was no guarantee the injured worker would find employment to resolve the case.

What Carol provided to the Insurance Companies in these Selective Job Placement cases, was her no nonsense approach with the Claimant's legal counsel and to obtain the doctor's honest review of the injured workers physical capability to work and the early resolution of the Claimant's case with effective Vocational Rehabilitation.

Although Carol was making good money and she had dramatically expanded American Rehabilitation's business, she did not like living in North Carolina. With most of Carol's Insurance Companies' referrals coming from Virginia the owner of American Rehabilitation offered Carol a promotion as the Director of the Vocational Rehabilitation Division of American Rehabilitation if she agreed to move into Virginia. He wanted her to live within an hour of Washington DC and he would have his Marketing man contact all the Virginia Insurance Companies to give her a full caseload before she arrived.

With this opportunity for Carol and knowing how much she disliked living in North Carolina I could not stand in her way. I told Carol I would have a better chance of finding a good job in Northern Virginia or in Washington DC regardless, how poor the job market was in the rest of the country. I explained the nation's capital always had something going on and there would be a number of opportunities for me with my background in manufacturing and International business to find a job.

We looked at a Virginia map and drew a circle around an area that would be within an hour's driving distance from Washington. I had spent time in Northern Virginia when I was assigned to the Pentagon. I had also conducted my James River Imports and Development business and Harpers Ferry Arms Company's reproduction uniform business with a number of foreign embassies so I knew the traffic problems of Northern Virginia and Washington DC.

Based upon my experience in the area I suggested to Carol and to the owner of American Rehabilitation that they consider locating the Vocational Rehabilitation Division in either Manassas or Fredericksburg Virginia. These locations would meet the requirements of the Company and these locations would be more reasonable to open the Office and finding a place for us to live. I also had an ulterior motive when I recommended these two locations. I knew there was a good rifle range in both cities and having a range would support my interests in competitive shooting.

We found Fredericksburg charming and more attractive than the city of Manassas and we made the move into a townhouse just across the Rappahannock River in Falmouth Virginia. Much to my surprise the owner of American Rehabilitation wanted Carol to work out of the townhouse rather than establish the Vocational Rehabilitation Division's Office. The second surprise came when his Marketing man gave Carol a list of Insurance Companies to contact, as he had not contacted any them and he did not have any Case Referrals for Carol.

The owner of American Rehabilitation had failed to keep his word when he promised Carol a full caseload to get her to agree to expand his business into Virginia. This was the first time in my life I had made a business move without checking all the facts and conditions involved before I agreed to proceed with a venture. I now knew, I should have become more involved in this expansion plan and confirm the financial arrangements before we made this move. I was mad at myself as I felt it was my fault. I had falsely assumed Carol had the business sense to work out the details and she had the financial commitments to support this new business development into Virginia.

The only case referrals Carol had came from the one Virginia Insurance Company she had worked on that first Vocational Rehabilitation case in North Carolina. She was not making enough money to pay the townhouse rent and I had not found a job yet. There was no easy way to deal with this as we were spending our own money to promote American Rehabilitation's Vocational Division and I needed Carol's understanding of the terms of her employment agreement as the Director in this Rehabilitation business.

My third surprise was she did not have an employment contract with American Rehabilitation and she had no guaranteed income as the Director of the Vocational Rehabilitation Division. Apparently, the owner of the Company just assumed Carol would continue to earn her money off the Rehabilitation case referrals as she had done in the past.

When I pointed out this was no way to run a business, Carol got mad at me and I flat out told her if she did not call the owner of the Company I would. This was the first fight we had since we got back together and she slept on the couch that night. However, the next morning she asked what she should do. I outlined the minimum guaranteed financial commitment she should ask for, if she was to continue to work for the Company.

"What if he doesn't agree?" She asked.

"Then if you are going to do all the work, you might as well do it for yourself. You are the one the Insurance Companies are expecting to handle these Vocational Cases and not American Rehabilitation." I concluded.

"I am sorry I got mad at you. You are right. I should have worked all this out before I agreed to make this move. I just wanted to get out of North Carolina so much I could only see moving back to Virginia as an answer to my prayers." She told me.

"I am also sorry I did not ask you what arrangements and agreements you had with American Rehabilitation. From now on I want you to agree we will always discuss any business proposals and make sure we both understand what is involved before the final decision is made. I only want you to be happy in anything you do. I will support any decision you make on this and I will always help you if I can.

I would suggest you write out what you are going to say and outline all the points you need in this agreement so when you are done, you have covered everything. If he is not receptive to your requirements you need to remind him you made this move based on his commitments to have a full caseload. If you do not say anything else, he should be smart enough to read between the lines without you having to issue the ultimatum that you will not work for him anymore.

When you have all the commitments you need, I want you to write a memo to yourself, send him a copy and keep the original as a business record. Unless he sends a correction of his understanding, you will have something to refer to, if an issue comes up about the terms and conditions of your agreement to work with him and for his company of American Rehabilitation.

If you do not have any more questions, I am going to go shooting while you make your call as I have always used shooting to clear my mine." I told her and she came over and kissed me in a way that told me we would successfully see this through together.

Once Carol was satisfied with her agreement with the owner of American Rehabilitation, we made our marketing plans to see as many Virginia Insurance Companies who would have Vocational Rehabilitation cases they might refer to us. The combination of Carol's Rehabilitation background and my experience as the Public Relations Officer in the 20th NORAD and in job placement at Management Recruiters opened the door to our first new Virginia cases in Selective Job Placement.

What we had going for us, were the stories about Carol's first Vocational Rehabilitation case in North Carolina and many of the other successful job placement cases she handled for other Virginia Insurance Companies. Once Carol had successfully closed these first cases, new cases were coming in to the point we were traveling all over the State. Having set Carol up with a full caseload it was time I found a job as we were burning up our savings even with the financial support from American Rehabilitation.

# 33. DOING WHAT I TOLD CAROL I COULD DO

We found Carol a reliable driver and I went to work for Mr Green who was an 84-year-old multi-millionaire that owned or controlled a number of Banks and Savings and Loans, hundreds of corporations, joint ventures and partnerships all over the United States. Mr Green wanted someone to consolidate all his business ventures into a manageable operation he could handle out of his office in Hyattsville Maryland.

What Mr Green really needed was a tough manager who could sell off most of his businesses and make the hard decisions where those who worked for him might lose their jobs when the new owners took over. When I agreed to take the job, I explained I would not be very effective once I accomplished what he was asking me to do. Everyone who still worked for him would see me as his "ax man" and as a result they would not trust me or work with me, as they could not be sure their jobs would be eliminated next.

Although Mr Green disagreed with me, I believed he understood what I was telling him and he agreed with my suggestion of working for him on a 6-month employment contract as that was my best estimate of how long it would take me to accomplish what he wanted done. This employment contract would give Mr Green the opportunity to evaluate my performance and if I were wrong about how his other employees felt about me, we would negotiate a more permanent arrangement. I accomplished what Mr Green had originally asked me to do in less than 4 months.

Unfortunately what I predicted would be the hostile attitude towards me by Mr Green's remaining employees also happened especially with his personal secretary. She and her husband were laundering money through Mr Green's business accounts and she was sure I would catch her unless she could get rid of me first.

She would take my messages while I was out of the Office but never leave them on my desk until after I had left. Then she would put them back on my desk and show Mr Green I was not doing my job. What she did not know was I had bought one of the first Cell Phones on the market for 1,200 dollars through a special offer by American Express. It was as big as a shoebox and I always left it in my car. I made it a habit to call everyone I was working with as if I had been out of the office and I was just checking back with them.

I must say I learned a lot about how to conduct business and Banking just listening to Mr Green handle his business partners and conduct his business with them. Mr Green owned one of the largest Savings and Loan Banks in Maryland and he had major interests in Banking in Washington DC and in Northern Virginia. I helped him negotiate the sale of the Metropolitan Bank of Washington. Mr Green loved to be involved in business transactions and he always explained why he was doing a particular maneuver as if he were a professor teaching his favorite student.

I have always said I earned my PhD in high-level finance and managing complex businesses while I worked for Mr Green. His main classroom and teaching tools were the trips we made together where he would point out a piece of property he owned without telling me how he owned it.

My ability to recall what he said just as he said it in my almost perfect hearing memory allowed me to find the property on a street map. Using the property records in the Deeds Registration Office I would establish what company or partnership owned it. From there it was easy to pull the Company or Partnership's file in Mr Green's Office to find out what Mr Green's interests were in the ownership of that property.

With the background on the property, I would go out and study the property and come up with a possible business use for the property or make a suggestion of how to dispose of it in my preliminary written report to Mr Green. Depending on Mr Green's evaluation of what I suggested I would contact Mr Green's partners. My biggest problem was Mr Green had out lived many of his partners and it would take a considerable amount of time to locate his partner's legitimate heirs.

Back then, we did not have the Internet with the hundreds of locator websites capable of finding just about anyone. I had to use Private Detectives to do this legwork but Mr Green did not mind spending the money to find these people. I came to realized this was Mr Green's way of making sure his partners' heirs received their fair share of the assets of the property owned by the company or partnership, as he was the only one left to do it.

When it came time to renew my employment contract I tried to tell Mr Green I did not think I could effectively work for him. Mr Green insisted I was wrong. I agreed to a three-month extension of my contract and he doubled my salary. I tried but I could not accomplish anything for him and I finally had to tell Mr Green about his secretary. He did not believe it and I told him I could prove it if he let me run a complete audit of all his business accounts. Only his active business accounts were ran every month in one of the largest Computer's in the country located in Atlanta, Georgia.

However, Mr Green's less active business accounts were only run once a Quarter and due to the staggered fiscal years of his Corporations and Partnerships throughout the annual year there would not be one accounting period when all his businesses were run through the Computer at the same time. o give you an idea of just how large Mr Green's business operations were it would take 12 hours of computer time to run just the complete monthly accounting.

Mr Green was reluctant to doing this as his Secretary had been with them for almost twenty years and he trusted her completely. However after I showed him what she was doing with my messages he started to believe me after we ran a simple test.

My routine of working in Mr Green's office had become an established pattern where I would come in before 9 o'clock depending on the rush hour traffic from Fredericksburg Virginia. Mr Green's Secretary would always be there before I arrived and my desk would not have a single message on it. Mr Green would usually arrive some time after I had gone out to work on a project and he would see all the messages left on my desk.

I made the suggestion to Mr Green that he come in early one day before his Secretary arrived and look at my desk in my office to see if there were any messages on it. To prove my point Mr Green needed to leave the office before his Secretary came in and then return at his usual time. It was just as I had told Mr Green as when he returned to the office and looked at my desk he saw how many messages were on it. This was enough evidence for Mr Green to agree to run a complete and consolidated Computer run of all his business accounts.

I did not want to waste this opportunity to establish how much Tax money I could legitimately save Mr Green in the amount of State and Federal Income Taxes he was paying each month. I had already discussed these Income Tax issues with the owner and the head Accountant of the local Accounting Firm who handled Mr Green's business accounts. Both the owner and his head Accountant told me they had made these suggestions in the past to the man I had replaced but nothing was ever done about it. They felt as I did if they made a consolidated Computer run of all the business accounts they could show Mr Green how he could reduce his Income Tax liabilities by as much as $50,000 a month.

Having Mr Green's agreement to do this computer run I had to disguise my true motive from his secretary by having the accountant suggest doing it. After the Accounting Firm made their presentation on the possible Income Tax savings and they suggested a consolidated computer run of all his business accounts to establish these tax savings Mr Green agreed and he smiled at me knowing where this suggestion had come from.

When the results of the consolidated Computer run came in what the Accountant and I had predicted in the Income Tax saving was established. I also did not have any trouble establishing the Secretary and her husband were laundering over 20,000 dollars a month from his Amateur Boxing Enterprise. They would move the money in and out of the less active accounts and make sure the balance was correct when these accounts had been run in the computer. I turned over the documented information to Mr Green and I never did find out what he did about it as Mr Green let me go a month early but still paid me the full amount remaining on my contract.

As a parting gift, Mr Green told me about a subdivision in the Winchester Virginia area that one of his Banks wanted to sell. The Bank had foreclosed on the property years ago and past efforts to work with local Realtors had not worked. He gave me a copy of the County Tax Map of the property and told me what the Bank would take for the land. The rest was left up to me.

I found a construction company who was interested in developing the subdivision and then I found a local investor willing to put up the money. When these two tried to make an end run around me the Bank told them, the property was under contract to me. Mr Green called to warn me and when the two reached me, I told them I had another interested buyer.

Nothing sells a property quicker than when someone else wants to buy it. I sold my contract to them for 5,000 dollars more than I had originally offered it to them. With this nest egg, I started to look for other business opportunities I might make some money. I looked into buying a local bank that Mr Green might be interested in to consolidate with one of his Virginia Banks. However, the bank's assets were heavily leveraged and they were struggling with foreclosed properties making their negative bottom line a disaster for anyone who bought the bank.

A month later, Mr Green called about the I-97 project I had worked on with the Maryland State Highway Commission. I had negotiated the the sales agreement for the new highway that would go through one of Mr Green's subdivisions west of Annapolis Maryland from Route 50 to Baltimore. The file was missing in the Office and Mr Green was wondering if I remembered what I had done. I kept a copy of the file and the tentative agreement with the Maryland State Highway Commission as I had a feeling it would come up missing after I had left. I sent Mr Green a copy of my file and a month later, I received a check for 10,000 dollars.

# 34. MAKING AN UNBEATABLE TEAM

By this time, our Vocational Rehabilitation business had expanded and Carol had five Rehabilitation Coordinators working for her. She had a very difficult case where the Virginia Workman's Compensation worker had moved to a mountaintop north of Grantsville, West Virginia. It was almost impossible to get there in any reasonable amount of driving time by the closest Coordinator Carol had. This case's file was ten inches thick. It was a lot like the first Vocational Rehabilitation case Carol and I worked in North Carolina. She asked me if I would consider handling the case and drive out to meet with the injured worker to evaluate his employment potential while she met with his attending Physician here in Virginia to get his work restrictions.

After looking at the map and calculating the driving time, it would take me a day to get there, one to meet with the injured worker and another day to drive back. Even if I could fly out and rent a car, it would still take three days. When I told Carol how long it would take to do it, she told me the Insurance Company did not care how much it cost as they had tried to use another Vocational Rehabilitation Company who had failed miserably after months of billings. This case came from the same Insurance Company that gave us that first Vocational case in North Carolina and they were hoping for another miracle.

"What if I could fly myself? I asked. "I had an airplane when I was running Harpers Ferry Arms Company and I flew all over the country when I was putting together the made in the United States Civil War Maynard Carbines and that French Flintlock for the Bicentennial. I could rent a plane and fly there in a few hours. All I needed is an updated Flight Physical and a Check Ride." I told her.

"Let me call the Insurance Company and see what they have to say. How long would it take to get this Flight Physical and take this Check Ride?" She asked.

"Let me find out" I said as I picked up the Phone Book and found a Doctor who could give me a FAA Flight Physical as I needed that before I could take a Check Ride. After making the call, I had an appointment for my Flight Physical the next morning. I called the local Airport in Fredericksburg to determine if they could give me a Check Ride and if they had any airplanes for rent.

The Check Ride would be no problem but they did not have any airplanes to rent. However, they did have someone who wanted to sell his Airplane and he might be willing to rent it, as he needed the money. Several phone calls later, I talked with the owner of a Moony Aircraft and he was willing to rent it for my Check Ride and for the trip to West Virginia.

The Insurance Company agreed to pay me the same mileage and the number of hours it would take for me to drive a car out there and back. I thought this was more than fair as the cost of renting the airplane would be less than the money I would be paid for just the mileage.

I had no problem with my FAA Flight Physical and my Check Ride was easy. I had flown over 6,000 hours in my own Airplanes and I had done some flying in Vietnam even though I was not an Army Aviator. I wrote about my wartime flying experiences in my Books _, Soft Touch_ and the _Three Toed Tiger Tales._

I met the owner of the Moony Aircraft at Fredericksburg's Shannon Airport. After he watched me make the required three full stop landings to complete my FAA Pilot's Certification Check Ride, he was confident I knew how to fly his airplane. I like how the Mooney handled and I was convinced if the price was right I would buy it. Although the Mooney Aircraft can carry the pilot and three passengers, it is the Corvette Sports car of the sky built for speed rather than any extra room in its cockpit. Rather than discuss renting the Mooney I found out what he wanted for his Airplane.

I studied the Airplane's Log Books and it still had a lot of time on the engine. The instruments were good as the Airplane had duel Navigation and Communication Radios and the Aircraft's Annual Inspection was only three months old. We went and talked with the Flight Mechanic who had been taking care of the Airplane for more than four years. He told me there was nothing wrong with the Airplane. He also wanted to know if I would use him if I bought the Airplane and kept it at Shannon Airport.

I made the Airplane's owner an offer as I had that unexpected 10,000 dollar check from Mr Green, the money from the Winchester property and I had saved most of the money I had made working for Mr Green.

"Cash money?" He asked.

"Let me call my wife and make sure she has no objections. I don't know any reason why she would object but I need to keep peace in the family if you know what I mean." I told him.

The next day at the Bank, we closed the deal and I flew out to West Virginia in our own Airplane. It took two trips to West Virginia to close the case as it was just like the North Carolina case. The man had been working with his brother-in-law installing Satellite TV Dishes.

His wife spilled the beans when she asked if he was going to meet her brother and finish the job in the next town. Sometimes when you catch someone with his hand in the cookie jar, it is to your advantage to pretend you did not see it. The individual will have no choice but to play along with the direction you wanted to take rather than admit he screwed up and you caught him. This was the case here. The Insurance Company just wanted to close this Workman's Compensation case and going through the legal process of proving he was defrauding the system would only cost them more money. Since the man was already working, the Insurance Company had what it needed under the Law to close the case.

Once I had his brother-in-law as the new employer, complete the job description, all I had to do was have the Attending Physician approve this new job as being within the man's Work Restrictions. The Insurance Company closed the case without having to pay him a Settlement. The man's wife had handed me and the Insurance Company the ideal solution as the man was not going to admit he was defrauding the Workman's Compensation system.

I made my first "in flight" Cell Phone call to Carol and she was delighted to hear I had the documentation to close the case. I had picked up a good tail wind for both my reputation in quickly resolving difficult Workman's Compensation cases and in flying back from West Virginia as I was home in Fredericksburg in less than two hours. Carol had already called the Insurance Company's Claims Adjuster who was thrilled with how quickly we had closed the case and she wanted to meet me.

She already knew I had been involved with Carol in resolving that North Carolina case and now I had resolved this case without Carol conducting the Initial Rehabilitation Interview with the Claimant. Carol and I did not expect to meet with all the other Insurance Company's Adjusters and the Head of the Claims Department when we arrived.

This meeting turned into a Marketing Opportunity to explain how the Vocational Division of American Rehabilitation here in Virginia was rapidly growing using "Selective Job Placement" as an effective tool of Vocational Rehabilitation to get Injured Workers back to work. We explained Selective Job Placement did not need a person with a Degree in Rehabilitation but someone with a background in business who understood how employers thinks when they hired someone to work for them. We were hiring individuals with experience in Personal and Hiring Employees who could deal with the Injured Worker's work restrictions as if they were marketing and placing those individuals in a specialized position with special physical needs.

Carol stated, "By using these types of Placement Coordinators we are able to close most Workman's Compensation cases in less than 60-days, after we received the case referral from the Insurance Company." To close a problem Workman's Compensation case in less than 60-days was unheard of in the Insurance Industry. However, when the Insurance Adjuster Carol was working with confirmed her statements there was nothing more to say.

The Insurance Company Adjusters are part of special community where the news of an effective Rehabilitation Company who could resolve problem Workman's Compensation Cases quickly was passed on to their fellow Adjusters in other Insurance Companies. It did not take very long before the reputation of our Selective Job Placement Coordinators and Vocational Division of the American Rehabilitation Company brought in new Workman's Compensation Cases from other Insurance Companies. Carol had to hire additional people with business backgrounds to handle the volume of the new business. I went to work for Carol full time as the Vocational Marketing Director for American Rehabilitation and I would handle some of the most difficult Workman's Compensation cases with a record of resolving them in 30 days or less.

Not all my cases dealt with a fraud as many times the injured worker had become a victim of circumstances beyond their control. I had a woman who had faithfully worked for a company almost 20 years when she had her foot crushed between a shipping pallet and the machine she was working at. The injury was the result of a careless Forklift operator who may have been drinking and not watching where he was going.

Although the woman was properly treated for her injury, her Workman's Compensation claim had not been processed correctly by the company resulting in her Compensation benefits being unreasonably delayed causing the woman needless financial hardships. She lost her car and her apartment, forcing her to move in with her sister, where she was living in the basement when I interviewed her.

The Company under new management refused to take her back to work as she could no longer stand very long on her foot and they did not have another job she could do. She wanted to go back to work and I found her a new job within her work restrictions paying her more money. She wanted the job, but she needed a car to get to work and she did not have the money to buy one.

I called the Insurance Adjuster and after explaining the situation, I recommended the Insurance Company buy her a car. I had worked with this Insurance Company Adjuster on several very difficult cases and she knew I would not be recommending buying a car if it were not necessary to resolve the case. She agreed, as the woman would be receiving a cash settlement if she went back to work.

I drove the woman to a Used Car Lot, and asked her what type of a car she wanted. She picked out a car that looked like the one she had lost and I had the Salesmen take her for a test drive. When they came back and she told me she liked the car, I check the car over to make sure it had good tires and a new battery. I got the Used Car Sales Manager to reduce the price for a cash deal and I wrote him a check from my personal account. I had the woman call her Auto Insurance Company and issue a policy so she could drive the car home. The next day the woman went to work at her new job and every year she sent me a Christmas card thanking me for helping her.

In less than a year, we bought a four-bedroom split-level house on the end of Franklin Street below Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg. The lower level of the house had a large family room and an even larger recreational room that quickly filled up with secretaries typing the Selective Job Placement Coordinators Reports and the Billing Invoices to the Insurance Companies. We had not anticipated the demand for Selective Job Placement services by the Workman's Compensation Insurance Companies as each successful resolution of a case brought in a flood of new cases.

We were now working with Insurance Companies in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington DC and we had 18 people working as Selective Job Placement Coordinators in the Vocational Rehabilitation Division of American Rehabilitation.

To put this Vocation Rehabilitation business in the proper prospective 5% of the injured workers cost the Insurance Companies 98% of the money spent to resolve a claim and that extra cost is translated into the higher insurance premiums paid by the employers.

Within this 5%, of injured workers' there are a high percentage of questionable injuries that were out and out fraud perpetuated by doctors of questionable reputations. When our Selective Job Placement Coordinators became involved in these types of cases, the Claimant knew it was the end of his free ride and the Doctor knew his gravy train was almost over.

The key to resolving these fraudulent claims was the accurate written documentation of the notifications sent to the Claimants by Certified Letter Return Receipt Requested and obtaining written job descriptions from the prospective employer to establish the job was within the Attending Physicians physical work restrictions. The detailed written report of the Selective Job Placement Coordinator would also include when the Claimant failed to show up for his scheduled appointments, job interviews and what the Claimant did when he deliberately sabotage the job interview.

All this documentation had to be mailed to us, from the Selective Job Placement Specialist and then retyped by our secretaries in reports to the Insurance Company. The Insurance Company would use our documented reports to file for a formal Hearing by the Virginia State Industrial Commission that would ultimately decide the Workmen's Compensation case if the claimant did not go back to work.

This had become an administrative nightmare where we had seven secretaries retyping reports of the 18 Selective Job Placement Coordinators working in the field. Carol was working all hours of the day and night proof reading all these reports as they had to go out under her signature as their Rehabilitation Supervisor. From a business stand point it was costing the company too much money to process these reports and Carol as the Director of the Vocational Division was doing more work than she was being paid while the President of American Rehabilitation was raking in the profits.

When I added up all the hours Carol was working, she was making less per hour than her Selective Job Placement Specialists hourly billing rate. I had to use the Vocational Division's monthly billings to show Carol how much money American Rehabilitation was making in profits after she and the Selective Job Placement Specialist were paid before she would listen to me.

With all the data on the costs and monthly billings of the Vocational Division Carol and I flew down to meet the President of American Rehabilitation in Charlotte North Carolina to discuss the restructuring of how the company did this Vocational Rehabilitation business. If the President of American Rehabilitation was aware of these facts, he never mentioned it but I had the feeling he did as he gave Carol a $50,000 dollar bonus.

# 35. THE RISE OF VIRGINIA AMERICAN MANAGEMENT CORPORATION

Over the next month Carol and I, formed a Virginia Company called Virginia American Management Corporation, "VAMCO." We negotiated a new business relationship for Carol to manage all the Vocational Rehabilitation activities of American Rehabilitation through this company.

Since the primary purpose of VAMCO was to manage the Vocational Division of American Rehabilitation, Carol was the President of the company with 75% of the Company's stock and I as the Executive Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer had a minority stock interest of 25%. As VAMCO's Executive Vice President, I managed the company, paid our employees, kept the company's books, and filed all the Tax Returns and annual reports to the Virginia Corporation Commission.

Just because Carol received, a bonus did not relieve the basic administrative problems in getting the Placement Coordinators reports and billings typed and sent to the Insurance Companies. My solution to the rising number of hours our secretaries spent retyping the Selective Job Placement Coordinators Reports and the lost time mailing in these Reports to our Office was to buy each of the Coordinators a Computer.

All this came about when I was looking into buying my own Computer and I found a small Computer Company owned by a former Vietnam POW. After we had swapped war stories, I discussed the problems of the administrative costs and the number of secretaries we had to process the Coordinators Reports. Between his experience in Computers and my ability to analyze problems and come up with a better way of doing things, he was able to understand and offer a possible solution by using computers.

The way he explained things if I had each of the Selective Job Placement Coordinators buy a computer they could write their Reports on the Computer and he could write a custom computer program to handle the automatic delivery of their Reports over the telephone lines using a Modem to our office's central Computer. Once the Reports were in our office computer, there was no need to retype them, as our secretaries became Report Editors. We expanded the custom computer program to create the billing invoice sent to the Insurance Company, when the Report Editors keyed in the time, mileage and other services the Placement Coordinators listed in their reports.

I convinced Carol to loan VAMCO the $50,000 dollars she received as a bonus from the President of American Rehabilitation to finance the purchase of the Computers for the Selective Job Placement Coordinators and set up the Office's Computerized "Word Processing" system.

By the time, the Computer Store owner installed our system in the building VAMCO bought in downtown Fredericksburg, he had written a customized "word processing" program to help the Selective Job Placement Coordinators write their reports in a uniform manor. It was a simple computer format and he created a way of automatically entering key phrases used in their reports with only a few key strokes on their Computers. The system worked so well that we were able to reduce the number of our Report Editors to just three people. When the President of American Rehabilitation saw all the money we saved to process these reports, he reimbursed Carol for the Computers VAMCO had bought.

We also learned the Modems worked both ways and Carol could send the Selective Job Placement Coordinators written messages and new cases referrals with the instructions she had received from the Insurance Adjusters. Now when I look back on this, "instant computer communication system" we had created was the forerunner of what people call e-mail.

A major change in the North Carolina Worker's Compensation law came with the Whitley Decision changing the Medical only Rehabilitation State into a wage loss State requiring Vocational Rehabilitation Services to find the injured worker new employment. The Vocational Division of American Rehabilitation had become the recognized leader in providing Selective Job Placement and Carol became the expert called upon by the North Carolina Insurance Companies who needed to understand what this change in the law meant to the future of the North Carolina Insurance Industry.

It seemed every other week, I was flying Carol to North Carolina to meet with Defense Attorneys and Insurance Companies. The demand to know how to deal with the change in the law also required Carol to make Selective Job Placement presentations at a number of seminars. The Vocational Rehabilitation Division of American Rehabilitation continued to expand and add five more North Carolina Placement Coordinators to meet this new demand but the effort was taking a physical toll on Carol.

# 36. THE LOVE OF HORSES

One night after a long day in North Carolina, we had gotten to bed after midnight. Sometime in the early morning hours Carol woke me up and told me, she wanted to buy a horse. Where this idea came from I did not know, but I told her I would buy her a horse if she let me go back to sleep.

The next day after we flew back to Fredericksburg, we did not go into the office but we went looking for a horse to buy. By then Carol knew what she wanted as it had be a mare so it could have a baby horse. We found a nice American Quarter Horse mare named Super Won's Cricket. We would have Cricket bread to a son of one of the greatest AQHA Stallions, Zippo Pine Bar. When the baby horse arrived 11 months later, the only logical name for the colt had to be "Zippitty Cricket."

Buying Super Won's Cricket and joining the American Quarter Horse Association had changed our lives and the horses became an activity both Carol and I could enjoy. In the past, my shooting had been my entertainment and my leisure time activity, while Carol's focus had been just working. She could not understand how I could just stop working at 5 o'clock and I felt she resented my going off on the weekend to attend a Skirmish. Now I could just mention going to see Cricket and Carol's pen would drop on her desk and we would be off to the horse farm where we boarded Cricket. We were there when Cricket was bread and we studied everything we could find about horses, breeding, prenatal care, delivering foals and raising a baby horse.

With both our undergraduate and advanced college studies in the Behavioral Sciences Carol and I found the theory of desensitizing newborn horses and exposing them to all the possible things they would experience in their lives would give our baby horse the best possible start in life.

Based on this theory a horse learned 90% of all his knowledge about being a horse within the first 48 to 72 hours after he was born and what he experience during this short period would become a normal and natural part of his every day existence. By rubbing our hands over every part of his body, putting our fingers in all his body's openings and picking up his feet, rubbing and pounding on their hooves would insure any treatment by a Veterinarian and the horseshoeing by a farrier could be accomplished as a normal event in the horse's life.

We were there when Zippitty Cricket was born and the owner of the horse farm thought we were nuts when we desensitized Zipper. We had prepared a list of all the things we wanted him to experience. When we exposed Zippitty Cricket to plastic bags, colored balloons, horse blankets, vibrations of horse clippers, the sounds of clapping of hands, cheering, whistles, car horns along with the things outlined in our study of the desensitization theory, the owner knew we were nuts.

Within the first day, we had put a horse halter on Zipper and we lead him and his mother in and out of a horse trailer. Then we loaded them back up in the horse trailer and we had the horse farm owner dive it around the farm. By the third day, Zipper was not afraid of anything and we treated him as if he was our firstborn grandchild.

There were two other foals born on that horse farm before Zipper arrived and these foals only learned what their mother had taught them. By the time they were weaned we could already see the difference our desensitization efforts had made. Zipper of course missed his mother but he did not trash around in his stall and scream all night at being left alone.

The other two foals were as wild as March Hares and almost impossible to handle. When the first new owner who had bought one of these two other foals tried to load it on his horse trailer, he had a fight on his hands and it took two men to drag and push the foal into the horse trailer. When the horse trailer began to move the young horse started screaming and kicking the sides of the horse trailer as he tried to get out. When the second buyer came to pick up his horse the other foal was even more unruly and they had to tranquilize it before they could load it on the horse trailer.

To prove the theory, the next day, Carol lead Zipper into the horse trailer and he calmly walked on and off the trailer. That day the horse farmer became a believer in the value of desensitizing baby horses. If a man, who had raised horses all of his life could see the value and the advantage of raising horses who behaved like Zipper and selling them, than the value of doing it was worth my effort to find out how to make money in the horse business.

It is widely held and strongly believed the Irish have a natural ability to establish a mutual understanding and a love relationship with the horse and many would claim Irishman are half horse, but they never said which half. Since Carol and I were both Irish, we had a double advantage of being successful in the horse business. My definition of success was not just raising horses with a great start in life, but making money doing it.

It does not matter how much money you made but how much money you get to keep after paying your taxes that really counts. When I did my research on raising horses as a business, I found there were a number of legitimate Tax advantages to sheltering and offsetting your taxable income. These Tax advantages were incentives to take the business risks but unless there was a real profit on the investment, it was not a good business.

In my further studies of the horse business, I found there was a consistent cost factor to feed a high quality expensive horse and the average horse. However, when you sold them, the average horse might not cover the cost to feed it.

We went to a number of local Virginia American Quarter Horse shows to see what was involved in showing horses if we were going to raise them. I studied the bloodlines of the horses who usually won their show classes in Virginia and throughout the AQHA. I found when "out of state" horses came to a Virginia Horse Show, the past Virginia horse winners lost to the outsiders most of the time. This meant the horses in Virginia were not competitive and if we were going to raise the best foals, we needed to buy quality broodmares and breed them to the top Stallions on the AQHA's Leading Sires List.

The American Quarter Horses are broken down into two types of show horses. Those horses judged for conformation are Halter Horses and all the others were Performance Horses shown in 42 different events from working with cows in Western saddles to those who jumped obstacles in English saddles. The more I studied the AQHA Rule Book on each event I began to understand how the Judges evaluated each horse and rider to determine the winners in each class of competition. My experience in working at the Milwaukee Hunt Club and running the Ground Crews during their Annual Horse Show helped me to recognize quality bread and well trained horses.

There is money to be made in the horse business if you could buy a quality horse at a reasonable price and then sell it for a better price after the horse was recognized as a winner in the Horse Shows. Since Carol and I were not experienced horse exhibitor's we had to rely on professionals to show the horse and the potential profit margin on the resale of the horse could be lost in the costs of showing it to demonstrate the horse's increased show winning potential. Therefore, any horse we bought must have the potential of being sold for a significant profit and the horse must have the proven bloodlines to make a quality broodmare if we kept her.

We found such a mare in Canada and we flew up to Collingwood Ontario to look at the three-year old horse Kim Bay out of the AQHA Leading Sire, Bold Step. I liked the horse the moment I saw her and I swear Kim Bay spoke to me and told me she was ready for the big time. When Kim Bay came to Virginia, she did not disappoint me as she took off like a Roman candle at the horse shows. Kim Bay was the youngest horse to qualify for the Pleasure Driving Class at the AQHA World Horse Show in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and she finished 8th at the World Horse Show. Kim Bay's early success reinforced my confidence I could pick a good horse.

I need to back up and explain how all this happened. When we were planning to take Kim Bay to the AQHA World Horse Show, there was a good horse business reason to go to Oklahoma. The largest American Quarter Horse Auction in the country would be held during the AQHA World Horse Show. There should be some of best Broodmares in the country at this horse sale and that was the type of broodmare we wanted to buy.

I studied the Horse Sales Catalog and I knew what mares I would like to buy if the price was right. Carol and I discussed the merits of six broodmares trying to decide which one we should buy. What I was looking for were quality Broodmares who had already produced a foal with a good show record and they were safe in foal to a Stallion on the AQHA leading Sires List. These Broodmares would be having their foals early next year and the value of these foals sold in Virginia could easily cover the cost of buying their mothers. When Carol agreed with my business objectives she surprised me when she said, "If we were going to be in the horse baby business, why not buy them all if they were that good."

I visited the six broodmares before the Auction started and four of them had the temperament and quiet disposition I wanted in a Broodmare, as they would have the greatest impact on their foal's attitude. Carol and I agreed we would never own a horse that kicked and tried to bite, as they were not worth having at any price no matter how great they might be.

Having been successful in desensitizing Zipper I spent time reading and learning how to touch a horse and communicate with them through my hands. My father had told us his horse stories when he used them on his farm for as long as I could remember and many of the things he said were confirmed in the books I had found. When I say a horse talked to me, I believed it was part of my collective unconscious as an Irishman and I found I could trust this extraordinary means of communication if I just listen to it.

Carol liked all four of the broodmares but only three of them spoke to me. Our Trainer of Kim Bay gave us his opinion on the horses and he gave us a price range of what each horse might bring in the Auction. He told us not to go back to look at these horses again as it was better for the owner to believe you had lost interest in the horse since you talked with me.

He also explained the dynamics of the behind the scene games the Horse Auctioneers played with the Horse owners to jack up the sale price. His advice was to make your bid after the first bids have slowed down and sit on it until the Auctioneer makes his final call for any more bids. The Auctioneer knows you were interested in the horse and he will be looking for you to raise the bid even if you have not made a recent bid. If the horse is within your established price range, raise the bid only half of the value the Auctioneer is asking for. Technically, your bid is not an official bid but you will be telling him you have reached your bidding limit.

The two broodmares I did not like, were sold at a reasonable price but less than what I thought they would bring. One of the broodmares bread to Diversified who spoke to me came up next and only three parties offered a bid. I made my bid and two quick raises followed. I waited as our Trainer told me to do and I raised the bid when the Auctioneer struck the podium after saying, "going twice" and with no more bids, the horse was ours. The horse Carol liked but had not spoken to me was Auctioned-off some time later. When Carol asked me, why I had not bid on the Broodmare I simply told her the horse did not speak to me and Carol laughed and called me a crazy Irishman.

We ended up buying the other two broodmares at a very reasonable price. We would find out later, the people who would have bid on these three mares in foal to the AQHA Leading Sire, Diversified where in the Area's Grandstand watching Diversified take his 4th AQHA World Championship.

Before we left Oklahoma, we had offers to buy the Broodmares for twice what we had paid for them at Auction. Rather than pass up a possible sale of the foals I sold two of them sight unseen for the price they offered to buy their mothers and they could pick them up in Virginia the day after the foals were weaned. This had been a great start to our baby horse business as we had already turned a profit on horses we had not own two days before.

In January at the Virginia Horse Sale, I bought another Broodmare in foal to Diversified named Barbee Flower who had been the High Western Pleasure Horse in the Nation and she was one of the last horses born out of the famous Bar Flower Stallion who was a full brother to Zippo Pine Bar.

The breeding rules of the AQHA required the broodmare and the stallion to be physically on the same farm. Most of the other mare owners would send their pregnant broodmares to the stallion owner's farm and after the foal was born, they would rebreed the broodmare. However, with the importance we place on desensitizing the foals immediately after they were born was could not do that. With the need to transport both our broodmares and their babies to a stallion, we bought a large horse trailer and a truck to pull it. To safely move the mother and her baby, I rebuilt the inside of the horse trailer with two box stalls. While we waited for the foals to be born we made arrangements to breed back our broodmare to the best stallions we could find in a reasonable driving distance from Virginia.

One of the party's I had out bid to buy Barbee Flower had been the Agent of the man who owned an AQHA Leading Performance Sire, Kee Cee Leaguer and he was located in Pilot Mountain North Carolina. He offered us a very attractive breeding package if we bread the three Broodmares we bought at the AQHA World Horse Sale and Barbee Flower with the option to buy Barbee Flower's foal out of Kee Cee Leaguer. We found Cricket a breeding with an AQHA Leading Sire who had just moved into western Pennsylvania.

All four Diversified babies were born healthy and gorgeous. I do not know anything prettier than a newborn baby horse and we were there to watch their births and perform the desensitizing to give them the best chance of being happy horses. Having established a successful formula for our horse business, we bought a number of quality broodmares safe in foal to some of the most outstanding AQHA stallions, at the next two AQHA World Horse Show Sales. With all these broodmares, I was spending a lot of time driving them to the best AQHA Stallions east of the Mississippi River.

Although we sold most of the foals when they were weaned, we had built a sizable herd of remarkable broodmares that we were spending a lot of money boarding them at someone else's horse farm. After doing a horse business cost analyses we established it was time to buy our own farm.

With the Vocational Rehabilitation Office of American Rehabilitation in Fredericksburg, we were limited to finding a suitable farm within a reasonable driving distance of the downtown, as when I was out of town Carol still had to go into the office. I went to night classes at the Germania Community College to get my Virginia Real Estate license to improve my understanding of the real estate laws. I kept my License with a Real Estate Broker Nick Calamos and he became our Agent in an effort to help us find a horse farm. He took us to see a number of farms but none of them appealed to us. Most of these farms did not have a horse barn large enough to hold all our horses or the house lacked the charm we were looking for in our new home.

# 37. EFFORTS TO DIVERSIFY VAMCO

The economic policies of President Reagan had turned the country around and put Americans back to work. With discretionary money in their pockets, again people were willing to spend money on their hobbies like shooting in the NSSA and buying a new gun.

Based on the money VAMCO was making and the growing number of NSSA shooters who wanted to know if Harpers Ferry Arms Company planned to make any more Reproduction Maynard Carbines I looked into that possibility as an investment for VAMCO. I knew I had to put my emotional desires to restart Harpers Ferry Arms Company aside and establish the real economic potential of this project before I could justify using VAMCO's money.

To test the potential market I started the rumor I was making another production run of this popular reproduction Civil War Carbine. As the rumor spread, I was able to establish a fair Market price and obtain an estimate of the number of the Maynard Carbines I could comfortably sell. I was looking at this production run as a part time business where I would build and sell all the Maynard Carbines myself.

The Investment caster in Ohio was still in business and his prices were reasonable but the barrel maker in Idaho was gone. I could not make the Maynard Carbines without a quality barrel maker. My friend Guy Owen in Winchester Virginia was still making gunstocks and he encouraged me to make another run of the Maynard Carbines. He helped fuel the rumor of Harpers Ferry Arms Company making another production run of the Maynard Carbines by claiming he had the contract to make their gunstocks.

I met the Bob Williams the owner of the Chesapeake Classics Gun Company at a Maryland Gun Show who had his barrel-making factory located just across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in eastern Maryland. After I was confident that he knew how to make a quality barrel I wanted, I flew up to inspect his operation and discuss the possibility of making my barrels for the Maynard Carbine. I gave Bob an original Maynard Carbine barrel and a copy of the production drawings I had used with the Idaho Manufacture along with the specifications of the steel I wanted. I had him make a sample barrel I could test. I was impressed with the quality of the barrel Bob made and how well the barrel shot. With all the cost estimates to make the Maynard Carbine it was a matter of deciding if I really wanted to get back into the Reproduction Gun Business.

Carol knew how much I loved shooting and making guns and she encouraged me to do it after I presented the business proposal on the project. Part of the problem was I did not have a place to actually machine the gun parts and assemble them. She suggested I build a workshop and a garage on our house on Franklin Street.

An unexpected result of the rumors of Harpers Ferry Arms Company making another production run of the Maynard Carbine came from Bill Groh the NSSA's Property manager and the NSSA Commander Royal Inge. Bill Groh wanted to know if I would consider selling the production rights of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Maynard Carbine to Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company. I did not take this offer seriously until Royal Inge the current NSSA Commander made the same offer and wanted me to met Val Forgett.

According to Royal Inge, Val Forget was willing to donate a percentage of the Maynard Sales to the NSSA. The fact Val Forgett was willing to bribe the NSSA to get the production rights to the Maynard made Val's offer believable but that did not make me trust him or believe he was sincerely interested in buying the production rights to the Maynard Carbine. Val had cleverly maneuvered me into the position where I could not refuse to meet him. If I refused, Val would claim I was not interested in helping the NSSA make free money and he would know I was really making another production run of the Maynard Carbines. I had to play the hand dealt to me even though I knew the deck was stacked against me.

Val Forget had made a similar deal with Mike Yeck, who had made a Reproduction Civil War Smith Carbine here in the United States. Val had obtained the production rights on the Yeck Smith Carbine based on Royalty payments on each Reproduction Smith Carbine Val made. The only problem was Val Forgett never made any Smith Carbines under that agreement and he had effectively eliminated Mike Yeck as a competitor in the Reproduction firearms business.

At the next Skirmish at the NSSA Home Range in Winchester, Royal Inge and Bill Groh brought Val over to my campsite to discuss obtaining the production rights on the Maynard Carbine. When Val made his pitch and Royal Inge was already counting the money the NSSA would be making I surprised them all by telling them it was a great idea and I went on to state I would have my attorney draw up the contract. When Val Forgett established he would pay the NSSA $25 dollars for every Maynard Carbine he made, the only thing I wanted to know was how many Maynard Carbines the NSSA could expect Val Forgett and Navy Arms Company to make the first year.

When Val Forgett hemmed and hawed and then he danced around with vague comments I set the hook into Val's deception and turned the tables around on him. "I am sorry Val I didn't mean to put you on the spot. Why don't you take a week to think about it? When you come up with the number of Maynard Carbines the NSSA can count on, you can let Royal know and I will put that number in the Contract." I suggested.

I thanked Royal and Bill for their efforts in putting this deal together but I knew Val Forgett would never come up with a number of Maynards he would make as part of the contract. Val's efforts to stop me from making another production run of Maynards convinced me this would be a successful venture. I built the shop and garage on the house on Franklin Street, order the barrels and parts for the production run of Maynards and picked up the gun machinery I had stored in Winchester.

BOOK TWO

### REOPENING MY INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

# 1. KEEPING MY WORD

It was 1990 at the NSSA's Spring National Skirmish in Winchester Virginia and eight months since Jim Brake approached me about finding an overseas buyer for US Tobacco. I did not want to tell him I had been so busy with Carol's Company, our horse business and the Maynard Carbine project that I did not have time to help the man who had helped Carol and me when we really needed it.

Rather than attempt to make excuses, I told Jim I would do it and I found out what I had to do to become an ASCS Registered Tobacco Dealer. It was a simple matter of going to the County Agricultural Field Office at the Spotsylvania Courthouse and Registering. My Tobacco Dealer's Cards were mailed to me and my Tobacco Dealer's Books would be issued to me by the Virginia State ASCS Office in Richmond before the first of July.

As any business I became involved in, I asked for and received a copy of the latest Tobacco Rules and Regulations and I studied them. I then went to Washington DC and met with the Director of the Institute of Tobacco, which was the Federal Tobacco Lobbing Firm in Washington DC. He wanted me to join the organization and he provided me with piles of brochures on marketing and exporting United States Tobacco.

My next effort was to contact the South Korean Trading Company who had handled the export of my reproduction 1861 Springfields for Harpers Ferry Arms Company. Mr Chow had retired but I was told his son Chow T S was the Assistant Director of the South Korean Government's Office of Monopoly that handled all tobacco and alcohol imports. The South Korean Trading Company contacted Mr Chow T S and passed on my interest in exporting US Tobacco to South Korea. In less than 24 hours, Mr Chow T S called me in Virginia and he was delighted to hear from me, as the last time we had met was when I attended his wedding.

After we exchanged family information, he told me South Korea would welcome my bid on the Office of Monopoly's current tobacco requirements of 200 Metric Tons of US Tobacco. Mr Chow T S sent South Korea's Importers Registration with the Office of Monopoly to me as the Executive Vice President of Virginia American Management Corporation. In the same package, he listed the type of Tobacco South Korea wanted VAMCO to offer a bid using their Bidding Procedures.

The bidding procedures were simple to understand as the terms and conditions in the Tobacco Importers Contract for delivery and payment followed the normal International requirements I had used in Harpers Ferry Arms Company. The only problem was the type of tobacco they wanted was Burley Tobacco grown in Kentucky and Jim Brake was dealing with Flue-cured Tobacco grown in North Carolina. I called the Department of Agriculture in Washington DC and I was given the name of the party I should contact in the Burley ASCS Tobacco's Central Office located in Lexington Kentucky.

When I gave him the specifications on the type and grade of Burley Tobacco the South Koreans were looking for, he faxed a list of that Burley Tobacco he had available in the US Government's warehouses. On just this type and grade of Burley Tobacco there were over twenty pages listing millions of tons of tobacco produced over the past 10 years by Sales Lot numbers. Each Sales Lot listed the number of pounds of Burley Tobacco available at a price per pound.

This was my first indication of the sized of the US Tobacco crop and the volume of business in the Tobacco Market. These numbers were staggering, as this only represented what the US Government had bought in one Tobacco Grade of Burley Tobacco. The amount of Flue-cured Tobacco with its 173 Grades of tobacco produced in seven States was 200 times more than the Burley Tobacco. These numbers also confirmed what Jim Brake had told me about the US Government buying and storing huge amounts of tobacco at the Support prices when no one bid on the tobacco sold at Auction.

I knew from my study of tobacco it was like wine as it improved with age yet the price the Government was offering this Burley Tobacco did not increase to reflect the age improvement. My question was did Mr Chow T S valued this aged tobacco more highly and if I offered it as VAMCO's bid would this tobacco improve my chances of winning the bid. I called Mr Chow T S to get his guidance on VAMCO offering the aged Burley Tobacco.

Mr Chow T S was excited about the prospect of getting aged tobacco and he asked if I could get Burley tobacco from the 1981 Tobacco year. When I told it might be available, he asked for test samples. Then he said if 1981 tobacco was not available, 1985 would be his second choice.

When I called the Burley Tobacco Center in Lexington Kentucky to request test samples from two Lots of 1981 Burley Tobacco, they asked if VAMCO, wanted a 30-day hold on those two Lots of Tobacco. I agreed without knowing what it would cost to have the Tobacco samples sent or what it would cost to put this 30-day buyer's hold on these two lots. I had the feeling the Government Representative was testing me to determine if I had a serious buyer.

When I asked how I would be billed for these samples and the 30 day hold, I was told there would be no charge as this Tobacco was being offered for export and the Government was strongly encouraging more Agricultural exports as a means of improving World Trade and the International Balance of Payments.

My next question was how the Government expected payment for this Tobacco. Again as part of the Government's efforts to encourage Agricultural Exports, I could sign for this Tobacco and pay for it in 45 days. I could hardly believe this business opportunity, as I would not need to barrow any money from A R Dixon to buy the Burley Tobacco. I had already negotiated a $1,750,000 dollar short term 90 day Business loan with A R Dixon based on the anticipated costs to finance this deal.

A R Dixon really liked this business investment as the cost of buying 200 Metric Tons of Burley Tobacco, the Export fees to handle the transaction and the shipping costs by SEATRAIN from the Port of Exit Lexington Kentucky to Port of Entry Pusan South Korea were normal International business transactions. A R Dixon's confidence to finance VAMCO's Export of US Tobacco improved considerably when I told him of my relationship with Mr Chow T S who was the Assistant Director of South Korea's Office of Monopoly.

When I told him about my involvement with Jim Brake and our plans to Export Flue-cured Tobacco bought at the Tobacco Auctions and how this would improve our profit margins on additional US Tobacco Exports, he became more excited. He offered to become our International Banker and handle the International Letters of Credit. Since the first time I met A R Dixon he wanted to become involved in businesses that used International Letters of Credit and I knew his offer to be our International Banker was genuine. I had to ask if his offer would also include financing the purchase of Flue-cured tobacco for Export.

I explained what Jim Brake told me about buying Flue-cured Tobacco and separating the 173 Grades of tobacco to get the type of tobacco specified in the Export Contract, then reselling the tobacco we could not use in the Tobacco Dealer's Market. When A R Dixon asked how much money we would need, I told him I would not know until I was dealing in the Tobacco Market. However, my best estimate would be close to a million dollars as the price of tobacco bought at Auction was about half the price of process tobacco sold for Export. A R Dixon thought a million dollar loan estimate was reasonable and he was willing to discuss this possibility when I was able to present the real numbers on our financial requirements.

This new information on the Government's Export incentives and the 45-day delay of payment on the Burley Tobacco change this business deal considerably. According to the Bid Contract South Korea's Letter of Credit was payable when the tobacco was Free On Board at the Port of Exit and I would have the use of the Letter of Credit's money for 45 days before I had to pay the Government. The best place to put short-term money was in High Interest Rate CD's and the quickest way to start earning that high interest rate would be at the Bank where the South Koreans sent their Letter of credit.

The Burley Tobacco samples were ship by DHL to Mr Chow and I received his Fax stating how pleased he was with the test results. He also commented on the terms and conditions of VAMCO's bid as being most favorable to South Korea, as VAMCO would ship the Burley Tobacco within three days of the receipt of their Letter of Credit at VAMCO's Bank in Lexington Kentucky. I knew from our past discussions Mr Chow had complained about the US Tobacco Companies taking as long as three months before they actually ship the tobacco after the South Korean Letter of Credit was opened. With my experience in conducting business in South Korea, I could almost read the Tealeaves to understand he was telling me VAMCO would win this 200 Metric Ton Burley Tobacco Contract without saying it.

Acting on this confidence, I arranged with the Burley Tobacco office in Lexington Kentucky to be prepared to load the Tobacco I had on hold on the SEATRAIN railroad cars the day after I confirmed the receipt of the South Korean Letter of Credit. I had talked to the Customs Agent who would inspect the Export shipment. He agreed to have all the Export documents typed and ready for his signature, after he verified the actual amount of Tobacco shipped.

Everything from that point moved forward like clockwork. South Korea sent their Letter of Credit to VAMCO on the same day they opened the Bids. Mr Chow sent a FAX to VAMCO congratulating me on having the successful bid. I immediately sent a FAX to the Burley Tobacco Office, the US Customs Agent and SEATRAIN I was ready to proceed with the shipment.

Since the International Date Line put South Korea a day ahead of the United States I flew to the Lexington Bank to open the Letter of Credit on the same date. The senior Burley ASCS Tobacco Agent was true to his word as he had loaded the 200 Metric Tons of Burley Tobacco on the SEATRAIN railroad cars and the Customs Inspector had sealed the railroad cars and completed his paper work by 11 am. With all the documents in order, the Bank transferred the money from the South Korean Letter of Credit to a 45 day CD at 19.67% Interest in their Bank before 2 pm. Just as I had done when I Commanded a Unit in the Army and my men did an outstanding job, I let it be known in the Burley Tobacco Office and with the US Customs Agent that I was throwing a Party at the Lexington Holiday Inn.

Since I was busy working on Selective Job Placement cases and I had not planned to do any tobacco business in the early Tobacco Auction Markets I waited until the end of July to meet with the Head of the Virginia State's Agricultural Tobacco Department to pick up my Tobacco Dealer's Books. He instructed me on how to record all my Tobacco Sales in my Tobacco Dealer's Books. He stressed the importance of mailing in every page of my Tobacco Books I had used to conduct my tobacco business that week on Friday. He also gave me his business card and told me to call him if I had any question about someone trying to sell me tobacco when they did not have a Dealers Registration Card.

The North Carolina Tobacco Auction Market opened in mid August and I wanted to take the time off from working Selective Job Placement Cases and Marketing the Company to work with Jim Brake in the Tobacco Dealers Market. However, Carol had a difficult Selective Job Placement Case with a new Insurance Company who only wanted me to handle the case. The case involved overlapping liability and complicated Insurance issues stemming from a traffic accident where the Claimant had received a shoulder and back injury as a truck driver.

The traffic accident had not been the injured worker's fault and what happen after the accident produced a string of complications that had several Insurance companies fighting over which Insurance Company was liable for what part of the problem and none of them were paying the injured worker's hospital bills or the doctors who had treated him.

What happened to the injured worker after the traffic accident was unbelievable. The Ambulance crew had dropped him off their gurney injuring his right shoulder and compounded his back injury from the accident. The Hospital's Emergency Room had gotten the injured worker mixed up with another patient brought in with a ruptured appendix and the Doctor had removed the Claimant's appendix rather than fixing his dislocated shoulder. This mix up was not discovered until the man with the ruptured appendix nearly died.

The Workman's Compensation Insurance Company was denying him benefits claiming his injuries were not the result of the traffic accident but due to the careless actions of the Ambulance Company. The man had to retain a lawyer who won his case before the Virginia Industrial Commission and the Commission ordered the Workman's Compensation Insurance Company to pay him his Workman's Compensation benefits.

In the mean time, the man had sued the Ambulance Company, the Hospital and the Doctor who took out his appendix. The Ambulance Company, the Hospital and the Doctor had cross-filed with lawsuits of their own claiming the other Defendants were responsible and liable for what happened to the injured worker. To add to the legal mess the Workman's Compensation Insurance Company was now suing the Ambulance Company, the Hospital and the Doctor to recover the Workman's Compensation Benefits they were forced to pay the injured worker. With five Attorney's involved in this legal tug-of-war and each one trying to protect his client it would appear to be beyond the Wisdom of Solomon to resolve, when I entered the case.

At first, each Attorney wanted to be present when I interviewed the Injured Worker as he was looking for evidence to absolve his client and establish someone else was responsible for what happen to the man. Although I spend a week playing telephone tag with these attorneys I won that argument by pointing out it was in their best interest to allow me to do my job as the longer the Injured Worker was out of work the greater the liability would be to all parties.

The only Attorney to object was the Injured Worker's lawyer who could see a bigger paycheck the longer the man was out of work. However, he was in no position to stop the Workman's Compensation Insurance Company from offering to provide Vocational Rehabilitation and Selective Job Placement for the injured Worker. His efforts to delay my initial interview with the Injured Worker brought a threat from the Insurance Company to cut off the man's Compensation Benefits and my initial interview with the Claimant and his wife finally took place in the office of this Attorney.

The Attorney's list of demands and his requirements to allow me to work with his client were typical of most Claimants Lawyers who wanted to control how the Vocational Rehabilitation Selective Job Placement Coordinators did their work. I politely listened to him and then told him his demands were not as I understood the law to be. I outlined how I would help his client find new employment with his Physician's Work Restrictions and I expected him as the Claimant's Attorney to encourage his client to cooperate in this effort to find new employment.

When the Attorney continued to argue with me, I suggested I was not here to argue with him and if he wanted to argue with anyone, he could do it in a formal hearing of the Industrial Commission. I pulled out my Cell Phone and asked him if he wanted me to call the Insurance Company and tell them you are interfering with my efforts to provide Vocational Rehabilitation to your client. When he realized I was not bluffing he took out a tape-recorder and told me to proceed.

One of the first things I had a Claimant do was to fill out an Employment Application as it would give me his employment history and I would know how he would present this information to a prospective employer. I would also use it as a learning tool, to teach them how to properly fill out their employment applications to receive the best consideration for the Job.

"In this Employment History, am I supposed to put down what I am doing now?" The Claimant asked and you could have heard a pin drop before the Attorney quickly turned off his tape recorder with a panicked look on his face.

"How that we are not recording anything it might be a good time to discuss the job you are working before your Attorney has a heart attack as I know how to make this work for everyone." I suggested and when no one else spoke, I continued and addressed the Claimant.

"What happen to you after the traffic accident is almost criminal and you deserve to be compensated for the pain and suffering they inflected on you. However if they find out you are working and collecting Workman's Compensation your chances of winning these lawsuits against them will disappear as you will be charged with committing a fraud. Somewhere in all this mess, justice should not be lost by letting those who were responsible escape, but it is not my responsibility to decide those issues. My job is to help you find a job within your work restrictions.

With that understanding, tell me about this Job Offer you are considering." I asked as if I had not heard what the man had said about the job he was doing.

I was told the man and his wife started cleaning houses to pay their bills and feed their family as he was not working and he was not receiving his Workman's Compensation Benefits. The couple was good at it and one satisfied customer referred them to others turning it into a profitable business.

"Now Mrs Johnson I am assuming you are the boss in this business. I would like you to fill out this Job Description Form and list all the physical requirements of doing this job." I told her. When she was done, I compared her written Job Description with the Physician's Work Restrictions and I could not see any reason why the Doctor would disapprove this job.

"I have just one more question. How much money would you be willing to pay someone to do this job?" I asked her and she looked at her husband and then at the Attorney who just nodded his head.

"Congratulations Mr Johnson on your new job." I told him and shook his hand. "I think I have all I need to close my involvement in your Vocational Rehabilitation and Selective Job Placement. I believe it is time to wish you good luck on resolving the rest of your legal issues." I said and I left them in their Attorney's Office.

The Insurance Adjuster from the new Insurance Company never asked how I had resolved this case, as she was only happy I did. Carol had to hire another Selective Job Placement Coordinator to handle the new business we were receiving from this Insurance Company.

# 2. JUMPING INTO THE TOBACCO AUCTION MARKET

Having successfully delivered the Burley Tobacco to South Korea I discussed the opportunity to deliver North Carolina Flue-cured Tobacco at a favorable export price with Mr Chow. I explained how the Tobacco Auction Market worked and how with a confirmed order, VAMCO would buy this Tobacco at Auction and have it processed before shipping the Tobacco to South Korea.

Unfortunately, Mr Chow could not deviate from the South Korean Office of Monopoly's bidding process without obtaining a formal waver from the Government. Mr Chow explained such a waver was next to impossible, claiming it would open the door to bribes and corruption, which the Government sought to avoid when it established the Office of Monopoly.

In every government system, there are loopholes and exceptions within the regulations and one of those in the Office of Monopoly dealt with a Contract Buyer. The Contract Buyer would be the authorized representative of the South Korean Government and be the Government's Licensed Agent.

The disadvantage of being a Contract Buyer was the Agent could only charge a commission based on the terms and conditions of the contract and the profit margin Jim talked about by having an overseas buyer would be lost. Rather than tell Mr Chow that I asked him to send me a copy of the terms and conditions of becoming a Contract Buyer, as I needed to discuss this option with the Board of Directors of VAMCO.

In the mean time, Mr Chow was soliciting bids on 200 Metric Tons of processed Flue-cured Tobacco with a shipping date on or before November 15th. Mr Chow gave me the advanced information of the Grade of the Flue-cured Tobacco South Korea wanted.

This shipping date requirement was something new in the Office of Monopoly's terms and conditions as up until VAMCO became a bidder the Big Tobacco Companies would ship their tobacco when they felt like it and South Korea had been at their mercy if South Korea wanted US Tobacco. Mr Chow felt by the short notice of the Contract's shipping date might be to VAMCO's advantage as it may limit the number of other Tobacco Companies willing to bid and deliver on this Contract.

I thanked Mr Chow for his efforts to help VAMCO win this Bid and I promised to do my best to make his job in dealing with the Big Tobacco Companies easier. To help me understand the competition on this type of tobacco Mr Chow sent me copies of the winning bids on the pervious Contracts on Flue-cured tobacco for the past two years.

It was after the Labor day Holiday before I flew down to North Carolina and bought my first 50,000 pounds of Flue-cured Tobacco from Jim Brake as a Registered Tobacco dealer. When I offered to pay him, he told me we would settle-up on Friday depending on how much of this tobacco I sold. In essence, Jim was floating me a loan and I would pay him when I sold this tobacco. The next day I sold 9,243 pounds at $1.87 a pound and I made a 26 cent a pound profit. I rode with Jim as he collected his Tobacco Sales Checks from Tobacco Auction Warehouses in Goldsboro and Kingston North Carolina. What Jim did next surprised me.

We went to several Branches of the same Banks and cashed in the Warehouses checks but the amount of the checks he would cash was always under $10,000 dollars. I always believe it was better to ask a stupid question once and find out the answer rather than remain ignorant by not asking it. I knew from working with Mr Green about the Federal Currency Regulations and the requirement to complete a Currency Transaction Form when you paid or received more than $10,000 dollars.

Jim's response was the North Carolina Banks did not want to tie up their Bank Tellers filling out the Currency Transaction Forms as it would take almost a half hour to complete. I did not challenge Jim's explanation until I could confirm this southern Banking policy myself.

Jim dropped me off at the Holiday Inn in Goldsboro saying he had to meet someone about buying more tobacco. Rather than stay at the Motel I went to another Tobacco Auction Warehouse to watch the Auction process on the sale of each pile of tobacco.

The Auctioneer would announce the Tobacco Grade and he would start the bidding at the ASCS Support Price on that type of Tobacco. The Tobacco buyers lined up along both sides of the row of tobacco piles and they would nod their heads or wave a finger to raise the bid. The Auctioneer wasted little time when the bidding stopped to announce the Buyer's Company who had won the bid and moved on to the next pile of tobacco. The Tobacco Warehouse employees quickly moved the auctioned tobacco to the designated loading areas of each Buyer. I watched as the tobacco was loaded on semi-trailers and I follow one of the trucks to Wilson North Carolina and the Standard Commercial Tobacco processing plant.

I watch this truck unload a number of difference Grades of tobacco into the same hopper. I followed the tobacco, as the stems and veins of the tobacco leaves were separated from the body of the leaves by the processing machinery. To my surprise, all the tobacco came out in the same place. The processed tobacco was then packed in 990-pound plastic lined cardboard boxes that were still called "Hogs Heads" even though the boxes were square and not round like the original wooden Hogs Heads. I came away from the Standard Commercial Processing Plant wondering if I had missed something. I was sure the tobacco loaded on that truck had been graded differently and yet when it was processed it was as if all that tobacco had been the same ASCS grade of tobacco.

The next day I watched the ASCS Government Inspectors grade only the top few leaves of a bundle of tobacco before inspecting the next bundle. Although I was just learning how to grade tobacco, I could clearly see a difference in the quality of the tobacco leaves in the center of a bundle compared with the Tobacco Grade given to the top leaves.

I sold 2,421 pounds of my tobacco at $1.82 a pound for a 21 cent a pound profit. I watched as my tobacco was loaded on a Semi truck and I had made note of the different ASCS grades of tobacco loaded on the same truck. When the same thing happened at the Tobacco Processing Plant, I realized this whole ASCS Tobacco Inspection Grading process was a sham just as Jim had told me.

The whole ASCS Tobacco Grading system was part of a larger political game to give the appearance of fairness to the Tobacco Farmers while the big Tobacco Companies were able to buy the tobacco at a lower price than what it was really worth. If the big Tobacco Companies were playing games with the ASCS Inspected Tobacco Grades to make a higher profit in the Tobacco Auction Market, so were the independent Tobacco Dealers.

When I returned to Goldsboro, I found Jim at another Tobacco Warehouse tumbling tobacco to improve its ASCS Inspection Tobacco Auction Grade when the ASCS Government Tobacco Inspectors graded it the next day. Jim's Tobacco Tumbler was a motorized rotating wire tube three foot in diameter and 10-feet long with paddles inside of it. When the different Grades of tobacco were mixed in the right proportions and it was passed through the Tumbler all the tobacco coming out of the Tumbler would receive a higher and more valuable grade from the US Government Inspectors.

The Independent Tobacco Dealers would buy the cheaper grades of tobacco that might have been graded lower because there was sand mixed in the tobacco leaves and by tumbling the tobacco, the sand would be removed restoring the tobacco to its true ASCS Grade value. The real trick in the independent Tobacco Dealers market was buying Tobacco Grades that were close to being a better Grade and mixing it with a Tobacco Grade of exceptional quality. This mixture would give the entire bundle of tobacco the appearance of a better grade. The value difference in mixing two pounds of ASCS BK5 grade tobacco with one pound of ASCS BK3 grade tobacco would grade out to be three pounds of ASCS BK4 grade tobacco and that would be an overall increase of 20 cents a pound in additional profit.

It had taken two weeks to earn the $5,000 dollars profit on all the tobacco I had bought from Jim. This was hardly the $50,000 Dollars Jim had told me I could make in a week in the Tobacco Auction Market as I was competing for the same selling floor space at the same Tobacco Warehouse Jim was selling his tobacco.

I asked Jim if it was possible for him to get me into another Warehouse where I would not be competing with him. Jim quickly agreed and I asked him how much tobacco he could buy. He told me he could buy all the tobacco I could pay for and have it delivered to any Tobacco Warehouse who would sell my tobacco. Knowing the price per pound of tobacco Jim paid would vary based on the tobacco market I also wanted to profit from those conditions. Once Jim agreed to sell me this tobacco for 10 cents more than he paid for it, I suggested he introduce me to at least five new Tobacco Warehouses. When Jim asked how much tobacco I wanted to buy, I told him I would have $750 Thousand dollars next week and more if I need it.

I had already talked with A R Dixon about barrowing a million dollars in anticipation of buying enough Flue-cured Tobacco for an Export Contract. I had received favorable terms and conditions on the money if I allowed him to handle the Letters of Credit. Although I did not have a contract to export tobacco he told me he had a Bank in Petersburg Virginia and I could have as much money as I wanted in three days of when I needed it.

I had also confirmed the North Carolina Banks wanted the Tobacco Dealers to cash in the Tobacco Warehouse checks in amounts under $10,000 dollars to avoid tying up the Bank Tellers with requirements to fill out the Currency Transaction forms. Throughout my life, I had learned how to analyze problems and come up with a way of overcoming them to make the system work better for me.

I talked with the Bank Managers and asked them if I could come up with a system of cashing out the Tobacco Warehouse checks in amounts greater than $10,000 dollars that would not tie up his Bank Tellers would he consider doing it. I could see the idea of saving the Bank Tellers time appealed to the Bank Managers, as it would mean a greater volume of business in his Bank.

To obtain their agreements, I told the Bank Managers about my Banking experience with Mr Green who owned several Banks in the Washington DC, Northern Virginia and Maryland. When I told them the names of Mr Green's Banks, it helped to establish my credentials as being a seasoned International Businessman and more than just a Tobacco Dealer in the local Banking Community.

Having established the volume of tobacco business I could handle it was time for a serious business discussion with Jim on what I had learned in the Tobacco Auction Market and the way he was conducting his business. Since I was buying VAMCO's tobacco from Jim what he did could affect VAMCO and me. It did not matter what the good old boys in North Carolina did in the tobacco market for years and years, as I knew it was the rules and regulations of the Federal Government in Washington that would dictate what had to be done in the Banking business.

The way Jim was thinking and operating to make $50,000 dollars a week in the Tobacco Market had to be changed if we were going to work together. We had to reach an operating understanding we were both comfortable with and establish a common business objective. I could see the business potential in the Tobacco Auction Market as being in the millions of dollars with the bonus of additional millions of dollars in the exporting of tobacco. At this level of business, the IRS would notice us. The only way I knew how to deal with the IRS would be as I did when I followed the regulations in the Army and have a documented record of everything we did.

Jim's efforts to document the tobacco transaction in his Dealer's Tobacco Books was outstanding but his money management and financial documentation reflected the policies and limitations imposed on him by the North Carolina Banks.

The Dealer's Tobacco Market was a fast-paced cash business where deals are made at all hours of the day and night, seven days a week. A Tobacco Dealer may have a truckload of tobacco to sell but there was no way to complete the sale until the tobacco weighted. The easiest way to verify the number of pounds of tobacco would be to have the tobacco delivered at a Tobacco Warehouse you planned to resell it. The Tobacco Warehouse would weigh each bundle of tobacco by the pound and attach a numbered sales ticket with the total weight of the bundle. Each of the numbered bundles was listed on the Warehouse's Invoice and then the total weight of all the bundles became the number of pounds delivered on your Dealer's Plastic Card. This Dealer's card was like a credit card with your name and ASCS Dealer's registered number on it.

Once you had the total number of pounds of tobacco on all the Warehouse Invoices, you could pay the Tobacco Dealer the correct amount in cash. To pay with a check would tie up the money for five Banking days before the money cleared the Bank and an out of State check would take almost 2 weeks before the money would be available to the Dealer who sold you his tobacco.

With the average sale of a semi-truck load of tobacco over $60,000 dollars and if you bought only one truckload a day, you would need almost 500 thousand dollars and few Tobacco Dealers had that much money. With only 12 weeks in the Tobacco Auction Market, a Dealer's success was determined by how fast he resold his tobacco and could turn over his money. The only way he could be sure he had the money from his last sale to buy the next truckload would be if he were paid in cash. An independent Tobacco dealer who bought and then resold his tobacco would be lucky if he could handle more than a truckload a week.

The alternative was a independent Tobacco Dealer could operated on a floating credit at the Warehouse where he bought his auctioned tobacco. The Tobacco Dealer could buy as much tobacco, as he wanted on the four tobacco auction days in a week as long as he settled his account at the Warehouse by 5 pm on Friday. The claim that "time is money" could not be truer than in this higher risk Tobacco Dealers Market. A Tobacco Dealer had to know before he bought a selected grade of tobacco that he had it sold to another Tobacco Dealer who had the cash to pay for it. The confidence and trust between Tobacco Dealers could only be established by reputation and through their business experience based upon oral commitments over the telephone.

Each successful tobacco transaction reinforced this business relationship and the confidence to do even larger tobacco deals. Many Tobacco Dealers further down south had become just a buyer and the suppliers for the Tobacco Dealers who had a business relationship to resell this tobacco in a number of North Carolina Tobacco Warehouses. Having the floor space to resell tobacco at a Warehouse was necessary to succeed in the Tobacco Auction Market.

Jim had been born and raised in Kingston North Carolina and he knew all the Tobacco Warehousemen on a first name bases. He had been a Tobacco Dealer since 1988. He had gained the reputation of an honest Tobacco Dealer who could be trusted to meet his business commitments to have cash to pay for the tobacco when it was delivered.

It was how Jim got his cash concerned me. I pointed out his efforts to cash his Tobacco Warehouse checks at the different Branches of the same Bank could get him into trouble with the federal government as he was dealing with more than $10,000 dollars a day at the same bank. I explained no matter how he counted and made his banking transactions there are only five banking days in any week and each day's transactions from all the Branch Banks would be combined as being one currency transaction each day. The Bank Examiners could easily catch the total number of transactions made on each day using the Bank's policy of cashing out the Warehouse checks in amounts less than $10,000 dollars. I told Jim since he was breaking the Currency Transaction Law I could not do any business with him unless he change the way he did his banking business.

Based on the amount of money I had seen Jim get from the Banks I told Jim he needed to have all his transactions documented as the IRS would be looking at the Tobacco Warehouses books and they would know how much money he had made. Without the proper documentation acceptable to the IRS, he had no way of proving how much money he paid for the Tobacco he bought. I suggested he put the amount of money he paid for the tobacco on the top of the Tobacco Transfer Form so when the Tobacco Dealer signed the Tobacco Transfer Form with the number of pounds of tobacco on it that same Form, would also become a sales receipt for the money he paid.

Jim took my IRS and Bank warnings seriously and he admitted he did not know how to legitimately convert the Warehouse checks into cash any other way. I told Jim I had a way of getting as much money from the Banks as we needed and I suggested we should do what each of us did best. Jim would handle the buying and delivery of the tobacco and I would take care of the reselling of the tobacco. We would also need a place to store the grade of tobacco we would need to fill the Export Contract if VAMCO won the Bid with the South Koreans.

The next day Jim introduced me into three Tobacco Warehouses in Kingston, a Warehouse in Goldsboro and one Warehouse in Wilson North Carolina. The arrangements were made to deliver tobacco for resale to these Warehouses by Monday. I had numbered all my Tobacco Dealer's Cards and Tobacco Books as a way of controlling them and left one of my Tobacco Dealer's Cards and a Tobacco Book with each Warehouse and they would remain there as long as I had tobacco to sell there.

My ASCS Agent in Richmond Virginia had approved my methods of conduction my tobacco business and controlling all the tobacco I marketed. By keeping one of my Tobacco Books and Dealer's Card's at each Warehouse the Warehouse Manager had them in his safe when my tobacco arrived and I did not need to be physically present at the Warehouse. The verification and proof of the number of pounds of the tobacco delivered would be imprinted on the top of each Warehouse Invoice and the truck driver would receive the Pink Copy of each Warehouse Invoice. When I received the Pink Copies, I would know where every pound of my tobacco was located and when it was delivered to each Warehouse. With my airplane I could fly into the airports in each of these cities and conduct my tobacco business with each Warehouse in a fraction of the time it would take to drive to just one of these cities.

It was time to put all the pieces of this business together. I met with the Bank Manager of each of the Banks who handle the Warehouse Accounts where I was selling my tobacco. I explained my idea of Xeroxing the Currency Transaction Form with all the required data already on it. When I came to the Bank to cash the Warehouse checks all I had to do was sign it after the Bank Teller filled in the number of dollars I was picking up. I would know how much tobacco I was selling at each Warehouse and I would order the amount of money I would need so the Bank would have the cash available.

I confirmed the date of when I had to order the money from the bank and when the bank would receive it. That way the Bank would not be holding money it could not collect interest on or have a large amount of money in their bank for less than a few hours. As a backup to getting cash, I made the same arrangement with VAMCO's Bank Manager in Fredericksburg Virginia. At first, he thought I was laundering Drug money until I told him, if I was laundering drug money I would be trying to put money into his Bank and not take it out of it.

His only question was if I smoked tobacco and when I took out my tobacco pipe, he agreed to cashing Cashier's checks from an out of State Bank. This opportunity to cashing Cashier's checks would be an additional back up if my tobacco sales were more than the amount of money I had ordered from the North Carolina Banks. It was agreed, if I deposited the Cashier's checks and ordered the money on Friday I could pick up that amount of money on Tuesday before 2 pm and there would not be any Bank charges for doing this.

Confident that I had completed all the parts of my plan I called A R Dixon to confirm I could pick up $75,000 dollars he had agreed to loan me. Tuesday afternoon I flew down to the Petersburg Airport and met with A R Dixon and his associate in the Petersburg Bank. I signed a Cashier's Check drawn on a Bank in Delaware and his associate took the signed check and cashed it at the Bank. With a $750,000 dollars in my briefcase I flew to the airport at Goldsboro North Carolina to meet with Jim who had the pink copies of the Warehouse invoices for the delivered tobacco at the five Warehouses I was reselling the tobacco. With the proof of delivery on the total number of pounds of tobacco, I paid Jim in the cash I had gotten from A R Dixon.

I entered the number of pounds of tobacco on each of the Pink Copies from each Warehouse in my Master Accounting Dealer's Book. Before I conducted any business at a Warehouse, I would transfer the total number of pounds of tobacco delivered to the warehouse as listed on the Pink Copies from my Master Accounting Dealer's Book into the Dealer's Book I had left at the Warehouse

Once that was done, the Warehouse Bookkeeper would enter the number of pounds of tobacco the Warehouse had sold since I was last there. My accounting system would establish how many pounds of tobacco were still in the Warehouse to be sold. Depending on the delivery schedule of the money at each of the North Carolina Banks, I would cash out the Warehouse Checks.

At the end of each Tobacco Sale day, I would meet Jim at the Holiday Inn in Goldsboro and report the amount of inventory remaining at each Warehouse. With the money I received from the Banks, I would play Jim for all the tobacco he had on the Pink Slips as proof of delivery to my Warehouses. Knowing that tobacco sales were conducting all hours of the day and night, I would also turn over the rest of the money I had received from the Banks as an advanced credit towards the purchase of Jim's next tobacco deliveries.

Everything was going fine, until one of the Warehouse Managers demanded I pay him a dime a pound for all the tobacco I sold at his Warehouse before he would give me the checks on my Tobacco Sales. I had no choice but to pay him.

However after I received my Tobacco checks I kept my Tobacco Dealer's Card and I took my Tobacco book with me. I walked out into the Warehouse and I asked if there was anyone willing to haul my Tobacco to another Warehouse. According to my Tobacco Book, I still should have over 9 thousand pounds in the Warehouse.

I approached the Warehouse floor manager and told him not to sell any more of my tobacco as I was moving it to another Warehouse. The only problem was he could not find it. I gave him 24 hours to find it or I would be back with a US Tobacco Agent to get my Tobacco. By the time, I got back to Goldsboro Jim told me it was all a misunderstanding and he had taken care of it.

Jim never explained what the misunderstanding was or how he had taken care of it. I told Jim I would not agree to sell any more tobacco in that warehouse and I had already made other arrangements in a new Warehouse, who was delighted to have our business.

This took Jim by surprise, as he had not expected me to act so quickly. When I asked if that was a problem, Jim told me he had never sold any tobacco at that Warehouse, as the Warehouse Manager would not allow a Tobacco Dealer to resell any tobacco in his Warehouse before this. After Jim thought about it, he said I did a good but wished I had told him before I did it.

Three weeks later the Warehouse Manager who had demanded money from me made peace with Jim. Jim handed me the money I had paid the man but I had the feeling that money had not come from the Warehouse Manager. Business is business and you do not cut off your nose to spite your face. When I went back into that Warehouse to pick up my Tobacco checks I only dealt with the Warehouse's Bookkeeper.

VAMCO's bid on the Flue-cured Tobacco to South Korea was second best. I discussed this with Mr Chow and since the Bids were now a public record, I asked if he would send me a copy of the other Bids.

There were three other Bids on supplying the 200 Metric Tons of US Flue-cured Tobacco to South Korea's Office of Monopoly but I did not recognize any of the names of the Companies making these Bids. VAMCO had lost the Bid by a half a cent a pound or $22,400.00 dollars on the 448,000 pounds to a company called "Carolina Tobacco Company" out of Wilson North Carolina. The other two Bidders were the "Bright Leaf Tobacco Company" out of Rocky Mount, North Carolina and the "Gold Leaf Tobacco Company" out of Raleigh, North Carolina.

When I called the North Carolina State Corporation Commission, I was told all three Companies were the Registered Trade Names of Standard Commercial Tobacco Corporation. Standard Commercial had made the three Bids required by the Office of Monopoly to award the Contract and the three Bids were within a few cents a pound of each other. It was obvious to me Standard Commercial was circumventing the Office of Monopoly's attempt to receive a competitive and independent Bid from at least three different companies by bidding against itself. Standard Commercial would ship the same tobacco no matter which of its Bidders won the Contract.

Knowing how business was done in South Korea as well as I did I was sure someone in the Office of Monopoly had been bribed to find out if VAMCO was bidding on this Flue-cured Contract and the amount I had bid on the 200 Metric Tons. All of Standard Commercial's Bids were made after VAMCO had submitted its bid and their bids were less than 50 cents a pound than the previous winning bids for the past two years.

I had the feeling Mr Chow knew how the Big Tobacco Companies were playing the bidding requirements of the Office of Monopoly and that was why he welcomed VAMCO's entry into the tobacco bidding competition. Having awarded VAMCO the last Contract was my payment for making this Bid on this Contract which had saved the South Korean Government close to a quarter of a million dollars on this Contract. Not only did Mr Chow save the South Korean Government money he was forcing the Big Tobacco Companies to ship the tobacco by a specific time. This was so typical of South Koreans who looked beyond the cost of one sale to gain the long-term advantage in future business and I should have seen it coming. However if I were being used as a stalking horse in this export tobacco business by the Office of Monopoly I could expect some favorable consideration from another part of the South Korean Government if Mr Chow wanted VAMCO to bid again.

I really could not complain as I had made a good profit from both the last tobacco contract and the quick financial turnaround on the Letter of Credit. I knew I had to act as if this had been Mr Chow and my plan all along as the future business in South Korea would be my long-term advantage.

During the time I was in the Tobacco Auction Market this year I had done close to a million dollars worth of business. Jim and I had established a remarkable system of coordinating the delivery of tobacco and the converting the Warehouse checks into immediate cash to take better advantage of the opportunities in the Tobacco Dealers Market next year.

There was one incident during the last week in the North Carolina Tobacco Auction Market that cast a shadow over our otherwise successful season. Jim is a large man who most people would not pick a fight with, yet a man who appeared to be drunk attacked him in a telephone booth.

During the fight, the spiral metal covering on the telephone cord had separated creating a sharp edge that cut deeply into the tendons of Jim's right hand. It was serious enough to have Jim immediately transfer to the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.

I met Jim in the hospital the next day and it was his opinion this had not been a random attack. It was his belief a rival Tobacco Dealer named Jimmy Wells was behind this attack. Jimmy Wells was a shady Tobacco Dealer who had problems with a number of Tobacco Warehouses who had chosen to deal only with us this year. Apparently, Jimmy Wells was jealous of our success. He saw Jim as the reason for the loss of his business and he wanted to take it out on Jim personally.

Jim would be in the hospital for a week and he wanted me to pick up his tobacco checks from the Warehouses he was selling his tobacco. Up until now, Jim had bought all the tobacco we had been reselling in the Warehouses and I had never met any of the Tobacco Dealers Jim had been doing business with. Jim claimed he had one pending tobacco sale with a Tobacco Dealer named Golden Frinks and I had to pay him $120,000 dollars for the tobacco he would be delivering on Monday.

Jim gave me a letter authorizing me as his Tobacco Dealer's Agent. He gave me a list of the Warehouses he was in and I should tell them he was closing out his account with them after they sold the tobacco he still had with them. To make my job easier Jim instructed me to tell Golden Frinks to deliver this last ordered tobacco to the Warehouses I was doing business with in Kingston North Carolina.

I was surprised to see Golden Frinks was a black tobacco dealer when I met him at the Truck Scales south of Wilson North Carolina. He claimed the 7 truckloads of tobacco at the Truck Scales were his and I gave him Jim's list of Tobacco Warehouses where he was to deliver the tobacco. We agreed to meet at a small restaurant east of Goldsboro where I would pay him for the tobacco he had on the Pink slips, confirming the delivery at the designated Warehouses.

Everything had gone smoothly as I did not need to bring any more money to pay for any tobacco. I collected Jim's tobacco checks from his Warehouses and turned over the checks to Jim who had his wife cash them. During the off-season after Jim was out of the hospital, he would meet with new Tobacco Warehouse Managers to expand our business into additional tobacco reselling floor space at 12 North Carolina Warehouses.

# 3. NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES WITH A R DIXON

When I met with A R Dixon to repay the loan he wanted to know if I had any other ideas where sizable investments could be made. He explained he was closing down his Company in Delaware and he wanted to move his investments into some long-range secure ventures that he could cashed in within 3 to 5 years.

When I told him about VAMCO's American Quarter Horse business and how we wanted to move it to the historic Berclair Plantation in Fredericksburg that George and Charles Washington once owned, he wanted to know the details. I told him Berclair Plantation was General Lee's Reserve Army Headquarters before the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. Then because the Plantation was on one of the highest ridges behind the Confederate Lines General Lee had built a Signal Tower that allowed him to see the entire battlefield from Hamilton's Crossing to Maries Heights during the Battle. In 1863 after the Battle of Chancellorsville Berclair Plantation was used as a Hospital during the Battle at Salam Church.

Having established the property's historical significance, I outline its investment potential in three to five years. Berclair Plantation was already zoned for a 170 building lot housing development and based on the price of $40,000 dollars for the building lots sold in the adjacent subdivision we could make over five million dollars when the Real Estate Market turned around.

The Plantation had been lost to Federally Insured Savings & Loan who had foreclosed on the property. However, because of the Savings & Loan crises across the nation, the valve of the foreclosed property is balanced against the money held on deposit at the Savings & Loan and that means this money cannot be leant on any new loans.

The Fredericksburg Savings & Loan is a small financial institution with just over a million dollars on deposit and with a million dollars foreclosure on Berclair Plantation they will be out of business if they cannot sell it quickly. I explained VAMCO had made a $750,000 dollar offer to buy Berclair Plantation and we are the only buyers with money. VAMCO's Bank was willing to give us a loan as they had seen the growth of the company as the Managers of the Vocational Division of American Rehabilitation and the volume of money VAMCO had used in the Tobacco Market.

"So you are willing to pay 750 thousand for a property that may not be worth a million dollars in a depressed economy." A R Dixon stated.

"Now A R, you know me better than that. The insurance coverage on the buildings alone is over a million dollars. The million dollar loan that toppled the rest of the Plantation was just on the front 50 acres. The way I am looking at this investment I am paying 25 cents on the dollar." I informed him.

"Not bad." A R Dixon stated as he paused to think. "You know this would be something I would like to invest in. Would you consider me as an investor?" A R Dixon asked.

"Yes I would, under the right terms and conditions. What do you have in mind?" I asked him.

"Let's say you keep the $750,000 dollar I lent you and you buy this Plantation. We could be 50/50 partners and we would split the profits after I have taken back my original investment when we sell it." A R Dixon proposed.

"I would like it better if we both took out our investments before we split the profits as I will be paying the Taxes and Insurance and I will be making improvements and maintaining the property." I suggested.

"That seems fair. Would you draft this agreement, as we understand it and we can finalize it next week?" He asked.

"That will be no problem and I will deposit your money in a joint Trust Account under the name Berclair Plantation at the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan. There is nothing like money in the Banker's own bank to establish the buyer is ready, willing and able to relieve him of this troublesome property and allow the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan to stay in business." I told him and we shook hands on the deal.

# 4. THE DISCOVERY OF BERCLAIR PLANTATION

Carol and I had looked at a number of potential horse farms in the Fredericksburg area, but we were not having any luck finding the right place. I was deeply involved in the Tobacco Market when Carol found this property and I had just come back from the Potomac Regional Skirmish held at the NSSA's Home Range in Winchester Virginia.

She and the Realtor were waiting when I arrived in my dirty and sweat filled Confederate shooting uniform Sunday afternoon. Carol was in her long Civil War Period day dress and wearing a wide brimmed straw hat, with this radiant smile on her face.

They would not let me unload my guns or shooting gear as Carol insisted I ride with her and the Realtor as she had something I needed to see. While we rode out to inspect the property the Realtor, claimed he had just obtained the Listing. As we rode up the half-mile long driveway, it was as if we were stepping back into history and I had been there before, perhaps in another lifetime.

I was impressed with the historic buildings, the amount of land that could be used as horse pastures and the thousands of mature English, Boxwoods that lined the numerous brick walkways, the swimming pool and formal Rose Garden of the Plantation. The Realtor claimed the original cuttings for these Boxwoods had come from President Harrison's Berkeley Plantation on the James River. The Realtor claimed the Plantation's house had originally been built in 1803 and it had been completely restored by the previous owners.

There were three rental units on the Plantation. The original Plantation's School House had been made into a comfortable two-bedroom house. The Plantation's original Meat locker had been expanded into a one-bedroom guest Cottage and a new one-bedroom apartment had been built in the second floor of the barn when the barn had been renovated.

The Realtor knew our primary interest in the property had been to move our horses to our own farm and he suggested we look at the barn first. He claimed the previous owners had spent $250,000 dollars to renovate the ten-imported French Box Stall Horse Barn with tongue and groove one inch paneling and brick allie-ways. Although I was impressed with this extravagance, I thought they had wasted a lot of money as I could have built a magnificent horse barn with a covered riding arena with that amount of money.

I was starting to count-up the value of the property's buildings to get an estimate of what the owners would be asking for this property when we turn the corner of the Tool Shed and I saw the Smoke house. I had seen this Smoke house before and I knew I was at General Lee's Reserve Army's Headquarters during the Battle of Fredericksburg.

I had attended a Civil War Round Table meeting in Madison Wisconsin back in 1960. One of the members of the Round Table had toured the Civil War Battlefields in the area of Fredericksburg Virginia and he was making a slide presentation. In one of the slides, he claimed it was a picture of the Well House at Berclair Plantation, which had been General Lee's Reserve Army's Headquarters prior to the Battle of Fredericksburg. When I looked at the slide projected on the screen, I made the comment to a man next to me, that it was not a Well House but a Smoke house as a Well House would have windows in it.

The man next to me challenged the Speaker on the historical accuracy of his presentation in an effort to poke fun and tease him. He told the Speaker he was sitting next to an expert on historic Wells and Smoke Houses and this slide was in my opinion a Smoke House. That incident left a lasting impression on me and here I was looking at the same Smoke house the Speaker had shown in his slide presentation.

When we walked through the formal Rose Garden Carol said. "Oh Mark, don't you just love this place? We have to buy it."

"Carol as I told you before when we were buying horses, you don't love a horse until you own it and I don't even know how much this place costs." I said as I turned to the Realtor and asked what they were asking for Berclair Plantation.

It was then we learned the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan had foreclosed on the front fifty acres of property and the rest of the Plantation had been lost as it was used as collateral on the loan. The Fredericksburg Savings & Loan was asking one million dollars for the entire Plantation. However, this asking price did not seem right, as I had estimated the value of the buildings alone were worth that much. Based upon my business experience when something did not seem right, in the asking price, there was usually a problem that could kill the deal.

To make sure I did not misunderstood the asking price or what was being offered For Sale, I asked the Realtor how much Insurance the Savings & Loan was carrying on the buildings. His response was over a million dollars. This amount of Insurance coverage confirmed my original estimated value of just the buildings alone without the value of the land.

"Ok I'll bite. What is wrong with the property and why is the asking price for the whole place less than what it is worth?" I asked.

"They just want to get their money out of it." The Realtor responded and what he said had thrown up a number of red flags I would have to find out myself. In the mean time, I had to lock up the property under a Sales Contract I could get out of if I did not like the answers I would find.

The best way to lock up a property is to offer several Sales Contracts that would be withdrawn if they were not accepted, as my multiple Sales Contracts would not allow a counter offer. The first Sales Contract Offer was at $750,000 dollars, as it was the most optimistic price I could hope to buy the property. The second Sales Contract would be at $850,000 Dollars as it would be a more reasonable offer closer to the asking price but still a good deal to us. The third contract would be at the asking price of the seller.

The Realtor was directed to submit the second and third offers only if the previous offers had been rejected and in this way, no one else would be able to submit an offer until all three of my offers were rejected. My escape clause in each Sales Contract offer was the conditions of an acceptable Home Inspection at the buyer's expense and the seller's certification that there were no hazardous wastes on the property.

Monday morning Carol and I met with the Bank Manager where we had VAMCO's business accounts and asked about getting a loan to buy Berclair Plantation. He never hesitated in making the Bank's Commitment and he only asked what Mary Williams was asking for the property.

He was surprised to learn the Fredericksburg Savings and Loan had foreclosed on the property. He was even more surprised at the price the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan was asking for it. We agreed with him that the asking price was too low.

I told him the low asking price had both Carol and I concerned that there was something wrong with the property. I explained that no matter how I looked at Berclair Plantation as an investment it should be worth at least three million dollars.

That was when, our Banker told us about the adverse effects of all of those Savings & Loan scandals were having on them. He explained how the Federal Government was forcing all the FDIC Insured Financial Institutions to deal with any foreclosed properties.

He told us that the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan was not very big and if we bought Berclair Plantation, we could be saving them from being taken over by some larger Bank. He suggested the best person to contact about Berclair Plantation if she will talk to you, would be Mary Williams who was also a Real Estate Broker and she really loved that place. He wrote Mary's phone number on the back of one of his business cards.

When he gave us the Loan Application, he asked how much money we would need. I told him I did not know yet and when I explained how I had made my Sales Contract Offers, he laughed saying only I would think of something like that.

The Fredericksburg Savings & Loan was more desperate than I thought as they accepted our first Sales Contract offer of $750,000 dollars. The only problem was they did not know when they could close on the property as there was an IRS lean on the property and it could take months before it was resolved.

As far as I was concerned this was just fine, as I needed to conduct my research on the possible problems that may exist on the property and I was so busy in the Tobacco Market I did not have the time to do it. Of course, I did not tell the Savings & Loan that. I expressed my disappointment of not being able to move all of our horses sooner as we were boarding them at another farm and it was costing us money we could be saving when we had our own farm.

Our contact with Mary Williams had not gone well as she politely told us she did not own the place anymore and we should address our questions to the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan.

Nick Calamos filled me in on how the Williams had lost Berclair Plantation. Mary's husband had been a Plant Manager for a major manufacturer in Fredericksburg and was making good money until he had a disagreement with the Company's Stockholders. When he had told them if they thought they could find someone who could do a better job than he did, they should hire him. The Board of Director's took him at his word, they hired someone else and Mary's husband was out of a job.

Mary's husband had also become involved with the son of Carl D Silver in the development of a Log Home subdivision on Berclair Plantation and they had borrowed the money against the Plantation to finance the venture. When the money ran out and they had not built the first Log Home, Mr Williams was left with the debt at the Savings & Loan, which foreclosed on the property.

When I told Carol the story I heard from Nick, she felt sorry for Mary Williams who was the only person who could answer the questions I had about Berclair Plantation. I suggested to Carol that she call Mary Williams and ask her if she would consider being our buyer's broker. It would not cost us anything as Mary as our buyer's Real Estate Broker would earn half of the Realtor's Commission on the sale of Berclair Plantation and we would find out what we needed to know about Berclair Plantation.

Mary Williams could not believe we were serious about having her become our buyer's Broker until Carol told her how busy I was in the Tobacco Market and I did not have the time to dig out the information I needed to find out to feel comfortable with going through with the sale.

Mary Williams was a dream, as she took us on a complete tour of the Plantation and told us everything she knew about Berclair and the history that took place there. She treated us like her children she was leaving in charge of the family's property. As a result, we knew more about Berclair Plantation then the Listing Real Estate Agent and the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan did.

When I opened the Berclair Plantation's Trust Account at the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan, with A R Dixon's money I asked the Savings & and Loan to take out a special insurance policy as FDIC Insurance would only cover the first $100,000 dollars in the account. I really was not concerned about the money. However, it was a polite way of serving notice on the Board of Directors of the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan, that we were growing impatient with the delay in clearing Berclair Plantation's property Title of the IRS Lean.

# 5. BUYING TROUBLE

In November, Carol and I went to the AQHA World Horse Show to watch some of our baby horses perform and to buy two outstanding World Class Broodmares in foal to some of the best AQHA Stallions in the Country. The horse farmer who was boarding our horses planned to take two of his horses to the AQHA World Horse Show Sale in a four horse and he had agreed to haul any Broodmares I bought at the Sale back to Virginia.

I bought the two Broodmares I wanted to buy and two other world class Broodmares in foal to an AQHA leading Stallion, who spoke to me. However, I made the mistake of buying a young stallion for the Horse farmer based only on his word that he would pay me for the horse when we got back to Virginia. Up and until this point Carol and I had been boarding our horses at his farm since 1987 without a problem and I had no reason to doubt his word.

After we returned to Virginia, I found my trust had been misplaced when he did not pay me. His father would not give him the money claiming the Stallion was not worth the money he had agreed to repay me. This revelation by a middle age man was as if he could not be held responsible for his own commitments and somehow his agreement to repay me had been legally canceled by his father. When I offered to take monthly payments on the horse, he suggested we should become partners in this young Stallion. He got mad and walked away when I told him I was not interested in owning the horse.

Rather than deducting the cost of boarding our horses on his farm and hauling my Broodmares from the money he owed me on the young stallion, the Horse farmer demanded I pay the full amount of the bill, which also included the cost of hauling the young Stallion from Oklahoma.

When the Horse Farmer refused to discuss the money he owed me on the young Stallion and again offered a partnership, I realized for the first time since we boarded our horses at his farm that our horses could be held as hostages. Without the Horse Farmer's agreement to make payments on the young Stallion, I did not have a legal choice but to pay this bill and move our horses to Berclair Plantation as soon as possible before things got ugly.

The Fredericksburg Savings & Loan must have believed I was going to back out of the sale as they gave us a $50,000 dollar credit off the Sale price for improving the roads and the pastures. Then suddenly the Savings & Loan cleared the IRS Lean and we closed on Berclair Plantation on December 6, 1991 and on the 20th Carol moved us to Berclair. When we picked up our horses before Christmas, the Horse Farmer realized he had killed the goose who was laying his golden eggs and he refused to allow me to take the young stallion he had not paid for.

Rather than be baited into a physical confrontation I walked away from him towards his father's house. I met the man's father at his front door and I told him he and his son had until the first of the year to pay for the young stallion or I would come and get the horse.

The man's father laughed at me, saying he would have me arrested for Trespassing if I came back on his farm. There was no sense arguing with either man as if the Law was to be involved I still had the Bill of Sale on the young Stallion from the AQHA World Horse Show Sale with my name on it.

Since I did not intend to own this young Stallion, I had not completed the transfer of the horse's Registration papers. With the complete description of the horse on its Registration, I would have no problem proving the ownership of the horse to the County Sheriff. I hoped with a week to cool off I would not need the Sheriff to become involved to be paid for the young stallion or to take possession of the horse. However, I was wrong again. The King George County Sheriff came to Berclair Plantation to serve formal notice if I set foot on their farm I would be arrested for Trespassing.

When the Law becomes involved in a business dispute, it was best to seek their advice on how to resolve the problem in their Jurisdiction. I let the Sheriff review the horse's Registration and my bill of sale on the young stallion. The Sheriff claimed I owned the Horse Farmer money for hauling my horses and he was holding the horse until the bill was paid.

Fortunately, I had already just received the canceled check from the Bank for the hauling of the horses and the advanced payment for the December Boarding of our horses. When I showed the Sheriff the Horse Farmer's Bill and the canceled check, which was in full payment of the Bill, he just shook his head knowing the Horse Farmer was using him and this was not the first time.

The Sheriff suggested I hire a Horse Hauler to pick-up the horse. He asked me notify him when the Horse Hauler would be picking up the horse so if there were any trouble he would be there to take care of things. I thanked the Sheriff for his suggestions and I would follow his recommendations. I then asked him if he had time for me to show him, Berclair Plantation and our horses.

The Sheriff welcomed the opportunity to change the subject of why he had come and he was empress with the Horse Barn and the quality of our Broodmares. He asked me, who I was buying my hay from and he suggested a few farmers who might have quality horse hay to sell. I thanked him and I took out my notebook to write down the names of these farmers.

As we toured the rest of Berclair Plantation, the Sheriff suggested I talk with Bob Popawicz the past Director of Region 5 of the Virginia Quarter Horse Association and we should become more involved in the Region's activities. I felt the Sheriff was telling me I needed to know more about the Horse Farmer who was holding the young stallion hostage without actually saying it.

Carol met us at the back door of the main house. She had made a pot of coffee and set out some Christmas cookies before she offered the Sheriff a tour of the Main House. By the time, the Sheriff left Berclair, I had the feeling the Sheriff was comfortable about, who we were. He had seen all my shooting metals and trophies I had won on a Confederate Rifle Team and this helped to establish we were honorable caretakers of a historical southern property and not the Yankee Carpetbaggers the horse farmer claimed we had been.

I called Bob Popawicz the past Director of VQHA Region 5 and introduced myself, telling him Carol and I wanted to join the Virginia Quarter Horse Association but did not know who we should call.

Bob admitted the Region was not as active as it had been in the past as the current Director seldom held any meetings and no one but a small group knew what was going on. Bob said he was willing to send us an application to join the VQHA and asked for our address.

When I mentioned Berclair Plantation and we had just moved our horses there, Bob offered to bring over the Application personally. Bob said he knew who we were and he had watched me buy Barbie Flower at the Virginia Horse Sale in Richmond a few years ago. He also said he had heard about the Broodmares we had but he got the impression from the horse farmer that he had to make an appointment to see them. I could hardly miss the less than subtle hint Bob was asking for an invitation.

I apologized for the false impression he may have gotten from the owner of the horse farm, as we wanted people to know and see the type of Quarter Horses we were raising to sell. I suggested he bring his wife and family over to see the horses and perhaps stay for dinner.

In the background, I heard Bob yell to his wife, "Carol we have been invited to Berclair Plantation to see Corrigan's Broodmares and have dinner with them." When Bob came back on the phone he asked what time should they be there.

I told Bob, that my Carol would be ready to serve dinner around 6 o'clock and they were welcome to come over and see our horses any time before dinner. Bob then asked if it would be all right if he could bring Fay and Andy Pollack along and Bob explained they were also interested, in seeing our horses.

Of course, I agreed as I had met Andy when he sold me the John Deer tractor and farm equipment for Berclair. This was another opportunity to correct the false impressions of other horse people in the area had about us as put out by the horse farmer.

Carol impressed our guest with a superb dinner after they had toured Berclair and inspected our horses. However, what we learned about our former horse farmer was most interesting. Apparently, the man did not have a very good reputation among the other members in the VQHA and he had some serious disputes with them to the point, someone had set fire to his hay barn.

I have always believed if you have a business dispute with someone like this horse farmer, it was better to keep the problem a private matter as to stir up the issue in public could be seen as an error of judgment on your part to become involved with this type of a man in the first place. However, when Carol and I went looking for a horse, we were interested in an activity we both could enjoy and we had not considered becoming as deeply involved in the horse business as we had.

It was my fault to turn our enjoyment of raising baby horses into a business venture without considering, who we were becoming associated with or his reputation in the horse community. I viewed the horse farmer as someone who was just providing a service of keeping and taking care of our horses. Although he had helped us understand the horse business, he had made money off the additional horses we bought and kept at his farm.

The situation over the young stallion had been my fault, as I had let myself believe he was a man of his word and could be trusted based upon the limited experience we had in keeping our horses at his farm. Now that belief had proven to be wrong, I needed to find out what I should have known before I allowed myself to be pulled into loaning him the money, to buy that horse.

I let our guests tell us about this man and his reputation so we would be better prepared to deal with him. The more we heard about this man I could see Carol's Irish rise up. I could only hope she would not start to air our dirty linen about this man in front of these people. Carol must have been reading my mind as she encouraged them to add other incidents of the horse farmer's adverse dealings with other horse people. Between the information we had gotten from the Sheriff and our guests I knew getting that young stallion off the man's farm was not going to be easy.

I took the Sheriff's advice and hired the man who had painted Berclair Plantation's address on our horse trailer to pick up the young stallion with his own two-horse trailer. After I establish my ownership of the Colt with its AQHA Registration Papers and a copy of the Bill of Sale, I made sure the man understood the circumstances involved and the procedures the Sheriff had suggested I use to take possession of the horse.

The Sheriff had called the horse farmer's father to tell him I had established ownership of the horse and he made it clear he did not want to come out to his farm if the horse hauler had any trouble picking up the horse at 10 o'clock the next morning.

The horse farmer refused to allow the horse hauler to get out of his truck and once the young stallion was loaded into the back of the horse hauler's trailer the horse farmer ordered him off the farm. When the Colt arrived at Berclair Plantation, the young stallion had difficulty walking off the horse trailer. The horse farmer had ripped off his horseshoes and in the process; he had severely damaged all of its hooves making the horse lame on all four feet.

While the horse hauler examined the horse's hooves, he explained what happen when he picked up the horse. Both Carol and I could see blood coming from the ripped out nail holes in the horse's split hooves and we knew the horse needed immediate medical attention. A horse's feet are the most vulnerable part of his body and a horse did not have enough sense to stay off an injured leg to allow the foot to heal. Unfortunately, this young Colt was in serious trouble, as he did not have a single healthy leg, to stand on.

I made a phone call to the Confederate Ridge Animal Hospital in Fredericksburg and an equine Veterinarian came right out to treat the horse. After he examined the horse and we rejected the idea of putting the horse down he explained the best he could do was to try to control an infection and he outlined the type of care the horse would need for the next three months it would take while his hooves healed. He also explained even with this care and recommended treatment, there was no guarantee that the horse would not develop complications and the horse may have to be put down anyway.

I knew we did not have the experience to care for this injured horse and I asked the Veterinarian where we might take the horse for treatment. The horse hauler suggested we call a friend of his who would know how to treat the horse and deal with a young stallion on his farm. The Veterinarian knew the man and if the man would agree to take care of the horse, his care might give us the best chance of the horse surviving.

When I called the man before he would consider taking care of the horse, he talked with the Veterinarian and then with his friend the horse hauler to get the story behind how the horse had been injured. The man agreed to do what he could for the horse when he found out who had done this to the horse's feet.

Carol cried all the way to the man's farm but when she stepped out of the car, she was the rehabilitation business professional as she listened to the man's plan to deal with the injured horse and asked the right questions to evaluate the probability of the horse making a full recovery.

The man did not pull any punches when he told us the horse had less than a 50/50 chance of surviving a week. His greatest fear was the horse's feet would become infected. He explained if he could not control the spread of the infection, he could not do anything to save the horse.

The man put a condition on his treatment of the horse. He wanted the authority to use his best judgment to put the horse down if he thought the Colt was not going to make it. I had the feeling this was his way to test of our willingness to trust him, to do what he could without holding him responsible for situations beyond his control.

Although the horse hauler had told the man, what happened to the young stallion every dispute has two sides to the story. I had the feeling he was trying to establish how much we had been responsible for contributing to what happened to the horse. I also knew we did not have a choice if we wanted to save the horse and when I looked at Carol, she told him we would accept his best efforts to do whatever he thought was best for the horse no matter what it costs. With Carol's response, we must have passed his test as he could see our primary concern was caring for the injured horse.

He admitted knowing who we were since we bought Barbie Flower and he had seen some of the quality foals we had sold to his friends. In fact, he had one of our horses on his farm. It was now a three-year old Colt out of Diversified owned by one of his horse boarders and he took us to see the horse.

When the Colt, we called Dandy saw us, he whinnied, dance and poked his nodding head out of the stall door until Carol and I rubbed his nose. The man was surprised that the horse had remembered us and wanted to know what we did to leave such a lasting impression, on the horse.

We told him about how we had desensitized all our baby horses immediately after they were born. The man told us Dandy had already won his Registry of Merit as a Halter Horse and maybe that desensitizing had made Dandy the easiest horse he had ever broke to ride.

"One day I put a breaking saddle on him. When he did not seem to mind, I stepped into the saddle and rode off as if I had been riding Dandy for weeks." The man told us.

The more we talked about horses and what we were trying to do in our horse business the more comfortable the man became in talking with us about the reputation of the horse farmer. Once he knew how we had become involved with this horse farmer, he understood why it had taken us so long to learn about the reputation of the man. He explained we were not the only ones who had trouble dealing with this horse farmer and he like our first guests at Berclair Plantation shared his own difficulties with the man.

After hearing what the man told us about the Horse Farmer, Carol was as mad as hell all the way back to Berclair Plantation. I had never seen Carol as emotionally worked up as she was about this Horse Farmer. She did not care what it cost to put the man in jail for what he did to the horse. Unfortunately, the best we could do was to take him to court and sue him for the damages he did to the horse.

The father of the horse farmer realized his son had picked a fight with the wrong people who were not going to let his son get away with what he did to that young stallion. When he called me suggesting we talk, I thought he was willing to settle this out of court but I was wrong.

From a business standpoint I would have settled the matter if he bought to horse and paid for the horse's care and treatment. What the man was really after had nothing to do with settling the matter out of court but to get a better understanding of the case against his son and he did not improve his understanding from me. He already knew the case would turn on the testimony of the horse hauler who picked up the horse.

2 days before the trial the horse farmer's father bought him off by buying his business and the man disappeared. Without the testimony of the horse hauler, we could not prove the Horse Farmer actually ripped off the horse's shoes. We could only prove the horse's feet were damaged when it arrived at Berclair Plantation and not who done it.

After several days of testimony, we had to accept the horse farmer's local King George County Court's decision and settle for embarrassing the men in a public hearing. Between what it had cost the horse farmer in attorney fees and what his father paid the horse hauler to disappear, they could have saved money by paying for the horse.

The fact we stood up to the horse farmer for doing what he did to the horse made us local heroes in the horse community. I was encouraged to run for the Director of Region 5 of the Virginia Quarter Horse Association. Bob Popawicz and Fay Pollack became my biggest supporters and I easily won the election.

My first act as the new Regional Director was to throw a party at Berclair Plantation and I invited every registered Quarter Horse owner living within Region 5 of the Virginia Quarter Horse Association.

The party was a huge success and within a short time, I was able to reenergize an active interest in making Region 5 a fun organization that did things for its members. We held free local horseshows for the kids and we sponsored moneymaking Trail Rides for the Region bringing in Quarter Horse riders from the other VQHA Regions and riders of other breeds of horses from Virginia and Maryland.

We made enough money off the Trail Rides to pay for our Regional Christmas Party. Since I was a member of the Fredericksburg Rod and Gun Club, we only had to clean up the place to get our deposit back. Everyone brought a covered dish and after we bought all the drinks, we still had money left over after I bought and presented the Region's Annual Awards.

The Regional membership had grown to the point we had to hold our monthly meetings in the private dining room at the Golden Corral Stake House and it had become a dinner meeting for a number of members.

The next year Region 5 sponsored the VQHA Annual Awards Banquet at the Holiday Inn in Fredericksburg. My experience in running the VIP Tours as the NORAD Public Relations Officer made my job as the Committee Chairman of the Awards Banquet easy. Although I could have done it all myself, I made this a Regional membership effort.

The hardest part was delegating responsibility to other members of Region 5 as subcommittee Chairman. I had to take the time to guide their committees through the steps to complete their assigned tasks without just telling them how to do it. The weekend of the Awards Banquet, we had one of the worst snowstorms to hit Virginia in years. In spite of the snowstorm, we had a record turnout and we turned a profit.

# 6. ADDITIONAL EFFORTS TO EXPAND VAMCO

An opportunity to expand VAMCO's business came when Cliff Jenkens who I had met when I was taking a night class to get my Virginia Real Estate License had become a partner in VAMCO's new company KG Greenfield Corporation. Cliff live in Dahlgren Virginia and he knew a woman who owned a large tract of land that could be made into a housing subdivision, a commercial office development and a shopping center. The Naval base at Dahlgren Virginia was involved in a rapid expansion and it was in a desperate need of housing and office space. There were also a number of Military Contractors, who were looking for office space and housing for their employees.

Based on all this information I was able to use the knowledge and experience I had gained by working with Mr Green to evaluate the project and determine the difficulties we would need to overcome to make it work. The land was ideally located on the other side of Route 301 from a secondary Gate of the Naval Base. However, the property was on a flood plain and the land could not be developed without building an expensive sewage treatment plant.

I hired an Engineering Firm to confirm my opinion and give me a preliminary estimate of the cost to build this sewage treatment plant. The Engineering Report exposed an even greater problem as the sewage treatment plants in Dahlgren and on the Naval Base were operating beyond their capacities and they were in violation of State and Federal EPA requirements.

My experience with Hopewell's building of its Regional Sewage Treatment Plant helped me to understand how to build this sewage treatment plant and a way to finance it as a private utility company. Cliff and I met with the King George County Supervisors and proposed the building of this Dahlgren Regional Sewage Treatment Plant that could service not only our development but also the rest of the community in the Dahlgren area. Our meeting with the Naval Base Commander brought his enthusiastic support of our proposal.

I called Mr Green and A R Dixon and explained the opportunity of investing in a private utility company. One contact lead to another and I was able to establish an investment group willing to consider financing this Regional Sewage Treatment Plant.

We thought we had the property owner convinced to sell her large tract of land for a percentage of K G Greenfield's development after I had explained we were prepared to invest in building a sewage treatment plant that was necessary to service the entire development.

Our attorney had drafted the agreement based on our proposal and Cliff and I met with the woman to go over the terms and conditions. She was pleased with the straightforward agreement and she would take it to her attorney for his opinion before she signed it.

Somehow, a part time Real Estate friend of the woman got a hold of our agreement and she convinced the woman she could make more money off the property if the Real Estate woman listed the property. What the Real Estate woman did not understand was the community of Dahlgren's sewage treatment plant was already in violation of State and Federal EPA Compliance Regulations and Dahlgren could not provide any sewage service to the landowner or anyone else.

Talking with the Real Estate woman was like talking to a brick wall as the only thing she could see was how she would become rich. The Real Estate woman had convinced the landowner she should build low-income housing on her property using Federal Government loans and the landowner did not need us to do that. he project was put on hold as we tried to find someone who could talk with the landowner and convince her that her Real Estate friend did not understand the wastewater problems of the property.

The landowner's property was never developed. With the problems in having adequate space to expand the requirements of the Navy and its Military Contractors, the programs designed for the Navy facilities at Dahlgren were built somewhere else.

# 7. THE NEXT TOBACCO MARKET SEASON

Last year my efforts to win another Overseas Tobacco Contract had not been successful as the big Tobacco Companies continued to win the delivery contracts with bids of less than a penny a pound lower than VAMCO's Bid. However, we were very successful in expanding our business in the Tobacco Auction Market.

Having established ourselves as aggressive Tobacco Dealers, Jim and I were able to make business arrangements with 10 new Tobacco Warehouses in North Carolina who were willing to let us resell Dealers Tobacco. When Jim's brother, Henry became a Tobacco Dealer he took over selling Tobacco at the Warehouses in the southern part of North Carolina and we expanded our relationships with Tobacco Dealers in Georgia and South Carolina who agreed to act as our buyers and ship tobacco to us.

I added 5 new Tobacco Warehouses in Virginia as the lower grade of tobacco we were bringing up from down south, brought top prices in this market. The Virginia Tobacco Market was also our safety valve to resell any tobacco we did not sell in North Carolina after its market closed.

In preparation for handling this year's Tobacco market, we bought four used trucks capable of moving 12 tons of tobacco between the local warehouses in North Carolina and Virginia. We rented a vacant tobacco warehouse in Goldsboro North Carolina as our receiving, tobacco tumbling, storage and distribution center. Since Jim was doing all the tobacco buying, he knew which truckloads of tobacco needed to be "Tumbled" before it was sent to one of our resale Tobacco Warehouses. Jim hired Mexican labors who worked for us tumbling tobacco after they finished their normal day jobs.

Part of our arrangements with the Tobacco Warehouses to keep their tobacco resale floor space in their warehouses, was our requirement to have enough tobacco in their warehouse to meet their daily tobacco sales quotas. Normally we kept an agreed amount of resale tobacco in each warehouse that the Warehouse Manager could pull off the wall to fill his quota. However, the opportunities in the Tobacco Auction sales were in a highly fluid and a rapidly changing market that required Jim to be on the telephone day and night getting sales reports from warehouses and coordinating their changing tobacco resale requirements.

This tumbled tobacco in our rented Warehouse was our safety valve as Jim could immediately send it on our own trucks to a warehouse that needed more resale tobacco. By Wednesday night of each week, Jim knew how much tumbled tobacco he could send to our warehouses in Virginia, as it would be graded higher there and the hirer grade would bring a better price offsetting the shipping costs to produce a better profit margin.

Since my primary job was reselling our tobacco, I spent most of my time flying to local airports where I had bought and left a used car. I would use the car to travel to the tobacco warehouses selling my tobacco. Since my ASCS Officer in Richmond had approved my business procedure of keeping one of my Tobacco Dealer's card and a Tobacco Book at each warehouse, he had no problem following the transfers of tobacco from my Master Inventory Tobacco Book into the Tobacco Books I kept at each warehouse.

By the end of the Tobacco Auction market, I had sold over three million pounds of tobacco and my inventory system was within a pound of tobacco I had bought and sold in my tobacco books. I resold the used cars I had bought for my local use in each of the cities where I did my tobacco business, for what I had paid for them.

# 8. FINALLY WINNING MY NSSA DISTINGUISH SKIRMISH SHOOTER POINTS

The NSSA's Fall National Matches are held during the first week in October. By October, the volume of tobacco coming into the Tobacco Auction Market was still rising and the amount of our business was rapidly expanding. Normally under these circumstances to take any time off would be unacceptable. However, since Jim, Henry and I were on highly competitive NSSA Teams going to Fall Nationals was an obligation and each of us knew what business we had to get done to be there.

For years, since I formed Harpers Ferry Arms Company and especially after I sued the NSSA over their malicious withdrawing of their approval of the Harpers Ferry Arms Company's reproduction 1861 Springfield my efforts to win any points towards qualifying for the NSSA's Distinguish Skirmisher Shooter Award had been extremely difficult of not impossible.

Friends and Gun Dealers of Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company, Bucky Malson, John Roby, William Jordan and several others named in the Law Suits would deliberately shoot extra holes in my six individual targets used in the NSSA's National Grand Aggregate Match to disqualify them from counting towards winning the required 25 DSSA points. I was consistently winning the Grand Aggregate Matches in Regional Skirmishes with an average score over 530 points out of a possible 600 but I could not break 500 points in the National Grand Aggregate Match due to the deliberate cross firing into my targets.

This year I had been so busy in the Tobacco Market that I did not have time to shoot in the NSSA's Individual Matches when I normally would have shot them on Friday. I arrived at the NSSA Home Range at 3 am Saturday morning and I had not planned to shoot my Individual Matches. However, two members of my team convinced me I should shoot them and they would help me post my targets.

The NSSA's main shooting Range that held the 50 and 100 yard Musket and Carbine Matches would only hold two Individual Match Relays on Saturday morning before the Range was closed to set up for the Carbine Team Matches. The separate Pistol Range would remain open even during the Carbine Team Matches. This meant I would need to shoot two of my Musket and Carbine Targets on each Relay. I shot my 50 and 100-yard Carbine targets on the first Relay and my 50 and 100-yard Musket targets on the last Relay.

I picked up only one crossfire shot in my 100-yard Musket target. It was a shot in the 6-ring of the target and the only shot out of the black but I still shot a score of 93-4x. Apparently, my "friends" did not realize I was shooting my Individual Targets on Saturday morning until it was almost too late. When I received that crossfire shot, I told the Line Judge what was happening.

Fred Hurlinger was a friend of mine who knew about the problems I was having at the National Matches. He alerted all the other line Judges to watch for anyone who might try to crossfire into my target while he watched my target through a spotting scope and marked each of my shots on a hand drawn target he had made. Since I had shot my 50-yard Musket Target first more than half of the 20 minute Relay was over and most of the other competitors had finished shooting their targets. I was also shooting on the end of the firing line and a crossfire shot could only come from the right side of my position.

Whoever was shooting into my target realized the Line Judges were watching and I did not pick up any more crossfire shots in my target. When Fred went down to examine my 100-yard Musket Target, he circled the crossfired bullet hole, as it clearly looked different from all the other shots in my target. When he asked me why I had taken this shot as one of my ten shots when I could have shot a better one. I told him I did not want to create a question about having an extra shot in my target when it was scored.

_I did not tell him that crossfired shot had put pressure on me to shoot my last 6 shots in the 10 and X ring. I was determined to show these asshole "friends" just how good I could shoot and they were not going to stop me this time. I always shot better, when I knew I had to make a shot as I did as a sniper in Vietnam and my first three shots in this target had been in the 9 ring cutting the 10 ring_ _._ _The last 6 shots I fired into my 100-yard Musket Target were 10's with 4 x's in a 3- inch group the size of a clay pigeon and each shot was clearly visible so there would be no question when it was scored._

I had only enough time to shoot my 25-yard Revolver Match before I had to shoot the Carbine Team Match. I shot my 50-yard Revolver Match in between the first and third Relay of the Carbine Team Match. I ended up in 5th Place in the Grand Aggregate Match with a score of 535-8 x using the 4-point loss of the crossfire shot. This 5th Place finish in the Grand Aggregate Match gave me 2 more points than I needed to win the Distinguish Skirmisher Award and it was the first time in over ten years I had placed in the Top Ten at the NSSA Nationals to win any points. I had beaten these assholes in their own game but they had other plans to deny the awarding the Distinguished Skirmisher Shooting Award to me.

What I had no way of knowing Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company and Bucky Malson, John Roby and Bill Jordan who were members of the NSSA Board of Directors were desperately trying to prevent me from receiving the Distinguished Skirmish Shooter Award. They were able to put off the NSSA Board of Directors vote on my being awarded the DSSA during the Annual January NSSA Meeting.

Bucky claimed the NSSA had to investigate the circled bullet hole in my 100-yard Musket Target before the NSSA could vote on giving me this award. Most of the other members of the NSSA Board of Directors had not seen the target and they were lead to believe there was a serious question as to the true score of this target. Without showing the Board of Directors the target they had no way of knowing there were only 10 shots in the target and it would not make any difference in the target's final score.

Val Forgett was desperate to discredit me as one of the top shooters in the NSSA since I formed Harpers Ferry Arms Company. He already knew I was making another run of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Maynard Carbines and there was a good rumor I had bought gun making equipment, gunstock making machines and set up a company in Maryland to reproduce an American made 1855 two-band Artillery Model Springfield Muskets. All this was true about getting back into the gun business, as the rumors in the gun-manufacturing world were hard to keep secret. I was counting on the word of mouth and the rumors to be my advanced marketing efforts.

**I already had shooters approaching me to buy one of the 1855 Artillery Model Springfields and put down a deposit. I would agree to take their names and addresses without a deposit. By handling their orders this way, helped to create an even better rumor as I would not have taken their names if I were not making them. It would also give that shooter** " **bragging rights" as he was going to get one of the first new guns from Harpers Ferry Arms Company.**

# 9. THE START OF THE NEW YEAR

After the Tobacco Auction Market had closed, I focused on VAMCO's Horse business. I had arranged to breed our Broodmares to the best Stallions I could find. I handled a few difficult Selective Job Placement cases for Carol and I continued to Market the Insurance Companies for the Vocational Division of American Rehabilitation. By February, I was deep into helping our Broodmares deliver their foals and running them to the Stallions when Jim called and asked me to send the balance of the money I had been holding for him in the Tobacco Account.

He had become involved with a company who made the die cast miniature collector cars of the NASCAR Drivers. He had the opportunity to buy half of the collectable cars at the Daytona Speed Way for $5 dollars a car. The way Jim explained the deal these collectable cars would sell for $10 dollars at the Race Track and after the race the collectors would pay as much as $20 dollars from the Dealers who had them. The deal did not make any sense to me but after all it was Jim's money and he could spend it anyway he wanted.

Jim had made enough money from the Daytona Speed Way deal to buy half of the NASCAR collectable miniature cars at the next Race and he was forming a Company as a major distributor and opening a retail outlet at the Charlotte Speed way in North Carolina. This location would also house the Mail Order business for these cars. Jim had told me about the profits, he was making and how much we could make if we signed an agreement to buy half of these Collectable Cars for the remaining NASCAR Races for the season. He wanted me to become involved in this business as he was looking for an investor.

I told Jim I did not know anything about the NASCAR Races or what he was doing with these NASCAR Collectable Miniature cars but I was willing to learn. I flew down to Charlotte North Carolina and Jim took me to his Collectable Miniature Car Retail Outlet across from the Charlotte Speedway.

According to Jim, the Importer had signed the top NASCAR Drivers to a Royalty Agreement to sell a Collectable Miniature of their Racecars to the NASCAR Fans for each NASCAR Race. However creating a collectable item was not the same as knowing how large the market was for that item.

Instead of providing the market potential, Jim continued his sales pitch claiming the more Collectable Miniatures NASCAR Racecars someone had of each NASCAR Driver the more valuable his complete collection of all the NASCAR Races became. This was like the Bubblegum Baseball Cards people collected, traded and sold for big money when a Baseball player became a Major League Star. Although I understood the value of collecting Civil War Guns witch continued to become more valuable in themselves these Collectable Miniature Cars would only increase in value if the NASCAR Driver continued to win races.

To me this was high risk collecting and I had to admit I did not understand how passionate a loyal NASCAR fan could be about their favorite Driver. The worst part of my lack of understanding was I had no way to establish its value to weigh against the financial risks involved in this business venture. Putting that lack of understanding aside the more I learned about the aspects of this business deal the less I liked it.

I told Jim I had several problems with this deal and maybe I did not understand how it worked. I pointed out I could have these Collectable Miniatures made overseas for less than a dollar and his deal of buying half of these cars was actually financing the Importer's Operation and giving him a 300% profit before he sold any of his half of the cars. I also pointed out Jim did not have any agreement with the Importer on the number of cars he would be making for each of the remaining NASCAR Races.

When I realized Jim might not have thought about this I suggested he only agree to buy half of the Collectable Miniatures for the next NASCAR Race while he negotiated a limit to what half of these Collectable cars would be in the future Races. Depending on the written terms and conditions of this agreement, which established how many cars were made for each race, I might know of someone who would be interested in a short-term investment. I could see Jim was disappointed that I had not jumped at the chance to make this big money with him.

When the Importer double the number of the Collectable Miniature Cars for the next NASCAR Race Jim realized what I had told him about the problems in the deal were true. Jim called and thanked me for saving him the money he would have lost in the deal. However this set back had not dampen Jim's enthusiasm on doing this business and he wanted to know if I really could make these Collectable Miniature Cars for a dollar overseas and how soon I could get them

My first question was how many cars did he want? I explained having them made would not be a problem but he had to make sure he had the right to sell them with the NASCAR Organization and he would need to get a Royalty Agreement signed with each of the NASCAR owners and the Racecar drivers. My other concern was dealing with the individual NASCAR Racetrack owners as each of these Collectable Cars were directly linked to each NASCAR Speedway's race.

Jim was way ahead of me on this. He had already talked with NASCAR and the owners of these NASCAR Racetracks. NASCAR was only interested in being paid for using its name. The Racetrack owner's took a percentage of the sales through their Concession Stands at their Speedways and felt they were benefiting from the free advertizing on the Collectable Cars sold elsewhere. More importantly, the Importer did not have exclusive rights to sell these NASCAR Collectable Miniature Cars. Jim had also talked with the five most popular NASCAR Drivers.

I asked Jim to fax me a copy of the Royalty Agreements these NASCAR Drivers had signed with the Importer to make sure these Drivers were not exclusively contracted with him.

With my experience in making Investment Castings for Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Reproduction Civil War and Revolutionary War firearms I knew how quickly these die cast Collectable Miniature Cars would be to make. I called my friend Mr Chow in South Korea and asked him for a favor in finding a manufacturer to make these die cast cars.

To my surprise, Mr Chow called me back the next day and told me he had found the Importer's Manufacturer in South Korea and they were willing to repackage the Collectable Miniature Cars with my company's name on them for 79 cents each. I confirmed the Importer did not have an exclusive contract with the South Korean Manufacturer, as the company owned all the dies it was using to make these cars. Since the manufacture was already making these cars, I would not need to send them a pilot model for each NASCAR driver's car who signed up with Jim.

My next call was to A R Dixon and he was very interested in the proposal as both the investor and as the importer. After discussing this with Jim and based on everyone's understanding of their roles and obligations a company called A R Dixon International would be formed in North Carolina with its Registered Agent an attorney I had used when VAMCO invested in a housing subdivision development in Goldsboro North Carolina. Base upon our understandings A R Dixon would have 52% of the company's stock and Jim and VAMCO would have 24% in the company.

When I received a copy of the NASCAR Drivers Royalty Agreements from Jim, I told him we could have our Collectable Miniature Cars shipped in time for the next NASCAR Race. I asked Jim to use his experience in selling the Importer's Collectable Cars to establish the number of cars we needed to order for each of the top NASCAR Drivers even if he had not signed them up yet.

I explained we needed to have an immediate impact on this market, as the major supplier of these Collectable Cars and it would be easier to sign up these NASCAR Drivers with us if they could see their Collectable Miniature Car were ready for sale at the next NASCAR Race. Based upon Jim's estimates I sent in our first order and they were flown into Charlotte North Carolina three days before the next NASCAR Race.

Our sales were so good I had the South Korean Manufacturer remake Collectable Cars for all the NASCAR Races already run. We made a special offer to anyone who had bought one of our Collectable cars to buy these earlier cars and have a complete collection for all the NASCAR Races for the season. From that point on, Jim and A R Dixon worked together in this Collectable Car business and since they no longer need me, I stepped out of the picture. For the next three months, I continued to haul our broodmares to be bred to stallions.

# 10. THE CIGARETTE MARKET OPPORTUNITY

Cliff Jenkens had become interested in my tobacco business and he had a Cambodian friend whose Aunt was interested in selling cigarettes in Cambodia. Cliff's friend wanted to know, if I could get Marlboro Cigarettes. Everyone wanted Marlboros as the Soviet Union had collapsed and all of Eastern Europe was open to western products with Marlboro cigarettes being the highest priority. Since I was not able to win any more Overseas Tobacco Contracts the idea of selling cigarettes had a reasonable business appeal and I agreed to look into the opportunity.

Philip Morris owned the Marlboro Brand of cigarettes and they were not interested in selling their cigarettes to any independent dealers as they had divided the world market into seven regions and each region control all the sales in their area. Sure, I could buy Marlboros from the Philip Morris Regional Representatives at a price so high I could not make any money reselling them.

I made several contacts with other Cigarette Manufacturers and found they were not interested in selling their brands of cigarettes at a reasonable price. The more I learned about the cigarette business I found out what it actually cost to make them. At less than 7 cents a pack of cigarettes, I explored the possibility of making them ourselves. This would be the international opportunity to use the reasonable priced tobacco we bought in the Tobacco Auction to expand our tobacco business. I found a company in Wilson North Carolina that sold used cigarette machinery.

When I told the owner what we were considering he assured me this cigarette making equipment was fully capable of making cigarettes and the only reason he had them was the major cigarette companies had replaced them with computerized equipment. The owner quoted prices and production capabilities of his equipment. When I admitted I did not know how many cigarettes I needed to make, the owner suggested he could set up a temporary cigarette production line to make our cigarettes until we established our cigarette market. This seemed more than reasonable and I flew down to Wilson North Carolina to see this equipment and understand what was involved in manufacturing cigarettes.

George Thomson had been in the tobacco business for 30 years and he gave me an education on making and marketing cigarettes. The cigarette making equipment was relatively simple compared with making Civil War reproductions in Harpers Ferry Arms Company. The key to making a successful cigarette was in the formula and the mixture of tobacco used to make it.

I was surprised to learn Philip Morris had changed the original formula for Marlboros three times since they started making them. By the time, I left Wilson North Carolina, I had selected "Mavericks" as VAMCO's Brand name using the original formula of Marlboro cigarettes and I had designed the cigarette packs to look almost like the Marlboro pack.

When I met Ting Tang at Cliff's crab picking party, I found him to be a very interesting and a highly intelligent man who was working in the Computer Center at the Dahlgren Navy Base. He had escaped from Cambodia in his Mig Jet Fighter with his pregnant wife in the back seat when the country fell to the Communist Khmer Rouge in 1975. If Ting Tang was an expert in computers, he was an even better businessman who immediately grasped the problem that I could not get Marlboro cigarettes cheap enough to resell them.

However after I explained I could sell him VAMCO's Mavericks cigarettes at 22 cents a pack delivered to the Cambodian Port City of Sihanoukville, his eyes sparkled and his smile returned. Ting Tang wanted to know why the price was so cheap.

I explained there was no tax on cigarettes made for export and I gave him several sample packs of VAMCO's Maverick cigarettes to send to his Aunt. Ting Tang immediately smoked one and he was pleasantly surprised with their quality and taste. As Ting Tang smoked another Maverick I told him VAMCO would need a minimum order of 840 Master Cases, which would fill one forty foot Shipping Container and we would ship the order within 10 days after receiving his aunt's Letter of Credit.

Once Ting Tang understood the terms and conditions of this sale, he wanted to know how he would be paid, if his Aunt became involved in this cigarette business. This was a logical question and confirmed my impression that Ting Tang was a knowledgeable and an experience businessman, who knew how to protect his own interests in this deal. I had built in one cent in the 22 cent a pack price to cover the cost to ship it and any sales commissions involved. Within two weeks after Ting Tang sent the sample Mavericks to Cambodia, he received a positive response from his Aunt and he wanted to know if I would go to Cambodia to discuss this cigarette business.

My international business experience in dealing with a number of Asian companies who produced products for Harpers Ferry Arms Company and James River Imports and Development Corporation had taught me the importance of a face-to-face meeting to get a business venture off to a good start. However, that did not mean I would fly over there just to meet someone without having an agreement as to the price and the terms and conditions of the deal. When you are dealing through a third party such as Ting Tang, you could not assume there was any agreement on anything or even if the other party understood your terms and conditions.

I told Ting Tang we would go to Cambodia as soon as I received an International Cable from his Aunt confirming the none-negotiable price on at least one Shipping Container of Maverick cigarettes. Ting Tang had his Aunt's response three days later. Cliff, Ting and I left for Cambodia before the week was out. The closer we got to Cambodia the quieter Ting became. This was so unlike Ting Tang that I knew something was wrong and I started to think I had acted too quickly.

When I asked Cliff about Ting Tang's behavior, he told me Ting Tang was afraid to go back to Cambodia. When he flew out of Cambodia in 1975, he not only stole his Jet Fighter, he also bombed the Control Tower and he shot up all the other aircraft so they could not chase him. Ting Tang did not know what to expect when the Cambodian Government found out who he was.

On the flight from Bangkok Thailand to Phnom Penh Cambodia Ting Tang approached a well-known Cambodian Buddhist Monk, to pay his respects and ask for his advice. Ting Tang told the Monk why he had come to Cambodia and his concerns about what he did when he left Cambodia in his Jet Fighter in 1975. The Monk told Ting Tang we should follow him off the airplane as a member of his entourage and no one would harm us. When the Airplane stopped at the Airport Terminal, everyone remained seated as the Monk left the Airplane with us right behind him. There on the tarmac was a saffron colored carpet stretched from the bottom of the ramp to the open door of the VIP Section. Along both sides of the carpet were bowing Buddhist Monks who never looked up until we were in the Terminal.

Someone grabbed Ting Tang and swung him off his feet. It was Ting Tang's former Wing Man in the Cambodian Air Force, who was now a General. This greeting was a surprise to both men as each man had thought the other was dead. The Monk just smiled as Ting Tang came back to thank him.

The General's Aide took our Passports and we were whisk though the Airport into waiting Jeeps and we were taken to the Main Hotel in Phnom Penh. This Hotel catered to Western Visitors and charged twice as much as a regular room in a Holiday Inn in the United States. It also provided the highest security for its hotel guests. The only problem was the local Cambodian businesspeople we wanted to see where not allowed through its security gates.

We moved to a Cambodian Hotel near the Buddhist Temple in the city and rented a suite of connecting rooms for 10% of the cost for just one room in the Main Hotel. One of our first visitors was Reverend Cong Chin, the Buddhist Monk we met on the airplane. Reverend Cong Chin was one of the highest-ranking Buddhist Priests in the world who was living in San Francisco California and worked for the State as a Clinical Psychiatrist. He wanted to know more about us and what type of business, we were doing in Cambodia.

I had prepared a colored company brochure on all of VAMCO's business activities and provided detailed description of each department in both the English and the Cambodian languages. One of the blocks in the company's diagram listed American Rehabilitation and Reverend Cong Chin wanted know more about that activity. When I explained what VAMCO did with American Rehabilitation, he wanted to know if this type of Rehabilitation could be used to help the War Veterans of Cambodia.

Reverend Cong Chin told us there were over 300,000 Cambodian Veterans who had fought in the wars since the Second World War. The Cambodian Government had recognized all individuals who had been part of any Army regardless of what side of any conflict these Veterans had fought on. The Cambodian Government was rebuilding the country and wanted to use the Veterans Organization as one of the building blocks to accomplish this.

I told Reverend Cong Chin it was possible to use the Vocational type of Rehabilitation VAMCO provided to help these Veterans if I understood more about the objectives of the Country's rebuilding program. This was part of the problem, as the Government needed ideas that it could use to create the national plans that would rebuild the country.

Reverend Cong Chin outlined what had happen to Cambodia after the Khmer Rouse took over in 1975. The book _The Killing Fields_ by Christopher Hudson told the story of the millions of Cambodians who had been killed by the Khmer Rouge in their effort to control the people and level the country back to true Communism. All the educated People who might offer resistance to the Khmer Rouge government were killed. Individuals could be killed for any reason the Khmer Rouge thought might be an enemy of the State. People who wore eye glasses were killed as that might mean they could read.

All the bridges and dams were destroyed as they were seen as capitalist improvements. The Khmer Rouge had forced millions of people out of the cities to work as laborers in the rice patties as part of equalizing everyone to the same level. All this resulted to reducing the country back to the Stone Age. The average age of a Cambodian was now 15 years old and only a few Cambodians could read or write. The rebuilding of the country had to start on the bottom as all the past knowledge and experiences of the Cambodian people were lost. When the irrigation dams and waterways were destroyed by the Khmer Rouse, the rice patties dried up. It was only in those limited rice patties that could hold the rainwater in them could produce rice and the starving people flocked into the cities in the hope of finding something to eat.

During the years of fighting the only thing planted in the rice fields were landmines and the presence of these landmines made going back to the rice farms a deadly experience for anyone who tried to grow food. To me the first requirement to rebuilding the country was eliminating the landmines so the people could go back to the farms and raise food to eat and Reverend Cong Chin agreed. As we continued to talk about Cambodia, I came up with a suggestion of using the Cambodian Veterans as the work force to reclaim the land. I knew enough about rice patties from my experience in the Army when I was stationed in South Korea.

My idea was to take a large section of land in the top of a valley and bring in experts in bomb disposal to teach the Cambodians how to find these land mines and remove them. Then rebuild the rice patties along with the irrigation ditches and dams to allow the water to flow from one rice patty to the next and eventually to all the rice patties rebuilt in the entire valley. Each Veteran who worked on the project would receive food, clothing and housing. As further compensation for his work when the section is finish, each Veteran will be given 2.5 hectors of land drawn by farm lot number designated on the map of the reclaimed section of land.

To make this work as part of the Cambodian Government's effort to rebuild the country the Veteran cannot sell it. He must live and farm it for 20 years before it became his and his family's property. Each year the farmer must pay 10% of his rice crop to the Government like a mortgage payment. This would generate money to the Government to run the country. Land ownership would give the people in the cities one of the best reasons to return to the land and people who owned land would have a stake in preserving a government who gave them the opportunity to own it. Using the Veterans as the pilot project for reclaiming the land would also meet the country's objective to helping those who had fought in all the wars. I told him. When Reverend Cong Chin thanked me for my suggestion, I did not think any more about it.

Our business meeting with Ting Tang's Aunt did not go very well as she wanted to buy Marlboro Cigarettes and could not understand if I were in the Cigarette business why I could not sell her Marlboros. Although this was a logic question from someone with limited international business experience, my answer depended upon my ability to educate her about how the rest of the business world operated. Not knowing how long this would take I suggested we have diner and I would explain the problems of getting Marlboro cigarettes.

One of the primary ways of an American to be successful in business in an Oriental country was to eat their food with them. I had Ting Tang arrange a dinner party for all of us at one of the best Cambodian Restaurants in the city. Ting Tang must have ordered everything on the menu, as there was more food than we could have eaten.

I ate some of each dish and commented on those I liked best. Once we were finished eating I took out a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a pack of VAMCO's Mavericks. I took out a cigarette from each pack and asked Ting Tang's Aunt to close her eyes and pick one of the cigarettes to smoke. Everyone watched as she took a Maverick and smoked it. I then had her clean her mouth with a drink of Johnny Walker Scotch before I had her smoke a Marlboro. When I asked her which cigarette she liked best, she picked VAMCO's Mavericks. This smoking test involved other Cambodian members of our group. We even had the Restaurant's owner and his waiters choose the best tasting cigarette. Every time they picked the Maverick cigarette.

Prior to this meeting, I had conducted my own cigarette marketing study and found the Cambodians on the street seldom bought more than one or two of the cheapest cigarettes at a time for about 3 cents each. Even at 3 cents each, the retail price was 60 cents a pack and 60 cents was a lot of money for the average Cambodian, who made less than 10 dollars a month.

Since we all agreed the Mavericks were a better tasting, than the Marlboros cigarette which was believed to be the best cigarette on the market, the 22 cent a pack price would allow Ting's Aunt to double her money at the wholesale market level. At 44 cents a pack, her retail sellers made 18 cents a pack or a 40% profit even if they sold the Mavericks at the cheap cigarette price.

I told Ting's Aunt the best price on Marlboro cigarettes were 46 cents a pack if she could find anyone who could sell them to her. I gave her the address, phone and Fax numbers to the Philip Morris cigarette company in Richmond Virginia and suggested if she wanted to buy Marlboros, she should try to buy them directly from the company that made them. Ting Tang told his Aunt, there were a lot of people claiming to sell Marlboro cigarettes who would take her money and never deliver them. Only Philip Morris could sell Marlboros cigarettes.

Ting Tang's Aunt was surprised that I would give her the address to my competition but I knew she would find out I was telling her the truth and realize I was trying to establish a long-term business relationship with her. I had Ting tell his Aunt we would be sightseeing for the next three days and if she wanted to buy our Mavericks cigarettes, she knew where to reach us at our Hotel. Ting Tang came to me the next day and explained his Aunt had never bought anything with a Letter of Credit and all her business transactions were paid in cash when she received the goods.

There were only two western Banks in Phnom Penh and I took Ting and his Aunt to the Branch Manager of the Bank of America who explained how the Letter of Credit worked to insure payment to the seller and the receipt of goods to the buyer. Although Ting Tang's Aunt claimed she understood how I needed to do business with her I was not as sure she did.

Reverend Cong Chin came to our hotel and asked if I would agree to have my picture taken with Chia Simm the President of the Cambodian Parliament, as I was the first westerners who had come to Cambodia to conduct business. I agreed as good Public Relations with the leaders of a country was just good business.

# 11. DEVELOPING THE BIGGER PICTURE

What was to be a 5 minute photo opportunity, turned into a 4-hour discussion of possible solutions to the problems facing the emerging country of Cambodia and all its people. These discussions began after the photos were taken, when Chia Simm asked if I had time to take tea with him. He wanted to discuss the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program I had suggested to Reverend Cong Chin. I knew I could hardly refuse this request from one of the key leaders of the country.

It was easy to repeat what I had suggested to Reverend Cong Chin. We discussed the Government's interest to heal the wounds and scars of war by uniting all those who fought all these years into a Program that would help all of them. The more I talked about the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program other members of Chia Simm's Staff came into the room and I could see they were taking notes. I not only told them how it would work I explained why it would be successful in rebuilding the country that did not have a lot of money.

I explained the country's principle asset was the labor of its citizens. I told them when men worked to improve his own position in life, he is working to rebuild a strong agricultural foundation his country needed to survive. I went on to explain it was my understanding that the Cambodian Government's greatest problem was to encourage the people living in the cities to return to the land and rebuild the country's food production capabilities. However to accomplish this all the land mines left after so many years of war had to be removed and what I was proposing for the Veterans could become the pilot model to show the rest of the country how to do it.

I admitted it would still take money to finance such a Program and before they asked, I said VAMCO did not have the money to do it alone. Having presented the idea, I felt obligated to suggest a possible solution. "I am willing to help Cambodia find the money for this Project from someone like the Asian Development Bank." I told them and I went on to explain the purpose of the Asian Development Bank was to assist in the development of Asian countries like Cambodia.

They would loan money to the Cambodian Government at a favorable interest rate based upon the Bank's acceptance of this Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program's plan. I explained the Asian Development Bank should see this Veteran's Program as a sound investment as the means to repay this loan already existed in the Veteran's Program with the 10% of the crops produced available to make the annual loan payments.

I could see by the very slight Asian smile on Chia Simm's face that he was pleased with the idea of getting money from the Asian Development Bank and he had no way of knowing I was flying by the seat of my pants when I made this suggestion.

However our discussion was not over as he asked if I had any suggestions to deal with the continuing Communist threat of the Khmer Rouge who held the western section of the country along the border with Thailand. He explained how the Khmer Rouge were protected by some Thai Generals who were making a profit off the continuing unrest. He told me how the Khmer Rouge was selling gemstones to these Thai Generals for guns and ammunition to finance the Communist's war efforts.

My one credit college course in Gems and Precious Stones at the University of Wisconsin gave me a basic understanding of the value of raw gemstone materials. The majority of raw gemstones would have little commercial value accept what might be worth a few dollars in Cambodia could have a significantly higher value in the world gem market.

I asked what a typical gemstone the Khmer Rouge would try to sell would be worth in Cambodia. The conversion from Cambodian riel's to dollars created a range of 2 to 40 dollars and at these values there had to be a hell of a lot of gemstones sold to the Thai Generals to pay for all the guns and ammo sold to the Khmer Rouge.

I suggested the Cambodian Government needed to cut off the source of the Khmer Rouge's money by setting up gemstone buyers in the area who would pay more than the going rate for raw gemstones. That way when one of the soldiers in the Khmer Rouge found a gemstone he would not turn it over to his Sergeant but would keep it and sell it himself.

I explained if the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge were like most men in a conscripted army, they would not be paid very much. These men would have few opportunities to find any pleasure in his existence in the Khmer Rouge Army. However, with the money he received from the sale of a raw gemstone, he could buy drinks for himself and his friends and the Khmer Rouge would not have any gemstones to trade to buy guns and ammunition to continue the war.

My business mind jumped to the opportunity to make money from this suggestion. I told Chia Simm I had a friend from India who was in the gemstone business and I believed he would agree to buy all the raw gemstones for a dollar more, than the Cambodian Government's buyers paid the soldier's of the Khmer Rouge for the gemstone. This would help to finance this program and the country would be making a profit in the process of denying the Khmer Rouge a means to finance their war efforts.

The next problem Chia Simm wanted to discuss was the need to develop electrical power in the country. The 100 Megawatt Electrical Power Plant in Phnom Penh was so old it could not produce 10 Megawatts during peak production times. The Electrical Power Plant was so unreliable that most of the Hotels and major businesses had their own generators. To make the situation worse many of the people in the city had strung common electrical wire into the main power lines to get free electricity and these make shift power cords would break shorting out whole sections of the city.

The 50 Megawatt Electrical Power Plant in the Port City of Sihanoukville was not in any better condition. The rest of Cambodia did not have any electrical power and I was lead to believe they never had it or the Khmer Rouge had destroyed what may have existed.

I told them I had a limited knowledge about producing electricity and I did not know how to evaluate the true condition of Cambodia's electrical power generating capabilities. However, I knew a company who were electrical power experts and they were associated with a Legal Firm I had used in Washington. This company was involved in privatizing the Electrical Power system in Pakistan and I would be willing to approach them about evaluating the possibility of doing the same thing in Cambodia.

Chia Simm wanted to know how I knew so much about resolving the problems facing Cambodia. I explained most of these problems had been resolved in the United States years ago and the solutions to these problems are in our history books. Reading and knowing history made it easy for me to explain how and why it was done and there was no reason why those solutions would not work in Cambodia.

One distinguished looking man who had joined Chia Simm kept staring at me as I discussed the problems facing the rebuilding of Cambodia and I had offered suggestions to resolve them. The intensity of his obvious staring was so unlike most Orientals' and I was getting an uncomfortable feeling we had met before.

"Tell me Mr Corrigan, what did you do in the war?" He suddenly asked and there was no doubt he was referring to the War in Vietnam. My immediate thought was I had probably killed some of his relatives when I was running that special Sniper Unit out of South Korea along the Cambodian border and he was going to have me shot.

"Let me tell you a story as I think I know who you are." He began and he proceeded to tell me about that special Sniper Training Class for soldiers from several Southeast Asian countries somewhere I believed was in Thailand. He started to describe an event where one of the country's Unit Commanders held a formation of his men on the rifle range after the day's shooting was over and then he asked me what happened.

At that moment, I knew who this man was. I told him I saw him shoot one of his team members who he claimed had embarrassed his country based on my evaluation that the man would not make it as a Sniper. This incident is written in my Book, _Three Toed Tiger Tales_.

"That is correct Mr Corrigan. I would like to take you to meet one of your students." He said and then he told Chia Simm in Cambodian about what I had done to teach these men how to shoot and where he wanted to take me.

"Please Mr Corrigan. It is all right to go with General Po as he is honored to introduce you to one of your students from Cambodia." Chia Simm encouraged me.

I had no idea what to expect when I entered the Office of Cambodia's Premier. General Po introduced me to the Cambodian Premier Hon Sen who was also one of my students in that special Sniper Training class. General Po also told the Premier of the suggestions I had made to Chia Simm to help Cambodia rebuild. I cannot say I remembered Hon Sen but he remembered me as the American who taught him how to shoot a rifle at great distances.

A pot of Tea was brought in and General Po suggested a secretary was needed to transcribe the ideas I had discussed with Chia Simm. Hon Sen listened and asked questions to clarify his understanding of these suggestions. From time to time General Po would elaborate in Cambodian to add information that may have been lost in the translation.

When we were finished talking about these Programs, Hon Sen wanted to know why I had come to Cambodia. I told him about VAMCO's cigarette business and how Ting Tang, as a former Jet Pilot in the Cambodian Air Force had introduced me to his Aunt who wanted to buy VAMCO's cigarettes.

"Mr Corrigan you are in the wrong business. You have freely outlined major business opportunities that could make you a great deal of money. The Cambodian people need these ideas and so do I. Reverend Cong Chin has already told me about your Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program and he has asked me to meet with you and discuss this proposal. Now you have given me several other Programs that must be done for the country and you as the creator of these ideas you are in the best position to make them successful. Will you do it?" Premier Hon Sen asked.

"You must understand although my company Virginia American Management Corporation has been very successful it is not a large company and I do not have the money it will take to make these programs happen." I told him.

"But you have already designed these programs and I believe you have an idea how to get the money to make these programs work. Tell me what you need from me and it is yours." The Premier stated as if the success of these Programs only needed his decree.

Although I knew, Hon Sen was sincere in his offer I realized Hon Sin's concept of business was based on his experience in a Communist country and he may have a limited understanding of how successful business works in the Capitalist world. However, I could be wrong and I did not want to pass up on this golden opportunity.

"Sir, I appreciate your confidence in me. Let me explain how we can help each other be successful. You as the leader of Cambodia is in the position to offer attractive incentives for businessmen to come to Cambodia and invest in locating their companies here. Base on my business experience in countries around the world I can use your incentives to encourage businesses to come to Cambodia. Let me explain what I mean by the incentives you could offer.

Cambodia is like a business that does not have money. You need something to trade or give as a profit incentive to get the people with money to enter into the opportunity with you. Let me use the idea of buying the raw gemstones from the soldiers in the Khmer Rouge as an example.

I am not in the position to buy and profit from these gemstones myself but my friend from India is. I planned to bring him as a man with money to Cambodia to make a deal with the Cambodian Government. I am trading the opportunity to get these gemstones from the Cambodian Government and I expect to share in the profits my friend makes in buying and reselling these gemstones.

My friend and I are trading money for the opportunity the Cambodian Government has to buy the gemstones from the Khmer Rouge soldiers as neither my friend nor I were in the position to do it ourselves. This is a good trade and good business for everyone as it will not only make money for Cambodia, it also accomplishes the national object of the Cambodian Government to stop the Khmer Rouge from using these gemstones to finance their ability to continue to wage their war.

We discussed other business opportunities Cambodia needed as part of its rebuilding process and the possible incentives the country could offer to induce investors to develop them. When Hon Sen understood every new business meant jobs for the Cambodians, he quickly caught onto the concept of offering incentives. Hon Sen wanted me to build my cigarette factory in Cambodia claiming the country produced 28 million pounds of tobacco a year. The incentive to build the cigarette factory in Cambodia was their tobacco sold for less than 70 cents a pound, which was less than half of what the tobacco costs in the United States.

Although 28 million pounds of Cambodian tobacco could make 14 million Master Cases of cigarettes, I remembered Jim telling me the tobacco was the least costly part of the cigarette. I also remember Jim telling me it only took 10% of the North Carolina flavored tobacco to make a cigarette taste good and the rest of the cigarette could be made with horseshit. However, these were technical details; I had to deal with before I could determine if building a cigarette factory would be a profitable business venture. But if I told Hon Sinn what he might think was an incentive to attract my building a cigarette factory might not be true, I could undermined the progress he was making towards his understanding of free enterprise and the value of using western economics.

"I am pleased to hear Cambodia has tobacco. Is it possible I could get samples of this tobacco to test it? I will need the test results to determine if I can use Cambodian tobacco to make VAMCO's Maverick cigarettes." I told him. Hon Sen seemed to be pleased with my response and he said I would have the tobacco samples before I left Cambodia.

We talked about the company, who had privatized the Electrical Power Generating system for the country of Pakistan. I explained I only knew about them through an attorney I had worked with at Brown and Williams Law Firm in Washington DC. The Brown and Williams Law Firm had been hired by the World Bank to write and negotiate the International Agreement with Pakistan and this company.

In spite of my efforts to explain how offering economic incentives worked to make free enterprise successful I had the feeling Hon Sinn did not understand what the "privatizing" of the country's electrical power system, really meant. Unless he understood privatizing meant transferring the ownership of the country's electrical power system that belong to the people in a communist society to a private ownership in a capitalist economy I was wasting my time trying to bring this company to Cambodia.

"I understand how important electrical power is to the future of Cambodia and I need to know if you are willing to do what it will take to accomplish this goal. I cannot help you or Cambodia unless you are willing to consider changing the way your country does business. By this I mean, Cambodia must move from a Socialist Economy into one that will recognize private ownership. I realize you may not have any experience in private enterprise and I can only point out American Capitalism based on private ownership has been successful while the greatest socialist system of the Soviet Union based on Communism or state ownership has failed.

If you recall, when I was teaching you how to effectively shoot your rifle, you were successful when you changed what you did in the past. If you look at Cambodia's current electrical power system like an untrained shooter who cannot improve without correcting past his mistakes and learning what actually works. I can tell you from my experience, what you should do for your country to provide electrical power necessary to rebuild Cambodia, as I know it works and continues to work in the United States. You must understand no one will provide electrical power to Cambodia for nothing and you do not have the money to build it yourself. Again, this is like the gemstone business we discussed earlier. What this private company is trading is the opportunity to make money selling electrical power for the right to own all of your country's electrical power system.

Only you can decide if giving every Cambodian, electrical power to have a light in his home is worth trading what you cannot provide yourself, for allowing a private company to do it. When you provide every Cambodian with electric lights in his home, you will also have the electrical power to run factories and businesses in Cambodia. Private ownership is the key to Cambodia's development and the country's economic success will open the doors to individual achievement and personal wealth that will make him work even harder for a better life for himself, and his family. The future of Cambodia depends on the development of a countrywide electrical power system where every Cambodian could have electricity in his home five years from now." I told Hon Sen. Then I added what the positive political effect would be for him and his political party if he was the one who gave every Cambodian electrical power in his home and he really liked that.

Now that I had convinced Hon Sen of the value of private investors producing Cambodia's electrical power, I realized I had moved into an area of international relationships that was beyond my business experience. I did not know what I could really do to help Cambodia without some authority to represent the Cambodian Government as I never represented a country before.

In the past, I represented myself or I had an established a business contract with a client before I approached a company to have something made. Without an established contractual relationship with the client or the manufacturer, you were dancing on thin air and you could end up working for nothing. Although I wanted to help Cambodia, I had my own interests to protect, as I was not a wealthy philanthropist who could afford to make other people rich off my ideas and efforts.

"Sir if you want me to approach this privatization company I will need some official standing with you and the Cambodian Government. I am sure you understand if I do not have any official standing to represent Cambodia no one will take me seriously. Please understand I am a businessman who needs to protect his ideas and all my efforts to accomplish this task and I expect to make money when I am successful.

Hon Sen and General Po discussed this at great length in Cambodian before they suggested they would seek Reverend Cong Chin's advice. I had the feeling old habits of the orient where the leaders expected to be bribed or paid for the authority they gave me to proceed with these projects and they were not sure how to approach me on the subject.

The topic of the discussion shifted to the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program as a long-term benefit to the country and how this Program could be financed. I outlined the Program as I had discussed with Reverend Cong Chin and Chia Simm. Hon Sen was very pleased with the idea and he gained the additional understanding of how the private ownership of the land would make it work.

I again suggested there was a possibility to get the Asian Development Bank to invest in the future of Cambodia as this Humanitarian Program had the ability to repay this loan. I had to admit I did not know how to make such a proposal to the Asian Development Bank but I would find out.

This brought us back to having the authority to represent the Cambodian Government to the Asian Development Bank. I also brought up the question of the Cambodian Government approving this Program as a National objective and I wanted to know the political process involved to have the Cambodian Government place its full faith and credit behind repaying this Asian Development Bank loan.

I explained without the Cambodian Government's official request for the Asian Development Bank's loan and approving the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program I had no idea how to make it work. With this understanding of the Cambodian Government's responsibilities, we agreed to meet again before I left Cambodia.

Ting Tang was worried about me, as he had no idea where I went after the meeting with Chia Simm to have our picture taken. I explained what happened and what took place in my meeting with the Cambodian Premier Hon Sen. Ting Tang was so excited he wanted to celebrate my success by taking us to dinner in one of the best Cambodian Restaurants. By the time we got back to our hotel Reverend Cong Chin was waiting for me.

Reverend Cong Chin told me he had just come from a meeting with Hon Sen and he wanted to know everything we had discussed. We talked well into the night and I learned how the Cambodian Government had been formed after the UN sponsored elections. There had been no clear winner in the election.

Hon Sen and Prince Sihanouk represented the two major political parties in Cambodia. However even if one of them gain an agreement with all the other political parties they still would not have a majority like a party leader did in England when he formed a coalition of political parties to form a Government to become the Prime Minister.

The Cambodian Government had been formed with two Prime Ministers of Hon Sen of the CCP Party and Prince Sihanouk of the Funcinpec Party with Chia Simm as the President or head of the Cambodian Parliament. As a result of this fractured government any legally binding agreement with the Cambodia took all three elected leaders to approve the proposal. Being a Political Science Major I realized a government with two heads and a tail any one of which could wag the whole dog would not work. Yet this was the political situation, I was forced to deal with if I tried to help the Cambodian Government rebuild the country.

Reverend Cong Chin agreed to approach Prince Sihanouk about the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program and the possibility of privatizing the Cambodian Electrical Power system. Reverend Cong Chin believed he could convince Prince Sihanouk both these programs were in the best interests of the country and the Prince would approve them. Unfortunately, Reverend Cong Chin was wrong as Prince Sihanouk refused to see me unless I gave him a million dollars. This was an out and out bribe with no guarantee he would approve the Programs. As an American, I could not bribe anyone without violating United States Law and I would not bribe anyone in the first place.

Reverend Cong Chin apologized for Prince Sihanouk's behavior and I told him I was also sorry that I could not help Cambodia when one of its elected leader's was not willing to talk to me about programs to help the Cambodian people.

Before I left Cambodia, Reverend Cong Chin handed me a letter from Hon Sen asking me to represent him and the Cambodian people in the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program and the privatization of the Cambodian electrical power system. I never asked how Hon Sen planned to pull this off with Prince Sihanouk's opposition but I told Reverend Cong Chin I would try to do what I could for the good of the Cambodian people.

Although we had signed an agreement to sell the Maverick cigarettes to Ting Tang's Aunt she had not open the Letter of Credit to VAMCO before we left Cambodia. Ting Tang never questioned his aunt's volume of business or her capability to buy a Container of VAMCO's cigarettes. When she had not invited me to see her business operation I had the feeling she was afraid if I did see her place of business I would not believe she had the capability to handle VAMCO's cigarette business. I knew the success of a business venture was not always based on its looks but more of what was contained in its business books and ledgers and the determination of the owner to be successful.

Based on my past International business I had learned how to evaluate several simple economic indicators to establish the value of labor and the cost of the raw materials to make the products I wanted to buy. This was really comparison shopping using what I knew it would cost to make the product in the United States and in the country I was dealing with. I was willing to pay a fair competitive price based on what it actually cost to make it in the country and not what the manufacturer thought I would pay.

I wanted to make a fair deal that would allow my company and the manufacturer to make a fair profit. I would pass on the savings I was able to negotiate with the manufacturer to my customers, which would make my products more competitive in the market. Although my role was now reversed, as I was now the manufacturer, I still needed to make sure Ting Tang's Aunt could meet the terms and conditions in the contract for her to become involved in this cigarette business.

My comparison of the economic conditions in Cambodia and the United States left me wondering how she could afford to buy the one Container of Maverick cigarettes. Back in the early 1990's 100 thousand dollars was still a lot of money in the United States but that same amount of money in Cambodia was as if it were a million dollars to her. Rather than question her ability to do this business, I gave her 30 days to open the Letter of Credit to VAMCO before our contract agreement expired. I had learned to give someone I had entered into a business contract every opportunity to succeed and never underestimate the desire of a highly motivated buyer to overcome a financial problem to raise the money.

What Ting Tang's Aunt did to buy her first Shipping Container of 840 Master Cases of Maverick cigarettes, was to appeal to her relatives in the United States to raise the money. When her niece, Lynn Su from Minnesota arrived in VAMCO's Office in Fredericksburg Virginia with the full payment for the cigarettes in cash I knew how to handle it.

I took her to VAMCO's Bank to deposit the money in a special Trust Checking Account and I added a thousand dollars to keep this Banking arrangement open for future transactions. I had Lynn Su issue a check to VAMCO for the first container of cigarettes. By doing this, I had established where the cash had come from and she had the documented proof of payment to send to her Aunt in Cambodia. Lynn Su became our houseguest at Berclair Plantation while the Maverick Cigarettes were made and shipped.

She fell in love with our horses and she could not believe how gentle our Broodmares and the babies were. Lynn Su insisted on making a Cambodian dinner for Cliff, his wife and us and for her Uncle Ting Tang and Aunt Ginny. This was such a treat that Carol suggested we should have Lynn Su make a sample buffet for the next VQHA Region 5 meeting. I had to make special arrangements with the Golden Corral's manager to bring food into his restaurant.

When Lynn Su left Fredericksburg with copies of the shipping documents on the first Container of Maverick cigarettes, I knew she felt as if she was part of our family. Rather than driving her to Dulles International Airport, I flew her in our airplane and gave her a bird's eye view of Berclair Plantation and Washington DC before we landed. There was no doubt in my mind when Lynn Su got back to Minnesota she would tell everyone about our horses and the ride she had in our airplane to the airport.

# 12. WALKING ON WATER

My effort to contact the company who had privatized Pakistan's electrical power system had been very successful and they were willing to go to Cambodia to investigate the possibility of doing the same thing there. I also learn how the United States and the World Bank had been involved in financing the privatization of Pakistan's Electrical Power Program. I had kept Reverend Cong Chin informed of the progress I was making by sending Fax Reports, which he forwarded to Hon Sen.

I did my research and study of the Asian Development Bank and its requirements for issuing loans to developing countries before I called them at their headquarters in Manila Philippines. I was fortunate to reach the Director for Southeast Asia and I was able to outline the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program to see if it would qualify for a loan from their Bank.

I fax him a copy of the written proposal with cost estimates of $300 Million Dollars and the means to repay the loan. Within a week, I received the application package and the $150 Million dollar loan limit the Asian Development Bank was willing to make for 20 years at one percent interest. What the Asian Development Bank wanted was for the Cambodian Government to seek a 50% investment from other sources for the Program and if the Cambodian Veterans Program were successful, the Asian Development Bank would consider forgiving their loan's repayment. This amounted to free money to Cambodia.

I had built in a 10% Management fee for VAMCO to run the Program and the Asian Development Bank thought this fee was reasonable. Once the Cambodian Government obtained the other $150 Million dollar commitment, they could formally apply for the loan after the Government approved the Cambodian Veterans Program through the country's normal legislative process.

I had kept Reverend Cong Chin informed of my progress with the Asian Development Bank and he forwarded everything to Hon Sen and Chia Simm. When he received my report on the possible $150 Million Dollar Loan from the Asian Development Bank and the Cambodian Government's loan application Reverend Cong Chin called me, as he could not believe it. Neither of us had expected such a quick and positive response from the Asia Development Bank to the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program.

However, this was only a third of the way to making the Program a reality. We still had to find another $150 Million Dollars and get Prince Sihanouk to agree before the Cambodian Government could submit the Application to the Asian Development Bank. Reverend Cong Chin was not as concerned about raising the money as he was about convincing Prince Sihanouk to agree to approve the Program.

I used Jerry Gillmore from the company who was privatizing Pakistan's Electrical Power to make the introduction to the right party in the World Bank. Jerry went with me to my first meeting at the World Bank. Jerry explained his company was considering the possibility of privatizing Cambodia's Electrical Power system and they hope to schedule a meeting with the Cambodian Government as soon as the formal invitation arrived.

The World Bank Representative and members of the loan committee were impressed with the humanitarian Cambodia Veterans Rehabilitation Program and they wanted to know how I became involved in this program. I explained how I met Reverend Cong Chin and how the idea of helping the Cambodian Veterans had come about in a matter of days. I explained how I had presented this program to Chia Simm the President of the Cambodian Parliament and then to Hon Sen the Premier of Cambodia to gain their support.

I discussed how Virginia American Management Corporation was uniquely qualified to manage this Cambodia Veterans Rehabilitation Program based on its management of the Vocational Division of American Rehabilitation, which provided Selective Job Placement to injured workers. I went on to explain how American Rehabilitation had agreed to use its Medical Division to provide and support the medical recovery of the Cambodian Veterans much like the Department of Veterans Affairs did in the United States.

I outline my management experience to handle large and complex operations. I discussed my military background where I had successfully commanded seven different Army Units the largest being over 990 men in First Field Force Vietnam. I had developed the US Army Sniper program, won two Presidential Citations and managed the Public Affairs Office for 13 States in NORAD before I became involved in International business with Harpers Ferry Arms Company, and James River Imports and Development Corporation. I concluded how I personally understood what the individual Cambodian Veterans needed as I had worked with a wide variety of injured workers to find them gainful employment within their physical limitations.

If they were impressed with my qualifications to manage the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program they were even more impressed with the progress I had made with the Asian Development Bank to get half of the money I needed for this Program. When I explained I was hoping to get the other half of the money from the World Bank, I was given a formal application and a copy of the World Bank's procedures to apply for loans and grants.

We also discussed the possibility of applying to the US Government for the balance of the $300 Million Dollars I might not be able to get from other sources. The World Bank Representative gave me the names of several key US Congressmen and Senators who were on the Foreign Aide Committees. Then he surprised me when he asked my permission to make copies of my written presentation to send to the Chairman of the House and Senate Foreign Aide Committees before he would call them to make the introductions. I thanked them for all their help, as I could not have been more pleased by the response and actions of the World Bank Representatives.

# 13. BECOMING A POLITICAL FOOTBALL

All this activity with Cambodia brought a request from the State Department who wanted to meet with me and discuss my relationship with the Cambodian Government. Although I knew operating at this level of international business with Cambodia would be noticed by governments I had was surprised by how quickly they had reacted. I had just hung up the phone with the Director of the Southeast Asian Deck at the State Department when a voice from the past called me.

Alex Baldwin had been a spook with the CIA in Vietnam and I had saved his ass after a VC Patrol caught him in a village. I had been watching the VC Patrol in my scope as they moved into my sector of the Sniper Team and I could not help but notice the tall American who had his arms tied around his back to a bamboo poll.

I knew we had to take out the 7-VC, with one volley or they might kill the American. I clicked the key on my radio's mike three times, which was our code for taking the VC out by the numbers. This meant each of us would shoot the VC in the order of our team's assigned designation. I was number "one" and I would shoot the first VC. My shooting partner would shoot the next VC in line, as he was the number "two" on the team. The number "eight" man on the team would be ready to take out any VC that had not been taken out in the first volley.

When I received their acknowledgment clicks, I radioed the action point for the engagement on the trail. The action point was an established physical object identified by a letter of the phonetic alphabet on their shooting maps at a known distance from each shooter. They would shoot on the count of three after the first VC reached that location. Seven shots rang out as one and the 7-VC dropped in their tracks.

I had gone down to retrieve the American and it was the first time I met Alex Baldwin or the name he was using at the time. I had run into Alex again several months later in Siagon during a CIA Classified briefing at MAC-V Headquarters. He insisted on buying me a drink at the Officer's Club and that was the last time I had seen him.

"Hay Captain Corrigan, how are they hanging? This is your old buddy Alex from Vietnam." He stated and then proceeded to tell me we needed to talk before I met with the people from the State Department. We agreed to meet at noon tomorrow at the Log Cabin Restaurant north of Stafford Courthouse on US Route 1.

Alex was not alone and he introduced his friend as just Max. When they proceeded to question me about my involvement in Cambodia, I stopped them and told them I had nothing to say until I knew who they really were, who they were working for and why they wanted to talk with me.

When they came up with some bullshit-sounding name for a Nongovernment Organization, I told them I was leaving. Alex admitted he was with the same group he worked for in Vietnam and Max was his boss. Alex then told me, I did not have to say anything and they were only asking me to listen to what they wanted me to know.

"I don't know how you did it but you are the first American to talk with Chia Simm and Hon Sen in 15 years. Then you come back to the United States and you have the company who privatized Pakistan's Electrical Power system making plans to go to Cambodia. Now you have the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank is considering a loan for some Cambodian Veterans group. The State Department is embarrassed, as our Ambassador to Cambodia has not seen either of these two men yet.

The Cambodians have a right to feel the United States Government disserted them and let the Communists takeover their country after the fall of Vietnam. I will be honest with you. The United States wants to improve its image in Cambodia and help them rebuild their country. However, with the anti-war sediment still running high in the United States and the MIA/POW issues unresolved, the President has been forced to move cautiously and quietly in his efforts to reopen the door into Southeast Asia now that Cambodia has elected this crazy three-headed Democratic Government.

Prince Sihanouk who is a puppet of the Chinese Government has thwarted all our past efforts. The Cambodians have no reason to trust us. Prince Sihanouk has compounded the problem, by claiming every American is a CIA Agent who wants to take over Cambodia just as they did went the CIA ran his father out of the country just before Nixon invaded Cambodia in 1971.

Apparently, you are the exception as you have gained the trust of both Chia Simm and Hon Sen and we would like to know how you pulled that off." Alex stated.

"Does it really matter? The important thing is I have and I doubt even you would believe me if I told you. Besides you still have not told me why you wanted to meet me before I went to the State Department." I responded.

"Have it your way. Alex said. "The State Department will try to co-op you into bringing these Programs under their protective umbrella as part of their Aide Program to Cambodia."

"So what if they do?" I had to ask.

"The moment the State Department gets involved, Prince Sihanouk will use it as an excuse to block these Programs. You need to understand China wants to keep all Westerners out of Cambodia. China has promised Prince Sihanouk with China's help, his father who is currently living in China will regain his kingdom in Cambodia.

China does not have the capability to financially compete with the United States and it has no intention to help Cambodia rebuild. What China can afford is an elaborate hoax built on empty promises. Every day phony Chinese businessmen meet with Prince Sihanouk's father at the palace the Chinese having him living in, to propose extravagant development plans for rebuilding Cambodia. As long as China can keep the Westerners out of Cambodia and convince Prince Sihanouk to do his father's bidding, China will not need to spend any money to demonstrate its support to help rebuild the country.

China is also counting on the American people opposing any further involvement by the United States Government in Southeast Asia and they did not anticipate someone like you, becoming involved in Cambodia as a private American businessman.

Of course, the Secretary of State does not see the Chinese influence on Prince Sihanouk as being that important in spite of our opinion based on the years of studying China's behavior and Cambodia's leaders. Although the President respects our opinion, he is willing to let Colin Powell play his hand out with you, after the President finished reading the dossier we prepared on you, your military career and your business enterprises.

When I was reading your Army Officer's Personnel file and the classified reports of your Sniper Team's activities in South Korea and Vietnam I realized I knew who you were and we had met in Vietnam. Since then I have been the Agency's point man and this is why I was asked to meet with you today." Alex told me.

"So you are telling me, I have become a political football and if I go along with the State Department I will not have a chance to succeed unless I can pull this off without the United States support which also means without the World Bank." I stated.

_I now understood the game Prince Sihanouk was playing with China. No matter what I did, with or without the US Government's support, Prince Sihanouk would still be an obstacle I had to overcome if I was to succeed in my business with Cambodia. Prince Sihanouk was not only my problem but he was also an obstacle to Chia Simm, Hon Sen and the future of Cambodia_ _._

"I told the President you would understand the political situation as you would not have gotten this far if you didn't." Alex commented.

"Let's just say I understand part of what you told me. If our roles were reversed, what advice would I give you when you meet with the State Department tomorrow?" I asked him.

"That's an interesting question. Tell the State Department you are willing to share any information you might learn about Cambodia. Remember they have a reason they asked you to meet with them, so sit back and listen to what they have to say.

You already know the dangers you could be facing from Prince Sihanouk. his father and from the Chinese. You do not need the State Department meddling in your business affairs or have one of their Clerk's telling her boyfriend that the State Department is working with you in Cambodia. As you know, Washington has big ears and you never know who talks to whom. The best advice and what would be in your best interests is for you to keep what you are doing in Cambodia to yourself." Alex stated.

"You know Alex you sound like you are talking above your pay grade. Who are you speaking for?" I asked him as I tried to look him in the eye and he refused to answer me.

"So it's that high up, is it?" I commented.

If I was right, the President was asking me for a favor and we all know favors in Washington create future obligations. Since I did not understand how important this favor was, I could only assume it was important enough to send Alex to influence me not to become involved with the State Department.

When Alex rolled his eyes and looked up towards the ceiling, I knew I was right and I was in, way over my head. "All right you have convinced me I will be wasting my time looking for any help from Washington." I added.

"I am glad you understand the situation as it exists now. You know how quickly things change in Washington and maybe a month from now your Programs could be welcomed with open arms. You know there are other ways to help you other than dealing with the State Department. I understand you might be looking for some technical support to deal with the landmines in Cambodia." Alex told me with a wink, I took to mean the US Military's help.

"Yes that would be very helpful. What the Cambodians really needs is someone to teach them how to locate and remove these landmines and they could use some of the advanced detection equipment." I stated in such a way to acknowledge the favor being offered. "Let me get back to you on that." Alex said as he looked at his Boss Max who nodded his agreement.

As we were eating our lunch, Alex asked a number of questions about how I had found Berclair Plantation and how I had gotten into the horse business. I knew Alex was trying to fill in the blanks in the dossier the CIA had compiled on me. I did not mind tell him about Berclair, the horses and my past business of Harpers Ferry Arms Company and James River Imports and Development Corporation.

I only told them what I thought they already knew about VAMCO and American Rehabilitation. I added just what I wanted them to know about my current businesses in Cambodia and my relationship with Hon Sen. I had to believe the CIA did not know about Hon Sen being one of my shooting students as I had just found out about it myself and it was none of their business. Alex gave me a card with his phone number on it and told me to call him if I ever needed anything.

I told Carol about the meeting I had with Alex and his boss and what they wanted me to do. This opened the door to discussing some of the things Carol never knew about me and how I had first met Alex Baldwin in Vietnam. This revelation of what I had done in the Army, as part of the Sniper Team in South Korea and Vietnam did not surprise her or as far as I knew most of this was still classified and if it was, I told Carol to keep it to herself.

_This discussion put my mind back into dealing with the Army as a bureaucratic organization and I realize the State Department was just another part of the same Government and they would be thinking the same way. I knew one of the best ways to discourage the State Department's interest in taking over the Programs would be to act as if you did not have a clue about what you were doing. On the other hand, the State Department already knew what I had already done and they would see through my act. However, that still might be the best way to approach the State Department, as it was a polite way to say "no thanks" and still keep the door open if things changed in Washington_.

The meeting with the State Department went as I planned and I could see they were not buying my clueless act. I was surprised when they asked if I would speak to Hon Sen and Chia Simm about setting up a meeting for Paul Reddicliffe their Ambassador to Cambodia.

I viewed this request as a test to confirm what they thought they knew about my involvement in Cambodia and not what I had told them when I politely rejected their assistance. Having agreed to do the State Department a favor, I asked for any information they had on Prince Sihanouk, Hon Sen and Chia Simm as if I really did not know that much about them. I wanted to keep the State Department guessing to keep the door open for something in the future. In reality I did not know who these Cambodians were and what role they played to get where they were in the Cambodian Government.

As I drove back to Berclair Plantation, I called Alex on my cell phone and told him what happened in my meeting with the State Department. Alex admitted he already knew and he told me his suggestion on the minefields had been approved.

We discussed how to coordinate this training, with the least amount of public exposure as to who they were so Prince Sihanouk would not find out they came from the United States. I suggested I would talk with my friend the Buddhist Monk who was a friend of Hon Sen and Chia Simm, as he would know how to handle this.

I called Reverend Cong Chin and filled him in on my meeting with the State Department. I also told him about the land mine detection and training team I was sending to Cambodia and I wanted to know if he could handle it. Reverend Cong Chin only asked when they were coming. By the time, I arrived back at Berclair Plantation I had accomplished everything I could do by my cell phone and I had arrived in time to help feed the horses with Carol.

The evening feeding at Berclair Plantation was our special time together to enjoy our horses and we never thought of feeding time as being a chore. During the summer months before the foals were weaned I would turn them and their mothers back out in the lower pasture where Hazel Run creek ran through the woods. The rich lush grass that grew down there was better than any hay I could feed them and the young horses got extra time to run and play to develop their strong bones and muscles.

I would come back out at 11 pm and call them back in, from the top of the hill. Many times just appearing on the top of the hill was enough to alert the Broodmares it was time to come in. One mare would start to move which caused the rest to catch up and it became a race to see who would reach the Mare Care Barns first.

I had specifically built these large stall Mare Care Barns with the idea of using the lower pastures for the evening turn out in mind. This made bringing in the Broodmares and their foals easy, as each broodmare knew her stall, and they would line up at their stall's door waiting for me to let them in. No matter how difficult my day had been, when all the horses were safely tucked in for the night I had an unexplainable peace and satisfaction that all was well on Berclair Plantation and in my life.

My night had one more ritual I had to perform before I started to make my business calls overseas. It involved our longhaired cat Mosby who looked like a classic black Persian cat with a silver bib. Mosby had come into our lives from the ASPCA when Carol's other longhaired cat she had raised as a kitten came up missing

Unable to find her cat she adopted this cat. The cat's long hair was so matted and tangled it could not be combed out and the pet groomer had no choice but to cut it off. The only hair left on Mosby was around its head and the tip of his tail. The cat was so thin he looked like an old man in gray underwear. He must have felt embarrassed by the loss of his hair as he constantly tried to hide as the "Gray Ghost Colonel John Singleton Mosby did during the Civil War. It was therefore more than fitting that he would be called "Mosby."

Sometimes when Mosby was not waiting in front of the refrigerator when I came in he would remind me it was "milk and cookie time" by jumping up on my desk and announce with a strong meow that sounded more like, he was saying "Now." If I ignored him, he would put his foot in the center of the page I was working on and he would repeat his demand with a louder "Now," until I gave him his nightly milk.

Buy the time I reached Reverend Cong Chin in California he had outlined the procedure to bring in the training team that would teach the Cambodians how to locate the land mines and deal with them. I told him I would have Alex Baldwin contact him and they could work out the details.

Reverend Cong Chin had a surprise for me. He told me about a High Hindu Priest called Swami G he knew in India who might be able to convince the Indian Government to give us the $150 million dollars we needed to finance the rest of the Cambodia Veterans Rehabilitation Program.

Reverend Cong Chin explained how he had met Swami G when he was in India for 15 years and Swami G was now the personal "religious" advisor to the Indian Prime Minister. Reverend Cong Chin called Swami G after I told him about meeting with the CIA who outlined the complications with the State Department and how Prince Sihanouk would block any financial aid from the United States Government or the World Bank located in Washington DC.

The timing of Reverend Cong Chin's phone call to Swami G could not have been any better. The Indian Government was looking for someone who could make the appropriate introductions to the new leaders of the Cambodian Government and open the door to Indian Businesses. It all boiled down to flying to India, meeting Swami G to explain the humanitarian Cambodia Veterans Rehabilitation Program and asking him for his help.

I could hardly refuse the opportunity to finance the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program and become the point of contact to bring new business into Cambodia. Arrangements were made to fly to New Delhi India on the following Monday. The Indian Government would send a formal invitation to me and notify their Embassy in Washington to issue my Entrance Visa.

When I got off the phone with Reverend Cong Chin, I called an old friend I had done business with in India when I was making uniforms and equipment for Harpers Ferry Arms Company. He was delighted to hear from me and he was able to confirm who Swami G was but also the position he had with the Indian Prime Minister. I thanked him and I promised to call him when I got to India.

The next day I went to the Indian Embassy in Washington to get my Visa. When I identified myself and asked for a Visa Application, I was immediately taken to meet the Deputy Ambassador, who personally stamped my Passport and apologized for the Ambassador who was unable to meet with me. However, the Ambassador had a personal gift for me. It was a book on the economic development of modern India.

I realized I did not know a lot about India and I stopped in the Rappahannock Regional Library in Fredericksburg to pick up any books they may have on India before I stopped in at VAMCO's office on Caroline Street to tell Carol what happened.

# 14. ANOTHER DOOR OPENS

I had a message from Vong Savang who claimed to be a friend of Lynn Su in Minneapolis Minnesota who wanted to talk to me about Maverick Cigarettes and Electrical power in Laos. When I called him back, Vong claimed he was a cousin to the President of Laos and the nephew to the Prime Minister and he heard about my cigarette business and my interest in Electrical Power for Cambodia. According to Vong, Laos had the capacity of producing enough hydro electrical power to supply all of Southeast Asia. The Government of Laos was interested in a joint venture with VAMCO to provide electrical power to the Cambodian Government.

I told him I would be interested in talking to him after I returned from an overseas business trip. However, Vong expressed some urgency in meeting before I left on business and he suggested he could fly to Washington and meet with me tomorrow in Fredericksburg. As we continued to talk, I got the feeling he was being sent by the Laotian Government to meet with me and I asked him if he was representing his relatives. He told me he would tell me when we met and he felt what he had to say should be enough to convince me to fly with him to Laos.

There was no sense arguing with a determined man and if he was willing to fly here from Minnesota, I had nothing to lose by seeing him. The more I thought about it, I was not sure Lynn Su knew about VAMCO's involvement with Cambodia's electrical power unless Ting Tang's Aunt told her. That meant Ting Tang must have told his Aunt or VAMCO's activities were not as confidential as I thought they were. I had not really thought about a possible security breach to VAMCO's business activities until after I met with Alex and Max. If the CIA and the State Department already knew, I needed to find out how Laos had obtained their information.

"Hay Ting Tang, I have a quick question." I asked when I called him at work. "Did you tell your Aunt about our involvement with Cambodia's electrical power?"

"No I never mentioned it. Why?" Ting Tang asked.

"I am just following up on loose ends. I need to talk with you and Cliff and update you on some of the latest developments. Maybe we can get together on Friday night for dinner at Berclair. If that is alright with you, could you call Cliff and see if he and his wife can come."

I had just hung up the phone when Jerry Gillmore called to say they had received the formal invitation from the Cambodian Government to make a presentation to Privatized their Electrical Power System. Jerry wanted to send their Electrical System's Evaluation Team to Cambodia a week before their formal presentation.

I did a quick calculation of the time I would need in India and if I went to Laos. I suggested he send his Evaluation Team on the following Monday and I would meet him in Cambodia on Friday. This would give us time to go over the results of the Evaluation before making the presentation on Monday.

Jerry wanted to check with his people about the proposed schedule before he could make a commitment. I told Jerry I would like to send Cliff Jenkins from my company with the Evaluation Team and he was available to leave at any time that was convenient for them. I also told Jerry that Cliff would be working with Reverend Cong Chin and they would coordinate any meetings with the Cambodians involved in Electrical Power and arrange for any travel his Evaluation Team needed.

By the time, I called Cliff, Ting Tang had called him and he and his wife were coming Friday night dinner at Berclair. I gave Cliff an update on the developments of the Electrical Power Project and the need for him to fly to Cambodia with Jerry Gillmore and his Electrical Power Evaluation Team.

When Jerry called back to confirm their travel plans I called Reverend Cong Chin and passed on the information. He informed me of his conversation with Alex Baldwin and their plans to bring in the Land mine Training Team in two weeks. He would be flying to Cambodia from India on Wednesday to coordinate the Land Mine Training Team's arrival and work with Chia Simm to select the Cambodian students who would receive this training.

At 10 am, Vong Savang arrived at Berclair and he presented a letter signed by the President of Laos, inviting me to visit his country. Vong Savang explained the Laotians were not sure I would be willing to do business with a Communist Country and they would understand if I chose not to become involved. He had been sent to convince me the Laotian Government was trying to open its doors to western businesses in the attempt to break out of its isolation and join the world community.

The leaders of Laos realized they would remain a poor country as long as they remained one of the last Communist Countries in the world and if they continued to resist the Chinese efforts to provide economic assistance. They knew any help the Chinese offered would undermine their independence and with the fall of the Soviet Union, only the west could help them.

Efforts were being made by the Laotian Government with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to restructure the country's Foreign Investment Code to encourage private enterprise. However, the progress to adopting these changes had stalled for a lack of understanding. The leaders of Laos did not understand what effect these recommended Codes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund would have on the country. They needed someone who could explain the benefits and the liabilities of what would happen if they agreed to adopt these new Codes.

When the leaders of Laos heard about my involvement in Cambodia as being the first American Businessman to come there, they had to take the chance to see if I would be interested in doing business in Laos. Vong explained.

I had the feeling the Laotian Leaders were mixing the concept of my business in Cambodia with the knowledge of what the World Bank wanted to see in the Laotian Government's laws to protect foreign investments in their country. This raised two questions. How did they know about my business in Cambodia and why did they think I could help them understand what the World Bank wanted them to do?

"What makes you think I can help the Laotian Government understand what the World Bank wants?" I had to ask.

"They just do. They are willing to pay all your expenses if you just come and talk with them about developing business ventures you might see in Laos."

Vong's answer surprised me until I realized what was missing from the end of his statement were the words, "Just like you did in Cambodia." Someone at that meeting with Chia Simm must have told them about my recommendations to resolving a number of problems we had discussed in Cambodia. Anyone hearing my comments third hand would think I was an economic genius who knew everything about turning the country's problems into international business opportunities.

Although since I returned from Cambodia I had studied the World Bank's criteria for making investments in developing countries, I was not an expert. I did have a basic understanding of the laws a country needed to have before the World Bank would encourage and support private investments. However, I did not know anything about the International Monetary Fund or their requirements. I felt if I did not clear up this misconception about my International Banking expertise, I would be misleading them and taking their money under false pretences.

"I believe you and the leaders of Laos are giving me far too much credit. I am not an expert in the World Bank's requirements. However, I am willing to find an expert who could present this information to the leaders of Laos. Perhaps I could talk with the World Bank and explain the concerns of the Laotian Government." I suggested to him and he was shaking his head.

"Don't you see what you just did? You just gave two solutions to their problems. If you just told them that, they would want you to do it." Vong pleaded.

"But you now know what I would recommend to them. Why can't you find someone else who can do that?" I asked.

"I have no idea where to look and neither does the Laotian Government." Vong stated very sincerely.

Since it looked like I could not dissuade him and I did not want to think about what might happen to him if he failed to convince me to go with him, I asked him to tell me about their Hydro Electrical Power capabilities.

Vong pulled out a map of all the Laotian rivers that ran into the Mekong River. I could not help but look north to the furthest tip of Laos and the Nanla River on the border with China where I had shot that Asian Drug Lord at 1487 yards in his fortress back in 1971. I wrote about making this shot in my book _Soft Touch_.

Vong was pointing to several Rivers in southern Laos that could be damned up within their steep gorges that could produce all the electrical power Cambodia would need for the next ten years. He produced Laotian Engineering Plans for damming up each river and the cost estimates to complete each Project. There were detailed plans for each construction phase, lists of materials and cost estimates to complete that phase. I assumed the English translations were added on the plans for my benefit.

I started to add up the tons of concrete and steel reinforcing rods and I asked Vong where Laos would be getting the concrete and steel but he did not know. As far as I knew, Laos did not make concrete or steel and that meant Laos would need to import concrete and steel and then have it delivered to the construction site. Based upon my knowledge of the cost of concrete and steel even at US prices the cost estimates listed for each construction phase was too low and it could not have included the cost of transporting these materials to the construction site.

Laos as a land locked country would have to bring in concrete and steel and the closest seaport was on the South China Sea in Vietnam. I had been in that area when it was South Vietnam as the Sniper Team leader and I had targeted B 52 Air Strikes on the Ho Chi Minh trail in that part of Laos as part of my duties in the FDCCC of First Field Force in Na Trang, during the Vietnam War. Even if Laos could obtain an agreement with Vietnam to bring in the concrete and steel through their seaports the transportation costs over the mountains in southern Laos would be astronomical.

Leaving those issues aside, I went through the set of Engineering Plans again, looking for the Turbines necessary to produce the Hydro Electrical Power and I could not find them. Rather than embarrass Vong by asking him about this lack of Turbines I asked him if there were any other Engineering Plans for these dams. He claimed these were all the plans he had been given for each dam.

_I was faced with the thought that Laos had produced these Engineering Drawings on dams they were proposing to build but they had left out the most important part in producing electrical power, the Turbines_ **.** _There was also the possibility the Laotian Government was testing me and my knowledge to help them by leaving out the key element of the turbines to make electricity and the true cost to build any of these Hydroelectric dams as these elements and factors were too obvious to be overlooked by the Laotian Engineers as an accident_ _._

Laos was asking me to help them build a hydroelectric power plant to sell electricity to Cambodia and the only thing I could see was the impossible task they were hoping would make their country rich. I knew I could not go to Laos and tell them what I already knew, before I left the United States.

"Vong I need to tell you something you may not know. You need to tell your President these Engineering Plans are not complete. There are no plans for the electrical turbines necessary to produce electrical power. I am also concerned about where Laos plans to get all the concrete and steel reinforcing rods to build these dams. Perhaps you need to call him and see what additional information he has." I stated as I looked at my watch and calculated the time it would be in Laos to make such a phone call.

"Let me suggest you stay here at Berclair tonight and you could make your phone call later this evening. In the mean time we can make up a list of questions you can ask the President that will help me understand how I can help Laos." I told him and I could see Vong was not sure what he should do. I could see he was a man under great pressure, as he had not expected the way this meeting had turned out.

I felt sorry for him, as it was obvious Vong was not an Engineer and he had not been prepared to respond to the questions I had raised. I was sure he believed he had failed in his mission to convince me to come to Laos. It was not his fault his Country's level of preparation to build a Hydroelectric Power Plant capable of providing Cambodia with all the electrical power it would need for the next ten years was not complete. I remembered what happen the last time I pointed out the lack of capabilities of an Asian country's representative, he got his head blown off and I could not let that happen again. The first thing I had to do was restore Vong's confidence by telling him I was impressed with the idea of building these Hydroelectric Power Plants in Laos.

"Once I have the answers to the questions I have raised I think I can help Laos build this Hydroelectric Power Plant. I also see how Laos is in the position to provide very reasonable low cost electrical power to all of Southeast Asia and maybe even to parts of southern China. I never realized how many rivers in Laos are so well suited in natural steep gorges that could be dammed up without a significant loss of usable land for agriculture. When the United States dammed up the rivers in the State of Tennessee to make electrical power, millions of acres of farmland were lost when the water filled up the reservoir behind the dam.

Looking at these river gorges in Laos they are like a bathtub with steep sides. I can see where these dams could be a thousand feet or 300 meters high and the Reservoir is still contained in the river's original natural valley. Think of how much water pressure is at the Intake at the bottom of these dams and how much electric power could be generated by the force of that water through the turbines. You could not ask for a better location in the world to build Hydroelectric Power Plants." I told Vong and I could see the worried look on his face start to disappear.

The timing of my conclusion could not have been better as Carol had just arrived from the Office and it was time to feed the horses. Carol was delighted to meet Vong who had made a special trip to see me. I told Carol we had an interesting discussion on the Laotian Hydroelectric Power Program and Vong would be spending the night with us as we planned to call Laos later this evening to get more details and information I had requested. Carol had already planned a dinner for Vong and she was delighted Vong would be our houseguest.

Carol invited Vong to see our horses while we fed them and she explained how feeding them every night was our way of enjoying them together. Vong was impressed by our horse barn, how friendly our horses were and how the foals came right up to him to be petted. If he was impressed by our horses, he was even more impressed with the Barn's Office, which was more like a Trophy Room filled with Horse Show Ribbons, Trophies, and Pictures of the horses we had raised who had won major horse show events across the country.

When we finished feeding the horses Carol went back to the house to make dinner while Vong and I took a tour of Berclair Plantation. I told him about the events that took place at Berclair Plantation during the American Civil War and how this Plantation had once belonged to President George Washington and his brother Charles Washington.

When I was expecting an important visitor, I would haul out my Civil War Cannons and place them on the knoll where the half-mile long driveway split in front of the Carriage House. We had won the NSSA National Skirmish Cannon Competition that year with the 3 Inch Hooper Cannon and we had never lost the American Artillery Association's National Matches held in New York since I bought this gun.

I demonstrated to Vong, how the Civil War soldiers loaded and fire these Cannons in battle. I had displayed the winning 200-yard target from the last American Artillery Association's Nationals with the five shot group that measure 4.3 inches to show Vong how accurate this Civil War Hooper Cannon could shoot. Even the most accurate modern rifles could not shoot a five interlocking shot group in less than a diameter and a half of the size of the bullet at that range.

We ended up in the Carriage House I had built were the original Carriage house had been and it was now my workshop, where I was building the Reproduction Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Civil War Maynard Carbines. Vong was surprised to see all the shooting metals I had won which covered the entire 40-foot wall of the Carriage House from the chair rail to the ceiling. The workshop was filled with gun-making equipment and the fact I knew how to operate them amazed him. I took him through the steps necessary to make a Maynard Carbine and l let him handle a finish Maynard Carbine I had made. I showed him a number of targets I had shot when I test fired each Maynard Carbine before I shipped it out to my customers.

I explained how I had made reproduction Civil War and American Revolutionary war guns, uniforms and equipment from a number of overseas companies and this was the bases of my International business experience. I did not realize how long we had talked until Carol called over the intercom to tell us dinner was ready.

Carol had made several dishes that Lynn Su had taught her how to make and Vong was delighted Carol had taken the trouble to make them for him. As we ate dinner, we learned how Vong had come to the United States through the Refugee Camps in Thailand after the fall of South Vietnam and he had gone back to Laos a number of times on business. However, Vong never mentioned the type of business he was in or the name of his company.

I knew from Alex, Vong was more involved with the Laotian Government than Vong was willing to admit. Vong was a Colonel in the Laotian Army and he was more than likely their Agent who was able to travel freely in the United States and then go back to Laos to report his activities. We had both concluded Vong was someone important enough to be trusted with this mission to convince me to come to Laos. Alex had promised to send me their complete copy of Vong's file before he arrived in Fredericksburg, but it had not arrived yet.

After coffee and cherry pie, we discussed how he should approach the President of Laos to get the answers I needed. I suggested he tell the President I was interested in coming to Laos and if I had the information, I was requesting I would be better prepared to discuss how I could help Laos build these Hydroelectric Projects. I turned over my Office to Vong so he could make his call in private and I told him I had to check on the horses.

I went to the Barn Office and I called Alex on my cell phone. We discuss what happened and what Laos was trying to do. Alex apologized for not sending Vong's file and he suggested I call him when I was alone in my office and he would FAX it to me. Alex said the FAX would also include the names and telephone numbers of "friends" in Laos just in case I needed them. He wished me luck and a safe trip.

When I saw the telephone line light on my Office desk's phone go out, I knew it was time to go in and hear what Vong had to say. Vong looked excited when I walked in and he told me the Laotian President was pleased with the progress we had made. Vong told me the Laotian Engineers would respond to my questions with a Fax to him at Berclair.

I offered Vong a drink and I knew if he was like most Southeast Asians who had been under French Rule, Cognac would be his drink of choice and I took out two brandy sniffers and poured in a good shot.

"To our success," I said as I raised my glass to his and he smiled. We talked and drank more Cognac until it was time to bring in the Broodmares and their foals from the lower pasture. Vong went with me. He was amazed at how easy it was to call the horses in and how the horses just waited at their stall doors until I open the stall doors to let them in for the night.

The next morning we found the FAX sent from Laos and Vong translated it. I was right about Laos not being able to produce the concrete and steel reinforcing rods as Laos was claiming these would be coming from China. The Laotian Government was negotiating with a French Company to build the Turbines but they had not finalized the deal.

_Although I could be wrong, this told me I had caught Laos by surprise with my questions and their response was their attempt to cover up just how unprepared they were to proceed with any construction on any dam. However to be sure of my assumption I would need to check with Alex on China's capabilities to produce Concrete and Steel. Either way if this had been a test of my knowledge and business capabilities, I had to assume I had passed with_ _flying-colors. I realized if I set Vong up with an offer to help Laos, how he responded would tell me if my conclusions were correct._

I offered to find Laos an alternative source for the Concrete and Steel Reinforcing Rods and I even suggested I could contact Westinghouse for a competitive bid on the Turbines. Vong's response when he asked if I could make these contacts before we went to Laos, told me I was right about the Laotian Government's true capabilities to build these Hydroelectric Power Plants.

Since I did not know how long I would be in India and when I could meet him in Bangkok I asked Vong to call my Office as I would be giving them my schedule when I knew it. When Vong left Berclair Plantation, he was a happy man. I was sure he was impressed with everything I had shown him and he would pass that on to his superiors in Laos.

Alex waited until Vong left Berclair before he brought the CIA's file on Colonel Vong Savang. He told me the file was too sensitive to let it out of his hands when he gave me the file to read. When I finished reading it the only sensitive thing I found about it was the CIA had it and I thanked him anyway.

I told Alex I needed China's capabilities to provide Concrete and Steel Reinforcing Rods to Laos. I also told Alex I needed a favor, as I did not have time to come up with prices on Concrete, Steel Reinforcing Rods and Hydroelectric Turbines before I left for India. Alex jokingly agreed after he asked if I were hiring him as a consultant. I think I surprised him when I seriously told him, he would not be working for the government forever.

# 15. SEIZING OPPORTUNITIES

I flew east to Frankfort Germany then to Bombay and then on to New Deli India where I met Reverend Cong Chin who had flown west to Hong Kong and had arrived in New Deli a day before me. I spent most of my flying time reading the books I had brought with me on India and the Hindu Religion to prepare for my meeting with Swami G.

Reverend Cong Chin introduced me to Shriekon Jane the Managing Director of Chanar Industries as Swami G's personal representative. Shriekon took my Passport and Airline Baggage Ticket. I was quickly processed through India's Customs while someone else claimed my bag. We passed through a VIP Exit and we were whisked away in a four-black car caravan to a six-story building called a Hindu Ashram.

The building had half-round carved figures on it from the ground floor to the roof. We entered the main double doors and passed through a metal detector before we entered a hallway. It had rosewood paneling with inlayed mother of pearl and ivory flowers with gemstones in the center of each flower. We took an elevator to the sixth floor, which opened into a huge room the size of the entire building.

Swami G sat on the corner of a huge bed that was twice the size of two king sized beds and in front of it was a coffee table with a wooden chair on both sides of it. There must have been 40 people standing quietly along the sides of the walls as if they were stone centuries with their hands folded in front of them.

On the way to the Ashram, Reverend Cong Chin informed me, we would be having lunch with Swami G and he reminded me not to attempt to touch him. Reverend Cong Chin presented me to Swami G and we made the traditional deep Indian bow from the waste with hands in a praying position, while Swami G responded with a slight head bow.

Swami G asked if I had a pleasant trip and I told him I was a world traveler who always enjoyed meeting interesting people. My response must have pleased him as he asked us to take a seat on the two wooden chairs and signaled for the food to be brought in.

Everything I remember reading about the Hindu High Priests they were supposed to be poor servants of god. Yet Swami G had so many jeweled rings of a different color on his fingers of both hands he could not bend his fingers to close his hands. The most notable ring on his left hand was on his left index finger as it was a champagne diamond the size of a half dollar and on his right hand's ring finger held a pigeon blood star ruby that covered his lower three fingers. Since we had been invited for lunch, I wondered how Swami G was going to eat while wearing all those rings.

The answer came in the form of an odd shaped golden spoon. I watched as Swami G hooked the curved end over the back of his hand with the handle of the spoon across the palm of his hand and the raised bent spoon came over his thumb. I watched as he moved his whole hand with the spoon sticking out over his thumb into the food and then up to his mouth.

There had to be over 20 dishes of different types of food all of which were carefully spiced and cooked vegetables without a single item coming from or made from an animal, as this was truly an all-vegetarian food according to strict Hindu dietary law.

I had learned, as an American one of the easiest ways in business to gain the confidence and respect of a man you hope to do business with, was to eat his country's food and give your honest opinion of how well you liked it.

No one likes the taste of every type of food or how it was prepared and if you claimed you did it would mean you were not being truthful. I had learned to love "hot and spicy" Mexican food when I was stationed in the Army at Fort Bliss Texas and I would go across the border into Mexico. I made a conscious effort to sample every dish and those I liked I would ask how the food was prepared.

While we were eating Swami G asked questions about the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program and Reverend Cong Chin let me answer all of Swami G's questions. I outline how each step in the Program helped the Cambodian Government meet it obligation to its veterans.

I also pointed out this Program supported Cambodia's objectives of encouraging the people who had come into the cities reclaim the land and produce the food necessary to feed the people of the country while the country rebuilt itself. All this information fed into the past claims that Southeast Asia had once been the rice bowl of Asia and the export of food would make Cambodia a rich country again.

I explained the progress Reverend Cong Chin and I made with the Asian Development Bank and how we were planning to bring in a new strain of rice developed in the Philippians that could produce 16 times the amount of rice currently grown in Cambodia. I went on to explain how I believe the production of food would be the greatest challenge in the world and those countries that were able to produce food for export would emerge as more important to the world than those countries that had gold and oil.

After I answered Swami G's last question, he rolled his eyes up into his head and only the whites of his eyes could be seen as if Swami G had gone into a Religious Trans. Then he suddenly stood up and asked, "Would 150 million dollars be enough to help with this program?"

_I knew Swami G was a big man but until he stood up, I was not sure just how big he was. My friend Tinny Frerichs who shot on the Civil War Cannon team was 6 foot 8 and close to 300 pounds. However, Tinny would look like a small man compared to Swami G_ _._

"Yes I think that amount of money could make this Program a success?" I managed to say as calmly as I could.

"Good than it is settled, you will receive 150 million dollars from the Indian Government." Swami G stated.

"No sir. But Shriekon Jane the Managing Director of Chanar and I will account for the money and insure it is spent wisely to make this Program a success." I quickly responded.

I did not know where this response came from in my mind, yet it was logical and practical. The Indian Government did not know me and I could see their reluctance in handing over 150 million dollars to me even if Swami G had made this commitment. With Shriekon Jane as a highly important Manager of Chanar involved with the Indian Government, it would know the money would be managed and accounted for and used for the intended purpose. I suddenly remembered what Reverend Cong Chin had told me why the Indian Government was being so generous. Cambodia had become a closed country under the Khmer Rouse for 20 years and now I represented someone who was closely associated with the leaders of Cambodia who could open the doors of international business for India.

"Yes that is better." Swami G said as he smiled toward Shriekon who bowed slightly as if he were acknowledging and accepting the duty and responsibility of his newly assigned position.

When Swami G sat down, the dishes of food were cleared from the coffee table and plates of small round cookies rolled in silver and gold were set out. I remembered reading about these cookies and I had thought this was a waste of gold and silver and now I was about to eat them. Again, I tried each type of cookie and Swami G seemed pleased when I did not hesitate to eat them.

Swami G asked if he could help me with anything else. I told him I wanted to talk with someone in India about rebuilding rice patties, dams, irrigation ditches and waterways in Cambodia. I pointed out the Khmer Rouge had destroyed most of them during the time they had controlled Cambodia. The loss of these physical structures to produce rice had been compounded by the Khmer Rouge killing of millions of Cambodians who possessed the knowledge of how to be good rice farmers. I told Swami G I had heard the Indian farmers knew how to make water run up hill and I needed someone who could teach the Cambodian people how to become good rice-farmers again as part of the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program to rebuild the economic agricultural base of the country.

Swami G did not hesitate a moment when he asked if 10 o'clock tomorrow morning would be convenient. I looked at Reverend Cong Chin who thanked Swami G and told him that would be fine.

Shriekon Jane rode with us on the elevator down from the sixth Floor and he asked, "Who are you people? This is the first time I know of that Swami G has had a westerner have lunch with him and you walk away with a 150 million dollars and an appointment with the Indian Minister of Agriculture."

"I hope I did not put you on the spot when I suggested that you and I account for this money." I told Shriekon. "Do you believe in fate or destiny?" I asked him knowing how this belief was part of the Hindu Religion.

"Sometimes we are in the right place at the right time and if we have been properly prepared by all our previous experiences some of the most difficult things just happen if we have the courage to except them." I found myself saying, as I had no other explanation for what was taking place.

I have always believed when I studied history and military campaigns, there was a single man who acted at a critical point to change the course of history and the way things were going I was starting to feel I was that man. This had been a heady moment where my ego could have clouded good judgment until I reminded myself that "pride" had been the downfall of Lucifer and his angels.

I also had to accept I did not know why I had been place in this position, only that I was and I had to wait and see what the Good Lord's plans were for all the business opportunities that were being given to me now.

Based upon my past business experiences opportunities that were meant to happen, moved along with only temporary setbacks while those businesses that would not succeed were filled with obstacles you could not overcome no matter how hard you tried. My success in business had been to be patience enough to wait until I could recognize the difference between a setback and an obstacle. However what was scaring me now, was things were falling into place too easily and I did not see any setbacks that would tell me to slow down or stop to look for any obstacles that would prevent my success.

The next morning Shriekon Jane picked up Reverend Cong Chin and me at our Hotel and drove us in the four-black car caravan to the Indian Minister of Agriculture's Office. When we walked into the Minister's Office, I had the feeling he was hoping he could help us as he had this worried look on his face as if Swami G had put the fear of god in him.

I outlined the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program as it had developed so far. I tried to put the Minister of Agriculture at ease when I told him we were looking for advice on how to build the rice patties, dams and waterways into a successful agricultural venture that would encourage the Cambodian Veterans' to return to farming their own land and help rebuild their country.

Reverend Cong Chin explained how the Khmer Rouge had not only destroyed Cambodia's agriculture production by dismantling the rice patties, irrigation ditches and dams they had also killed so many of the experienced farmers that many of the successful rice farming skills were lost.

I told the Minister of Agriculture why this Program would be successful. "Under normal circumstances the rebuilding of the rice patties, irrigation ditches and dams would be an easy task if the Cambodian Government had the money to buy earth moving equipment but it does not even have enough money to rent this equipment. What Cambodia dose have is hard working people who are willing to rebuild these rice patties, irrigation ditches and dams with their hands. Men cannot work on empty stomachs and we will pay them just enough money to feed themselves and their families while they work for the opportunity to own enough land to grow their own rice in the years to come.

What we are first looking to get from India is the Engineering skills to survey and evaluate the land and design the most ideal rice patties. We need the Engineers to layout the best location for the irrigation ditches and where the dams should be built to provide enough water to each farmer's land. Once this Engineering phase is complete, the Cambodian Veterans will provide the hand labor under the supervision of the Engineers to complete each Section of the Project. When a Section is finished each section of the project will have enough land in it to give each Veteran who worked on it with 2.5 hectors of land. These 2.5-hector plots will be numbered and they will be assigned to each Veteran worker when they drew a number out of a hat.

This will not be free land, as the Veteran cannot sell it, even though they worked for it. It will become their land to sell only if they work the land for 20 years and pay the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program 10% of their crops or a minimum annual mortgage payment. These annual payments will be used to pay off the Asian Development Bank Loan and help to finance the additional development of Sections beyond the amount of money we have received from the Indian Government and the Asian Development Bank. The most important thing we need from India to make this work is the knowledge and experience to teach the Cambodians how to be good farmers." I concluded.

"Let me make sure I understand this correctly." The Minister stated. "What you are asking for is the knowledge of how to build these rice patties and how to farm them once they are built."

Shriekon confirmed this understanding and why Swami G had thought the Minister of Agriculture, might be in the best position to help. Shriekon went on to explain the Indian Government would be providing 150 million dollars in financial assistance for this project.

"Part of that money could be used to pay for the Engineers and Agricultural experts to assist the Cambodians to learn how to be rice farmers again." I told the Minister of Agriculture and I immediately suggested the Minister come up with a budget to cover his estimated costs.

This raised the question of how long this Program would take. The best estimate was five years with the first two years being the costliest as this would be setting up the program and making the adjustments to see what worked the best. The possibility of using the experience of the Veteran's Program as the pilot model for similar programs with other Cambodian groups was discussed. The idea of training the Cambodians to perform the Engineering and agricultural functions brought up the suggestion of bringing Cambodian students to India to learn these things.

The Minister thought this was a good idea and he suggested India could send its students to study under his people as part of a student exchange program. Reverend Cong Chin suggested we talk with the Cambodian Ambassador and offer this proposal to him to get this officially started. Shriekon told Reverend Cong Chin to call him and see if he was available.

Reverend Cong Chin called the Cambodian Ambassador on the phone and based on the Ambassador's favorable response, the Minister suggested if it was convenient, he would send his car to pick up the Ambassador and he could join us in the discussion here.

This seemed like another thing that was supposed to happen as the Student Exchange Program with established objectives and the details of this exchange program would be worked out in follow up meetings. I would learn later after this meeting, from Reverend Cong Chin that the Cambodian Ambassador had been in India for over six months and he had yet to be formally received and officially recognized by the Indian Government. Having been in India for less than 24 hours we had accomplished what we had come to India to do and established a firm bases to make the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program a success.

On the way back to the Hotel, Shriekon suggested I might like to visit his office at Chanar and go over the organization of India's part of the Cambodia Veterans Rehabilitation Program.

I had anticipated this meeting as India would be looking for something in return for this investment in Cambodia. Since I had brought Shriekon into managing and controlling this 150 million dollar investment with me I had picked the point of contact in India I had wanted to work with.

I now realized why my subconscious or Guarding Angel had put the words in my mouth. Shriekon would know how to deal with the Indian Government and as Swami G's man and by selecting him, it was my acknowledgement of my understanding of how things are done in India. I also had the feeling Shriekon wanted to learn more about me after seeing what had to seem like several miracles happen in a row as if I had planned, controlled and made them take place by my will. The idea of "will" could also mean the deference given to you in Oriental cultures.

It was as if your "destiny" requires everyone to acknowledge the significance of your Karma or the strength of the goodness in your heart. India's influence of "Karma" on the Asian culture is greater than most people in the United States realize unless you understand the belief in karma is the foundation of the country's two major religions of Buddhism and Hinduism. This lack of understanding by many people in the United States may have come about as part of India's choice to remain unaligned with either the West or Russia during the Cold War.

Back then during the Cold War if you were not with us, you were against us. The United States sought to isolate India's cultural influence and ignore India's national efforts to remain an independent nation by claiming India was more socialist or communist than a democratically elected government.

Because of our self-imposed isolation, we continued to think of India as it was under British Rule where teaming millions of Indians lived on the edge of starvation without the ability to improve themselves beyond the subsistence level. The way we saw Mohandas Gandhi in the News Stories from India reinforced this image even though India had won their independence from Great Britain since then and India had developed their own Nuclear Weapons capabilities.

My own business experience in Harpers Ferry Arms Company with India had been by FAX which did little to change my opinion of India until after I had finish reading the book the Indian Ambassador in Washington had given me. India was moving away from socialism and privatizing its National Industries to become a free enterprise economy.

Since this privatization started in 1991, there had been a significant growth in India's economy and a surge in the number of rising upper middle class individuals who demanded the comforts and luxuries their newfound wealth could buy. This rising demand for consumer goods had simulated a secondary growth in entrepreneur businesses, which had expanded their production capabilities into exporting them into the international markets. All this privatization and growth of new businesses opened the door for the need of investment capital, the selling of Company Stock and the establishment of India's National Stock Exchange since 1992.

_What could not be found in the Indian market place opened the door to a growing number of Import Businesses with_ _goods from Europe, Japan and Taiwan. The fact India was not importing goods from the United States reflected our Government's 40 year old policy of treating India as an International Trader to democracy and to the rest of the free world._

Reverend Cong Chin told me about Chanar and Shriekon's position as the Managing Director of Chanar on the way to Swami G's Ashram. A Managing Director in an Indian Company was a cross between the President of a company and the Chief Executive Officer with more power then both of those positions combined. I welcomed the opportunity to get to know Shriekon better as the success of India's part in the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program would now be in his hands too.

"I would be delighted to see your Company, Shriekon. This trip to India has opened my eyes to what India has become. Although I had done some business with India years ago, I must admit my opinion of India has not kept up with reality and this image of India has a lot to do with my Country's political attitudes toward India's unaligned position during the Cold War." I commented and Reverend Cong Chin wisely understood that this meeting would be about and he suggested I should go with Shriekon alone.

I was impressed with the size of Chanar, the number of people who worked there in many departments, sections and subsections that handled hundreds of products from India and around the world. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Chanar was the leading trading company in India with Russia and the Eastern European Block Countries. Now they were only the fifth largest Company in India. Here I was a piss ant from Fredericksburg Virginia dealing with the Managing Director of a company as large as IBM or General Motors and he was treating me as his equal.

It did not take very long for Shriekon to explain what India and Chanar hoped to gain by supporting the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program. Since the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975, India had lost all its contacts with the leaders of the country. They had tried to deal with Prince Sihanouk and his father after the Khmer Rouge had been push back to the western provinces of Cambodia and after the United Nations sponsored the Elections in 1993. However, they had found dealing with them was impossible even after giving them significant gifts.

Gifts my ass, these were out and out bribes. Although we in the United States outlawed such business practices, this was the way of doing business in this area of the world. Shriekon was not considering the moral issue of bribing government officials but the unacceptable fact Sihanouk took the bribe and then refused to grant the favor making Sihanouk a dishonorable man. Now I knew why India had offered the 150 million dollars to help me finance the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program. Swami G may have seen this Program as a worthwhile humanitarian effort but it also would be a vehicle to reach the Cambodian leaders of Chia Simm and Hon Sen through my relationship with them. The question in my mind was what did India want that was worth 150 million dollars?

I related my own experience with Prince Sihanouk and his demanding a million dollar bribe before he would even consider meeting with me. Without disclosing where I had obtained the information, I told Shriekon about Sihanouk's ties to China and China's interests in keeping everyone else out of Cambodia. Shriekon smiled and admitted he also had the same information, which told me he was well connected in the Indian Government and its Intelligence Community.

Shriekon's position with the Indian Government was understandable as Chanar was the major Indian trading company with the Soviet Union for years and the way things had been in India, Chanar may have been the official Indian Government's business representative.

I realized Shriekon was giving me more credit in the United States Government as I would not have this information on China if I did not. I questioned myself about correcting Shriekon's understanding, as I did not have that level of support from my Government. However to tell him about the problems with the State Department and the back handed support of the President through Alex Baldwin of the CIA would not be wise as I would be betraying a trust.

If I could not keep this limited relationship, a secret then if the political climate changed I would have cut myself off from any financial support I might be able to receive from the US Government and the World Bank. This was the first time I was letting a false impression continue to exist in a business relationship. However, I did not know how to correct it and I could only hope it would not become an issue with Shriekon.

Shriekon wanted to know how I knew Prime Minister Hon Sen and the President of the Cambodian Parliament Chia Simm. I told him about the Publicity Photos with Chia Simm that turned into a lengthy discussion on the problems facing Cambodia in its effort to rebuild the Country.

Out of this meeting came the idea of the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program and the Privatization of Cambodia's Electrical Power system. I told Shriekon I was immediately taken to see Prime Minister Hon Sen to present these ideas to him and how I was asked to implement them. I did not tell Shriekon about Hon Sen being my former shooting student who had been involved in that special long-range marksmanship training program held for Southeast Asian Countries during the Vietnam War.

Shriekon was very interested in knowing more about this Electrical Power Program as India was also trying to provide electrical power to everyone in India. I explained my relationship with the company who was Privatizing Pakistan's Electrical Power System and I saw Shriekon bristle when he heard this.

**I remembered reading how the countries of India and Pakistan were formed as separate countries after they left Great Britain and the bitter religious feelings that caused millions of people to migrate to and from both countries. It was obvious these bitter feelings still existed and the national rivalry was just as strong as the religious fervor that had created these two countries in the first place. If India were interested in providing electrical power to all of its people before hearing about Pakistan's Privatization this new information would make India elevate this goal to a national priority** _._

Shriekon wanted to know just how far this Pakistan Privatization of its electrical power had progressed. I told him about the Attorney Group I had used in some of my businesses had written the International Agreements and how the World Bank had already approved the loans to make it happen.

I could see how this information troubled Shriekon. However, I also saw this as an opportunity to bring the idea of Privatizing of India's Electrical Power system and I could approach Jerry Gilmore about this when I saw him in Cambodia if I was given the authority from the Indian Government to do it. Bringing Jerry's company to India would be a way to repay the favor the Indian Government gave me to support the Cambodian Veterans Program.

I had to ask Shriekon if the Indian Government would be interested in Privatizing its own Electrical Power System. I went on to explain how this Privatization would be in line with the Indian Government's efforts to move its industry into a free enterprise economy just like the Electrical Power Companies in the United States were Public Utilities owned by its private investors and individual stockholders.

_I had the feeling Shriekon was looking at me and wondering where I had come up with this immediate solution to the problem India was facing to keep up with the developments in Pakistan and it just might work_ **.**

Shriekon surprised me when he picked up the phone and called someone. I did not understand the language he was speaking and I only guessed it was someone in the Indian Government as he used the English words "Privatization, Electrical Power and Pakistan" several times during the conversation. Then he asked me if I was willing to discuss the Privatization of Electrical Power with a friend of his who wanted to know more about it. When I agreed, Shriekon invited the person he was talking with to come to his office at Chanar.

While we were waiting we discussed how we would handle the $150 million dollars the Indian Government was giving to the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program. I suggested since Shriekon knew the Indian Government and the procedures it required, he should manage these funds based on our budgeted finance needs of the Program. Shriekon was willing to do this as a logical solution to managing these funds.

We then talked about how the United States had developed its Public Utility Electrical Power Companies. I told him about how the Tennessee Valley Authority had been formed and the Boulder Dam had become Public Utilities. I also told him about the other electrical power companies in a number of States that were regulated by their State Government Commissions to insure the Power Companies a profit and protect the consumers from being charged unreasonable rates for electrical power. I told him about the electrical meters every customer had to determine the individual's electrical usage and l pointed out the State Governments taxed the use of Electrical Power as a means of providing State revenues just like the Indian Government could do.

Now that I understood how Shriekon was viewing my position with the leaders of Cambodia, I still did not know what the Indian Government hoped to gain for this generous $150 million dollar gift to Cambodia. I needed to find out before I got myself in too deep into this relationship and the best way to find out was to ask him.

"Shriekon if you expect me to help you and the Indian Government with Prime Minister Hon Sen and President Chia Simm it might be helpful to know what the Indian Government wants to accomplish in Cambodia." I asked him and I knew he was smart enough to read between the lines of what I was really asking him.

"Mark this is to remain between you and me. India is aware that Cambodia has gas and oil. We do not know if the current government knows about this, as these test wells were dug by several major Oil Companies in 1966 and 1967. With the Vietnam War going on and without a stable government in the area, these gas and oil wells where capped off in the hope of developing these gas and oil fields later. Unfortunately, things did not go well and the Khmer Rouge took over the country and as you know the Khmer Rouge is impossible to deal with." Shriekon said as he got up, went to his office filing cabinet and brought back several files.

"Here is an article in the United States _Time Magazine_ , written in 1967 about these oil and gas test wells. Perhaps you have seen these articles before. As you can see, there are estimates of the amounts of gas and oil reserves believed to exist in these deposits. Cambodia is in the center of this oil deposit and it stretches from eastern Thailand through Cambodia and Vietnam and way out into the South China Sea. We in India believe the United States was supporting South Vietnam's independence and they were fighting this war to secure these oil fields for American Oil Companies.

It is now 20 years since that war was lost but those gas and oil deposits are still there and no one has developed them. The reason no one has developed them has a lot to do with your countries failure to recognize Vietnam because of the MIA and Prisoner of War issues. India sees this as an opportunity to work with Cambodia and establish the first claim to develop this gas and oil.

Chanar would like to use the Natural Gas to build a fertilizer plant in Cambodia, as India needs this fertilizer to grow food. We are importing millions of tons of fertilizer every year at a cost above the average World Market Prices. You were right when you told Swami G that food and the countries that could produce an abundance of food for export will become more important than those countries that have gold and oil.

India will have a billion people living here before the end of this century and since you know we value all life the Indian Government must plan how to feed these people." Shriekon concluded just before he was told by his Secretary, he had visitors from the Indian Government.

The three men who arrived at Chanar were introduced to me as the Indian Ministers from Finance, Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, and Commerce and Industry. Shriekon told them about my meeting with Swami G, yesterday where Swami G had made an offer of $150 million dollars on behalf of the Indian Government to help finance the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program. Shriekon told them about our meeting today with India's Minister of Agriculture to obtain their support to rebuild Cambodia's rice producing capabilities before coming to Chanar to discuss implementing the program.

I explained while discussing this Program I told Shriekon Jane about Privatizing Cambodia's Electrical Power System using a company who was Privatizing Pakistan's Electrical Power System. When I learned of India's interest in providing electrical power to everyone in the country, I suggested India might consider privatizing its own Electrical Power system.

Although the Ministers did not feel they needed any outside help, they were interested in finding someone who could provide the electrical power generators for their electrical power plants. I told them I was already looking for American Companies who could provide this type of equipment and if they wanted me to explore this for them, I could have those company representatives contact them directly.

Our meeting ended with a polite "thank you" and I was told they would consider my offer to help them find American Companies who made the Electrical Power Generators. When they left Chanar, Shriekon apologized for their lack of enthusiasm over my offer of assistance. He explained they may have been too proud to ask for help from anyone who came from the United States and I told Shriekon I understood why they might feel that way. The United States had treated India as a trader to the Western World during the Cold War and the Indian Government would not easily forget the hostility from the United States towards India.

Shriekon asked as a personal favor to him, if I could get a copy of the Electrical Privatizing Plan for Pakistan and if I would follow up on contacting the American Companies who manufactured the Electrical Power Generators. When I said I felt obligated to help improve relations between the United States and India, he smiled and suggested we have a late lunch as we did not have a chance to eat before India's Ministers arrived.

We went to one of the best restaurants in New Deli but instead of ordering western food, I asked Shriekon to order Indian food for me. Shriekon told the Restaurant owner to bring small portions of a variety of Indian dishes so I could have a sample of his best menu items. While waiting for our dinner I found out Shriekon loved single malt Scotch Whiskey. We had several glasses over Ice as we talked about our families, where we grew up and where we went to school.

I truly enjoyed sampling all the Indian dishes and we talked about my International business experience in Harpers Ferry Arms Company and James River Imports and Development Corporation. He asked if I had ever dealt in commodities such a sugar, wheat, corn, corn oil, soybeans and fertilizer, as his company was always looking to buy these at favorable prices.

When I told him I had not dealt in commodities, he proceeded to tell me how to get involved in this type of business and what to look out for when trying to find someone who handled commodities especially when dealing in Sugar. According to Shriekon, there were so many scam artists involved in the International Sugar Market that you had to know how to protect yourself.

Shriekon explained, how everyone will claim to have boatloads of sugar, when they are just trying to get a contract from the buyer so they could get in the middle of the deal. One of the best ways to know if someone really has sugar to sell was to ask for a delivery bond of at least 25 Thousand Dollars. The real sugar sellers will not object to putting up this delivery bond as they have the authority to sell the sugar.

Shriekon suggested if I was interested in getting into the commodities market he would pay me a 10% commission on every deal I had found. All I had to do was turnover a qualified seller and he would handle it from India. He would even establish a buyers Bond for me to offer the seller so he would be confident he would be turned over to a ready, willing and able buyer. He also told me if he did a repeat business with the seller, I would get a 5% commission on every deal they made. This seemed reasonable and I wanted to know what the normal prices were on these commodities. Shriekon said he would Fax the current international prices to me in the United States before 5 am every Monday.

I called Reverend Cong Chin in his room when I got back to the Hotel and we met in the lobby where I up dated him on what happened after I left with Shriekon. He was pleased to hear Shriekon agreed to manage India's contribution to the Cambodian Veterans Program.

Reverend Cong Chin planned to go to Cambodia to announce the Indian Government's support and to guide the country's Leaders through the process of the Cambodian Government approving the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program. Once it was approved he would help the Cambodian Government apply for the loan from the Asian Development Bank.

This was the first opportunity we had to talk about the Landmine Disposal Unit coming from the United States. They would be arriving in Cambodia next week and Reverend Cong Chin had been working through Prime Minister Hon Sen's Office to set up the first Cambodian training class selected from Hon Sen's Army.

I would learn the outward appearance of cooperation in Cambodia masked the underlining mistrust between the leaders of the country, as Prince Sihanouk, Chia Simm and Hon Sinn still maintain their individual Armies. Chia Simm's Army was in the northwestern Provinces of Cambodia holding the Khmer Rouge in check against the border of Thailand. Hon Sinn's Army held the center of the country from Sihanoukville through the Capital of Phonon Penn to the southern borders of Laos. Prince Sihanouk feared Hon Sen's past association with the Communists in Vietnam and he had positioned his Army east of the Mekong River and along the eastern border with Vietnam.

I could now understand why these Landmine Disposal experts would not train the men in Prince Sihanouk's Army. Sihanouk would learn about the United States involvement in Cambodia and he would have major objections that could bring in the Chinese to support him.

It was not my intentions to create a political football or create a military advantage between the two Cambodian Prime Ministers, yet I had and it was too late. Until I learned about these three separate Armies, I had believed when I turned over this training program to Reverend Cong Chin all the Cambodian Veterans from all the armies would have been trained in the detection and removal of these Landmines and not the soldiers on active duty. I had the feeling Hon Sen was seeing this Landmine Training as an opportunity to improve his own Army's capabilities. If the men in his Army were the only people trained to remove these Landmines, he would be in the position to justify moving his men across the imaginary boundaries between his Army and Prince Sihanouk his political rival's Army.

On the other hand, Hon Sen's actions may have been the most practical given the short notice he had about the US Army's Training Unit coming to Cambodia and the understanding he needed to keep the US Government's involvement a secret, from Prince Sihanouk. Only time would tell if Reverend Cong Chin had done the right thing in working only through Hon Sen and if Hon Sen was not taking advantage of the situation.

I called Carol and after she told me everything was fine at Berclair, I told her everything that happened here in India. I told her I would be leaving New Deli for Bangkok tomorrow. I asked her to Fax my scheduled arrival to Vong Savang.

Carol told me I had a Fax from Alex with a list of companies on it. I told her I was expecting it. I gave her my Hotel's Fax and room number and I asked her to send it to me. The Fax was delivered to my room within the hour and since it was in the middle of the day In the United States, I made several phone calls to get some preliminary data and costs of Electrical Turbines used in Hydro electrical power production.

During my conversations with various company representatives, I learned as a rule of thumb the cost to build an electrical power plant was between one to 1.7 million dollars per Megawatt of production capability. The initial cost to build a Hydroelectric Plant was nearly twice as much as a Carbon Fuel Plant. However, the cost savings to produce Hydro electrical power, at 7 cents per Kilowatt-hour was 30 % less than the cost of fossil fuel plants. Once each type of power plant was paid for the fossil fuel cost would more than likely continue to go up.

I was surprised to learn Natural Gas and Nuclear power costs were about the same to produce a Kilowatt-hour of electrical power but they still cost 16% more than the cost of producing Hydro electrical power. However Natural Gas electrical power plants were the least costly to build, operate and maintain. When I heard this about Natural Gas, I remembered what Shriekon said about the Natural Gas his Company wanted to use in Cambodia to make fertilizer. If Cambodia had enough Natural Gas then maybe a Natural Gas Electrical Power Plant would be the answer to providing the country with electrical power as part of the Privatizing efforts.

Everyone was quite helpful in giving me a quick education on the production of electrical power but no one asked me what part of the world I was working in. Alex must have told them not to ask, as I was working on something important for the Government.

Using the information Vong had given me on the size of the possible Dams in Laos I asked each Company's representative to send me the size and number of turbines they would recommend for a dam close to a thousand feet high from the original riverbed. I should not have been surprised when they already had the answers. I asked for their Contract terms and conditions and how long it would take to make the turbines. I thanked them for their information and I told them I would call them back in a week to ten days, as I would have more details by then.

The next day Shriekon sent a Company Representative along with a car to take me to the Airport. He also sent a copy of the _Times Magazine_ Article, on the discovery of gas and oil in Cambodia with a note saying he thought I might need it.

I arrived in Bangkok Thailand late that evening and Vong was waiting for me. We stayed the night in one of the best hotels in Bangkok. Vong briefed me on our schedule to meet the President and the Chief Minister and discussed the protocols and customs in meeting these leaders of Laos while we ate a late night dinner. He then offered to take me to the Night Clubs or have a woman sent to my room. I thanked him for his generous offer and I politely declined in such a way not to offend him.

_In Asia, the offer of the pleasure of a woman was seen as a special gift in the normal course of business and you needed to be careful not to offend the party making this offer if you turned it down. I had learned it was better to show them I was not a typical sex crazed American and establish myself as a dedicated businessman who did not want to be distracted from doing my job. My best excuse was I had to contact my company and check on other projects I was involved in to make sure they were progressing as planned. Taking care of business was a logical excuse, as it was normal working hours back in the United States and it also established how important my position was in my Company_ **.**

# 16. EVALUATING THE REAL CAPABILITIES OF LAOS

The next morning at 10 am, we boarded a direct flight to Vientiane the capital of Laos. When we arrived at the airport, we were met by a Laotian Colonel. He walked us past the Laos Customs officials to a waiting official government limousine that took us to our Hotel. We were told that our appointment with the President would be in one hour and the Colonel would take us to the meeting.

I was presented to the President of Laos as if I were a foreign dignitary and as if I were an old friend. When the Prime Minster and the Head Laotian Hydroelectric Engineer joined us, our discussions went well as my briefings from the US Electrical Power Generating Companies Alex had set up, gave me enough of an understanding to intelligently discuss the value of the Hydroelectric Projects Laos offered.

I must have impressed them with my knowledge as I saw the President smile ever so slightly toward Vong. I would not have noticed this smile of approval, if I had not learn from experience how to read the expressions of Oriental people when I was in the Army and when I had conducted my other International businesses. Most people believe Orientals never show any emotions but once you learned what to look for even if it was as small as a slight closing of an eyelid you could read them like a book.

_I had the feeling when I looked at the Prime Minister and the Head Engineer they were concerned I might get into discussing technical problems such as the concrete and steel reinforcing rods and the fact they did not have them to build these dams_ _._

When I wisely did not bringing up any of the technical problems I found in the Engineering Plans that should be discussed with Laotian the Head Engineer and I could see the immediate relief in their faces.

The President thanked me for coming to Laos and he hope we could come to an understanding on the use of Laotian Electrical Power for my project in Cambodia. I thanked the President for inviting me and I hoped the availability of Laotian Electrical Power would benefit both countries. When Vong and I left the President, the Prime Minister and the Head Engineer the Colonel took us back to our hotel.

When Vong asked what I would like to do this evening I told him I would like to walk through the city and see what the people in Laos were like. He seemed pleased with this idea and he was an excellent tour guide. The people on the streets were friendly and the merchants were delighted when we stop to look at their goods. We sampled and ate food from the street venders and when they found out I was an American some of them would say a few words in English. I would always ask how a particular food was made if I liked it and what it was called in the Laotian language.

We ended up in a Laotian Night Club where I learned how to "Lao Dance" to the music of the 1960's. The dance steps were the same but the Laotian dancers would turn their open hands palms out, moving them back and forth in rhythm to the music.

The "Twist" was a very popular dance in Laos and I was able to demonstrate several different moves of the Twist I had learned years ago when the Twist was the rage in the United States. I was surprised to meet the Head Engineer and his wife there and we were invited to join their group after several tables were pushed together. As the beer flowed, many of the customers joined in singing along in English with the recording artists and some of these singers were quite good.

When the "last call" was announced, I insisted on buying a drink for everyone but the Nightclub owner refused to take my money saying it was his turn to buy. I really enjoyed the evening and I thanked Vong for showing me how friendly the Laotian people were. By this time, Vong respected my focus on business and there was no offer to provide me with a woman.

There was an unusual quietness in the city this large as we walked back to our hotel and discussed our plans for tomorrow. Although I did not feel threatened, my sixth sense told me I was being watched not only by someone from the government but also by the other people on the streets. I told myself I had to be a curiosity, as I had to be one of the few American's who was not a soldier to visit Laos since the end of the Vietnam War.

Since I enjoyed Laotian food, Vong suggested we have a typical Lao breakfast rather than eat western type food in the Hotel. He also wanted to take me to the open-air market and show me the type of tobacco grown in Laos before we were to meet with the Head Engineer of the Laotian Hydroelectric Department at 9 am. I told Vong I would like that. Vong wanted to know what I thought of our meeting with the President and the Chief Minister.

I was sure Vong was expected to report everything we did and what I said. I was not sure how to answer him and maintain my business objectivity. I had to treat everything that happened as part of the overall effort of the "seller" to influence my agreement to buy into the Laotian Government's electrical power proposal for Cambodia.

I had to remind myself Laos was a Communist Country and my belief such a government would want to be in control of everything could put me in the position to have a direct influence on how they would react to what I told Vong. If this was true what did I want the Laotian Government to believe and react to, so I would maintain my business advantage. I chose my words carefully but said them as if I were just commenting casually off the top of my head.

"I was impressed with the reception I received and how serious the Laotian Government was taking this proposal to provide electrical power to Cambodia as part of its national interest. I am looking forward to learning more about the capabilities of Laos to meet the needs of Cambodia after we meet with the Engineering Department tomorrow." I told Vong. I had given him a positive first impression and a reason why any further comment would be a premature judgment.

I was not sure how Vong would report this as I assumed Vong had bugged my Bangkok Hotel room and he had a copy of all the Faxes I sent and received. However would he know the Fax from Alex was a coded message telling me China was not capable of providing concrete or steel to Laos and Laos had just contacted the French Turbine Company MEDCAMIDI a week ago.

I could only hope the Laotian intelligence Agents were smart enough to crack Alex's code and they would tell the President I knew Laos did not have any concrete and steel reinforcing rods to build a Dam or Laos was not buying turbines from France. The only way to reestablish the credibility of the Laotian Government would be to admit they did not have the concrete, steel reinforcing rods or the turbines and ask for my help before I just left Laos believing they could not be trusted. In business, you cannot count on someone else acting as you wanted them to act and you had to act for yourself.

"Vong I must tell you I have reliable information that the report sent to me at Berclair by the Laotian Engineers is not true and maybe they are also misleading your President about the real capabilities of Laos to build any hydroelectric dams.

I am not here to create any problems for anyone. However if we are going to work together to see if Laos can provide electricity to Cambodia I need to understand the real capabilities of your country to provide electrical power and how soon it can be done." I told him and I could see the fear in his eyes until he understood everything I had said.

"You mean you are still willing to help Laos?" He asked hesitantly.

"I am here, am I not?" I responded leaving him in doubt as to when I knew the Laotian Engineer's Report was false.

"Thank you and good night." Vong said in almost disbelief. I had the feeling I had saved several days in exposing the false reports and I was now in the position to establish the real electrical power capabilities of Laos.

The next day after a breakfast of mint leaves with sticky rice and tea, Vong took me to the Laotian Farmers Market. Their booths and selling stalls were filled with fruits and vegetables along with a wide variety of handmade items. We found their tobacco displayed in small piles on raised tables separated by color, texture and cut.

I knew enough about tobacco sold in the ASCS Tobacco Auctions to recognize the better Laotian tobacco offered for sale. I would select a pinch of tobacco and load it in my pipe to smoke it. I followed this same process, until I had selected the right combination of tobaccos I found pleasing to smoke in my pipe. I ordered a half of a kilogram of the best combination of several tobaccos.

The tobacco merchant seeing what I had done filled his own pipe from the mixture I had selected to smoke and taste it. By this time, a number of other Laotian Tobacco merchants had come over to see what I as an American was doing. I offered them a pipe full of the tobacco blend I had made and Vong translated their comments about how good this smoke was.

The tobacco merchant I had bought this mixture from wanted to know what this tobacco blend was called and if he had my permission to mix it and sell it. I must admit this blend of tobacco did smoke well and I had established myself as a tobacco expert in Vong's eyes. I told Vong to tell him it was called; "Mark's Own" and he had my permission to mix it and sell it under that name as long as he used his best tobacco and followed the same formula.

I took out a copy of VAMCO's Letterhead and addressed it to the tobacco merchant authorizing him as my Exclusive Dealer in Laos to mix and sell the Pipe Tobacco "Mark's Own." I had Vong translate this license into Laotian and sign it as a witness. Vong asked what royalty I expected to receive from this license. I told him it was a gift to help promote VAMCO's Maverick Cigarette sales in Laos.

The meeting with the Head Laotian Hydroelectric Engineer and his Staff went well. We discussed several dam locations in Southern Laos. One river in southern Laos divided into two-channels around a mile long island before they merged back together and proceeded to the Mekong River.

Using my limited knowledge of Dam construction, I suggested they consider building this dam in one of the channels of that river and then dynamite the walls of the other channel into the gorge to close it off and force the water into the channel where the hydroelectric dam was located.

While they were discussing the merits of my proposal, I suggested this location would allow them to build this hydroelectric dam on dry land behind a temporary dam built across the top of the channel to direct the water down the other channel of the river. I explained they would also need to build a smaller dam to keep the river's water from backing up to the construction site of the hydroelectric dam but the materials for each of the temporary dams could be blown into the river from the walls of the channel.

I pointed out once the turbines were installed in the hydroelectric dam the temporary dam could be blown up to remove any obstruction in the main channel to the power plant. This last suggestion convinced the Head Engineer to take my proposal seriously.

He had the geology maps brought out along with the seismographic tests done on the rock walls of these river channels. After careful study and as if luck would have it there was a major fault deep into the rock of the mountain a hundred yards in from the edge of far side of the wall of the narrowest river channel. The Engineers pulled out their side-rulers and they calculated if the mass of rock contained between the fault line and the edge of the cliff was large enough to fill the channel of the river.

Once it was determined that the amount of rock in this wall could easily fill the channel of the river above the height of the Hydroelectric Dam, the Head Engineer wanted a study done to confirm their calculations. He also wanted to determine how much dynamite they would need to blow this rock formation into the channel of the river.

The Head Engineer then put his engineers to work studying the geology maps of the walls in the channel where the hydroelectric dam would be built to determine where the best locations were to build the two temporary dams. The Head Engineer claimed it would take two days to confirm these locations and the amount of explosives they would need to create these temporary dams.

With a possible site for this hydroelectric dam, it was time to discuss the business side of this project. I asked if they had any plans for building the transmission lines to deliver the electrical power from this dam. I also wanted to know what the conditions of the roads were to bring in the materials to build this dam.

My discussion with Vong on the inaccurate Engineer Report had its effect as they admitted they had not finished the transmission studies and they indicated they were considering bringing in the building materials from a seaport in Vietnam but no one had conducted a feasibility studied of using the roads from there to a dam site in Laos.

After I told them, I had also considered using a seaport in Vietnam I asked for a current road map to study a possible route to this dam's location. The only reasonable route over the mountains came from Quang Tri Vietnam west on highway 9 towards Laos's highway 13 east of Savannakhet but from there it became a nightmare to reach the dam site.

I suggested it might be easier to bring in the building materials for the dam by ocean going ships up the Mekong River to the Great Falls in Cambodia. They could use Cambodia's highway 7 that became Laos's highway 13 and it was a shorter route to build the road to the dam site.

One of the Engineer's suggested it might be easier to just transfer the materials around the Great Falls of Cambodia and bring the materials all of the way up to the dam site by boat. This would save time and money building a road. The Head Engineer assigned the Engineer who made that suggestion to study this alternative land route and his proposal to use boats to deliver the materials to the dam site.

I told them I was looking for prices on concrete and steel reinforcing rods and I had contacted a number of companies who built Hydroelectric Turbines. I told them I needed their best estimates on the about of concrete and steel and the size and number of turbines for this new Dam.

My final question was how they planned to finance this Project. I pointed out I was working with the Company who was Privatizing Pakistan's Electrical Power system and the World Bank was backing this Project. "However, I did not see that happening in Laos, as long as the Government continued to own everything as a Communist Nation." I told them and waited for their comments, which did not come.

I then told them I knew Laos had a natural resource called Bauxite and if it was properly developed, it could pay for this project. I explained one of my company's had worked a difficult Workers Compensation case where a man had been injured on the job at an Aluminum Processing Plant in North Carolina. This Aluminum Plant was located next to a Hydroelectric Plant, as their process in making aluminum required a lot of electricity.

I pointed to the map of the Southern Region of Laos and located the Boloven Plateaus where I knew the Bauxite deposits were and they were not far from this suggested dam site. I explained, with the right combination of investors I could help Laos finance both this electrical power project and help them become a world leader in the production of low cost aluminum. However, the only way I could accomplish this was to get the Laotian Government to guarantee any private investments would be protected from a Government take over. When I looked into their faces, I had the feeling it would be easier to convert Mao Tse-tung to Catholicism while he was in his grave than for Laos to change its economic and political beliefs.

When no one said anything, I said I had gone as far as I could in helping Laos with their electrical power program until they had the money to build this project. I also told them I was not here to change their form of Government but I did not know how to work within it or help them finance this project unless there were changes to protect the private investors.

I was hoping what Vong had told me about Laos wanting to change their Foreign Investment Codes to attract foreign investors and loans from the World Bank were still being considered and Laos wanted me to help them understand what these changes would mean to their country.

As I got up to leave I told them I hoped some of my suggestions would be helpful and I wished them luck. As we rode back to the Hotel neither of us said anything. Back at the Hotel, I told Vong I planned to leave tomorrow for Cambodia unless the President wanted to have an exit meeting.

By telling Vong this, I had created a sense of urgency. I had left the door open to discussing a possible solution to protecting foreign business developments from a Government take over and creating a favorable environment to attract capital investments for these Laotian Projects. I had to believe Vong had spent enough time in the United States to understand how private investments and the free enterprise system worked. I also had to assume he was smart enough to be able to translate why the free enterprise system had been successful while the Soviet Union's socialist system of Communism was not.

I knew Vong had a lot to think about before he reported to the President and the Prime Minister. I had to hope I had successfully offered Vong and the Laotian Engineers the business incentive or "carrot" by convincing them I was in the position to help them when I made my suggestions on building this new dam. I had sweetened the pot with my offer to produce Concrete, Steel Reinforcing Rods and Turbines knowing Laos needed these things to make this project a success. If I had shown them the path to success and the means to get there, then I would have created the need to change the way the Laotian Government treated private foreign investments. I would know if I had been successful in opening an attractive door for private foreign investments if Vong came back to see me tonight.

I needed some advice on what the World Bank would consider as adequate protections for foreign investors in Laos. I called the World Bank Representative I had met in Washington and I told him what I was doing in Laos.

I asked for the World Bank's foreign investment criteria for considering a loan to Laos. He was very helpful in improving my understanding. He gave me the name and phone number of a Laotian Economic Professor the Laotian Government could contact if they were willing to consider changing their laws to protect private foreign investors.

Having prepared myself to deal with Vong I went to the Front Desk of the hotel and told them I would be going to the same Laotian Restaurant Vong had taken me to last night and I planned to go back to the same Night Club. The Hotel Manager seemed surprised I was going into the city without Vong and I was sure he would call Vong the moment I left the hotel.

I had just ordered my dinner when Vong showed up. He told the restaurant owner he would have what I had ordered and he apologized for being late as if we had made plans to be here. It did not take long before Vong asked, if I had any suggestions the Laotian Government should consider if it wanted to attract these private foreign investors.

I outline what I had learned from my contact at the World Bank and I gave him a simple explanation of the protections most foreign investor would consider attractive. When I was sure, Vong understood what changes were necessary for the Laotian Government to attract foreign investors I gave him the name and phone number of the Laotian Professor who would be in a better position to advise the Laotian Government.

Vong asked when I needed to be in Cambodia and then suggested I spend some time touring the city and he wanted to show me the Friendship Bridge the Australians had built across the Mekong River into Thailand. I understood this request to delay my departure meant I had evaluated my business position correctly and the Laotian Government needed time to evaluate the possibility of changing its laws to attract private foreign investors while I was still here in Laos.

If there was one advantage of a Communist system of government, it was the ability of their leaders to immediately focus their attention on a critical issue and act without worrying about any opposition from another political party or how the News Media would report it.

For all I knew the Laotian Government was about to make a radical change in the fundamental foundation of their Communist beliefs until I realized I was deluding myself. The Communist ideology of "State Ownership" had been entrenched in Laos since the end of World War II and a leopard does not change its spots over night. It would be interesting to see what compromise they might be willing to make as an accommodation to attract outside investors.

The next day our visit to the "Friendship Bridge" confirmed my belief the Laotian Government was not ready to embrace free enterprise. This was a beautiful modern concrete and steel reinforced four-lane bridge to nowhere. Although it was a major step forward to opening the Border between Laos and Thailand neither country had established Border Check Points and the bridge was not being used by anyone.

I saw this Friendship Bridge as an opportunity for the Laotian Government to create a Free Trade Zone where free enterprise could exist. This would be a safe haven for foreign investors, who would be protected from a government takeover by an enforceable International Agreement much like what existed in Hong Kong.

Vong admitted he had been to Hong Kong a number of times and he had been impressed with the wealth and economic opportunities that existed there. Once I knew Vong understood what I was talking about, it was easy to paint the picture of how valuable such a development could be to Laos.

I pointed out how these businesses and developments would need the Laotian people to build and work in them. It was possible to create an International City where people from all over the world would come to enjoy the wonderful climate of Laos and do business making Vientiane Laos the Economic and Financial Capital in Asia much like the World Banking Centers in Geneva Switzerland.

To help sell the idea I reminded Vong, Hong Kong businesses and World Financial Companies located in Hong Kong were looking for a new home, as China would be taking over the British Colony in 1997. Vong then asked the loaded question. "But why would they want to come here? We do not have a Seaport."

"They will come if the Laotian Government offers the right business incentives. You are right Laos does not have a Seaport but I will bet, you did not go to Hong Kong on a ship either. You flew into Hong Kong just as most people do.

Vientiane has a large Airport capable of handling the largest commercial airplanes. All it needs is a special International Terminal to handle the people who traveled on Commercial Flights to Friendship City." I told Vong, as I gave a name to this proposed special business area at the base of the Friendship Bridge.

"How big would this Friendship City need to be?" Vong asked.

"The original Hong Kong peninsula of Kowloon Province was only 18 square miles. You could think of it being less than a 5-mile square area or less than half the distance from here to Vientiane. If Friendship City is successful then the Laotian Government can always sell or lease the city more land to expand the size of it." I told Vong as I was looking over the area in front of the Friendship Bridge trying to estimate what a 5-mile square area looked like.

"May be we could take a ride up that road and see what is beyond that ridge." I suggested. The short trip revealed a wide level valley on the other side of the ridge with a few farms on it. As far as I could tell, it would be a perfect location for Friendship City and Vong agreed. We went further down the road and stopped at an open-air restaurant for lunch. While we were eating, I outlined a plan to contact Henry Ping who was an old business friend I knew in Hong Kong.

Henry was the Hong Kong business partner of A R Dixon's. From time to time, in the past, we had done business through James River Imports and Development Corporation and we had always made money together. Henry was a man who claimed to know everyone and he could put a good deal together with the right people at the right time in the blink of an eye.

Once VAMCO started making its own cigarettes, Henry became very interested in buying Maverick Cigarettes and importing them into China. I had sent him samples to test along with the terms and conditions of sale. Henry liked the taste of the Maverick's and the favorable the terms and conditions of the offer.

However, the first problem had been where he wanted the Maverick Cigarettes shipped. Then I realized Henry was planning to smuggle my cigarettes into China when he wanted me to remove the "Made in Wilson North Carolina" from the Cigarette Packs, Cartons and Master Cases. I politely told Henry I would not be involved in what he might be able to get away with in Hong Kong. It was then that I learned China had band all products from the United States and imposed heavy penalties on anyone who was caught with American made goods.

"I think I can get an answer to Hong Kong's interest in coming to Friendship City if I can Fax Henry Ping an outline of what could be created here in Laos. He would be able to tell us what terms and conditions the business leaders in Hong Kong would be looking for from the Laotian Government to consider making this move to Laos.

However before I do this, we need to talk with the Prime Minster to make sure the Laotian Government is willing to consider the proposal of Friendship City. If he is not, then there is no sense wasting the time and effort to find out if this idea would be acceptable to the people in Hong Kong." I explained to Vong and he agreed with this approach.

"Let me call the Prime Minister and tell him about the idea you came up with after you saw the Friendship Bridge. I am sure he will want to talk to you." Vong said as he got up and walked to the telephone.

Twenty minutes later, we were in the Prime Minister's office and I was outlining the opportunity to make Friendship City the next Hong Kong as if I had prepared this briefing for days. The Prime Minister was impressed with the idea and the concept of Friendship City. He liked the approach I had suggested to contact my friend Henry Ping. We spent the next hour discussing what I should say in my Fax to Henry Ping.

Normally in business when you were the intermediary you had to keep the Buyer and Seller from learning about each other until you had a signed agreement that protected your position in the deal otherwise they no longer needed you. I knew there was no way I could send this Fax to Henry from Laos without the Laotian Government learning how to reach Henry Ping directly. Although I had done business with Henry, the potential value of Friendship City could temp him to cut me out of the deal. To send Henry an agreement that would protect my position would be the same as telling the Laotian Government who he was and how to reach him.

_I had the feeling the Prime Minister knew the position I was in when he had made it clear he would not approach the President about Friendship City until he had a positive response from Henry Ping. This would be the normal point in a business deal where I would ask for a written agreement to protect my position. However, with the Laotian Government controlling all the means of communication this was not a normal business deal where I could have a private conversation with Henry. Therefore if I ask for a protection agreement now might be seen as if I did not trust Henry Ping or the Laotian Government_ **.**

To show my trust and confidence we were all working together in this I gave the impression that Henry Ping and I had a binding business understanding. I asked the Prime Minister if he had an English Typewriter I could use. When the typewriter was brought in, I typed a draft of the Fax I would send to Henry Ping. I outlined the proposal of Friendship City was seriously being considered by the Laotian Government and I made sure I included the points the Prime Minister had made when we were discussing the proper wording of this Fax.

To give Henry confidence this was a serious proposal I typed the next paragraph informing Henry I was sending this Fax from the Laotian Prime Minister's Office and we would appreciate his immediate comments on how Hong Kong's businessmen might react to this proposal of Friendship City. It was at this point while I was still typing the Fax I asked the Prime Minister and Vong what position we were willing to offer Henry Ping to become our Hong Kong representative. It was a polite way of asking how we would all profit from the venture and it would be the same understanding that would also protect my own interests.

To clarify my question I went on to explain how Vong and I could be involved in this business as equal partners with Henry Ping. However, I did not know how things were done in Laos or what Laotian Laws would apply to the Prime Minister and the President as officials of the Government, if the Laotian Government approved this venture of Friendship City.

If the Prime Minister, thought he had sidestepped his commitment to protect my position in Friendship City he realized I was no fool and I would not finish typing the Fax to Henry Ping without it. On the other hand, if the Prime Minister was acting honorably, he would understand it was time to reach an agreement on how we would proceed with this venture.

Vong already knew I was protecting his interests when I had included him in my relationship with Henry Ping. The only question the Prime Minister might have was if I understood how things were done in Asia and how the leaders of a country would profit personally from any business the government approved.

Vong must have sensed the Prime Minister's hesitation. Vong addressed him in Laotian reminding the Prime Minister I had conducted business in Asia for years, and I would not judge him according to the United States laws or our moral business standards.

"Perhaps we should consider Henry Ping, you and Vong as the public partners in this venture and the President and I will be equal silent partners with the three of you in this venture with the Laotian Government." The Prime Minister suggested.

"Just so I understand the three of us are equal partners with you and the President. That sounds fair doesn't it Vong?" I said and Vong quickly agreed.

I typed the understanding that Vong and I had established a relationship with the property authorities and we were offing Henry Ping an equal partnership with us if he was able to bring the Hong Kong businessmen to Friendship City.

When I finished the letter, I offered the draft Fax to the Prime Minister and Vong to read. After a few word changes I retype the Fax on VAMCO's Letterhead and I asked them to proof read it to make sure I had not made any mistakes before it was sent to Henry Ping.

We were still talking when Henry Ping's response came in on the Prime Minister's fax machine. Henry's fax said it was the best idea he ever heard of and he would be sending his detailed comments after he talked with several key business leaders in Hong Kong. The Prime Minister had his answer and he immediately called the President.

The Prime Minister was pleased with the President's response. The Prime Minister suggested to us he would present the details of this proposal to the President and if the President agreed to proceed with the Friendship City venture, Vong and I would meet with the President tomorrow to finalize the understanding and agreements with the Laotian Government.

The speed in which this idea of Friendship City had developed and how quickly it had gone through the normal steps of business to the point where an agreement at the highest levels of Government was made had my head swimming and Vong was looking at me as if I always walked on water. That night while we had dinner neither of us spoke about Friendship City as if we did we would wake up and find it was all a dream.

We went back to the Night Club and found the Head Laotian Engineer with his wife. He told us he was having problems with the Government over the idea of Privatizing the Hydroelectric Project. The idea of creating permanent ownership of the Hydroelectric Project was not acceptable and they wanted to offer a 20-year ownership with the possibility of extending it for another 20 years before it was turned over to the Government.

I knew there was no sense discussing this with the Head Engineer, as he had tried his best to explain the realities of attracting foreign investors to the Government Officials who could not think beyond their beliefs that Communism was still the wave of the future in the World. I thanked him for his efforts and suggested we enjoy the evening and set up a meeting tomorrow to deal with the Government Officials.

The next morning Vong and I were told the meeting with the President was set for 2 pm and the Head Engineer had been able to schedule our meeting with the Government Officials for 10 am. As usual, an official car brought us to the meeting in the Head Engineer's office.

Our meeting with the Head Engineer and the Government Officials did not go well and I needed Vong to translate most of what I said. The Government Officials clearly did not understand that no one would invest in this Hydroelectric Project if they could not make money doing it. After I established the Laotian Government did not have the money to build this Hydroelectric Project, I tried to explain the estimated loan of 600 Million Dollars to build this Dam and install the equipment to produce electrical power was not free or a gift as it would need to be paid back.

It was obvious to me the Government Officials had not consider this or even preformed a basic business analysis to establish the breakeven point when this project would start paying for itself. Realizing these Government Officials were thinking as Communists I had to use simple logic to show them how things worked in the rest of the world and they had to understand what they needed to do if they wanted to attract the foreign investors to help pay for this Project.

"Gentlemen, I came to Laos to determine if your country has the capability of producing electrical power for Cambodia. The potential is here but the capability of producing electrical power for Cambodia is not. I do not see that potential of producing any electrical power as long as you do not understand the way you want to conduct this business will not work. What you are offering to attract the money you need to build this Project amounts to a limited 20-year lease agreement that would not be attractive to any foreign investor.

Perhaps I have misunderstood the Laotian Government's position. I was lead to believe Laos wants to borrow the 600 Million Dollars to build this Hydroelectric Plant. You need to understand just to pay off the 600 Million Dollar loan in 20 years without making any interest payments on the loan would require an annual payment of 30 Million Dollars over and above operating costs to produce the electrical power. If you do not need a loan than just tell me it is a State Secret and I am willing to consider buying electrical power for Cambodia from Laos." I told them and I waited to hear their response.

When the Government Officials did not respond, Vong told me the Laotian Government did not have any money, secret or otherwise. He explained the Government Officials were embarrassed, as they had not considered the business factors I had brought up before they made their 20-year proposal and I realized Vong was right.

I had to save the Government Officials face if I would have any chance of helping Laos build their Hydroelectric Program. The best way to do that would be to point out their 20-year proposal did not have the benefit of western business thinking and I was willing to help them understand the reasons why foreign investors would favorably consider loaning the money to build the Laotian Hydroelectric Projects. I spent the next hour explaining the difference between the Free Enterprise System, which offered individuals and investors a profit motive to succeed and State ownership offered the same reward to everyone.

I used the example of the rice farmer who worked twice as hard as his neighbor did and he produced twice as much rice would benefit twice as much as his neighbor in a free enterprise system. I pointed out a State ownership system was unfair to the man who worked harder than is neighbor as the State was unfairly rewarding the lazy man.

I told them when the Englishmen established the Jamestown Colony in Virginia it was a Commonwealth where everyone took the food they wanted from the common warehouse even if they had not put any food into the warehouse.. If it had not been for the American Indians giving them food, they would have starved. The next year Captain John Smith as the leader of the Colony said. "If you do not work you will not eat." Jamestown not only survived, Virginia became one of the wealthiest states in America. I explain the financial success of Virginia is based on the investment of work to produce the reward of having money and those who took the risks of reinvested their money had the right to make a profit on that money.

I told them I did not think anyone would risk their money in any project where the government did not protect their investments forever. Otherwise, the State was taking their money just as they took the rice from the farmer who worked harder than his neighbor did. I pointed out permanent ownership made the western world successful in doing business and if Laos wanted to attract western investments Laos had to consider offering a business opportunity the investors would understand. I finally suggested they seek out the advice of Western Economists to help them structure an attractive investment proposal to develop the Laotian Hydroelectric Program. When I asked if they had any questions and no one did, I knew I had wasted my time.

Henry Ping had sent an outline of the initial terms and conditions the Businessmen in Hong Kong wanted if they were to consider moving to Friendship City. With this information, our meeting with the President and the Prime Minister on Friendship City went well and our private business understanding was confirmed in a written agreement.

Our discussion of Laotian Government's capabilities to provide electrical power to Cambodia brought some concerns to the President when I told him of some of the difficulties I had found. I wanted him to understand what I was about to tell him should not be used to punish either the Hydroelectric Department or the Government Officials, who did not understand what was necessary to attract foreign investors.

I went on to explain the Engineers had done an excellent job of designing Hydroelectric Dams but they were not Construction Contractors who understood the logistics it would take to build these dams. I used the example of the need to find enough concrete and steel reinforcing rods from someone to build these dams. I told the President I had agreed to look for a reliable source for these materials and obtain a competitive bid for the turbines.

Dealing with the proposed plans of the Government Officials to attract foreign investors was not as easy as it would mean changing the fundamental economic beliefs of the Communist Country. I explained as long as Laos needed foreign investors to finance Hydroelectric Dams the country had to offer attractive terms and conditions closer to a Free Enterprise system with Private Ownership.

Vong told the President how I had outlined what was necessary to accomplish this to the Government Officials and I had suggested they seek the advice of a Western Economist to help them structure an attractive investment package for foreign investments.

Although the President had listened, I could see he was not ready to take the leap towards Capitalism and I suggested a possible alternative to finance the country's Hydroelectric Projects. I explained I was aware of the Bauxite deposits in the Boloven Plateau and the electrical power generated at the proposed Hydroelectric Dam could be used to process this material into Aluminum, which had a great economic value in the World. However, the problem of financing the Hydroelectric Power Plant remained and perhaps Laos would consider using western investment procedures just to get this one Dam built.

The President, Prime Minister and Vong discussed this idea in Laotian for some time, until the President asked if I would look into this combined Aluminum and Hydroelectric project. I was offered Tax-free Imports for VAMCO's Maverick Cigarettes and any other products VAMCO wanted to market in Laos as compensation for my efforts to help them.

# 17. MOVING ON TO CAMBODIA

Having done what I could to help Laos with their Hydroelectric Program I flew to Phnom Penh and arrived in time to watch 40 American looking men arrive alone in an unscheduled airliner from Bangkok. They were immediately loaded on a bus and left the Airport without going through Cambodian Customs. Although these men were in suits and ties this was not a tour group and there was no doubt, these men were the US Army's Ordinance Specialist sent to train the Cambodians in detecting and disposing of Landmines.

Reverend Cong Chin and Clif met me at the Airport. They took me to the Hotel, Jerry Gilmore and the men from his company were staying. My meeting with Jerry did not go well as their investigation of the Cambodian Electrical Power System established Cambodia did not have enough electrical power production capabilities in the entire country to justify any consideration to privatize it.

I was told that the former Cambodian Minister in charge of the Nations Electric Power had sold all the copper electrical transmission lines and transformers before she left the country with all the money she had made. What had replaced the regular transmission lines amounted to miles and miles of electric lamp cord strung loosely in unsupported tangle clumps of hundreds of spider webs with each individual wire trying to get closer to the power source. Many of these wires had been stretch beyond reasonable limits and they would break electrocuting unsuspecting people on the streets every day. That problem of the loss of electrical power notwithstanding, Phnom Penh's Power plant could produce less than 10 kilowatts of electrical power at peak production levels and the Power plant in Sihanoukville could barely produce 6 kilowatts when it was operational.

Other then the Government Offices, the only reliable electrical power in the city came from private generators owned by the Hotels, Night Clubs and some of the larger businesses. Jerry then told me the individual monthly income level of the average Cambodian was less than 10 US Dollars and at that income level, they could not afford to pay for the electricity of a single 100-Watt light bulb.

Jerry's conclusion was Cambodia's electrical power problem was hopeless and he could not offer the Government any possible solution. What Jerry was really saying was he did not see any way the World Bank would pay his company to help fix the electrical power problem in Cambodia. With as adamant as Jerry was about the hopelessness of privatizing Cambodia's electrical power system I did not think it was wise to tell him about my trip to Laos and the possibility of getting electrical power for Cambodia from them.

If the Laotians were capable of providing electrical power to Cambodia, the electrical power system would already be a private enterprise and the users of this electrical power would be paying for it. However if the average Cambodian could not pay for the basic level of electricity than the effort to bring in electrical power into Cambodia was a fool's errand and I was wasting my time trying to do it.

Knowing what Jerry would be telling the Leaders of Cambodia I met with Clif and Reverend Cong Chin after we left Jerry's hotel to see what alternatives there might be to giving the Cambodian people electrical power. To my surprise, Reverend Cong Chin simply stated, "I am confident you will come up with a solution just as you came up with good ideas in the past."

_I realized Reverend Cong Chin as a Buddhist Priest could not have said anything else as he believed everyone was born for a reason and perhaps my destiny was tied to accomplishing the near impossible in Cambodia. However, as a Catholic I did not believe in predestination. Yet I had to admit, I had been placed in a number of unusual circumstances and I did not know where most of these ideas came from before I spoke them aloud. The fact these ideas worked, reinforced all my past experience when things continued to go well and problems were easily overcome I should not question why they happened as they did and I should accept them as the right thing to do. On the other hand when I could not overcome a problem it was an indication I was doing something wrong and I needed to back up to see where I was making a mistake or if I was wasting my time trying to make it happen. The problems in providing electrical power for Cambodia appeared to have hit a brick wall and I needed time to think before I gave up on the idea_ _._

With Jerry's briefing to the Cambodian Leaders scheduled for Monday afternoon three days away, Reverend Cong Chin suggested we take some time off and visit the ancient Cambodian Temple City of Angkor Wat. In spite of the lateness of his suggestion, Reverend Cong Chin still felt he could arrange a round trip flight to Angkor Wat as one of his friends owned the Cambodian Airlines.

The next day we had lunch with Reverend Cong Chin's friend who was a blood relative of Prince Sihanouk's father. We had a delightful meal of Cambodian food and we talked about the history of the Cambodian people especially what happened after the Khmer Rouge took over the country. As we discussed what was happening in Cambodia now, it was obvious from the topics of our conversation Reverend Cong Chin had told him what we had done in India to help the Cambodian Veterans and what I was trying to do to help bring electrical power to Cambodia.

After discussing Jerry's findings and conclusions, we all agreed the value of having electrical power was critical to the future of Cambodia and the problem was how to finance its development when the Cambodian people did not make enough money to pay for the basic level of electrical service.

Reverend Cong Chin's friend as a successful Cambodian businessman understood the economics of attempting to create a business when the customers could not afford to buy the product. He admitted he could not think of a solution to the problem and he wanted to thank me for trying. To show his appreciation he offered two round trip airline tickets to Angkor Wat. He insisted we except his gift and I knew I could not refuse them without offending him. I did not know he had also paid for our Hotel rooms and all our meals.

I was impressed with the huge hand carved stone blocks that made up the towering structures, the vastness and number of Temples that were part of Angkor Wat but I was even more impressed with Reverend Cong Chin's ability to read and translate the ancient Sand script writing on the Temple walls. At times, I felt we were touring the Temples alone yet my sixth sense was telling me we were being watched which heightened my personal state of alert. When I caught a man with a rifle slip back into a shadow I knew I was right and told Reverend Cong Chin we might be in danger.

Reverend Cong Chin apologized and finally admitted there were Cambodian soldiers of Chia Simm's Army protecting us as Angkor Wat was too close to the area held by the Khmer Rouge and as a westerner, I could become a political target to embarrass the new Cambodian Government in Phnom Penh.

I cannot tell you how naked I felt without a weapon but I declined Reverend Cong Chin's offer to return to the safety of our Hotel. If the Khmer Rouge knew I was here, I was already a target and being at that hotel would not stop them from trying to get me. Strangely knowing I could be a target I did not feel threatened when I understood who these shadows were.

"Reverend Cong Chin I want you to know I would have wanted to come to Angkor Wat even if I had known of Chia Simm's concerns about my safety and the possible treat by the Khmer Rouge. I am only disappointed you did not feel you could tell me." I told him. He nodded his understanding and then we continued to walk through the Angkor Wat Temple ruins as if I had not seen Chia Simm's soldiers.

Jerry's briefing for the Leaders of Cambodia held no surprises and I could see Chia Simm and Hon Sen's disappointment, as I am sure they were hoping Jerry's Company would offer a solution for the electrical problems in Cambodia.

When Jerry concluded his briefing by pointing out the economic level of the Cambodian people and stated in his opinion they could not afford to buy electrical power even if it was available I realized I was looking at the affordability of the electrical power as the limiting factor and not the ability to produce it. My thoughts jumped from what Shriekon had told me about Cambodia's gas and oil deposits and what I had learned from the US Electrical Power Companies about the economic advantage of using gas to produce electrical power.

If the Cambodian Government believes these gas reserves belonged to all the Cambodians then using this gas to produce electric power was trading one asset for the electrical power they needed at a price everyone in Cambodia could afford. This idea could be priceless and I knew I had to wait until I could talk with Chia Simm and Hon Sen alone as Jerry had dismissed the idea of helping Cambodia.

The Cambodian Government officially thanked Jerry for coming to Cambodia to study the possibility of Privatizing, their electrical power system. Jerry and the members of his company's evaluation team were given small gifts to commemorate their visit. All the while Reverend Cong Chin was looking at me as if I was about to explode.

"Why do I have the feeling you are not disappointed to see them go?" He whispered to me as Jerry and his team was leaving.

"You know me too well Reverend Cong Chin. I think I have an idea how to bring electrical power to Cambodia. Please tell President Chia Simm and Prime Minister Hon Sen I would like to talk with them." I whispered back to him. Reverend Cong Chin quietly spoke to the Prime Minister's secretary and after Jerry and his party departed, I addressed them.

"I am sorry this effort to bring them here was not more promising. However, I believe we all have learned a lot about the economic conditions in Cambodia from Mr Gilmore and his team." I began to tell them. I went on to tell them what Shriekon Jain of the Indian Company Chanar, told me about the gas and oil reserves in Cambodia. I was surprised by their reaction as I was told the knowledge of this gas and oil was the country's highest State Secret.

I pointed out it maybe your country's Highest State Secret but it was no secret in the rest of the World. I pulled out the copy of the _Times Magazine_ article Shriekon had given me and I handed it to Reverend Cong Chin to read it to them.

I explained how I learned about using Gas to produce affordable electrical power from some of the US Electrical Power Companies I had talked with. I offered the suggestion Cambodia could use the gas that belonged to the people to produce affordable electrical power for everyone, as they did not have to pay for the fuel cost of the gas. Once, the country's economy had developed, than the price of the electricity could be raised without hurting the individual consumers. To make my suggestion clear, I told them they were trading the gas they owned for the electrical power they needed now.

Reverend Cong Chin understood the concept and he discussed it in the Cambodian language with the two Cambodian Leaders until I was asked how this could be done. I outlined the use of the gas and oil deposits to finance the Gas Powered Electrical Plant and recommended this Power Plant be located between Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville where a Gas Test Well had been dug.

The first step would be to establish a contract relationship with a major oil company who has the ability to advance a Royalty Payment large enough to pay for the building of Cambodia's Gas Powered Electrical Power Plant. With this major investment, an Electrical Power Company would be formed with enough assets to attract outside investors as Stockholders to build the electrical power transmission lines and electrical power distribution stations throughout the country.

I would suggest a local Electrical Power Company be established in each Cambodian Province and they would build the electrical distribution lines to all the Cambodian customers and collect the monthly payments for the electrical power used by these customers. I went on to explain while I was in India with Reverend Cong Chin I became aware of an Indian company's interest in using Cambodia's Gas to make fertilizer and build a Fertilizer Plant in Cambodia. I believed the money Cambodia would receive by selling the Gas used to make this fertilizer would be enough to finance the local Cambodian Provence Electrical Power Company's distribution systems.

Once the Oil Company starts producing petroleum, I believe Cambodia will be able to attract an investor who is willing to build an Oil Refinery that is capable of meeting Cambodia's domestic needs and exporting gasoline to other countries in Southeast Asia. I went on to suggest my company VAMCO could form a management and development company with Cambodia, as I would need the authority to negotiate these relationships with the companies Cambodia needed to develop its Electrical Power System and the other businesses I had outlined.

They wanted to know how I knew there would be enough gas and oil to do all this business. I referred them back to the _Time Magazine_ article, which listed the estimated gas and oil reserves based upon the results of the Test Wells already dug. I went on to explain the Oil Company who wanted to develop these petroleum deposits would drill their own test wells and conduct their own estimates of these oil reserves before they agreed to advance any Royalties to the Cambodian Government.

Reverend Cong Chin suggested to Chia Simm and Hon Sen that they discuss these suggestions with their advisors and check with their own sources, who knew more about these gas and oil reserves. Once they had confirmed what I had told them about the gas and oil reserves, they would be in the position to consider my offer to manage and help Cambodia develop these national assets.

Reverend Cong Chin reverted into the Cambodian language as he told them how successful I had been in raising the money to finance the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program and open the door to gain the Indian Minister of Agriculture's support to rebuild Cambodia's rice patties and irrigation system. I had the feeling Reverend Cong Chin was making the case I was one of the few people who understood the needs of Cambodia and had the knowledge and understanding to bring the businesses the country needed to rebuild itself into a modern nation.

When he pointed out in English I was not asking to be paid by the Cambodian Government to do this as I expected to profit from the success of my own efforts and he stated if I did not succeed in my efforts; it would not cost the Cambodian Government anything.

"If we allow you to develop these national assets can you also bring in other companies who will develop what we need in Cambodia?" Hon Sinn asked.

"I do not see why not if Cambodia is willing to offer the right incentives to overcome the risks these companies would be taking to come here. Perhaps if you told me what type of businesses you would like to see come to Cambodia I can suggest what they might be looking for." I responded.

"We need a million bags of concrete a year to build buildings, roads and bridges and we cannot afford to buy it and import it. Cambodia has a mountain of limestone to make this concrete if we had a company willing to build a concrete plant." Hon Sen told me.

Hearing this, my mind immediately jumped to the concrete needs of Laos to build their Hydroelectric Dams and I had to ask how big this mountain of limestone was. Maps were brought out to show me and as I looked at its location, I found it was not very far from the Gas Power Electrical Power plant I had suggested earlier.

I remembered meeting a member of the family from Iran who ran the cement industry during the time the Shaw had ruled the country. The family had left Iran when the Shaw's government fell with their wealth and they were looking to start up their family business somewhere else in the world outside of the United States.

Since I had done business in a number of countries, they asked me to help them find a new country that would welcome their type of business. I had introduced them to a friend from Australia but that did not work out.

In the process of looking for a new location for their concrete business I learned how to make cement. It required a high temperature kiln to heat the limestone with clay and sometimes other materials were used to make cement clinkers. Then the clinkers would be ground up to produce the basic material in concrete. These kilns used electricity as a consistent means to keep the kiln hot, as it would cost too much in time and money to let the kiln cool-down. Here in Cambodia with an electrical power plant so close to this mountain of limestone was the opportunity this Iranian family was looking for.

"Is the need for concrete in Cambodia worth giving a Cement Manufacturing Company the mining rights to this mountain of limestone?" I asked and Hon Sen looked at Chia Sinn before he said it was.

"I think I know of such a company." I told them. I asked if I could get a sample of this limestone before I left Cambodia. I explained how important it was to have it tested to establish its value to this potential Cement Company. Hon Sen spoke to someone on the phone and then told me it would be done today.

Hon Sen moved on to the need to build a refined white sugar company in Cambodia. He went on to explain Cambodia was importing it in huge amounts at a very high cost and most of the sugar was coming into the country through the black market. Cambodia had produced Palm sugar for centuries but the people wanted white sugar and no one in the country knew how to make it from Palms sugar.

I explained white sugar was usually made from sugar cane and the climate in Cambodia was close to the climate areas that traditionally grew sugar cane. I told them I would need to study the agricultural requirements needed to grow sugar cane before I would know if I could help them find a company who would be willing to come to Cambodia. I would also need to know how much white sugar was consumed in Cambodia and how much land was required to grow that much sugar cane to produce that much white sugar. However, I reminded them a company would not consider coming to Cambodia if they could not make a good profit and we needed to establish the price of what the white sugar was selling for in Cambodia.

Hon Sinn must have realized from our discussion on the Cement Plant that Cambodia needed to offer a business incentive to a company to encourage them to come to Cambodia as he asked. "Do you think it would be enough to offer a Sugar Company enough free land to grow all the sugarcane they would need?"

"Yes that would give me something to offer a Sugar Company especially if they would be the only cane sugar company in Southeast Asia. Does anyone know if there is another white sugar manufacturer in Southeast Asia?" I asked but no one knew. I told them I would find out, as that could be a greater business incentive as it could mean Cambodia could export white sugar to the surrounding countries as they were already importing it.

Several other Cambodia Ministers had joined our discussions and the Cambodian General I had met during my initial meeting with Chia Simm was with the last group. I nodded a welcome as he took his seat and waited, as Hon Sinn asked if I had considered building VAMCO's cigarette factory based upon our earlier discussions.

I told him I was surprised to find out Cambodian Tobacco had a high sugar content and it also had the necessary flavor like our North Carolina tobacco to produce a quality cigarette. I had to admit I had only done a preliminary investigation of the costs to make cigarettes in Cambodia and I planned to discuss this project with Ting Tang's Aunt who was our cigarette partner in Cambodia.

We went on to discuss other businesses such as a Pharmaceutical Company to make medicines and a plastic company who could make bottles, plastic bags and dishes. I told them these were good ideas especially for a plastic company who would use petroleum to make the plastic. I finally suggested all these businesses were possible and I asked that they come up with a priority list of the businesses the country needed the most.

General Po asked if I was still making guns in Harpers Ferry Arms Company and when I told him I was, he asked how difficult it would be to make modern firearms with my machines and equipment. I explained I could make just about any type of modern shoulder fired firearm with the machinery I had but I was not sure if I could export them to Cambodia, as I was not familiar with those laws and international restrictions that might be involved.

I had the feeling I had given him the answer he was looking for and I was glad he did not ask me about building a gun factory in Cambodia, as I did not know those restrictions either. I was also sure General Po would bring up the subject again before I left Cambodia, as this was not the time or the place for discussing this military capability.

Our meeting ended on a high note, as I believed I had finally established what free enterprise could accomplish in Cambodia. I agreed we would meet again in two days and by that time, they would decide how they were willing to deal with VAMCO as Cambodia's authorized business representative.

Just as it was in Laos, the leaders of Cambodia were interested in profiting from the businesses they helped to establish in their country. However, they did not know how to ask me as an American to include them in the deal.

Reverend Cong Chin approached the subject over dinner. I suggested that once all the program's contracts were signed and approved by the government VAMCO would contribute 3% of its Cambodian venture in a blind trust that he would manage for all three parties involved.

Reverend Cong Chin realized by the way I was making this offer it could not be viewed as a bribe and 3% could mean a lot of money. When Reverend Cong Chin told me that he needed to think about it, I understood he would be discussing the offer with his two silent partners and he would insure the other party was protected.

That evening I called Alex and asked him to check on any white Sugar Companies in Southeast Asia. He asked me how I did in Laos and I told him I would talk with him when I got back to the United States. Within an hour, Alex called back and told me there were no white sugar companies in Southeast Asia.

The next day I went to the Hotel's dining room Manager and asked him who he bought his white sugar from and how much did it cost. He would not tell me where he bought his sugar. However, the price he was paying for it was 10 times the amount it would cost in the United States. He claimed his customers expected him to have white sugar on his restaurant tables and he told me it was the cost of doing business. He claimed he had a problem with his staff and his customers stealing his sugar and selling it to other restaurants. He had gone to the additional expense to have the Hotel's name printed on the sugar packs but that only established what restaurants his sugar had been sold to and the police would not arrest anyone for selling his sugar.

As expected, General Po came to my hotel to discuss making modern firearms in Cambodia. I explained I did not know if I could legally do it but I would find out. The General told me he would have the Cambodian Ambassador to the United Nations contact me in Virginia and we could discuss the possibility of making firearms in Cambodia.

I went home with a signed business agreement with the Cambodian Government and went to work on the projects I had developed during my trip to India, Laos and Cambodia. I called Clif and Ting Tang and told them I would tell them about what happened in India, Laos and Cambodia, when they and their wives came for dinner at Berclair Plantation.

Alex stopped in at Berclair Plantation to hear the story on Laos. I told him it went surprisingly well but the possibility of Hydroelectric Power from Laos would be contingent upon getting enough concrete and steel reinforcing rods to build their dams. However, the bigger problem was getting finances to build these dams as long as Laos refused to convey private permanent ownership. When I started to tell him about Friendship City or what it might mean to the businesses in Hong Kong he said he already knew about it. I had to ask him if he already knew what went on, why did he come here and have me tell him.

"Let's just say the man in high places wanted to know if you appreciated his help with the landmines and if you would report the truth about all your activities. You see you are in the position to open a few doors in India and Laos that the Secretary of State has not been able to open since the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The United States sees the potential of India emerging as a major economic super power since it has started to privatize a number of industries own by the Government. Your meeting with Swami G who is the personal advisor to the India Prime Minister, is seen as a major breakthrough for the United States to establish better relations with India. The United States needs India to understand it is not alone in its efforts to deal with China. The United States would like to establish a formal alliance with India to send a signal to China that we will come to India's military aide if China continues to attempt to expand its southern borders.

The same goes for Laos with all the problems with the MIAs and POWs in recognizing Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia represent a major foothold for the United States to get back into Southeast Asia and you are the only "civilian" who has been welcomed back there.

As you know, the United States has a credibility problem in Southeast Asia and they have no reason to trust us based on how we left things hanging after we pulled out of South Vietnam. Up until now the influence of China in Laos and Cambodia has been taken for granted by the Chinese even though China has invested very little to maintain this control and influence. What you have already done is give Laos and Cambodia a choice to create their own destiny and realize China has been taking advantage of their lack of alternatives.

We must assume China has learned about you but they may not know what you have been able to accomplish or what they will do about it when they find out. Do not worry I will keep you posted on anything we find out. I have been told to tell you as long as the man remains in office he will help you any way he can to succeed in your business efforts." Alex told me.

I thanked Alex for his comments and efforts to help me but I was having second thoughts about making myself a target of the Chinese. I wanted to ask Alex just how much of a personal threat I was to the Chinese until I realized he already did when he told me the President was looking out for me.

# 18. OLD ENEMIES NEVER DIE

I was casting my bullets and making my ammunition for the NSSA Spring National Matches when my brother Pat called me with some distressing news. Pat as the Team Commander of the 66th North Carolina Infantry told me that the NSSA would not be awarding my Distinguish Skirmish Shooter Award at the Nationals.

Bucky Carr, the Tidewater Regional Commander told Pat there was a question on the scoring of my 100-yard Musket Target I shot at the NSSA's Fall Nationals. The NSSA took this matter up during an Executive Session of the NSSA's January Board Meeting. They appointed a Committee to investigate this target and they voted to postpone any consideration of awarding my DSSA. However even after Fred Hurlinger who had scored my target confirmed there was nothing wrong with the scoring of my 100-yard Musket Target, Royal Inge the NSSA's Commander refused to consider approving the Award until the August Board Meeting. Bucky Carr claimed he voted against this delay but Bucky Malson, John Roby and Bill Jordan had their votes lined up to push it through.

I should have expected something like this even though I thought I had beaten the bastards at their own game and finally won the Award I had created to recognize the outstanding individual shooters in the NSSA. Pat told me I should let him handle it as the Team Commander.

_The fact I had been able to win 27 Distinguish Skirmish Shooter points in spite of the last 16 years of the crossfire harassment had stirred up all the old controversy of me having to sue the NSSA to get back the approval on my 1861 Springfields_ _._

Many of the NSSA's members hated my guts, as they believed I had committed the greatest sacrilege anyone could when I had sued the "holy of holies" the NSSA. They refused to understand I had no financial choice when Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company and his NSSA Board of Director Dealers had used the NSSA as a vehicle to orchestrate the financial ruin of Harpers Ferry Arms Company by arbitrarily withdrawing the approval of my company's 1861 Springfields.

Looking back on my decision to save the NSSA's Home Range from becoming Tungsten Park's Golf Course and how that settlement agreement was turned against me, I realized I had made a mistake by letting my emotions and my love of the NSSA cloud my good judgment. Although I had saved the NSSA Home Range, my sacrificed had not exposed the illegal actions of Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company and his Dealers on the NSSA Board of Directors to the NSSA Membership as it was not part of the Settlement Hearing.

What I should have done or could have done was now water over the dam. I had accepted the punishment the NSSA imposed on me but I had my 1861 Springfields once again approved. The NSSA did not take any of my Distinguish Skirmish Shooter points I had earned before the lawsuits and the NSSA continued to award me any Distinguish Skirmish Shooter points as I had earned them. Now that I had won the points for this award, certain NSSA Board Members wanted to change the Settlement Agreement and add the denial of the DSSA as a further punishment 16 years later.

When Pat as the Commander of the 66th North Carolina pointed this out to the NSSA Board of Directors during the NSSA's Spring Nationals, their Attorney must have told them in NSSA's Board of Directors Executive Session, they could be creating a legal problem they could not win in court. In spite of this legal advice, Bucky Malson and his allies were able to put off a vote to consider awarding my Distinguish Skirmish Shooter Award until the August NSSA Board Meeting.

During the NSSA Individual Matches at this Spring's Nationals when I had posted my first target on the target backer and before I could shoot, my first shot in the 50-yard Musket Match there were so many crossfire shots in it, there was no point in my shooting it.

Fortunately, the Line Judge had witnessed what had happened and he would attempt to get me a new target. The Skirmish Director understood the problem but he explained there was no provision in the NSSA National Match rules that would allow the issuing of a new individual target. He told me he would take the problem to the NSSA Board of Directors and see if he could get a favorable ruling based on the Line Judge witnessing this range harassment.

The Skirmish Director was determined to prevent any further crossfire problems at his Nationals. He asked if I would allow him to assign a Line Judge with a spotting scope to watch and score every shot I fired in all the rest of my Individual Matches. I could have kissed him. He held a meeting with all his Line Judges after the Relay was over. He then made an announcement from the Control Tower that he had instructed his Line Judges to report anyone they saw shooting into someone else's target. I shot the rest of my Individual Targets without a single crossfire. Of course, the NSSA Board of Directors did not allow the reissuing of my 50-yard Musket Target. If I had just shot my average score in that 50-yard Musket Target, I might have won the Grand Aggregate Match.

I did not have any crossfire problems when I shot in the Tidewater Regional Matches. The Tidewater Regional Commander had put the word out if anyone cross-fired into my targets he would find out who did it and personally run him out of the NSSA. It was only when I attended Skirmishes held at the NSSA Home Range that I had any crossfire problems as the "friends" of Bucky Malson, John Roby, William Jordan and Val Forgett, had been assigned to shoot crossfire shots into my targets.

Having seen how effective it had been at the Spring Nationals to have someone watch my targets for crossfire shots I had to make it obvious to my crossfire "friends" I would continue to have a witness watch me shoot my Individual Matches. Knowing all the "friends" I had on the NSSA Board of Directors, I knew one witness might not be enough. I spread the rumor I had other witnesses watching me and the other shooters on the firing line when it appeared they had not shot in their own target.

Prior to shooting a target, I would approach the Line Judge to identify my spotter who was watching my target for crossfire shots loud enough for anyone to hear within 50 feet of my position. I knew I had frustrated my crossfire "friends" when someone protested to the Skirmish Director that I was cheating, as I had a coach helping me on the firing line.

The Skirmish Director came out to watch me shoot and when he watched me load and shoot without any help from anyone he told me what happened, as there was no rule against coaching in the Individual Matches.

Jay Haden a member of the 66th North Carolina volunteered to be my regular official spotter when I shot my Musket and Carbine Matches. I usually did not pick up crossfire shots in the 25 and 50 yard Pistol Matches. The Range Officer in the Pistol Control Tower could easily see where each shooter was shooting and as one of the better NSSA Pistol Shooter's I knew he would be watching me shoot every shot. I always would load and shoot only one bullet at a time rather than loading all the chambers of my revolver. I would shoot my Pistol Matches when the Pistol Range first opened and few other pistol shooters would be shooting.

A Pistol Relay was 30 minutes long with a 10 minute period to erect new targets while a Musket and Carbine Relay was 20 minutes long and 10 minutes to erect new targets. This time difference was enough to allow Jay Haden to shoot his Musket and Carbine Matches and give me enough time to move to the Main Range and set up to shoot my Musket and Carbine Matches.

I had easily won the Grand Aggregate Match at the July McNeil's Ranger Skirmish held on the NSSA Home Rage without picking up a single crossfire shot. What I did not know was, Bucky Malson, Earl Coats and Richard Stearns were desperate to stop the NSSA from awarding my Distinguish Skirmish Shooter Award. They would create a false cheating charge in spite of the fact my 25-yard Pistol Target had been scored by the Line Judge before it was removed from a clean target backer and no one protested the scoring of my target.

# 19. MY BUSINESS MAGIC CONTINUED

When I got back from the NSSA Spring Nationals, I was working day and night pulling the business pieces together to capitalize on the opportunities I had developed in India, Laos, Cambodia and Hong Kong. My primary objective was finding a Major Oil Company willing to become the Manager of Cambodia's Gas and Oil Reserves. Once I established a possible relationship with a Major Oil Company, I could negotiate the advanced Royalty payments to finance Cambodia's Electrical Power System with them.

_The most likely candidates who would be interested in this proposal would be the Oil Companies who had already drilled these test wells. The Times Magazine Article listed the names of those Oil Companies and the easiest way to find out who I needed to call was to get a copy of the Oil Company's Annual Report and its Organizational Chart from a Wall Street Stock Broker_ **.**

The Annual Report would give me the names of the Senior Company Officers and the members of their Board of Directors. Their Organizational Chart would give me the Company's Departments and Sections that might be involved in growth, expansion or exploration. What I did not have was their individual telephone numbers.

However, my experience in managing the Hickory North Carolina Management Recruiters' Office taught me how I could get that phone number from a friendly Company Telephone Operator by asking for the person by name and requesting his telephone extension before I was put through to his office. Being connected to the right person's office is easy but getting past his secretary who is the gatekeeper screening all calls to her boss can be a tough nut to crack.

When you ran into a brick wall and you were given one of the standard "brush-off's" you could still benefit from the call. The best way to do that would be to tell the secretary you were not sure if you reached the right party and ask her if there was someone else you should be calling to discuss this proposal. Most secretaries will feel they had protected their boss, and they will try to help you reach the right party as she has no idea who you are or how important your call might be to the company. When you called the second party, you could honestly tell his secretary that Mr So and So's secretary suggested I call him and you would have a good chance to talk with him. In spite of these techniques, it took days of calling before I felt I had reached someone in a high enough position with the authority to discuss this proposal.

Huston Oil, who later became ENRON, had me jumping through hoops with a number of Vice Presidents who wanted to know what authority I had to present this proposal. When I said I was welling to fly down to Huston to show them if they had the authority to enter into a contract, I was passed on to the next VP only to go through the process again.

British Petroleum, BP was just as bad as their Vice Presidents claimed they were speaking for an unnamed member of their Board of Director's. This roadblock could not be overcome and I gave up trying as it was just costing more money to call any other Vice President in London England.

I tried to reach the Mobil Oil's representative I had met in South Korea during one of Tungsten Park's Public Relations events. Tungsten Park had assembled someone from every company he owned or was doing business with one of Tungsten's companies on the stage in a large theater. The theater was filled with Korean families of those who had someone employed in these companies.

Mobil Oil was employing South Korean Sailors on their Oil Tankers through Tungsten Park's employment company. Sydney Holbrook and I were the only two none Orientals on the Stage but we represented part of Tungsten Park's worldwide investments. During the party that followed, Sydney and I exchanged business cards and I had kept his name in my international Roll-a-deck.

I found out Sydney was no longer with the Company but his name and my meeting with him in South Korea at one of Tungsten Parks business functions was enough to have my call directed to the Head of the Mobile Oil's Petroleum Exploration Department.

After I introduced myself as the Executive Vice President of Virginia American Management Corporation, I told him I was looking for a Company, who was willing to manage the gas and oil reserves of a country I was representing. When he quickly suggested we exchange a mutual protection and confidentiality agreement I felt this happened too quickly. When I asked what authority he had to make this binding agreement, he hung up.

Two days later, an Attorney called claiming he represented the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Mobil Oil Company wanted to know what country I represented. I told him I would be glad to present my letter of authority when I made my presentation to the Company. He told me if I did not disclose the name of the country there would be no meeting.

When I asked if the Chairman of the Board would sign a mutual protection and confidentiality agreement he claimed it was never done before the initial meeting was scheduled. I was feeling very uncomfortable with this phone call and when I told him I would call him back after I talked with my own Board of Directors, he hung up.

My next call was to Mobil Oil's Security Office. I reported a phone call I had received from a party who claimed he was their attorney representing the Chairman of Mobil Oil who wanted to know what country I was representing before a meeting could be scheduled. When I asked for a mutual protection agreement, the party hung up. The Security Office must have taken my report seriously, as Sydney Holbrook returned my call the next day. When I was sure I was talking to the man I had met in South Korea, I told Sydney I was representing Cambodia and outlined why I was calling Mobil Oil.

After I answered his specific questions, he said he would arrange a conference call with him and the real Chairman of the Board of the Mobil Oil Company. The conference call went as well as to be expected and when Mobil Oil did not claim they still owned their Test Wells in Cambodia, I felt confident they would seriously consider this opportunity. A tentative meeting was scheduled when the Chairman would be in New York next month.

I had followed Shriekon's advice on dealing with Sugar and I found a reliable source in Brazil. I was impressed with the International Broker who put this deal together and we formed a Limited Partnership to handle the other Commodities Shriekon needed. As in most business contacts one party lead to another one and we ended up doing business with Hazerit Ali and his company in Toronto Canada on a number of the commodities Shriekon wanted to import to India.

Hazerit was looking for partner in the United States to supply chicken to Iraq in the authorized United Nations "Food for Crude Oil" Program. I knew enough about raising chicken and the poultry business from the time I worked with Mr Green and I handed off the project to Clif Jenkins and told him what to do and how to present the United States chicken to Hazerit Ali's company.

As if I did not have enough to do, I received a phone call from Kim Shin who was the son of my South Korean house boy we called "Swartz" when I was station at Alfa Battery outside of Osan Airbase.

When Swartz's wife needed an emergency appendectomy, he came to me and asked if I could advance him the sixty dollars I would have paid him for washing and ironing my clothes, cleaning my room and shining my shoes for the remaining 6 months I had left at Alfa Battery. I knew I would offend Swartz's pride if I offered to give him the sixty dollars he needed. I knew Swartz would need my 10 dollars a month to feed his family and he could not refuse to take my 10 dollars a month if I offered it to him as a bonus or a Tip.

After I was pulled out of Alfa Battery to Command that Special Marksmanship Unit, Swartz came to the 76th Engineer's Compound with the balance of the money for the months he had not worked for me. I refused to take it as I told him our deal was he would work for me as my House Boy for the time I had remaining at Alfa Battery. I explained since I left Alfa Battery early was not his fault and therefore he did not owe me anything. I would later learn that Swartz had delayed taking a better paying job in the Alfa Battery's Mess Hall because of our agreement.

How Kim Shin tracked me down after all these years became clear when he mention getting my phone number from Mr Chow at the South Korean Government's Office of Monopoly. Kim Shin was in Washington DC and he wanted to see me. I gave him directions to Berclair Plantation and invited him to come down early so I could show him our horses before dinner. Kim was impressed with the Plantation, our horses and the dinner Carol had made. After dinner, Kim explained why he had come.

He was part of a Korean Thailand conglomerate that wanted to build a paradise vacation site and plush resort destination on Phuket Island off the western coast of Thailand. For some reason Thailand had become the Honeymoon destination for Korean Newlyweds with several Korean Airline flights arriving daily. I knew Bangkok Thailand had been a great R&R destination for GI's during the Vietnam War and after the war, it apparently continued to offer a tourist attraction for other Asian Countries.

What Kim and his partners had done was to create an alternative tourist attraction was to obtain commitments from major Hotels, Casinos and Restaurants to build on this Paradise Island. It had taken them longer to put this all together than they planned and they needed a major investor to make the final payment on the Island or they would lose it all. I appreciated his honesty about the position he was in but I explained I was deeply involved in rebuilding Cambodia and as a result I did not have the money he needed. However, I told him I might know someone who might be interested and I could call him, if Kim wanted me to do it.

Kim offered me a 1% interest in Phuket Island if I was able to find an investor. I called A R Dixon and told him about a project he might be interested in and I put Kim on the phone to make his proposal. They talked for several hours before A R Dixon wanted to talk with me. The only thing A R Dixon wanted to know was if I trusted Kim Shin and if I believed this project was real. When I told A R Dixon, why I had no reason to doubt Kim Shin, they agreed to meet in Washington DC on Friday. Saturday afternoon I received a fax from Kim Shim thanking me for all my help and he attached a signed agreement stating I would receive a 1% Interest in the Phuket Island Development.

# 20. MORE THAN JUST LUCK

I received a phone call from George Johnson in Statesville North Carolina who wanted to know if I was interested in buying an Electrical Power Plant. It was a 622-Megawatt unit built by Westinghouse for a Nuclear Power Plant. However, the Nuclear Power Protesters had defeated the building of this Nuclear fueled Electrical Power Plant and the original investors who pulled out of the deal wanted to recover what they could by selling the electrical generating part of this plant. It was still packed in the original boxes and shipping crates and Westinghouse had agreed to upgrade the system to current standards and specifications.

He explained this system could be easily converted to a Gas Powered Plant. He claimed it was a bargain at 380 Million dollars, which also included its construction within 2 years on a turnkey contract as if he knew where I wanted to build this Electrical Power Plant.

When someone offers you a solution you are looking for, you did not tell him you cannot afford it. If this offer were genuine, it would be a third of the cost of a normal Electrical Power Plant and to have it built in 2 years was a dream come true. However, before I got too excited I asked for some references and I would like to see the plans of this electrical power plant.

George passed on the names of two Executives at Westinghouse and one of them had been the name of the man Alex had given to me when I needed information on Electrical Power Plants. If this offer were a scam or a fast hustle, he would not tell me how he was involved in the deal. George had no problem telling me he had a contract to sell it from the original company who planned to build the Nuclear Power Plant. He gave me the name and phone number of the President of the Company who would confirm his contract to sell this power plant.

I told George I would check this out and if things were as he said they were, I would like to fly down and meet him. He said he would pick me up at the Charlotte Airport until I told him I would be flying my own Airplane and I was familiar with the Statesville Airport. My first call was to Alex who said that was quick. He confirmed everything George Johnson had said and told me not to worry if I made this deal with George Johnson.

The next morning I was in George Johnson's office looking over the Blue Prints on building this Gas burning 622 Megawatt Electrical Power Plant. I was pleased to see George had already added the Gas fired elements for this power plant, which was included in the Turnkey price. A Baltimore Company was prepared to build this Power Plant and George had a map of Cambodia showing the location I had selected when I first discussed this project with Chia Simm and Hon Sen.

George had plotted on the map the route to deliver the Electrical Power Plant from the port city of Sihanoukville to the construction site. He pointed out they had run into a problem using the shortest route. There was an old overhead steel bridge over a river that lacked the capacity to handle the weight of some of the elements of this power plant and the bridge was not high enough to allow the trucks carrying most of the elements of the power plant to pass through it.

I was amazed with all the knowledge George had on the site location of this Power Plant in Cambodia and how much planning he had done as if we had already made this deal and he had been working on this project for months. I did not see a Staff large enough in George's Company who could have done all this work in a matter of weeks. Someone who knew what I needed to provide electrical power to Cambodia must have helped George and the best way to play it was to pretend I already knew who it was.

I told George I was impressed with the work he had done and let him believe it was a done deal before I shifted to the need to find a Company who could build the electrical power lines and establish the power grid for Cambodia. I asked George if I could impose on his knowledge and experience in the electrical power industry to recommend a company who might be interested in building the electrical power distribution system in Cambodia. This was the obvious next move in planning this project, as just building an Electrical Power Plant would not give electricity to the Cambodian people without a means to deliver the electrical power to them.

I had brought my own map of Cambodia in anticipation of showing George the location of this Electrical Power Plant. I was now using it to show the tentative electrical power distribution lines I had drawn to make up the Power Grid in the Provinces of Cambodia. I had not concerned myself with obtaining easements or property right a-way's, when I drew my electrical power distribution lines on the map as technically the Cambodian Government still owned all the land after the Communist Khmer Rouge took control over the entire country. I also knew these power lines would not prevent the Cambodian farmers from using the land beneath them.

George did not say a word as he studied the map. When he took out a ruler to measure the distribution lines I had drawn on the map I handed him my fact sheets, which listed the distances between the points identified on the map. He measured several points to confirm his own estimates before he turned to the total distances listed on the final page.

When he asked if I had made any cost estimates to build these transmission lines, I had to admit I did not as I did not know how to determine the size or the number of the power cables that would be needed to carry the electricity between each point on the map.

"I will tell you this you have already done the hard part as you have established the route and the distances of the distribution lines. Let me call a company I worked with several years ago." George said as he reached for his roll a deck on his desk and dialed the number.

George told the man he was working on an overseas project, which was to be considered confidential and once he had obtained that understanding George explained what he was looking for. George used the distances I had listed in my fact sheets to give his friend an idea of the size of the project that had to be completed in two years. When Tommy Harris said he would be interested I was introduce to him and we continued the discussion on George's speakerphone.

A copy was made of my map and fact sheets and faxed to Tommy Harris's company in New York. Once the map was reassembled in Tommy's office, he asked George if he was pulling his leg or if this was some joke. George assured Tommy it was real and he told him he would be building the Electrical Power Plant.

Tommy wanted to know who else would be working on this Power Grid and distribution system. I told him he was the first company we had contacted and I was looking for one company who could do it all. This seemed to please Tommy and he asked when we could meet.

George explained for my benefit that Tommy always completed his part of the contract ahead of schedule but those who were responsible for completing other key parts of the electrical distribution system usually caused him the most problems, he could have avoided if his people did all the work.

I told Tommy we were already thinking the same way, as I only wanted to talk with one man to solve any problems that would come up. I suggested when he had a rough estimate of the cost he could fax it to my office in Virginia and I could fly my own airplane to meet him in New York. Tommy's final question was if I would be looking for competitive bids on the project. I told Tommy only if my own people found his estimate unreasonable.

Before I left Statesville I sign a Letter of Intent with George Johnson's Company to buy the 622 Megawatt Gas Powered Electrical Power Plant under the terms and conditions as agreed. I called Reverend Cong Chin on my Cell Phone at 7,500 feet from my airplane as I flew back to Shannon Airport in Fredericksburg. I told him I had found a Gas fired 622 Megawatt Power Plant that would take care of all Cambodia's domestic electrical power needs for the next 10 years. Reverend Cong Chin did not seem to be surprised and told me he would pass on this information directly to Hon Sen and Chia Simm.

Over the next few weeks, Clif Jenkins worked on Hazerit Ali's chicken order while I met with the Iranian family who were looking to reopen their Cement Business in some other country. They were very pleased with the test results of the limestone I had sent them and they came to Berclair to negotiate the final terms and conditions of the deal.

In between all this, I had contacted Bill Edwards who was perhaps the most knowledgeable man I knew about making modern firearms for Cambodia. William B. Edwards had published a number of Gun books; he was the Assistant Editor of _The Gun Digest_ and the Technical Editor of _Guns Magazine_ for years.

Bill had been in business with Val Forgett in the early 1960's as the company's Engineer when they were looking for a company to make reproduction Civil War revolvers and the most popular shooting musket in the NSSA, the brass mounted 1863 Zouave Rifle. Bill had done all the reverse engineering on these guns with an Italian Company and once Navy Arms Company was established, Val Forgett screwed Bill out of his share of the Company. Bill Edwards had also stood by me as one of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Dealers when Val Forgett used the NSSA to withdraw the approval of my 1861 Springfields.

When I called Bill and told him about Harpers Ferry Arms Company's new factory and the possibility of making modern firearms he never asked what type of firearm I planned to make but he and his wife, Virginia came down to Berclair Plantation the next day to offer his knowledge and assistance. Once I told Bill what I was trying to do for Cambodia, he understood I wanted to reproduce an existing firearm.

Producing an existing firearm would save reengineering cost and any royalties if the Patent rights had expired. After discussing a number of possible firearms and considering the relative size and experience of the Cambodian soldiers, Bill recommended the Russian AK-47 and the US Army's M-1 Carbine would be idea with the AK-47 being the easiest and least expensive to make.

Bill wanted to become involved in this modern firearms venture and he asked if I would consider allowing him to become an investor. This surprised me as I was about to offer him a job to manage this project. I told him I would welcome his direct participation and I asked how much he might consider investing. He never hesitated when he said he and his wife had discussed this on the way down and he would be willing to invest between 100 and 150 thousand dollars depending on what percentage this would buy in the company.

I suggested I could fly him to see this new factory and he could make his own evaluation of what he thought the company was worth. I also suggested we could create a separate Modern Firearms Division in the Company where his investment would represent a higher ownership percentage. Bill thought this was more than fair as I was giving him the option to select how he would like to invest his money.

The next day I flew up to a small airport in Waynesboro Virginia, which was the closest to Afton Mountain where Bill Edwards lived. I flew him to Pocomoke City Maryland where I had established Harpers Ferry Arms Company's factory. Bob Williams the factory manager was working on Harpers Ferry Arms Company's pilot model of the 1855 Artillery Springfield.

Bill was impressed by the amount of gun making equipment I had assembled at the factory and the quality of machined parts we had already made especially how well the rifling in the barrels looked. I explained the extra steps in polishing the bore to a mirror finish before the barrels were rifled and then polishing the rifled grooves to the same mirror finish produced the finest barrels I knew how to make.

On the back wall in the Barrel Making Section, I showed Bill a dozen numbered test targets shot from a machine rest at 50 yards from the first 12, 1855 Artillery Model barrels made by this process. Each target had a three shot group linked together in a ragged hole less than the size of a quarter.

As we toured the large building Harpers Ferry Arms Company had moved into I knew Bill Edward was calculating the open space available to produce the firearms for Cambodia. I pointed out the areas where the production lines of the 1855 Artillery Model Springfields would be located and where the production line of modern firearms we had been discussing could be set up. I explained if we needed more space we could use part of or the entire other half of the building, I was currently renting to a storage company.

As we flew back to the Waynesboro Airport, Bill was making notes and writing his thoughts down so we could discuss them when we landed. He did not have any question about Harpers Ferry Arms Company being able to produce a modern Firearm and he was already thinking about other Gun Markets besides Cambodia. His estimates of the value of the gun making equipment owned by Harpers Ferry Arms Company was almost double what I had paid for them.

I was concerned Bill was thinking his investment offer as being too small to get a reasonable share in the Company. Knowing what happen to Bill in his dealings with Val Forgett I did not want to take advantage of Bill's over estimated value of the equipment. I told Bill I had made a very good deal when I bought all that equipment and to be fair, he should use the value of what I paid for the equipment if he was thinking of investing in the whole company rather than in the Modern Firearms Division. I told him I had a half million in the equipment and 250 thousand in the building that VAMCO owned and was leasing half of it to Harpers Ferry Arms Company.

We than discussed the meeting with the Cambodian Ambassador to the United Nations and how we would like to present our proposal. One of my questions dealt with the possibility of using the AK-47 cartridge in the M-1 Carbine as the AK-47 bullets were the least expensive cartridge in the world and a number of countries in the former Soviet Union were still making them.

Bill said he would have his recommendations on this idea before we met with the Cambodian Ambassador. I asked Bill what day next week would be better for him and I would call the Ambassador to see if that worked for him. Bills answer, "Whatever works for you is fine with me," added to the confidence I had in Bill since I first spoke with him about this project.

Tommy Harris's Faxed offer to build the Electrical Transmission lines and set up the Electrical Grid for Cambodia was right on target with my own. I had done my own cost estimates based on the average cost per mile to run the transmission lines here in the United States. George had given me his best estimates on the number and size of the power cables from the Power Plant and to the distribution points and substations in each Province. Tommy's only question was who would be handling the local electrical distribution from his power lines.

I suddenly realized Tommy's proposal did not include the Province distribution of the power lines to their customers. It was my error as I had failed to use what I had learned in the Army about the need to spend 10% of your time planning before you began your attack on the objective. However, in War when the enemy does not give you the time to make a detailed plan, you had to take advantage of the situation presented to you. In this case, I did not expect to find a solution to providing the Cambodian Power Plant and finding a Company who could build the main transmission lines so quickly.

This early success had delayed my contacting a husband and wife in Region 5 of the Virginia American Quarter Horse Association. They both worked for an Electrical Power Company as power distribution Engineers and they should have the background and knowledge I needed.

The way things were going since I first went to Cambodia to sell cigarettes I felt as if I was being guided by the Good Lord's hand to accomplish the near impossible. He would not have opened the doors of these opportunities if he did not want me to succeed. Perhaps Tommy's question was the Good Lord's way of reminding me I had overlooked setting up the Local Province Companies Electrical Power Distribution systems.

I called Tommy to tell him his offer looked good. I told him I did not have anyone handling the local electrical distribution and I would like to talk to him about it. When he said that was what his company did, I told him I would like to discuss this when I flew up to sign the Letters of Intent on the main transmission line agreement.

We spent less than fifteen minutes discussing the limited or none existing electrical power grid in Cambodia and hours on how to create the Province Electrical Power Companies with their electrical distribution systems. We both understood the cost saving of having his company build the whole country's electrical distribution system. Without the need to secure a legal right-a-way from any land owner, he could run the power lines the shortest distances and establish the most economical power grid using the fewest number of transformers, electrical poles and miles of wire. We both agreed the only reasonable way to deal with the electrical distribution in the Province Companies would be on a cost plus contract.

We still had to build sub grids within the Provinces and connect the electrical power to the local customers. Tommy suggested we could hire Cambodians who had come to the United States and could speak English to do it. We would teach them the fundamentals of electricity and show them how to install the electrical wiring in the homes and businesses, of the Province Electrical Power Companies customers. I told Tommy this was a great idea and suggested when we formed the Province Electrical Power Companies we could establish their own electrical installation department using the Cambodians we had trained here in the United States.

I asked Tommy for his advice and suggestions on the organization, formation and structure of these local Province Electrical Power Companies, as I needed to tell the Cambodian Government how to set them up. Tommy told me he would Fax an outline of the ideal structure for the local electrical power companies and he would answer any questions I had before I flew up to New York on Friday.

The meeting with the Cambodian Ambassador to the UN took place at Berclair Plantation the next day and Bill Edwards surprised the Ambassador when he made the presentation in French on the possibility of making modern firearms for Cambodia.

Although I had made a presentation kit for the Ambassador showing all the photographs of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's factory and the gun making equipment, he still asked if he could visit the factory. I had the feeling this request was a test as he may have been tricked by pictures in the past. I looked at my watch and told him if he was not afraid to fly in a small airplane, I could fly him to the factory in Pocomoke City Maryland in less than an hour.

Bill immediately told the Ambassador I was a good pilot and he had flown to the factory with me last week. The Ambassador thanked me for the offer and suggested he might go another time. His response told me we had passed his credibility test and he knew the factory was real. The Ambassador did not hesitate to ask how he would be included in this deal if he recommended the approval of this project.

I told him that would depend on how the guns would be paid for as an American Business I could not pay anyone before I had a contract. I also told him I was only making this proposal as a favor to the General. This was a polite way of telling him I would not bribe him to get the deal and I did not need the business. To save his face I suggested I might be able to give him a sales commission if such commissions were authorized in the Contract.

Leaving that issue hanging, I took the Ambassador and his driver on a tour of Berclair Plantation and showed them all our broodmares and their foals. His driver asked if he could take pictures and he took several photos of the Ambassador, Bill Edwards and me posing with the horses.

We ended up on the knoll in front of the Carriage House taking pictures of my Civil War Cannons as I told them of the significance Berclair Plantation played during the Civil War Battles of Fredericksburg in 1862 and Salem's Church in 1863. They were impressed with the five shot group in the National Championship target I had displayed to show them how accurate my cannon could shoot at a distance of two soccer fields.

Although the Ambassador might be a friend of the General, I could not count on the General sharing his experience when I taught that special long range shooting class during the Vietnam War. I took the Ambassador into the Carriage House and showed him the guns Harpers Ferry Arms Company was currently making. If he had any questions about my ability to shoot and make guns that shot extremely well, all the shooting medals hanging on the Carriage House walls removed all doubt. To reinforce the point of shooting and making quality guns, I picked up two mangled cannonballs I had shot during the cannon match at the Spring NSSA National Matches from the scrap lead pile and gave them to the Ambassador and his driver as a gift. As we walked back to the Ambassador's car, he talked quietly with Bill Edwards in French.

When they were about to leave I told the Ambassador to thank the General for sending him to discuss this venture and I hope he had found what the General was looking for. As the Ambassador's car, pull down the driveway Bill turned to me and said."That son of a bitched asked me if I would make these guns without you." When I told him no, he wanted to know how soon we could have a pilot model. But the funny thing was he never asked the price."

# 21. UNEXPECTED SUPPORT

I was in the middle of typing a letter to Fax to Reverend Cong Chin in Cambodia about setting up the Province Electrical Power Companies when Clif Jenkins came into the VAMCO's downtown office. Clif had found two companies who would sell 5 Metric Tons of frozen whole chickens a month but we would have to hire our own Imam, the Islamic holy man to bless the Halal killed chicken. Halal food laws to the Muslims were as kosher food laws were to the Jews.

What was bothering Clif was this amount of chicken Hazerit Ali wanted would not even fill a 20 foot refrigerated shipping container, which would cost the same as a 40-foot container filled with eight times as much chicken. I called Hazerit to confirm the limited size of his order and explained how he was paying four times more to ship a pound of chicken than was necessary. Apparently, there had been a mistake in the destination of the chicken in the agreement he had sent to us. What he was looking for was to have the chicken sent to him in Canada where he would be shipping Halal killed beef with the chicken to Iraq.

I told Hazerit about the need to hire our own Imam at the slaughterhouse and I asked if he had any recommendations where I could find one. I had the feeling Hazerit was getting nervous about talking to me over the phone, when I suggested Clif had an idea of starting our own chicken business if there was a possibility of increasing the number of tons of chicken.

When Hazerit suggested we talk about this in meeting, I mentioned I would be flying up to New York on other business on Friday and I could fly into Toronto and discuss the idea. He was surprised to learn I had my own airplane and Toronto would be less than a three-hour flight from Fredericksburg Virginia. He asked if we could fly up tomorrow and be his houseguests. When Clif nodded his agreement, I gave Hazerit my Airplane's FAA Registration Number and told him we would be at the General Aviation Terminal of Toronto's International Airport by 10 am.

While Clif put the final touches on his business proposal of raising our own chickens, I finished my Fax to Reverend Cong Chin. I asked him to translate Tommy's recommended organizational structure of the Province Electrical Power Companies into Cambodian and have Chia Simm and Hon Sen select the businessmen, they wanted to own and manage these companies. I also told Reverend Cong Chin about the idea of training Cambodians who were now living in the United States how to install the electrical wiring in the Cambodian homes and businesses as when they were finished with this job they might consider working for the Province Electrical Power Companies.

I took Carol out to dinner that night and up dated her on my trip with Clif to meet Hazerit Ali on the chicken business. Then I would meet Tommy Harris on Friday to sign the Letter of Intent on the building of Cambodia's Electrical Power Transmission lines.

I brought up the idea of talking with Harold and Dana who worked as engineers for the Power Company as someone I might be able to use to understand more about the Electrical Power business and maybe even hiring them to manage it. Carol reminded me she was hosting the dinner party this month on Saturday night at Berclair Plantation and I could bring it up then.

The next morning at 9:45 Clif and I were on final approach to land at Toronto's International Airport. Hazerit Ali was standing outside of the General Aviation Terminal watching as my Super Viking Bellanca aircraft taxied to the tie-down area, parked and shut down the engine. He warmly greeted us as we deplaned and he wanted a closer look at my airplane.

On the way to his office in downtown Toronto, Hazerit wanted to know how long I had been flying. I told him the story of flying to a rifle match when I was Commanding Charley Battery in the Detroit Air Defense Missile Command and then buying my first Airplane. I explained how valuable my airplane had been in the development of a number of my businesses.

Hazerit had assembled the key members of his Staff in the Conference Room and after we were given doughnuts and coffee, Hazerit explained how he had become involved in providing Halal killed Chicken and Beef to Iraq in the United Nations approved "food for crude" program. The procedures to provide this food to the Iraqi people had become a bureaucratic nightmare of complicated requirements and restrictions to the point few food suppliers could qualify. However, Prince Jetri Bolkiag of Brunei, a devoted Prince of Islam has interceded in behalf of the Iraqi people to obtain the desperately needed food by advancing payments to the Halal Food Suppliers.

"The Prince believes he may be the only one who could successfully process the claims to the United Nations for reimbursement from the Iraqi Oil funds held in the UN Trust for payments in the "Food for Crude" Program. Mark, you are right, 5 Metric Tons of Chicken is not very much and the cost per pound of chicken is excessive under normal circumstances. However, the cost to feed the hungry people in Iraq is irrelevant to the Prince of Brunei.

You must also understand, the United Nations only approved 5 Metric Tons of Chicken in this contract and we cannot send any more or any less than the 5 Metric Tons of Chicken no matter how unreasonable or how costly it would be in business terms and conditions." Hazerit stated.

This was a classic example of the stupidity of uninformed bureaucrat in the largest dysfunctional organization in the world, making decisions and establishing the requirements of a program designed to feed the starving Iraqis while limiting the amount of food that could be given to them. When faced with an impossible situation I had learned to think outside of the box to find a reasonable solution.

"Why don't we offer another contract to the United Nations to supply a larger amount of Halal Killed Chicken?" I asked. "Clif and I have come up with the idea of going into the chicken business and if the Prince of Brunei is already willing to finance the current food for Iraq he should be able to see the benefits of having his own source for providing even more food." I added creating a silence in the room as no one offered a reason why it could not be done.

Clif gave his presentation on this idea showing the charts and graphs to support the proposed chicken business and building our own chicken processing plant with a freezer attached. The key to this Halal Killed Chicken Business in the United States was the abundance of reasonably priced feed grain that did not exist in any other part of the world.

I pointed out although Iraq was currently in need of chicken it was not the only Islamic country we could sell our Halal Killed Chicken once we met Iraq's needs. The possibility of a worldwide market for Halal Killed Chicken sparked a lively discussion in support of Glif's business proposal.

I asked, "Why this chicken had to be shipped frozen?" I explained that whole canned chicken could be processed and shipped cheaper with a shelf life of years in all temperatures and climates. No one had an answer other than it was the requirement of the United Nations contract. Once it was agreed that we would offer both canned and frozen chicken to the United Nations Hazerit suggested we should break for lunch and come back to refine this proposal so he could Fax it to the Prince of Brunei for his consideration.

Over lunch, Hazerit casually asked about my meeting tomorrow in New York. When I told him about the 622 Megawatt Gas Powered Electrical Power Plant I was working on for Cambodia and how it was coming together. He was surprised to learn Cambodia had Gas and Oil deposits. I told Hazerit about the _Times Magazine_ article that identified the Gas and Oil Companies who had dug the test wells in the mid 1960's and my efforts to establish one of these companies as the manager of the Gas and Oil developments in Cambodia.

Hazerit wanted to know what legal obligation Cambodia or I had to use these Oil Companies as the Petroleum Development Manager. I told him I did not know of any legal obligation that would exist after all these years especially with the number of changes in the Government of Cambodia since these test wells were dug. I explained I had contacted these companies as a place to start, as they would have the knowledge of the existence of this gas and oil from their own test wells and historical files.

I realized Hazerit had more than a passing interest in the management and development of the Cambodian Gas and Oil when he introduce a member of his company who was part of Canada's largest Oil Company's family. The young man had been listening to our conversation on Gas and Oil since I first mention the subject.

Hazerit then asked him if his family would be interested in Cambodian gas and oil and perhaps becoming the manager of the country's petroleum development. The discussion that followed established what I needed from the Oil Company Manager to finance the development of the Cambodian Electrical Power system and the amount of Gas and Oil reserves established by the test wells.

The young man was concerned about the large amount of advanced Royalties I was looking for and he suggested he would like to present this proposal to his family to see if they had any interest in talking with me. He asked if I would send him a copy of the _Times Magazine_ article. I told him I had the Cambodian Electrical Power Projects file with me and I could have a copy of the magazine article made for him when we return to the office.

The young man faxed an outline of this Management proposal along with a copy of the Times Magazine article to his family's company. Then he called to get an initial response. Although the response was favorable the Canadian Oil Company wanted specific details and answers to a number of questions.

While the young man, Hazerit and I worked on our response to the Canadian Oil Company's questions, Clif and Hazerit Ali's Staff worked on the chicken business proposal for the Prince of Brunei. It was late in the evening before the response to the Canadian Oil Company and the chicken business proposal to the Prince of Brunei were faxed out. We had a late dinner at one of the famous Restaurants in Toronto's PATH underground before going to Hazerit Ali's home for the night.

Hazerit and I talked well into the night about how I became involved in Cambodia and he would not have believed I had expanded my business into India, Laos, and Hong Kong so quickly, if he had not witnessed what we had accomplished that day.

Hazerit was confident we had opened the door to helping Iraq feed its people with this new chicken business and he was excited about the prospect of the Canadian Oil Company becoming Cambodia's Petroleum manager. He told me not to worry about getting the money to finance the Cambodia Electrical Power system as if he already knew how everything would turn out.

The meeting with Tommy Harris went well as he was already working up the cost estimates for the number of miles of electrical wire and power-poles each Province would need. I was surprised to see what had to be a more current map of Cambodia than I had, as it contained a significant amount of detail of the contours of the land in each of the Provinces.

I thanked him for the structure and organizational charts for the Province Electrical Power Companies he had sent to me. I gave Tommy a copy of the packet of information I had sent to Reverend Cong Chin who would present the information to Hon Sinn and Chia Simm. In the packet, I suggested Prime Minister Hon Sinn use Tommy's business model to set up these individual Cambodian Provence Electrical Power Companies and the need to select or appoint the owners and managers of these Provence Electrical Power Companies.

I had outlined the need for these owners and managers to learn how to run their Electrical Power Companies and understand what VAMCO needed from these Province Electrical Power Companies to manage the Cambodian Electrical Power Company. I had suggested once the owners and managers had been selected I would send a team of instructors to Cambodia. This team would teach these Province Electrical Power Company owners how to set up and manage their Electrical Power Companies businesses within the guidelines and procedures established by VAMCO.

Tommy suggested depending on how long it would take to teach the Cambodians to how to manage these electrical power companies, we might be able to send our instructors to teach the Cambodians how to install the electrical wiring in the customer's homes and businesses at the same time.

This seemed like a good idea and I suggested we run employment ads in the Newspapers where the majority of Cambodians had settled in the communities here in the United States. I would contact Reverend Cong Chin and ask him to help us find Cambodians who lived here in the United States we could train to be instructors to teach the native Cambodians how to be electricians.

It was mid Friday afternoon when Clif and I arrived back at Shannon Airport in Fredericksburg feeling good about what we believed we had accomplished in Toronto and in New York. We now understood why the United Nations frozen Chicken "Food for Crude" contract to Iraq had been limited to 5 Metric Tons. We had opened the door to an additional "Food for Crude" contracts which would justify establishing our own Chicken Business if the Prince of Brunei was willing to finance it.

The Cambodian Electrical Power Project had come together nicely. We had George Johnson's 622 Megawatt Gas fired Power Plant and Tommy Harris's agreement to build the main electrical transmission lines, the Electrical Power Distribution Grid and set up the Province Electrical Power Companies to handle all of the Cambodian Customers. We had given Hon Sen and Chia Simm an outline of what had to be done in Cambodia to make this project successful. For the first time I felt confident I had found a means to finance this Electrical Power Venture with advanced Royalties from a major Oil Company, who was interested in managing Cambodia's Gas and Oil reserves.

After our guests arrived at Berclair Plantation for the dinner party, we gathered around the large oak table in the kitchen with drinks and eating hors d'oeuvres while Carol put her last minute touches on dinner. I used this opportunity to tell them about the Electrical Power Project I was working on in Cambodia.

I use one of the techniques I had learned at Management Recruiters when I was looking for a candidate to fill a position. I would present the opportunity to them as if I were seeking a better understanding of the qualifications of the ideal person to fill the position. Having perked Harold and Dana's professional interests, they asked the right questions during dinner that allowed me to expand their knowledge of the project while entertaining the other guests with interesting stories of how all this happened. I opened the door of opportunity to them when I claimed this project happened so quickly I had not been able to find a qualified manager to run the Cambodian Electrical Power Company for VAMCO. I would know if they were interested if they called me in the next few days.

# 22. THE SLEEPING GIANTS OF THE BIG TOBACCO COMPANIES AWAKES

The Philip Morris Tobacco Company struck out at VAMCO's Cambodian Cigarette business with a deliberate vengeance. They hired 250 cute young Cambodian girls in short red skirts, white blouses with red beanies and had them pass out free packs of Marlboro cigarettes next to our Maverick cigarette sales booths. What Cambodian would buy a few of our Maverick Cigarettes, when they could get a whole pack of Marlboros for nothing? Our Cambodian Maverick Cigarette Dealer could not compete with this give a way business and I suggested they ship their cigarettes north to Laos until Philip Morris thought they had destroyed our Cigarette business.

Philip Morris gave away free packs of Marlboros, for three months and then offered a pack of Marlboro Cigarettes for what would be equal to 75 US cents. When our Maverick Cigarette came back on the Cambodian Market at 35 cents a pack or 2-cents for a cigarette few Cambodians were buying Marlboros. When Philip Morris realized it had not run our Maverick Cigarettes out of the Market it gave away packs of Marlboro Cigarettes for six months and then sold a pack of Marlboros for 25 cents. What Philip Morris did in Cambodia would have violated the Anti-Trust laws here in the United States.

Evidently, VAMCO had become a big enough thorn in the side of the big Tobacco Companies that they had engineered a way to eliminate VAMCO's ability to bid on the Overseas Bulk Tobacco Market by having the ASCS reject my application to renew my Tobacco Dealers Registration. The reason for the ASCS rejection was the claim that some of the Tobacco dealers who had sold me their Dealers Tobacco had failed to file their Dealer's Weekly Sales Reports.

The Tobacco Auction Market would be open for two months by the time my appeal of this ruling could be schedule for a Hearing. I found out I was not the only Tobacco Dealer who had been denied the renewal of his Dealers Registration. Without these Independent Tobacco Dealers bidding on the tobacco offered at the Tobacco Warehouses, the Government was forced to buy the tobacco at the Tobacco Grade Support Prices as the big Tobacco Companies refused to bid. The Government had already bought 80% of the tobacco it had bought all last year in the first month of the Tobacco Auction Market.

I easily won my appeal based on the fact these other Tobacco Dealers who had failed to file their weekly sales reports, were independent businessmen and I was not responsible for what they did or did not do in their businesses. The week my Tobacco Dealer's Books and Cards were issued, the average sale price of Auction Tobacco jumped 35 cents a pound. The Farmers in North Carolina and Virginia knew why the prices had jumped and I was treated as if I were a local folk hero.

Jim Brake's appeal did not go as well, as he claimed someone had forged his name on a Tobacco Sales slip for 250 thousand pounds of tobacco yet the USDA was still holding him accountable and was charging him with a penalty of $1.29 a pound that came to a $322,500.00 Dollar fine.

Privately Jim told me he knew his former Tobacco Dealer partner Jimmy Wells had forged his name from an old Tobacco Sales Slip to get even for taking away his business. Jim had hired an attorney who had engaged a handwriting expert to prove it was not Jim's signature on the Tobacco Sales Slip but the USDA delayed his hearing until after the Tobacco Auction Market had closed.

Jim could still legally act as VAMCO's Tobacco buyer using one of my Dealer's Tobacco books and cards. Even with this late start in the Tobacco Auction Market VAMCO did more business than it ever did before. This pissed off the big tobacco companies as they thought they had stop VAMCO in Cambodia and they had not expected me to win my appeal and get my Tobacco Dealers Registration back before the Tobacco Auction Market closed for the season.

I am jumping ahead to the next year to explain the influence the big tobacco companies had on the United States Department of Agriculture in controlling the Tobacco Market. The ASCS department of USDA required all independent Tobacco Dealers to have a Performance Bond before they could apply for the renewal of their Tobacco Dealer's Registration.

A Performance Bond issued by Insurance Companies was nothing new to me as this was a normal part of International Business to insure the timely delivery of goods in Letter of Credit Agreements. The problem was the ASCS failed to provide the specific requirements of this Performance Bond and no one in the ASCS could tell me what the requirements were. This was a classic Catch 22. The ASCS had created a requirement that could not be met, as without knowing the terms and conditions of their Performance Bond no Insurance Company would issue it. As a result, I was forced out of the Independent Tobacco Dealer's Market and without a Tobacco Dealers Registration I was also put out of the overseas Bulk Tobacco Market, which was what the big tobacco companies wanted all along.

# 23. A SUCKER PUNCH FROM THE NSSA

A week before the NSSA's Fall National Matches I received an official notice that I was charged with cheating at the July McNeil's Ranger Skirmish and the NSSA Board of Directors had scheduled a disciplinary hearing on Friday night at the NSSA Home Range. The letter did not contain any information on the nature of the cheating charge, who had made the charge, or when it happened. For the life of me, I could not think of anything I had done at the McNiel's Rangers Skirmish that could have created a cheating charge.

My phone call to my brother Pat caught him by surprise, as he knew nothing about any charges. According to the NSSA By-laws, Pat as the NSSA Unit Commander of the 66th North Carolina must be notified of any disciplinary charges made on a member of the Unit. The NSSA has only Skirmish Team Units as its members and individuals must belong to a NSSA Unit to hold membership in their organization.

Pat's efforts to find out about this cheating charge from Bucky Carr the Tidewater Regional Commander ran into a brick wall. Bucky claimed he could not discuss it as it was done in the NSSA's Board of Directors Executive Session, which made everything done in Executive Session a secret. When Pat called Royal Inge, the NSSA National Commander, Pat was told the same thing.

There was no doubt in my mind Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company and his major Gun Dealer Bucky Malson had engineered some tromped up charge during the NSSA's August Board Meeting. This was just an excuse to delay the NSSA Board of Directors vote on awarding my Distinguished Skirmish Shooter Award.

Bucky Malson's efforts to delay this vote in the January Board Meeting to investigate the circled shot in my 100 yard Musket Target had been proven to be unfounded. Yet the NSSA Board had delayed this vote again at the Spring National Board meeting giving Val Forgett and his gun dealers on the NSSA Board of Directors another chance to come up with a reason to deny my receiving this award at the August NSSA Board of Directors Meet.

_Their solution amounted to over kill as they had lost the appearance of providing me with a fair hearing when they failed to follow the NSSA By-laws. The NSSA By-laws specifically state any Disciplinary Hearing would be conducted according to Roberts Rules of Order, which outlines the procedures that must be followed to bring charges before any Disciplinary Hearing takes place. One of the most important procedures in Robert's Rules of Order deals with the confronting the accused with the charges made against him and giving him the opportunity to resign to save the embarrassment of a formal Disciplinary Hearing. However if the accused did not resign than the organization must issue formal written notification of the specific charges made against the accused along with the names of the witnesses so the accused can prepare his defense in a Disciplinary Hearing_ _._

The North South Skirmish Association is a Virginia Corporation and therefore subject to the Laws of the State of Virginia. I hired a lawyer in Loudoun County where the Registered Agent of the NSSA resided. I obtained an Injunction against the NSSA holding any Disciplinary Hearing until they complied with their own By-laws that specified the procedures outlined in Roberts Rules of Order.

The Deputy County Sheriff, Guy Owns who was also a member of the NSSA served the Injunction on Royal Inge as the President of the Corporation of the NSSA and he went to the NSSA Board of Directors Meeting to make sure they complied with the Court Ordered Injunction.

This however did not stop the NSSA Board of Directors from using their influence to unjustly target and harass the 66th North Carolina and its members during the remainder of the Fall Nationals. The 66th North Carolina's Revolver, Carbine, Cannon and Musket Teams were singled out for repeated inspections of their guns. On Sunday, the 66th North Carolina's Musket Teams were moved from their position of honor based on their placement at the Spring Nationals to the far end of the firing line, which was the furthest distance from the 66th North Carolina's Camp Site.

In spite of the Court Order, the NSSA would only identify that I was charged with Cheating on my 25 Yard Revolver Target at the McNeil's Rangers July Skirmish. They did not specify what I had done, who made this charge, who had witnessed the cheating or identify the name of the Line Judge who had scored this target while it still remained on the cardboard target backer.

With everything that was going on in VAMCO's business ventures, I attempted to educate my Attorney on what I would need to know about this Cheating Charge to defend myself at the NSSA's Disciplinary Hearing scheduled for the January NSSA Board Meeting. I had expected him to go back to the Judge who issued the Injunction and explain the NSSA had not complied with the Court's Order. Apparently, the Attorney for the NSSA had presented a better argument and the Judge felt I had been given enough time to prepare for the Disciplinary Hearing.

Rather than conducting my Disciplinary Hearing in an open NSSA Board of Directors Meeting where the members of the NSSA could witness the proceedings, it was held in Executive Session. I attempted to have a Court Recorder transcribe the Disciplinary Hearing but the NSSA Board refused to allow their actions to be recorded as they could not permit what they did to become public knowledge and used in a court of Law.

The first thing Earl Coats as the new NSSA National Commander did was suspend the NSSA's shooting rules of competition. There is no authority in the NSSA's Corporate By-laws to suspend any of its rules and my objection was over ruled, without providing the authority in the NSSA By laws to suspend the rules.

The NSSA's principal witness was Charley Brooks who had misappropriated 1st Valley Ranger's funds when I had been a member of that NSSA Unit. When Charley Brooks as the Commander of the 1st Valley Ranger's refused to allow an audit of the books or give the new Unit Treasurer a copy of the past Bank statements a number of members including myself and my brother Dick left the Unit and we joined the 66th North Carolina.

When I asked for the balance of the money in my team account, I found out that someone had taken it. The past Unit Treasurer and I conducted an audit and we established some of the other member's accounts were also missing money. The Treasurer explained when he went inactive due to an illness he turned over the books to Charley Brooks. Faced with the hard evidence we met with Charley privately and he came up with the missing money. However, Charley had it in for me and blamed me for exposing the money he had taken from my Unit's membership account.

In Charley Brooks' testimony he claimed he had watched me through his spotting scope shoot only 9 shots in my 25 yard Revolver Target and then I forced the Line Judge to believe I had shot ten shots when he scored my target on the backer.

In cross examination Charley could not remember how many shots I had fired in the Sighting Target or the order in which I had shot each bullet for score, as he did not keep any record. I asked Charley if he knew I was cheating why he did not file a Protest of the scoring of my target. Charley looked at Earl Coats and Bucky Malson and then he refused to answer.

My final questions for Charley, was to establish he made a habit of watching me shoot my Individual matches and he knew I always kept a written record when I shot them as I had a platform attached to my spotting scope to hold this written record while I shot. I had him identify my Shooting Record Book as being the written record he had seen me use every time he had watched me shoot my Individual Matches.

Bucky Malson claimed he had taken my target to the International Black Powder Shooting Federation. He claim they had a way to indentify when more than one bullet when through the same hole in a paper target. Bucky knew I had a 36 Caliber Revolver accurized and believed because it shot so well I had been able to win so many Revolver Matches. He claimed they identified only 9 shots in my 25 Yard Target and those bullet holes had been shot with a 36 Caliber Revolver.

You might be asking yourself if Earl Coats suspended the NSSA shooting rules why would the Board of Directors use an outside shooting organization's procedures to judge the scoring of the NSSA's Revolver target.

When I testified in my defense, I asked Fred Shell who was the Skirmish Director at the McNiel's Ranger Skirmish if any one protested my Target according to the NSSA shooting rules. He said no one did, before Earl Coats could say the NSSA shooting Rules were suspended for this hearing.

I asked if the Line Judge who had scored my target was here as a witness and Richard Stearns who was acting as the NSSA's prosecutor said the NSSA was not obligated to produce witnesses for the Defense. I pointed out the identity of the Line Judge had been requested in the original court order and it had not been provided as I still did not know who he was. However, I might as well have saved my breath, as there was not enough reasonable and objective men left on the Board of Directors to become a 51% majority and overrule the plans to find me guilty.

I offered my Shooting Record Book that Charley Brooks had identified I always used when I shot my Individual Matches as evidence. This type of shooting Logbook and the recording of each shot was a carryover from when I had shot on the 5th Army's Marksmanship Team and I had a similar shooting logbook I had developed for the Snipers _._

I had two NSSA Shooting Logbooks. One listed each Team event and one for the Individual Matches. On each page, I included a space to identify the time and date, the name of the Shooting Range, the weapon, the type and weight of the bullet, the powder load and the sight picture. I also noted the angle and direction of the sun light, the temperature, the speed and direction of the wind as these were factors that could affect my shooting.

My NSSA Individual Match Shooting Logbook had two targets printed on each page and a scoring box beneath them. I would mark the location each shot I fired on the "Call Target" by number before I would look through my spotting scope. I would than mark the "Hit Target" where the shot was actually located. If the location of my "calls" were the same as the "hits" I knew my gun was shooting correctly and it would reinforce my confidence my next shot would hit where I aimed it.

"Gentlemen since Mr Brooks has already identified this Shooting Logbook as the written shooting record he saw me use every time he watched me shoot my Individual Matches I would ask you to inspect the page that recorded my 25 Yard Revolver Target at the McNeil's Ranger Skirmish. You will note I had fired only eleven shots. One shot was in the sighting target, which was dead center in the X ring. The other ten shots were marked as called on the Call Target and the score of these 10 shots is how I had shot them in the Hit target." I stated.

When I passed around my Shooting Logbook on this 25 yard Revolver Target I pointed out to the members of the Board Directors it was shot with my 44 Caliber Remington Revolver. I asked them to look at the other Shooting Record Book pages on the 25 yard Revolver targets shot before and after the McNeil's Ranger's Skirmish as there is no 25 yard target I shot with a 36 Caliber Revolver.

When I walked out of the Hearing, I told my attorney the only thing I had done was set the stage for a Lawsuit. He tried to disagree with me as he claimed I had clearly defended myself with my spiral bound Shooting Record Book that clearly showed my shooting record was the same as the actual target I had shot at the McNiel's Skirmish.

I told him I hoped he kept good notes, as he would be the only man in that hearing room who really knew what happened and who was willing to talk about it. As expected, I was found guilty and suspended from the NSSA for life. Bucky Malson's attempts to have the NSSA withdraw the approval of all of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's reproduction firearms did not pass.

I had my attorney file a lawsuit to get the 25-Yard Revolver Target and have it examined by an expert. I told him to schedule depositions of the NSSA Board members and Charley Brooks to establish how the NSSA had engineered this cheating charge and my conviction in violation of the NSSA's By Laws to suspend their Shooting Rules.

I was faced with another problem as Harpers Ferry Arms Company had perfected its 1855 Artillery Model and we had delayed presenting it for NSSA's Approval at the January Board Meeting. I wanted to separate my personal problems with the NSSA, as I knew after the Kangaroo court found me guilty they would not even consider approving the reproduction made by my company.

Rather than submitting the 1855 Artillery Model with Harpers Ferry Arms Company's name on it, only the barrel was submitted to the NSSA for approval under the Maryland Company name Chesapeake Classics LLC, as Harpers Ferry Arms Company owned it. As an insurance policy I had a friend on the 6th Wisconsin Infantry who was a gun-maker submit a second barrel made by my factory for the NSSA's approval.

During the Spring Nationals, the NSSA Board of Directors approved both barrels. However, when Val Forgett of Navy Arms Company and Bucky Malson found out I owned Chesapeake Classics LLC the record of the NSSA's approval of the barrel submitted by that company disappeared from the Official Minutes of the NSSA Board of Directors meeting. Efforts by Chesapeake Classics LLC to obtain a copy of the NSSA's Approval of their barrel went unanswered.

Again, I made the decision to separate my personal problems with the NSSA from my gun business interests and keep the focus of my lawsuit on the failure to follow their own Corporate By-laws when they brought the false charges and then illegally suspended the NSSA Shooting Rules to convict me.

The NSSA and their Board of Directors would not realize how Val Forgett, Bucky Malson and the NSSA Small Arms Committee Chairman Dave Bozer had missed used the NSSA and deceived them until I filed a second lawsuit against the NSSA to recover personal and business damages.

In many ways, the lost NSSA approval on the Artillery Model barrel was a repeat of what the NSSA had illegal done to withdraw the approval of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's 1861 Springfields. Only this time I was not going to let the NSSA get away with it and I had the money to fight them.

# 24. PROGRESS IN CAMBODIA IS STALLED BY PRINCE SIHANOUK

Although all the pieces to make the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program work were in place, Prince Sihanouk refused to consider even looking at the Program until I paid him a million dollars. Reverend Cong Chin attempted to deal with Prince Sihanouk by appealing to his responsibilities to help the Cambodian people and rebuild the Country. After their first meeting, Prince Sihanouk refused to talk with Reverend Cong Chin again.

Efforts to deal with Prince Sihanouk's Funcinpec Political Party to gain their support and put pressure on him to approve the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program created a rift between the Political Party and Prince Sihanouk but it did not change his refusal to consider the Program. I knew without Prince Sihanouk in this crazy three-legged government he could block all the other projects VAMCO was working on for Cambodia. I had to believe that things would chance in the Cambodian Government by the time VAMCO was ready to proceed with the Electrical Power Project.

My efforts to get the Canadian Oil Company to become the Managers of Cambodia's gas and oil reserves had progressed to the point they had sent their people to Cambodia to verify the existence of the Gas and Oil Test Wells as reported in the _Times Magazine_ Article.

By this time, Tommy Harris had determined the cost to build the Electronic Power Grid for Cambodia and provide electrical power to every home and business in the country especially to the Iranian Cement Plant and the Sugar Mill I was negotiating with an American Company.

Our estimated income from the sale of electrical power would not cover the annual costs to run the 622 Megawatt Electrical Power Plant and the costs to run each of the Cambodian Province Electrical Power Companies. We needed a 20 million dollar cash reserve, to cover these costs while the income level of each Cambodian increased to a point they could pay a minimum of 50% of the cost to produce the electrical power.

It was hard to estimate the cost to train the Cambodians how to manage their Electrical Power Companies and teach their electricians how to install the electrical wiring and service to the Cambodian customers based on the Electrical Building Codes here in the United States.

We concluded we could teach them the basics but we would still need to hire American managers and electricians to work with them to give them hands on the job experience. With the estimated population of Cambodia close to 10 million people living in nuclear families of 2 or 3 generations, we estimated we would need 2,000 qualified American electricians to hook up the electrical power to them. To accomplish this part of project in two years each of these electricians would need at least two Cambodian helpers to install the electrical power to the Cambodian customers.

When we added the 380 Million dollars to build the 622 Megawatt Power Plant, the 700 Million dollars for the Main Transmission Lines and the Electrical Power Grid and the 900 Million dollars to install the electricity to the customers we were approaching the cash requirements of 2 Billion Dollars.

I should not have been surprised by this two Billion Dollar figure. This was a major project to bring Cambodia into the 20th Century after the Khmer Rouge had almost taken the country back to the Stone Age with their type of primitive and basic Communism.

All the other pieces of the Project had come together and the only thing that remained was if the Canadian Oil Company was able to confirm there was enough Gas and Oil in Cambodia to justify making the commitment to finance the Electrical Power System. While we were waiting for the Canadian Oil Company to finish their investigation of the Cambodia Gas and Oil reserves I had met Hazerit Ali several times on developing the Chicken Business to expand the amount of Halal Chicken sent to Iraq under the United Nation's "Food for Crude" program.

The Prince of Brunei was willing to finance VAMCO's Chicken business but with President Bush, losing the White House to Bill Clinton there was a question President Clinton might not allow the United States to export any food to Iraq.

The only way to test this would be to attempt to export the next 5 metric tons directly from the United States. VAMCO processed the paper work on the 5 metric tons of Halal killed frozen chicken to Iraq and the export license was denied. It took a while to find out why. I was told it was being blocked in the White House and it would take the President's signature to lift the ban. My first thought was President Clinton wanted VAMCO to buy this chicken from his Arkansas political supporter who owned Tyson's Chicken.

Although this may have been a possibility I would later find out this rejection by the White House had more to do with the reason behind a 1993 bribe made by Singapore businessmen to get President Clinton to recognize the country of Vietnam.

Behind this phony smoke screen of the Singapore bribe, was Vietnam's fear that VAMCO was about to create of a nationwide electrical power system making Cambodia the most advanced economic country in Southeast Asia within the next two years. The additional rumors of the International developments of a Cement Plant, a Sugar Mill and rebuilding of Cambodia's Agricultural Base with India's support would be too much of a head start for Vietnam to become the Regional Power it had been promised when it agreed to end the Vietnam War. The proof of Nixon's promises can be found in the official records of the United States.

When President Nixon ended the United States involvement in Vietnam War, he secretly promised the North Vietnamese 3.3 Billion Dollars in economic reconstruction aid to help them rebuild their country and become a World Trading Partner with the western countries. President Nixon had also established economic trade relations with China and signed the first SALT agreement with Russia in the effort to have them influence North Vietnam into accepting the Peace terms to end the War in Vietnam. North Vietnam was already one of the dominate countries in Southeast Asia and this "Peace Payment" would make Vietnam the strongest Regional Economic Power.

However, the Watergate forced President Nixon to resign and he was not able to keep his promises to North Vietnam. North Vietnam felt they had been tricked into ending the War and without this promised economic assistance; there was no reason not to resume the war against South Vietnam and reunite the country under Hanoi's control. North Vietnam easily won the war as the United States refused to consider sending any support to South Vietnam and Siagon fell on April 29, 1975.

Up until this point, the MIA and POW issues had kept the pressure on Congress and the White House not to recognize Vietnam until every American Serviceman was accounted for. Vietnam had tried to assist the United States and even private individuals to locate the remains of Americans who had been killed and buried in remote graves but each new find of an MIA only convinced the American people Vietnam was still hiding and holding the other 2,500 missing and unaccounted American Servicemen.

With such a strong national emotional outcry against Vietnam and their failure to account for all of the MIAs and POWs, President Clinton knew he could not immediately recognize Vietnam even though he took their money. The best President Clinton could do to help Vietnam now was to attempt to delay or stop VAMCO and me from developing Cambodia.

Alex Baldwin had warned me that my efforts to develop Cambodia had made me a target of the Red Chinese. Although I took, Alex's warning seriously, I did not realize how desperate the Red Chinese were to stop me. I now know that the Singapore bribe was small potatoes compared to the millions of dollars the Red Chinese paid to the Clintons in Chinagate scandal.

If President Clinton could stop VAMCO or me from developing Cambodia he would gave himself enough time to pick the right time to recognize Vietnam and claim it was "the right moment to bind up the nation's wounds."

The merits of President Clinton's recognition of Vietnam in July 1995 would not be question until the story of the Singapore bribe hit the news. The full implementation of the formal relations with Vietnam took place in early 1996 and by then President Clinton's efforts to stop VAMCO and me were executed by indicting me in the Excess Tobacco Marketing Scheme.

# 25. THE LYNCHPIN GETS HOOKED TO THE WAGON

Reverend Cong Chin had provided the Canadian Oil Company's Exploration Team with direct access to the Cambodian Gas and Oil Test Wells with copies of all the geological data Cambodia had on these reserves. Although the Canadian Oil Company was satisfied with the results of their findings and they liked the idea of developing and managing Cambodia's Gas and Oil deposits they did not have the cash to pay the advanced royalties VAMCO needed to build the Cambodian Electrical Power System.

The basic problem was the Canadian Oil Company would need most of its ready capital to develop the Cambodian Gas and Oil Deposits. Digging an Oil Well and finding oil did not mean you were suddenly rich. The oil had to be pumped from the Oil Wells, moved to an Oil Refinery and converted to a usable product before it was worth anything.

The situation in Cambodia would require not only digging of the Oil Wells, the Oil Company would need to build a pipeline, a storage tank farm and the port facilities to load the oil tankers that would transport the oil to a Refinery. I could understand the Canadian Oil Company was looking at this proposal as an expensive and high-risk venture that could take years before they could recover their investments.

It would take several trips to Toronto to come up with a workable solution for all the parties involved. My first objective was to show the Canadian Oil Company was not alone in this petroleum development. I presented Shriekon Jane's interest in having his Indian Company of Chanar build a Fertilizer Plant using Cambodia's Gas. I explained my latest efforts to meet one of my early suggestions to Hon Sen and Chia Simm to build an Oil Refinery to meet Cambodia's and the other Southeast Asia's gasoline requirement was now possible. Swami G had used his relationship with Adnan Khasheggi, the Saudi Arabian Arms dealer in Iran Contra scandal to produce his commitment to build an Oil Refinery in Sihanoukville Cambodia.

Although these two business ventures would help the Canadian Oil Company develop the Cambodian petroleum deposits, the total amount of money involved could create some serious cash flow problems if they had to pay VAMCO all these royalties up front. Hazerit Ali could see we both wanted to make this deal work but we needed to work together to find a solution we both could live with.

Hazerit convinced me that VAMCO did not need all the Royalty payments before we began this project, as what I needed was the guarantee VAMCO would be able to pay when the bills became due. Hazerit pointed out to the Canadian Oil Company that they were only thinking as if their cash flow as the overriding factor preventing them from making the deal of the century as their net worth was 10 times the cost of this project.

When Hazerit had our attention, he made the suggestion he could arrange a 5 year two Billion Dollar Line of Credit for VAMCO with the Nova Scotia Bank of Canada if the Oil Company agreed to back it, along with the financial backing of the Prince of Brunei.

This suggestion made sense, as VAMCO would have the money when it needed it and the Oil Company no longer needed to worry about its cash flow. In five years, the Canadian Oil Company would be well on its way to dominating the Southeast Asian oil market and shipping crude oil and gasoline to Japan and China at half the cost of shipping it from Canada. In five years, the cost to pay off the Line of Credit from the Nova Scotia Bank would be hardly notice on their Corporate Balance Sheet. By including the financial backing of the Prince of Brunei, Hazerit was giving the Oil Company confidence they were not in this project alone.

Hazerit explain why the Prince of Brunei was backing this effort. It was to show his appreciation of the idea of VAMCO raising Halal Killed Chicken in the United States, as a means to provide reasonable priced blest food for all the Islamic people in the world. With the conformation of the 2 Billion dollar Line of Credit from the Nova Scotia Bank, VAMCO and the Canadian Oil Company signed an agreement in principal to proceed in the development of Cambodia's gas and oil. Although this arrangement placed VAMCO in the position to meet its commitments to Cambodia, it did not remove the obstacles created by Prince Sihanouk in the Cambodian Government to approve any of VAMCO's projects for the country.

# 26. DEALING BUMPS IN THE ROAD

My Lawsuit with the NSSA allowed me to take depositions of the key individuals who had engineered the false charges against me and use the NSSA Board of Directors to rig the Disciplinary Hearing at the January Board Meeting to find me guilty. I finally established who the Line Judge was who had scored my 25-Yard Revolver Target at the McNiel's Ranger Skirmish. In his videotaped, deposition Mr Rose stated I had only asked him to check my target and he had no problem scoring the 10 shots in the target, as all ten shots were clearly visible on the new cardboard target backer.

I subpoenaed the actual target from the NSSA to have my own expert examine it. He was a Paper Expert used by the FBI in letter bombing cases and he established by the holes made in the paper target there were at least 10 paper breaks in the scoring target made by a 44-caliber bullet.

We were able to establish how Richard Sterns, Earl Coats and Charley Brooks refused to make an official protest of my target to allow Fred Schell the Skirmish Director to rule on the validity of their claim I had cheated. Mr Rose who was the adopted son of the Skirmish Director Fred Schell had already told his stepfather he had no problem scoring the target and there was no valid reason for anyone to protest the scoring of the target.

The Virginia Courts traditionally protect Corporations and the NSSA Directors had a sudden case of Alzheimer's when they testified about their Disciplinary Hearing. The Loudoun County Circuit Court issued a split decision saying the Board had a right to discipline its members yet the NSSA could not have found me guilty of cheating, as there was no evidence of cheating.

I had what I needed to file a second Lawsuit claiming personal damages from the false cheating charge and I added the disappearance of the NSSA's Approval of the 1855 Artillery Model Barrel as submitted by Chesapeake Classics of Maryland as further damages to me and my company.

Based on the depositions for the first NSSA trial I had the evidence of who actually was responsible for creating this false Charge and they were named as Individual defendants and as NSSA Corporate Defendants in my next lawsuit. Most of them had been the original defendants in the Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Lawsuit when the NSSA illegally withdrew its approval of my 1861 Springfield. With the evidence of Navy Arms Company's executed deliberate acts to eliminate fair business competition an Anti-Trust lawsuit should bankrupt Val Forgett.

Although I was pleased with the progress in holding the NSSA and Navy Arms Company accountable, I was not as fortunate with keeping my ASCS Tobacco Dealers Registration. I have already explained how the big Tobacco Companies used the US Department of Agriculture to eliminate the Independent Tobacco Dealers from the Tobacco Auction Market, by creating the ASCS Tobacco Dealers performance bond requirement that was impossible to obtain.

As I did in the past when I ran into a Regulation that created a brick wall, I obtained a copy of that Regulation in the attempt to understand and deal with it. The only problem was my ASCS Officer did not have a copy of this new Regulation and he was acting on verbal orders from Washington. My efforts to obtain a copy of this Regulation from the US Department of Agriculture in Washington became another brick wall as no one seemed to understand what I was looking for. Even the US Government Printing Office who is responsible for printing all Government Regulations did not have a copy, as the Regulation did not exist.

I appealed the denial of my Tobacco Dealers Registration based on a nonexistent Regulation. During the Hearing without admitting the Government was in error, I was told I should make an application next year but nothing was done to restore my Tobacco Dealers Registration this year. When I question this continued denial of my Tobacco Dealers Registration they claimed the Tobacco Auction Market was now closed as if that was the only reason I had for getting my Tobacco Dealers Registration. I raised the issue that VAMCO was bidding on bulk overseas tobacco Contracts and I needed my Tobacco Dealers Registration. The Hearing Officer stated he would consider it, when they issued their final written decision. If this written decision was ever issued I never received a copy. My application to renew my Tobacco Dealers Registration the next year was again denied and no reason was given.

I knew Jim Brake was upset about our being denied the opportunity to participate in the Tobacco Auction Market as he was a highly competitive man who had to be involved in something that dominated his every waking moment or he would retreat into a bottle. Jim was always a heavy drinker but every time I saw him now he was drunk or well on the way to being drunk as if he had a deeper problem he could not tell me about.

The source of Jim's problem could be anything. Although Jim normally displayed a public boisterous personality, he had a private nature. Until Jim was ready to talk about it, I was wasting my time trying to help him.

# 27. WHEN MONEY IS NOT WORTH LOSING A FRIENDSHIP

I must admit I had my hands full formalizing all the agreements I had made to accomplish all the Programs and Projects I had started since my first trip to Cambodia. What I did not expect was A R Dixon claiming Jim Brake had stolen money out of the NASCAR Collectable Car Business. He wanted me to buy him out of that deal, as he could no longer trust Jim Brake. This did not sound like the Jim Brake I knew and I told A R Dixon I would find out what happened.

My phone call to Jim brought out his confession that the man, who knew how to run this business thought he had a heart attack, took 250,000 dollars and he had skipped town several months ago. Since the man left, the business fell apart. The Orders were screwed up, shipments were not made and the new merchandize had not been ordered from South Korea.

I told Jim, A R Dixon was so mad he wanted me to buy him out of the Collectable NASCAR Business as he was blaming me for misleading him into a business with people who could not be trusted. There was no point in discussing this any further over the telephone, as I needed to know just how bad this situation really was. I told Jim to do a physical inventory and have the A R Dixon International Development Company's Books available when I flew down tomorrow morning.

I must have put the fear of God into Jim as he sent a driver to pick me up at the Concord Airport, which was the closest small Airport to the Charlotte Speed Way. When I arrived at the Speedway Collectable Store and warehouse Jim and the staff had been doing inventory since yesterday after I had called.

I had the Bookkeeper run the numbers on what we had received from South Korea while the assistant Bookkeeper did the total sales and accounts receivables. If those numbers were accurate, Jim inventory should match what was being carried on the company's books.

I went to the Company's Bank and got a complete run of all deposits, cash withdrawals and checks written for the last two years. What I was looking for were checks that were not in the company files, large cash withdrawals and checks written out of sequence just as I did when I worked for Mr Green to prove his Secretary was running her husband's money through his books.

Back then, the checks written out of sequence usually came from the back of the last series of checks issued by the Bank. The Secretary who opened the mail held that check until the Bookkeeper ran that company's account through the computer in Atlanta. By than the Secretary had used the out of sequence check to removed the money from that Company's Account they were running through Mr Green's Books and the account would be in balance again.

Here I was not looking for the attempt to balance the account but things that looked like a simple error such as a "9" that should have been a "1" or "7" and an "8" that should have been a "6","5" or a "3." A Bookkeeping Clerk might just correct the number in the account ledger believing she had found the error without verifying what that number really should have been as written on the check stub and on the check itself. This difference in the value of the numbers could add up to thousands of dollars in a month's time.

The first indication I was right, was the fact the canceled checks were not attached to their check stubs in the checkbook. Since I was not sure who might be involved in this scam I could not let one of the clerk's reattach these checks. As I taped the canceled checks to their check stubs, I would paperclip the checks that did not match the amount written on their check stubs. I found most of the checks written to the NASCAR Drivers for their Royalty payments were involved. All the other checks for Royalties, payroll, payment of merchandise and utilities were accurately recorded on the checks and the check stubs.

When I totaled all the paper-clipped checks' I found a difference of over 250 Thousand Dollars from what was written on the checks. If this was the method used to skim money out of the company, how did the crook get his hands on the money? I went back to look at the Royalty checks I had not paper clipped and these checks totaled over 250 Thousand dollars. Although there were different names on these checks, when I looked at the backs of these checks, they were all deposited in the same three accounts and Jim Brake's friend had been the only one who signed all the Royalty checks and made the false entries on the check stubs. This and the 250 Thousand Dollars he had taken when he left the company was over a half a million dollars. To prove I was right none of the NASCAR Driver's names on correctly written checks were on the list as one of our Collectable Car drivers. By the end of a long day, the Bookkeepers had totaled the purchases, the sales and the accounts receivables to establish what the physical inventory should be.

However the physical inventory was short over 50 Thousand Dollars, which meant someone else was stealing from the Company or the merchandise was shoplifted from the store. When I showed Jim what I had found in the checkbook and the amount of missing inventory he was shocked and speechless.

_It is never easy to separate your feelings and deal with the loss of money when a trusted friend is involved. I knew if I did not deal with this correctly, I would lose the money and a friend. Money can always be replaced but the loss of a good friend can never be replaced. The best way to handle this situation would be to have Jim offer his solution and if what he offered was fair, I would take his solution without offering a counter proposal_ _._

"All right Jim, you know A R Dixon wants me to buy him out of the Company and from what we have found out, he has every reason to expect me to do it. When I buy out A R Dixon can we still save the company and make it work?" I asked him. When he did not answer, I told him to think about it and I suggested we get something to eat.

This was the first time we had gone out to eat where Jim did not have a drink. We talked about "old times" when we shot together on the 5th Virginia Cavalry and when we lived together in Hickory North Carolina. Rather than drive to Jim's place we decided to get a hotel room and stay in town. Sometime during the early morning hours, Jim got up and left the hotel room letting me sleep. Jim was always an early morning riser while I was never an early morning person. It was 9 o'clock when Jim came back to wake me and after I had a shower we went to breakfast.

By this time, Jim had an answer to my question about the Company being able to survive after I paid A R Dixon off. I had hoped Jim would have come up with someone we could hire to replace Jim's friend and continue operating the business. However unlike the Jim I thought I knew who was never a quitter, he told me he would give me all the inventory and sign a note for the missing half million dollars. He also told me of a Dealer in Charleston South Carolina who would buy the inventory if I wanted to sell it.

I had to accept Jim's solution to close down the Company, as I did not have an alternative. I sold the inventory and arranged to have it shipped to South Carolina. I asked Jim to sell all the equipment in the store, collect the Accounts Receivables and pay off the employees.

I had the money from the sale of the inventory wire transferred to A R Dixon's International Bank Account and then I called him to find out how much money I still owed him. Having received over 738 Thousand Dollars from the sale of the inventory and A R Dixon suggested he would call it even if I gave him the 1% share VAMCO had in the Phuket Island project and he would give me the Note he held on Berclair Plantation. As far as I was concerned, this deal would be an even swap of assets and it would not be a Taxable Income until VAMCO sold Berclair Plantation. Having cleared A R Dixon International Development Corporation of its assets I would file the final State and Federal Income Tax returns and let the North Carolina Company go dormant.

# 28. WHEN SAINT PETER CALLS

Carol's father Richard Harringshaw, who had worked himself up from an after school Bagboy to a Corporate Regional Treasurer of the A&P Tea Company was forced to resign after more than 30 years. Carol and her mother were concern he would not know what to do with himself. He surprised us all, when he polished up his Resume and found a position with Blue and White Trucking as their Comptroller at a higher salary then he had with the A&P Tea Company.

He worked another 10 years and then retired in Indianapolis. In the spring of 1994, Carol's mother passed away. Richard started to deteriorate fast and Carol was flying back and forth to Indianapolis every week to take care of him. In spite of the fact, Carol was a workaholic, these trips were wearing her down and she came to me wondering what she should do.

I suggested we convince her father to move into the 200-year old Plantation's Schoolhouse on Berclair. The schoolhouse was a comfortable two-bedroom cottage we had rented out to a woman, who had kept her horse at Berclair until she was transferred by her employer to Chicago a month ago.

Carol had the Farm's help clean up the schoolhouse and repaint it before she used the Company's Video Camera to film the inside and outside of the school house and send it to her father. When we called him and told him we wanted to take care of him, but it was becoming difficult for Carol to keep traveling back and forth to Indianapolis, we suggested that he come live with us.

Before he asked, I told him we would hire a moving company and move all his belongings into the schoolhouse where he would be close by, yet he would still have his independence. When he agreed, I suggested he put his house up for sale and we would fly out to Indianapolis to supervise the Movers before I drove his Van back to Virginia.

Carol and her father flew back to Virginia and he stayed in our guest room until his household goods were put in the schoolhouse where he wanted them. I parked his Van next to his bedroom window where he could look out and see it anytime even though he never drove it again.

We bought him an electric golf cart where he could put his oxygen bottle in the holder I had built for it. It did not take him very long before he was driving his golf cart all over the Plantation and experienced a new found freedom he thought he had lost. He assumed the duty of getting the mail from the mailbox located down the half-mile long driveway at Harrison Road. He loved to drive the golf cart out into the horse pastures and have the young horses come up to him in his golf cart so he could pet them. Before long, he knew all their names and he insisted Carol allow him to pay for the carrots he wanted to feed them.

One night when I was over to the schoolhouse playing a game of Chess with him, he asked me what I did with the boards that were laying on the floor of his garage in Indianapolis. Something told me he would ask about those boards and I made sure the Movers did not leave them behind. When I told him, I put the boards in the Carriage House, which he knew was my workshop he seemed satisfied that I had not left anything behind in his house.

When Carol took her father to one of the best Doctors in Fredericksburg to transfer his medical records and establish a medical relationship with him, we found out how frail her father really was. Based on his height and weight the doctor told us, Richard's bone density amounted to a thin shell that could easily break if he experienced the slightest bruise.

During the six-months Richard lived in the schoolhouse, Carol was able to establish a closer relationship with her dad she never had been able to achieve before. The more he learned about VAMCO and how well Carol as the Director of Vocational Rehabilitation was running a multi-million dollar company he was amazed by what a good businesswoman she had become.

His previous opinion of his helpless blind daughter was shattered when he saw her working the young horses in the round pen or riding one of the horses as if she could see where she was going. When he asked, Carol how she could do that she simply told him the horse does not know I am blind and they are not going to run into anything they can see.

I always respected Richard's business opinions and I would discuss my frustration to get the Projects started in Cambodia. He marveled at what I had accomplished since I had gone to Cambodia to sell cigarettes.

When he asked how I had learned how to do all this, I told him about my military experience commanding seven Army Units. Then when I formed Harpers Ferry Arms Company, I had traveled the world to find products I sold to the Civil War and Revolutionary War shooters and Bicentennial Reenactment groups. I went on to explain how I had formed James River Imports and Development Corporation to find overseas manufactures for companies who were looking to import products into the United States. However, I claimed I had earned my PhD in high-level finance when I worked with Mr Green.

After I had told him about all this, I knew he would ask Carol if what I did was true. She told him it was and she told him how I had used my airplane to handle injured workers claims for Insurance Companies and how this had developed into VAMCO managing the Vocational Division of American Rehabilitation. When she told her father how we had gotten into the horse business and how successful this business was, he laughed and told her he would not own a business asset that eats while he slept.

After I knew Reverend Cong Chin had approached Prince Sihanouk with his share as a silent partner in Reverend Cong Chin's agreement with VAMCO and he had turned it down, I did not know what to do. I went back to India to develop a strategy with Shriekon and Swami G to obtain Prince Sihanouk's approval of the Cambodia Veterans Rehabilitation Program and allow the Cambodian Government to apply for the Asian Development Bank's loan. They were as frustrated as I was in the attempt to get Prince Sihanouk to act for the good of the Cambodian people.

What they came up with was the Indian Government would send a "gift" of 500 Metric Tons of rice to the leaders of the Cambodian Government to help feed the Cambodian People, as there had been another crop failure that year. I argued against the idea as I could see Prince Sihanouk selling this rice for his personal profit and then acting as if it did not happen. However if this "gift" was the way things were done in the Orient and if Prince Sihanouk approved the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program it was worth it.

Reverend Cong Chin went to Cambodia to deliver the rice and arrange the invitation for Swami G, Shriekon and myself to come to Cambodia and obtain the formal approval of the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program. We waited a month but the invitation from Prince Sihanouk never came. Although no one said it, Prince Sihanouk had again committed an unpardonable sin of accepting the "gift" and then failed to honor the reason why it was given.

All the way back home to Virginia I had the feeling I had wasted my time and money putting this all together for nothing. If I had not tried to sell cigarettes in Cambodia and run my mouth, about solutions to help the Cambodian people I would not have become involved in a country with an impossible government and a selfish leader who cared less about his people than I did. I reminded myself that I had already determined a government with two heads and a tail that could wag the dog was doomed to failure.

By the time I got home, Reverend Cong Chin had called VAMCO's office several times leaving the message to call him immediately. When I called him, he told me not to give up on Cambodia and give Hon Sen and Chia Simm a chance to improve the situation in their country.

Carol's father had enjoyed Thanksgiving at Berclair Plantation as Carol had cooked a great big turkey with all the trimmings. The Main House had been filled with all the men who worked at Berclair and their families for Thanksgiving dinner along with several of our friends Carol had invited.

Under the circumstances of what did not happen in Cambodia, I was sorry I had missed the Thanksgiving dinner. By the time I came home, Carol's Father had become bedridden and Carol had hired a full time nurse to come in to take care of him. As he continued to decline, we kept our promise not to send him to a hospital or a Nursing Home. The doctor agreed he was getting better care at home with a full time nurse than the care he would get in a hospital.

Richard was not in any pain but his body was just worn out. He was at peace with himself and he was ready to die. He gave me his gold watch and asked me to take care of his daughter the night he died in his sleep. He had already made his funeral plans to be cremated and he had asked to have his ashes spread over his wife's grave in Indianapolis. Carol was his only heir and his estate was settled in January leaving her everything.

# 29. TAKING A MAJOR STEP IN THE HORSE BUSINESS

Once our January due broodmares delivered their foals and I had taken them to be rebred to selected top stallions we would have a week before our next broodmares were due to have their foals. We flew to Indianapolis to fulfill her father's wish before we flew on to the Dallas Fort Worth Airport where we rented a car to look at a broodmare Carol wanted to buy.

The owner had claimed the broodmare was a daughter of the AQHA's all time leading Stallion, Impressive. His off spring dominated the Halter Classes around the country and many of them had become World Champions. He also claimed the horse had an excellent Horse Show career before producing outstanding foals. A mare of this caliber would be extremely valuable and worth owning in VAMCO's Horse Breading Business.

I was not impressed with the look of the owner's rundown farm and I was disappointed in the look of this broodmare as it lacked the conformation of a quality Halter Class Show horse. Rather than wasting any time examining the horse I asked the owner to see the AQHA Registration on the horse. The owner reluctantly produced the AQHA's Registration on the broodmare and it was not a daughter of Impressive the owner claimed when he convinced Carol to fly out to see the horse.

According to the AQHA's Registration this mare was the great granddaughter of Impressive. Using the AQHA's Registration number I called the AQHA on my cell phone and asked for the mare's Horse Show and Foal Production record. The mare had not won any AQHA Show points and the only foal listed did not have any AQHA Show points.

When I asked the man what he hoped to achieve by lying to us, he laughed saying so you might buy something else. I never expected to see Carol explode as quickly as she did.

"You won't think it is so funny when I send you a bill for flying out here and if you don't pay it I will take out a full page ad in the Quarter Horse Journal to let people know what a fraud you are. I also hope you try to sue me and maybe I will get some real money out of you." The way she said it made a believer out of him and he wrote her a check for the price of our airline tickets.

Since we were already in Texas, I suggested we contact some of the big AQHA horse farms in the area and maybe we could find another broodmare worth buying. We called Carol Rose who owned the 4-time AQHA World Champion Stallion Diversified. She remembered us as buying several broodmares bread to Diversified at the World Horse Show Sale and she invited us to see her horses. There were several other big named AQHA Stallion owners, who welcomed our visit to their farms. However, the broodmares they were willing to sell would have cost a king's ransom to buy.

There was a young Stallion named Coosa Lad I had been following since he broke into the top 10 on the AQHA Leading Stallion List along with his AQHA Leading Stallion father Coosa. We took a chance of just stopping in to see Coosa Lad.

When Coosa Lad came out of the barn, he took my breath away. I was surprised when the owner dropped the lead rope to the ground and Coosa Lad just stood there looking at me as I approach him. Carol snapped a picture of that moment when I swear Coosa Lad formally introduced himself as if we both knew we would be together in Virginia.

I had the pleasure of seeing Secretariat, the greatest horse in modern history at the 99th running of the Kentucky Derby. When Secretariat walked past me on the way to the starting gate before winning the Derby in record-breaking time, I saw a regal look of confidence this horse had in his eye and Coosa Lad had that same look of confidence in his eye.

We were impressed with the easy-going temperament of the foals out of Coosa Lad, who were just as calm as our baby horses we had desensitized immediately after they were born. After we confirmed they did not desensitized their foals and all Coosa Lad's foals were naturally this calm I had to wonder what the foals would be like if we desensitized them. When I looked over towards Carol, I knew she was thinking the same thing. We had to breed some of our mares to this stallion or buy a broodmare already bread to Coosa Lad.

As fate would have it, they had an outstanding Winchester Broodmare who was safe in foal to Coosa Lad and we bought her. The wife of the husband who was a co-owner of Coosa Lad tried to sell us a good-looking young stallion out of Coosa Lad. However, we had already learned the mistake of buying an unproven young stallion when we dealt with the horse farmer where we had first boarded our horses.

When the wife could not sell the young stallion, she asked if there was anything else she could sell us, and I told her Coosa Lad.

"You are serious aren't you?" She asked.

"I sure am. What do you want for him?" I responded.

When she named a price, I countered it and when she said split the difference, I said sold. She immediately called out to her husband and told him she thought she just sold Coosa Lad. We spent a day and a half discussing why this would be a good deal for everyone. The turning point in the deal was when Carol and I called Mike Hay who was a young AQHA Judge we knew in Virginia.

The owners of Coosa Lad knew Mike had an outstanding reputation in the horse business and when he agreed to stand Coosa Lad for breeding for us the deal was made. When we left Texas Carol had wrote a check as a deposit on the contract sale of Coosa Lad and the balance was due when Coosa Lad was delivered in Virginia before the 1st of April.

This would give the former owners of Coosa Lad time to finish the breedings they still had under contract. They would ship cooled semen to us in Virginia to breed our mares that were ready to be bread after having their foals. The Husband agreed to deliver Coosa Lad to the Cloud Croft Farm north of Lynchburg Virginia and train Mike how to handle Coosa Lad during breeding. Mike sold over 50 breedings on just his word to a stallion he could not name until the horse arrived at Cloud Croft. We had the owners of Coosa Lad donate a breeding to the Virginia Breeder's futurity and we paid for it.

The news of Coosa Lad's arrival at Cloud Croft spread like wild fire and we picked up 30 more breeding contracts to match the number of breedings Coosa Lad had in Texas that year. Coosa Lad was a major financial asset that had to be managed to the best Tax advantage.

After we obtained the best legal advice on the Tax advantages of owning Coosa Lad it was decided to register Coosa Lad only in Carol's name. Since Carol used her inherited money from her father to buy the horse that would make it a clean deal for tax purposes. Carol would lease Coosa Lad to VAMCO who would profit from the breeding fees and would be responsible for his care, feeding, advertizing campaign and the breeding fees paid to Mike Hay.

Once the breeding season was over, we explored the possibility of moving Coosa Lad to Berclair Plantation. However, because of the cost of Liability Insurance to have a stallion at Berclair and the need to build Mare Care facilities to house outside broodmares the numbers did not add up to a good business decision. The fact the Virginia Highway Department's Fescue Grass had over seeded into our pastures and this grass would kill foals if the broodmare were not given a special medication it was too much of a liability to bring outside broodmares to Berclair Plantation.

Faced with these problems we had to move to a new farm if we wanted to keep our stallion Coosa Lad and our broodmares on the same farm. Our efforts to find a new farm in the Fredericksburg area had not been successful and the only reason we were looking for a new horse farm here, was Carol managed the Vocational Rehabilitation Division of American Rehabilitation.

When Carol said she wanted to retire and spend more time enjoying the horses, she removed the need to remain in the Fredericksburg Area. She talked to the owner of American Rehabilitation about selling the Vocational Rehabilitation Division. Carol agreed to train her replacement to take over before she retired on a date that was left open pending the purchase of a new horse farm.

We came to the business conclusion the ideal location for our new horse farm would be close to the Virginia Horse Center in Lexington Virginia where 90% of all the Virginia American Quarter Horse Association's horse shows were held. If we had our horse farm within a reasonable driving distance of the Virginia Horse Center, we would attract a larger number of AQHA horse owners who may want to breed their mare to Coosa Lad. Coosa Lad would be the only AQHA Leading Stallion east of the Mississippi River and north of the state of Florida. Having easy access to see an AQHA Leading Stallion would also attract buyers who were looking for Coosa Lad horses that were old enough to show in the AQHA Horse shows.

Although we sold most of our foals when they were weaned there was no reason we could not sell other people's Coosa Lad horses for them. This was good business for everyone, as we needed Coosa Lad horses to be shown to keep him on the Leading Sires List and the sellers knew if the buyer's were impressed by the looks of Coosa Lad; it would help sell their Coosa Lad Horse.

We talked with Nick Calamos about finding a new farm in Lexington Virginia but he felt it was too far away for him to help us. He gave us the name of a Realtor in Lexington who he knew and trusted. Now when we went to see Coosa Lad at Cloud Croft in Lynchburg we also looked at possible horse farms near Lexington Virginia. We even tried to buy Cloud Croft but it was not for sale at any price.

# 30. NEW LIFE TO THE PROJECTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA.

Although Henry Ping had made some progress on establishing Friendship City in Laos, he was unable to obtain a permanent commitment from the Laotian Government to allow the Hong Kong businessmen to own the investments they were willing to make for more than 20 years. Vong was doing the best he could to convince the Laotian Government that they were unreasonable to expect anyone to spend millions of dollars to develop a major business center like Hong Kong and then just give it to Laos for nothing.

The building of the first Laotian Hydroelectric Dam had gone nowhere for the same reason as the Laotian Government refused to consider the permanent private ownership of the electrical power system. The German Aluminum Company who had made the sample aluminum arrows for me in 1978 was willing to come into Laos to develop the Bauxite Deposits and help build the Hydroelectric Dam. The German Company had tested the Laotian Bauxite deposits and they were willing to pay the Laotian Government a generous royalty based on the world prices for every ton of Bauxite they made into aluminum.

The negotiations to obtain the permanent private ownership of the Aluminum Plant were stalled with the mistaken belief Laos should be able to develop this Bauxite themselves and keep all the profits after the aluminum would just magically appear in their Communist Society. I had the belief that China was behind the misleading of their fellow Communist Nation as a means to insure western companies would not gain a foothold in Southeast Asia.

Just when I thought the development of Cambodia was dead, VAMCO was asked to make a presentation on the Cambodian Electrical Power Project to the newly appointed Cambodian Ambassador to the United States. Hazerit Ali and the son of the Canadian Oil Company came to present the financial support for the Project. George Johnson and Jack Haggerty of the Baltimore Construction Company who would build the 622 Megawatt Gas Power Electrical Plant made their presentations. They confirmed they were ready to proceed and they would have it built within 2 years.

Tommy Harris who would build the transmission lines, the electrical power grid and the Province Electric Power Companies made his detailed presentation and I videoed taped them all so I could send the tapes to Reverend Cong Chin who would take them to the leaders of Cambodia.

Swami G and Shriekon came to Berclair Plantation to discuss the new developments in Cambodia and we held a party for them under the pool house shelter. We invited Congressmen, State and local government officials along with key businessmen and senior Bankers from Washington, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina I worked with in VAMCO's ventures. The local dignitaries and horse people from Fredericksburg produced a sizable party of over a hundred guests. I even had Mike Hay bring Coosa Lad to Berclair as Swami G had heard so much about him and all his champion offspring that Swami G wanted to bless him to improve his breeding capabilities.

The blessing itself was unusual as Swami G could not touch the horse. Swami G put his hand on shoulder of a lower ranking Hindu Maharishi who put his hand on Coosa Lad and Swami G's blessing passed through the Maharishi onto Coosa Lad. Coosa Lad in all his glory just calmly stood there enjoying all the attention as the local photographer I hired memorialized the occasion.

The news media caught wind of this party and I had the men who worked at Berclair Plantation stationed at the driveway from Harrison Road to stop anyone who did not have an invitation. Once Swami G's personal bodyguards saw how I had set up the security at the Plantation, they withdrew to the Boxwood Bushes surrounding the core of the plantation. They set up their own men with automatic weapons as a ring of security for Swami G and out of sight of the guests. The Spotsylvania County Sheriff added one of his patrol car's with four Deputy Sheriffs at the end of Berclair's driveway to deal with anyone who tried to crash the party.

I made sure my people wrote down the license plate numbers of anyone who drove by the driveway more than once. When the Sheriff ran, the license plate numbers through the police computer there were a surprising number of cars belonging to one or more Agencies of the Federal Government. When I tried to reach Alex Baldwin to find out who these Federal Agents were, I was told he no longer worked in that department. They had no forwarding phone number and they only took my phone number when I insisted I needed to reach him.

After I hung up the phone, I felt a sudden chill as I realized Alex had been the previous President's man and after the election of President Clinton, the need for Alex's relationship with me to help VAMCO's projects in Cambodia had been eliminated. I often wondered why Ross Parot thought he should run for the Presidency and be a spoiler for George Bush's reelection, as surely he knew he could not win.

Now that Clinton was elected, I thought since Clinton had been a draft dodger during the Vietnam War and that Anti War attitude towards the United States involvement in Southeast Asia may have influenced his opinion as to the importance of the United States helping Cambodia rebuild its country. My belief in President Clinton's reasons for his lack of interest in helping Southeast Asia rebuild would change when President Clinton recognized Communist Vietnam and especially after the Singapore bribe to President Clinton became known. It had nothing to do with helping Southeast Asia rebuild only which country in Southeast Asia would be allow to become the dominate power there.

The situation in Cambodia to get Prince Sihanouk to agree to allow the Cambodia Government to approve the Cambodian Veteran's Rehabilitation Program did not improve and VAMCO's efforts to proceed with the Electrical Power Development in Cambodia had gone nowhere. Although I believed, the growing costs to negotiate and develop all these Cambodian Projects would eventually pay off, they had not produced any income and the way things were going, I could not predict when these projects would start to make a return on VAMCO's investments. Fortunately, all the other ventures I had started with Shriekon continued to make money with very little effort on my part.

About that time there was an opportunity to buy a hundred acres at two thousand dollars an acre located next to the Goldsboro Subdivision VAMCO owned. It would take another 100 thousand dollars to bring in all the utilities and pave the roads. We were already selling lots in the other Subdivision for 10 thousand dollars for a third of an acre and this parcel of land would produce 300 building lots that would be a handsome return on the investment.

Once A R Dixon had traded his interests in Berclair for VAMCO's interests in the Phuket Island development I had arrange for a half million dollar Line of Credit on the front pastures of Berclair which I had used from time to time to purchase items for export. The Bank had given me a reasonable rate of interest on the outstanding balance in the line of Credit account I paid off after each International transaction was completed.

When I discussed this land development opportunity with Carol and using VAMCO's Line of Credit, she did not have a problem in VAMCO doing it. She wanted to use part of that Line of Credit to pay for Coosa Lad's advertising campaign and promotional activities.

When I flew down to Goldsboro to close the subdivision deal, the land survey of the parcel indicated there was 25 more acres of land than we originally thought and this increased VAMCO's investment to 250 thousand dollars.

Willy Strickland wanted to keep this development separate from the other subdivision. He had a dormant Corporation called Strickland Auction Company. He suggested we could use it rather than form a new company and I did not see any reason not to use this company. VAMCO's investment was secured by holding the first deed of trust on the property and once VAMCO recovered its investment Willy and VAMCO would be equal partners as he would be managing the sale of the building lots and doing all the work to put in the utilities and roads to develop this Subdivision.

# 31. A RED FLAG IN THE TOBACCO AUCTION BUSINESS.

Jim Brake made an unexpected visit to Berclair. He came to tell me he had taken a Plea Bargain for the Federal Crime of Structuring. He was guilty of this crime as he failed to file US Currency Transaction Forms when he cashed out tobacco checks for more than 10 thousand dollars in a single Banking day.

I knew Jim had been doing this when I first got into the Tobacco Auction Market. After I explained the possible consequences of him doing this, I became the Tobacco seller at my Tobacco Warehouses and used the Federal Currency forms to cash the Warehouse checks to produce the money Jim used to buy more tobacco that I resold. I knew Jim was still selling tobacco at the Warehouse he had been in and I had assumed he was legally cashing his tobacco checks as I did. What I did not know was how many Tobacco Warehouses Jim was doing business with until the ASCS denied his Tobacco Dealers Registration. It was then that I realized we became the largest independent Tobacco Dealers in the Tobacco Auction Market. We had become a threat to how the big Tobacco Companies controlled the Tobacco Auction Market and I understood why they had used the USDA and the ASCS none existing regulations to keep VAMCO out of the tobacco market.

Jim went on to explain his Plea Bargain would not affect me as he had only cashed these checks before I joined him in the Tobacco Auction Market. He had almost convinced me until he told me he had to admit he had created 14 million "air pounds" of tobacco to get his Plea Bargain as he was facing 5 years for each Structuring violation.

This was the first time I had heard the phrase "air pounds." Jim explained "air pounds" were the phony amount of tobacco the "dead card" Tobacco Dealers penciled in his tobacco books, to sell the farmers "excess tobacco." Excess Tobacco is the amount of tobacco grown by a farmer over his authorized tobacco allotment issued by the ASCS.

When I pressed Jim to learn more about the "dead card Tobacco Dealers" who sold these "air pounds" that was the "excess tobacco," he told me it was better if I did not know. When someone tells me, I do not need to know something I would find out why I did not need to know about it. When I asked Jim if he really sold these "14 million air pounds," he denied it and then he told me, this was the only way he could get his Plea Bargain.

Jim did not want to say for dinner or meet Carol before he left Berclair Plantation. I had the feeling he was lying about something or not willing to tell me the whole truth. I began to wonder how long Jim had been worrying about this, before he decided to tell me what was bothering him.

I thought back to the problem with the NASCAR Collectables and how long that went on, before A R Dixon called me and demanded I buy him out of that business. However, I had felt Jim had a problem he did not want to talk to me about even before that and it was about the time the ASCS had used the phony regulations to deny my application to renew my Tobacco Dealers Registration.

I did not know who to ask about these "air pounds" or how these "air pounds" were used to sell the farmers "excess" tobacco. When in doubt I knew I needed go to the source or the experts in the Tobacco Auction Market. I called my ASCS Agent in Richmond but I was told he had retired and moved out of the State.

It took several more phone calls before I learned the US District Court in the Eastern District of North Carolina located in Raleigh North Carolina was the jurisdiction of the US Attorney who was handling the Tobacco fraud Cases. I called The _Raleigh News and Observer_ and asked for any recent articles on Tobacco Cases in the US District Court in the Eastern District of North Carolina. I had the News Paper Fax several articles to me. I did not recognize the names of any of the people listed in these News Paper Articles. The only thing I could get out of the articles was the name of the US Attorney and the Special Investigator involved in the cases. If anyone could tell me about this excess tobacco these people should know.

I knew if I planned to meet with the US Attorney I needed to take an attorney with me. I had talked to several referrals and selected the attorney who claimed his family had run a Tobacco Warehouse. I told him what I wanted to do and we agreed to a fee. He made an appointment for me to see the US Attorney. I flew into Raleigh-Durham Airport. He picked me up at the General Aviation Terminal and took me to our meeting at the Federal Building in down town Raleigh.

After my attorney established the reason for this meeting I introduced myself and told the US Attorney and his Special Agent I had received some disturbing news from a man I had done business with in the Tobacco Market. I had come here to learn more about the things he told me. I explain I wanted to know about "air pounds" and how they were used to sell a tobacco farmer's "excess" tobacco.

Special Agent Ed Dayo presented graphs and charts showing how "Dead Card Dealer's" would create "air pounds" in his Tobacco Books and sell them to other Tobacco Dealers for 25 cents a pound. Than that Tobacco Dealer, would take these "air pounds" to the Warehousemen who would marry up the "excess" tobacco the Tobacco Farmer had.

When the tobacco was sold the Tobacco Dealer and the Warehouseman would go to the Bank and cash the Warehouse Checks. The Tobacco Dealer would take 80 cents a pound, the Warehouseman would take 10 cents a pound and give the rest of the cash to the Farmer.

Agent Dayo then told me after the Tobacco Auction Market had closed these "Dead Card Dealers" would disappear. The Tobacco Books of the Tobacco Dealers who sold this excess tobacco always came up missing and they never filed their required Weekly Sales Reports. During Special Agent Ed Dayo's presentation, I recognized him as the Agent who had interviewed me after my first year in the Tobacco Auction Market and I had not seen him since.

When I asked Special Agent Ed Dayo if this was the only way this excess tobacco scheme could operated, he assured me it was. I told him I was relieved as my experience in the Tobacco Auction Market was nothing like the procedures he had outlined. I also told him I had all my Tobacco Books, filed my Weekly Sales Reports to the ASCS Office in Richmond and paid my Taxes on every pound of Tobacco I sold.

"Oh sure you did. If you come clean now we will offer you a Plea Bargain of less than 5 years in Prison and most likely take everything you own." The US Attorney stated.

"Are you serious? This does not sound like any bargain to me. I came here to get information and since you do not have any Tobacco Dealers records, I am willing to show you all my Tobacco Books and records on everyone I dealt with if that will help you." I told them and they just looked at each other. "Thank you for your time and the information, gentlemen. My offer to share the information in all my Tobacco Books and records is still open if you want them." I said as I got up and left the room with my attorney.

We talked as my attorney drove me to the Airport. I asked him if he could add anything more to what we were told in the meeting. When he could not, I asked him to make a Memo for Record of our meeting with the US Attorney and Special Agent Ed Dayo and send me a copy. I also asked him to send a letter to the US Attorney restating my offer to cooperate with his Investigation and provide copies of any records or documents I had.

# 32. GOOD NEWS, PLOTS AND DANGERS

When I got home, there was a message from Reverend Cong Chin and Hazerit Ali. I called Hazerit first as he was in the same time zone and I would have 4 hours to call Reverend Cong Chin before he left his office. Hazerit had good news as the Prince of Brunei was on board for developing the Halal Killed Chicken Business in the United States. The objective was to start with 40 Metric Tons a month of frozen Halal Killed Chicken to Iraq and build up to 240 Metric Tons a month within one year. I did not see any problem meeting this monthly 240-Ton quota with all the lead time he had given VAMCO to build this complete chicken business. I suggested we buy as much Halal Killed Chicken as we could while we were building our processing plant and establishing our Chicken Growers. He liked the Idea and VAMCO applied for the US Export Permits.

When I reached Reverend Cong Chin, he told me he needed to talk with me face to face, as he did not trust talking over the phone or even communicating by Fax. He asked me to meet him as soon as I could. He told me not to fly out of National or Dallies Airports but to fly myself to another city. When I landed there, I should call him and he would tell me where to meet him. I wondered what prompted all this "cloak and dagger" stuff but I agreed to do as he asked.

Not sure where I would be flying to, I flew to Kennedy Airport in New York as it would have the greatest number of flights to anywhere in the United States. When I left Shannon Airport in Fredericksburg, I understood Reverend Cong Chin did not want me to leave a trail anyone could follow, so I did not file a Fight Plan.

It took me less than 2 hours to fly to New York and when my airplane was tied down at the General Aviation Terminal, I called Reverend Cong Chin on my cell phone. He said one word "Minneapolis" and hung up. I went to the Passenger Terminal and I booked a direct Flight to Minneapolis and called Reverend Cong Chin back on my Cell Phone. I just said the Flight number and just as he had done, I hung up after I said it.

When I arrived at the Minneapolis Airport, an attractive well-dressed young woman approached me and kissed me on the cheek. "Please follow me." She whispered and took my hand. She took me out of the Passenger Terminal to a waiting black Mercedes sedan that took us to a downtown Hotel. Once I had registered at the Front Desk and had my room key, the young woman wrote the room number down, said good-bye and walked out of the hotel using the side street entrance.

Ten minutes later, a note was shoved under the door of my hotel room with only a number on it. I assumed it was Reverend Cong Chin's Hotel room number and I took the elevator up and got off on the floor beneath his. I then took the stairs to his room. Reverend Cong Chin warmly greeted me and apologized for all the subterfuge. This was the first time I saw Reverend Cong Chin in a western style business suit and not wearing his Saffron colored Buddhist Robes.

He explained he had found a wiretap on his phones. He also claimed someone had installed a trap on his fax line. He was not sure who had done this but he strongly suggested it was someone in one of the "3 letter" Agencies of the US Government, as the listening devices were very sophisticated and beyond anything known to exist in the "spy world" market.

He had discovered the Fax Trap first. He had sent a Fax to Cambodia and when he called the person, he sent the Fax 10 minutes later the man still had not received it. Yet his Fax machine was showing the conformation phone number where he had sent it. While they were still talking, his Fax came in.

He had his office, his home swept for listening devises, and they found the phone taps. They also found other listening devises throughout his home and office. He left them in place as to take them out would have told whoever put them there that he had found them. He was installing a "white noise" generator that was supposed to block any transmission from these listening devices as if there was nothing to transmit.

When I asked why he thought the government was involved, he told me he was being audited by the IRS but he was being asked questions about things that had nothing to do with his Income Tax Returns. When he asked the IRS Agent what these questions had to do with his Income Tax Returns the Agent claimed they were part of larger investigation and implied if he did not answer them, the IRS Agent would be forced to inform his IRS Supervisor that he was not cooperating and it might affect the outcome of the Audit. It was at that point he hired a lawyer who took over his case and all further meetings were held in his office. His attorney forced the IRS Agent to confine his questions to the Income Tax returns.

Hearing this IRS involvement was too much of a coincidence. I remembered getting a letter from the IRS scheduling a tax audit on Foonman Airlines, which was the name of the partnership Carol and I established when I bought the airplane. We had to name the partnership something and we chose the name "Foonman Airlines" after the airlines Dan Rowan and Dick Martine used in a comedy skit on the late 1960's TV show Laugh-in.

Just like Reverend Cong Chin's IRS Audit I was not being asked about Foonman Airlines Tax returns but I was asked questions about the companies I had used the Airplane to conduct my businesses especially about VAMCO' s Tobacco Auction Market business and my trips to Toronto Canada. Now as I thought about it the IRS Agent never asked about all the flying I had done for Carol as part of the Vocational Rehabilitation Division as that represented over 60% of Foonman Airlines Annual Business.

I would not put anything past the government and even though Berclair Plantation was in an isolated location with a top Security System installed in the main house. A determined agent could have easily have by passed our security system and installed phone taps and listening devises. The situation with Reverend Cong Chin was a wakeup call to check out my own phones and the security systems at Berclair and at VAMCO's downtown office.

Having established the reason for all this secrecy and cloak and dagger procedures Reverend Cong Chin got to the point of this meeting. Since I had been able to come up with so many ideas to solving the problems in Cambodia, he wanted to discuss how to get rid of Prince Sihanouk without killing him.

Reverend Cong Chin explained the situation I already knew about in my attempts to deal with Prince Sihanouk. Hon Sen and Chia Simm had tried to work with Prince Sihanouk to help the Cambodian people on a number of proposals and projects such as the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program and to bring electrical power to all the Cambodians. Yet for over two years now, Prince Sihanouk refused to discuss these projects or even consider the benefits these proposals would be to the people and the country.

The "gift" of the 500 Metric Tons of rice to Cambodia from the Indian Government had been a disaster. Prince Sihanouk refused to release the rice and he was willing to let the rice rot in the warehouse until he was paid half of the value of the rice. He finally agreed to release the rice for third of the value the rice would bring on the open market. 40% of the rice was sold to cover the cost of paying him and storing it but at least 60% of the rice was given to the Cambodians.

The problem as Reverend Cong Chin understood it, was how Prince Sihanouk could be legitimately removed without making it look as if Hon Sen was making a power grab to become the Dictator of Cambodia to the UN and the rest of the world. This was really two problems. The first problem was how to legitimately remove Prince Sihanouk and the second problem was the best way to do it. We spent hours discussing the political system and the Cambodian Constitution so I could understand the possible procedures available.

The idea of holding a recall election would not work, as the Cambodian Government did not have the money to hold an election. If Hon Sen or Chia Simm brought impeachment charges against Prince Sihanouk, it could throw the country into a Civil War. However, there was nothing stopping the Funcinpec Political Party from doing it. Prince Sihanouk's demand to be personally paid before he released the 500 Metric Tons of rice the Indian Government had given to the Cambodian people was well known. However just using this obvious act of corruption to remove Prince Sihanouk would not automatically leave Hon Sen as the sole leader of Cambodia according to their Constitution.

The other question was why would the Funcinpec Party remove Prince Sihanouk and disrupt the balance of power they had established in the election that had formed the Cambodian Government. Reverend Cong Chin and I both agreed there was no simple answer to motivate them to give up their power in the Government.

I knew we needed to find a way to maintain the balance of political power and still removed Prince Sihanouk as the obstacle to proceeding with our plans and developments. I was already past the moral question of the value of doing these projects for the development of Cambodia, as I did not need to do them financially or for any reasons of personal ego. I just seemed to be placed in the position to help make them happen as everything I had learned before was now being used to overcome what should have been obstacles to their success, except for dealing with Prince Sihanouk.

The idea of "knowing your enemy" is one of the first rules of battle. I had read everything I could find on Prince Sihanouk and his father. I also had access to the CIA's files when Alex Baldwin was working with me. Since meeting Reverend Cong Chin, we had discussed the Prince and his father for hours and hours so I would have a better understand of their personalities, motives and weaknesses. I came to the conclusion they were only committed to helping the Cambodian people as long as they could financially benefit themselves first.

The idea that every man has his price only worked when you knew what it was and if you could pay it. The "gift" from India was a prime example. It apparently was not enough to satisfy what they thought they deserved to allow the proposed Cambodian Veterans project to be approved.

The other factor in this equation was how much influence and control the Chinese had over both Prince Sihanouk and his father. Based upon Alex's information on China's influence it was limited to feeding their egos without providing any real financial support. However attacking a man's ego was a battle you could not win without creating a bitter lifetime enemy.

The solution therefore had to be separating Prince Sihanouk from his Political Party and I needed Reverend Chong Chin to tell me, about how and why these political parties were formed, their basic political philosophy they operated under and the goals they hoped to achieve. This was like asking someone in the United States to explain the differences between a Republican and a Democrat and how they evolved into the political parties they were today.

When I explained to Reverend Cong Chin what I needed to know about the Cambodian Political Parties he suggested we needed to order dinner from Room Service as they were about to close the hotel's kitchen and we could discuss it while we ate.

Reverend Cong Chin was taking no chances of exposing his presence here in Minneapolis as even the waiter was a Cambodian who looked more like a bodyguard. When I looked out the door as the waiter wheeled in the food cart two more Cambodian bodyguards were positioned at each end of the hallway. When I thought about it, Reverend Cong Chin was plotting the overthrow of one of the elected leaders of the Cambodian Government and I would have people guarding me too.

As we ate Reverend Cong Chin, outline how the Cambodian Political Parties had evolved. As far as I could tell, there was not that much difference between them except for the loyalty to their current leaders. However, the most interesting fact was Hon Sen, Chia Simm and Prince Sihanouk still maintained their personal Armies. Chia Simm's Army was still in the western provinces blocking and holding the Khmer Rouge up against Thailand's border and Hon Sen who had the largest Army held the center of the Country where he could support Chia Simm's Army if the Khmer Rouge attempted to start something.

Prince Sihanouk did not trust the Communists in Vietnam and he was afraid they might attempt to reunite with the Army of the former Communist leader Han Sen to take over the country. Prince Sihanouk had positioned his Army on the eastern side of the Mekong River and along the border with Vietnam. The discipline, training and morale in Chia Simm and Hon Sen's Armies was very good as they were well fed and paid every month. For all the importance Prince Sihanouk had placed on the role of his Army to hold the border with Vietnam they were poorly trained, questionably fed and had not been paid in months.

Depending on how Prince Sihanouk was removed there was the possibility the country could be thrown into another Civil War and the condition of the Armies of each of the Cambodian Leaders could become the deciding factor in the outcome of that war. But a Civil War was the last thing Reverend Cong Chin wanted and it would not do VAMCO's projects any good either as they had already been delayed too long.

"Tell me Reverend Cong Chin, do you know how loyal Prince Sihanouk's Army is to him? Would they fight to support him if they knew he demanded to be paid before he would release the 500 Tons of rice the Indian Government gave Cambodia?" I had to ask.

"I know some of Prince Sihanouk's Generals would fight to the death for him. As far as the loyalty of the soldiers goes, it would depend on if Prince Sihanouk used that money to pay them. Since he did not I believe their loyalty might be in question. Why do you ask?" Reverend Cong Chin responded.

"An Army represents the immediate means to reinforce the will of its leader. If we are to be successful in removing Prince Sihanouk we must have a way to neutralize his army or he will use it to keep his position in the government and we could be restarting the Cambodian Civil War." I told Reverend Cong Chin and I could see the immediate concern in his face.

It never ceases to amaze me that true men of peace like Reverend Cong Chin are willing to plot a revolution if it were a Chest Game but they fail to see all the blood shad that might be necessary to achieve it. However, I could be wrong as I could see Reverend Cong Chin was weighing the cost to remove Prince Sihanouk.

"I see." Reverend Cong Chin slowly said as he realized what I said could very well happen. "What would you recommend Hon Sen do to limit the amount of bloodshed?" He asked.

"Based on what you told me Prince Sihanouk's Army is in a very vulnerable situation of his own choosing by placing his Army between the Armies of Hon Sen and the Vietnamese. Unless his Generals are incompetent they know how dangerous this situation is yet based on your assessment of the Prince's Army they are not prepared to fight or effectively defend themselves especially not in a two front surprise attack. If there is going to be a fight it is better to have it end quickly. The ideal situation would be when the Prince is out of the country and before the UN and the United States has time to step in.

I would have Hon Sen contact the Vietnamese government and have them move their Army up to the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. The Vietnamese can call it a normal "Training Exercise" but the real reason is to establish a blocking force to hold Prince Sihanouk's Army from escaping into Vietnam. At the same time Hon Sen needs to encircle Prince Sihanouk's Army with his own Army so the Prince's Generals will know they cannot escape and they will also know by the time the UN or the United States can send any help it will be too late.

The real problem is how to avoid any large-scale bloodshed while neutralizing the Prince's Army quickly. I know when men are trapped they will fight to the death unless they are given an honorable way out. The question is if the Prince's men are more loyal to him or to the country. The next question is what would make the Prince's men choose their country.

What Hon Sen and Chia Simm needs to do, is nationalize their armies into one unified Cambodian Army. The most popular Cambodian General needs to be appointed by the President of the Parliament as the Commander of the Cambodian Army. His primary mission is to Command the Army and protect the country from all its enemies foreign and domestic yet he is subject to civilian control of the President who is the country's Commander in Chief.

Once this is done, Prince Sihanouk will be asked to commit his own army into this new Unified Cambodian Army. If he agrees, we have removed the threat of his Army creating a Civil War when he is removed from office. If Prince Sihanouk will not allow his Army to become part of the Unified Army, we have created a division of loyalty within his army where they must choose to follow Prince Sihanouk or follow the rest of the soldiers in the new Unified Army.

To exploit this division in Sihanouk's Army the news of the Unified Cambodian Army needs to be widely reported across the country especially in the areas where Prince Sihanouk's Army is located. Newspaper articles with pictures showing the soldiers in their new Unified Cambodian Army uniforms being paid and eating good food in the Mess hall will cause the men in Sihanouk's Army to wonder why they are being treated differently. The Newspaper articles need to point out Prince Sihanouk refused to allow his Army to become part of the Unified Cambodian Army, which will raise further questions about Sihanouk's true loyalties to the country.

I would also suggest additional stories with pictures showing the families of the Unified Cambodian soldiers living well in good homes with plenty of food while their children are attending schools. Pictures of their families participating in social events sponsored by the new Unified Cambodian Army will further undermine the morale of Sihanouk's men.

Once this Public Relations Campaign has been successful, the evidence of Prince Sihanouk's corruption when he demanded to personally be paid to release the Indian Government's gift to the Cambodian people of the 500 Metric Tons of Rice needs to be spread throughout the country. This will also show Sihanouk's personal greed and his lack of concern for the welfare of the Cambodian people.

However, there is no reason to do all this unless Sihanouk's political party is willing to use this corruption to impeach him and replace him as the Funcinpec Party's Prime Minister. I would suggest you personally approach the leaders of the Funcinpec Party to obtain their commitment to remove Prince Sihanouk as their Party's Prime Minster. Once you have their commitment, Hon Sen and Chia Simm can proceed with the Unification of the Cambodian Army, the Public Relations Campaign and make plans to trap Prince Sihanouk's Army when he leaves the country.

When Prince Sihanouk leaves Cambodia, the Funcinpec Party must impeach him and replace him to establish the legitimate peaceful transition of power according to Cambodian law. Than under the authority of the new Funcinpec Party's Prime Minister and Hon Sen, they will direct the Commander of the Unified Cambodian Army to issue his ultimatum to the men in Prince Sihanouk's Army. The ultimatum should be simple and very clear that unless they are willing to swear allegiance and loyalty to the Country of Cambodia they will die.

If the Public Relations Campaign has been successful and if the removal of Prince Sihanouk is legally done, the men in Prince Sihanouk's Army will not want to fight their Cambodian brothers. Especially if they know, they are surrounded and they will die for a dishonorable man.

Before the Commander of the Unified Cambodian Army attacks, a Peace Delegation from the Funcinpec Party needs to be sent to the Commander and the Generals of Sihanouk's Army to negotiate an honorable integration of their Army into the Unified Cambodian Army.

I cannot guarantee Prince Sihanouk's Generals will listen without a fight and I honestly do not know how to prevent this potential loss of life. However if Sihanouk's Generals know they do not have the full support of their common soldiers, the amount of bloodshed should be limited." I told Reverend Cong Chin. We spent the rest of the night discussing this proposal and clarifying how it could be accomplished.

I flew from Minneapolis to the Central Wisconsin Airport at Mosinee to visit my mother. I was not sure I had helped Reverend Cong Chin deal with removing Prince Sihanouk. I also prayed my motives to help overthrow Prince Sihanouk were not based solely on my business interests but the attempt to remove the obstacle to help the Cambodian people rebuild their country. Although VAMCO was in the position to make a lot of money, making money had never been my primary objective in my life. I always thought of money as if it was the tool and the means to help me make things better.

My mother was glad to see me and hear more about the business projects I was involved in around the world. After I told her how Carol and the horses were doing, I told her about my meeting with Reverend Cong Chin in Minneapolis.

I did not tell her about the clandestine means Reverend Chong Chin had me take to get to this meeting. When I finished telling her of the proposal I had make to remove Prince Sihanouk, my mother related this to my past involvement in the Independent Granville efforts against the City of Milwaukee's takeover of the Town of Granville. Her only question was if I would have offered this proposal if I did not have a business interest in Cambodia.

I found myself telling her I would have but I did not think I would be in the position to influence the Cambodian Leaders if I had not created these business opportunities in their country. However once I was in this position I had created I had an obligation to follow through with my best efforts to make these projects successful and overcome the obstacles put in my path.

I explained how the Chinese were controlling King Sihanouk and his son Prince Sihanouk to keep western businesses out of Cambodia. Yet China was not doing anything to help the country improve. I felt when Prince Sihanouk was removed the Cambodian people had a chance to improve their lives and this alone was enough justification to remove Prince Sihanouk.

I went on to explain how Prince Sihanouk had block every project VAMCO had proposed to include the Cambodian Veterans Rehabilitation Program, which would have rebuilt the country's agriculture capabilities to feed themselves and become a major exporter of their excess rice to feed other parts of the world. My mother already knew these projects had started after I went to Cambodia to sell VAMCO's cigarettes and met the Buddhist Monk Reverend Cong Chin. One business opportunity had lead to next after Reverend Cong Chin asked me to help the Cambodian Veterans when he noticed on VAMCO's business chart listed it was involved with the Vocational Rehabilitation of injured workers.

She was proud of my accomplishments to find additional financing for the Cambodian Veterans when Swami G arranged for the 150 million dollars from the Indian Government. I had told her about my meeting with Shriekon Jane who was interested in building a Fertilizer Plant using Cambodia's natural gas and the knowledge of Cambodia's gas and oil deposits had lead to my efforts to privatize Cambodia's electrical power system.

I updated her on the progress I was making on all these business projects and how VAMCO had obtained a two billion dollar line of credit to finance them. My mother asked me how I knew how to do all these things and make these business agreements. My only explanation was as if everything I did in the past gave me the confidence to know where to acquire the answers I needed to make the fairest business relationships with VAMCO's partners.

The next morning I took a walk into the woods where we always hunted during the Wisconsin Deer Hunting season. I stood on the rock I had killed 5-deer in 4-years with 6-shots. The thoughts of deer hunting cleared my mind and I confirmed I had made the right decision to provide Reverend Cong Chin with a plan to remove Prince Sihanouk. I only hoped what I had suggested would not lead to another Civil War in Cambodia.

That afternoon I caught a flight to Chicago and then flew to New York. When I arrived in New York, I had the feeling I was being watched just as my sixth sense had told me when I was in Vietnam with the Sniper Team. I walked towards the other end of the passenger terminal and then I quickly turned and walked back trying to catch who was following me.

Unlike the jungle, there are few places to hide in an open corridor of an airport terminal. Yet the same principles of looking for something that did not fit in the surrounding environment would apply. A man in a dark suit and sunglasses without any luggage quickly turned around when he saw me and his reaction caught my attention.

I walked briskly to the next corner and ducked into the side door of a Gift Shop. I waited until the man came to the corner and he started to walk in the direction he thought I had gone. I took off my suit coat and left the Gift Shop through its main door before going back down the corridor I had just come from. I then quickly walked directly out of the terminal to catch a Taxi to the General Aviation Terminal. As the Taxi Cab pulled away, I saw the man who was following me come running out of the terminal and he met two other men who were pointing in different directions.

Reverend Cong Chin's 'cloak and dagger' meeting must have created more government interest than I realized or I was followed here for another reason. A far as I knew there were only two possible ways someone could have found me here. One was when I used my credit card and the other was the Registration Number on my airplane that I had left here. Only the Federal Government had access to both of these tracking numbers.

I could eliminate the credit card as I had paid cash for my round trip Airline ticket and I traveled under the name Mark Stewart to cover my trail to meet Reverend Cong Chin. There was the possibility the government never knew I had flown to Minneapolis. However if that was true then why were they here waiting for me?

If I was on someone's radar, I was not going to make it easy for them to track me from New York. I paid my tie-down fees and gas bill in cash to eliminate leaving my name and signature on a credit card. When I contacted New York Departure Control, I asked for a south-west departure to Harrisburg Pennsylvania. Once I cleared the New York Terminal Controlled Airspace, I dropped down to 2000 feet, turned off the airplane's transponder and set a course to Fredericksburg Virginia. Shannon Airport's office was closed by the time I landed and put my airplane in its hanger. Unless someone was watching me land at the airport, no one would know when I came home.

# 33. INCREASED GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE

My secret meeting with Reverend Cong Chin and my experience in New York made me feel uncomfortable as if I were in someone's rifle sights. When I started to discuss what happen with Clif Jenkens he immediately put up his hands to stop me from talking. He then wrote on a sheet of paper."Be careful we maybe bugged."

We went to the hay barn where he told me he thought he was also being followed and he had found a "bug" in his home phone. He called a friend he knew in Vietnam who had been retired for medical reasons from the CIA. When the former CIA Agent looked at the "bug" he identified it by make and model number as one of the government's latest listing devises.

I knew Clif had been pushing to find out who was blocking our Halal Chicken shipments and it again lead back to a Colonel in the White House. What Clif was now telling me that he been visited by FBI Agents who were asking about me, VAMCO's involvement in Cambodia and my tobacco business. He had told them what he knew and they had examined his tobacco books but did not make any copies. He was sorry he had not told me about this before and he offered to bring his friend to Berclair to check for any bugs. I was not concerned about what Clif might have told the FBI Agents, as we were not doing anything illegal in any of our businesses. However if the government was spying on us, what were they really looking for? I decided not to tell Clif about my meeting with Reverend Cong Chin and I asked him to bring over his friend.

John F Jones was very good as he found listening devises throughout the downstairs of the Main House and even one in the Barn Office phone. I was amazed as I had installed one of the best security systems in the house and Carol assured me she always put it on when I was away from home.

John laughed as he told me the people who had installed these devises were government experts and my security system would not have been a challenge to them even when it was turned on. The only question he had was if I wanted him to remove them but if I did, it would tell them I had found the devises. His alternative suggestion was to leave them in place and use a white noise jammer he could tune to the listening devises frequencies. When I turned the jammer on it would cancel their transmitting signal without any indication the devises were not working properly.

When I asked when he could install this jammer, he took a small black box out of his bag. He suggested I plug it in as the battery would only last 6 hours if the electricity went off. He refused to take any money for what he did as he said he was doing it for his friend Clif. He finally agreed to take 100 dollars to pay for the parts he used to build the jammer.

Although I had the evidence that the Government had bugged my house, and tapped my phones, I still did not know why they were doing it. The fact Clif had found a tap on his phone and the FBI had asked him about my Tobacco business and VAMCO's Cambodian business, did not mean the Government had combined these two separate business activities into using one to destroy the other.

What I did not know was a year ago the government tried to convict Rudy Hill as the ringleader in the excess tobacco scheme and failed miserably. The government's Chief Investigator Agent Ed Dayo had been found to have manufactured evidence and created facts, which the government's own witnesses had denied. The government's case had been so undermined that Rudy Hill was acquitted without presenting a defense.

I learned about Rudy Hill's trial when I visited Jim Brake at the Federal Prison Camp at Seymour Johnson Air Force base. Jim had been given 6 months as part of his plea bargain agreement for pleading guilty for cashing checks for more than 10 thousand dollars without filling out a federal currency transaction form. I would not have known about Jim's incarceration if one of my business partners in North Carolina had not told me when I flew down to sign the corporation's tax returns. What Jim Brake did not tell me was he had been forced to testify in Rudy Hill's trial as part of his plea bargain.

It was less than two months after I visited Jim that the IRS began their audit of Foonman Airlines. It seemed every month the IRS Agent had more questions that had nothing to do Foonman Airlines. Last month the IRS Agent had expanded his audit into VAMCO and my personal income Tax Returns. He wanted to know where A R Dixon was and when the last time I had seen him. He was also asking for more documented evidence of the amount of money I had paid for the tobacco I had sold even though I had already provided signed receipts, which corresponded to the entries in my tobacco books. The IRS Agent then claimed I could not take the one-year tax deduction on the Mare Care Barns I had built until I used the IRS's own Regulations to show him I could.

A month later, he denied all of VAMCO's business expenses totally over 3 million dollars and doubled the amount of Taxes due on the 3 million dollars as a penalty plus interest.

It is important to understand there is a big difference between the amount of Taxes due and the amount of money the IRS claimed should have been Taxed. VAMCO never owed 3 million dollars in taxes and the IRA Agent made the claim that VAMCO owed the Taxes on 3 Million dollars. Yet when this IRS Agent testified at my Excess Tobacco Marketing Trial, the 3 million dollars was presented as if this was the amount of Taxes VAMCO had not paid.

Carol was so upset that she insisted we hire a Tax Attorney. We paid for his in depth audit, which confirmed my records and VAMCO's tax returns had been correctly filed to the penny. The only unresolved issue with the IRS seemed to be the existence of A R Dixon, which I had not seen or talked with since the NASCAR Miniature Collectable Car business had folded.

The Tax Attorney wanted to know how I met A R Dixon and he insisted we hire a top notch Investigator he knew who could to find A R Dixon anywhere in the world. This turned out to be a gross exaggeration on the Tax Attorney's part, as his investigator was only capable of running a routine investigation of domestic phone numbers and a simple records check. When the Investigator sent his limited report along with his bill, I refused to pay it based on his failure to perform any international search.

The Tax Attorney claimed there must have been a misunderstanding until I presented him with a copy of the written contract the Investigator had signed to perform a detailed international search in Europe, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, as those were the areas A R Dixon had conducted his business. In spite of this written contract, the Tax Attorney still tried to defend his investigator.

I told him the least the Investigator could have done was check the Airlines to see where Dixon had gone and if he could not do that, we needed to find someone who could. When the Tax Attorney demanded I pay the Investigator's bill, I fired the Tax Attorney and he knew better than try to send me his bill for this meeting. In the mean time, I collected all the documentation I knew existed on A R Dixon to prove who he was in the hope this would satisfy the IRS.

I called Clif and asked if he and John would go to the Delaware Corporation Commission and get a copy of A R Dixon's Company that he had used to transfer the original loan when I started the Tobacco business. The company had gone dormant shortly after that transaction just as A R Dixon said it would. However, I did not need a copy of his company's registration when I did my due diligence before I entered into a business relationship with A R Dixon. However, I still had the file with the corporation's number from the Delaware Corporation Commission. Since it was a dormant company, it could not be Faxed and someone had to go to the Corporation Commission to get it.

Clif and John had an interesting tale to tell when they brought a copy of A R Dixon's Company Charter from the Delaware Corporation Commission. Before they began their story, Brian insisted we go into the Rose Garden where the 10-foot high boxwoods would prevent any line of sight listening devices from picking up our conversations.

"Mark, I hate to tell you this but the FBI must have planted some new listening devises in your office as they knew we were going to the Delaware Corporate Commission today. When we walked into the office of the Delaware Corporation Commission, we were told the A R Dixon's Corporation did not exist and it was never a Delaware Corporation. However, I had caught a glimpse of a man who ducked into an office door as we walked in. I was almost positive it was Allen Kelly, who transferred into the Washington Office, just before I had left.

Acting on that hunch, I went back into the Delaware Corporation Commission's office during lunchtime when another clerk would be at the desk. This time when I asked for a copy of A R Dixon's Corporation by its registration number the clerk had no problem producing a copy. I had her notarize the copy of A R Dixon's Corporate Charter that had gone dormant in 1991 so it would be date stamped as proof of when I had obtained it.

What was even more interesting was the Federal Agents had followed us all the way to the Maryland side of the Potomac Bridge. I not only recognized several other Agents and I recorded the license plate numbers off their government vehicles. We had Clif's cousin, who is a King George County Deputy Sheriff run the license plate numbers and they all belonged to the FBI from the J Edger Hoover building in Washington DC.

Although Clif has told me about your business in Cambodia, I would like to know more about what you are involved in that would justify the FBI taking such a keen interest in you." John stated.

"I am not really sure other than there seems to be a lot of interest from the White House as they have been blocking our Halal Chicken business as part of the United Nation's "food for crude" program to Iraq. I also think what we are doing in Cambodia has the Vietnamese upset as the economic aid Nixon promised them to end the war did not happen because the Watergate forced Nixon to resign.

I have the feeling Vietnam thought with this economic aid they would become the dominate power in Southeast Asia and now we are on the verge of making Cambodia that power within the next 2 years and Vietnam will not be able to catch up.

Knowing the Communist Vietnamese as well as I do, there must be some truth to the rumor Vietnam used someone in Singapore to bribe Clinton into recognizing their country. However, the strong public opinion on the POW and MIA issues has delayed Clinton's recognition of Vietnam. However, if that rumor is true it would explain why the IRS has been messing with me and my company. Let me ask you something. Did you ever come across a man named Alex Baldwin?" I asked John.

"I don't know him personally but I heard he was working with President Bush." John responded.

"I first met Alex in Vietnam and you are right he was working with President Bush until Clinton got elected." I told John but I decided not to tell him that Alex had helped me establish some vital connections in VAMCO's efforts to develop Cambodia. I would let John make the connection himself if he was sharp enough to be useful to me. John paused for a long moment before he asked if he could be any more help to me and I knew he understood the support I had, before Clinton was elected.

"You know I never like that draft dodger and I don't like what he is doing to you and Clif. I still have some friends you might find useful and I have nothing better to do." John added as he volunteered to help with me in any way he could.

"Well first of all, we need to find those new FBI Bugs and then I need you to help me find A R Dixon who might be in Thailand at a tourist attraction on Phuket Island." I told him.

John went to get his equipment and when he came back, he suggested he look for the bugs alone. Brian explained until he found these new bugs as any noise could signal the FBI he was looking for the bugs. It was almost an hour when John came back and said it was all right to go into the house. There on my desk was a new jammer John had carried into the house. After he told us we could talk freely, he showed us someone had deactivated his jammer and left it in place so I would think it was still working. They had added some new bugs linked to a battery operated high-powered transmitter beyond the frequencies levels of his old jammer. John had readjusted his old jammer and then shorted out the battery on the transmitter so it could not power their transmitter and they would think they had a defective battery. What John had done was set a trap for the FBI as they would need to come back to replace the battery.

John pointed out that the FBI had made the mistake of putting their transmitter in the chimney of the fireplace we had not used for some time. He suggested if we did not catch the FBI when they came back to replace the battery we should build a fire in the fireplace two days from now, as the heat would fry the transmitter and permanently disable it.

Since the FBI had obviously been in the house, several times and I knew they would need to comeback to replace the battery I spent the next few hours trying to determine how they had been able to get in without anyone seeing them.

After we found the first listening devises on Berclair, I had asked our farmhands to pay closer attention to the main house when Carol and I were gone. I concluded that the FBI must have come in when I was home at night as our security system was only used when Carol was home alone. I double-check the windows and doors for any evidence of tool marks as an indication of a forced entry but I did not find any.

That left only the crawl space under the house. There was a small door in the outside wall of the house beneath the kitchen window used to access the water and plumbing pipes. It took awhile before I found the short floor boards in the pantry had been cut to make a trapdoor. When it was pushed up a man could have easily crawled into the kitchen and have access to the rest of the house. Rather than nailing down the trapdoor, I moved a heavy tall stone crock on top of it and it just fit under the bottom shelf.

Now if anyone tried to come into the house this way, there was not enough room to push up the crock and lift the trapdoor. The best part of placing the crock over the trapdoor was the Agents would not know I had found their entrance point and I had deliberately blocked their trapdoor.

When John came over to get my history with A R Dixon he was pleased to see how the FBI Agents had entered the house and how easily I had blocked it. Rather than take any chances we had missed any of the FBI's listening devises in the house, we drove his car on the back roads of Spotsylvania County while he recorded all my contacts and business relationships with A R Dixon. By the time we were done, John had all the names, dates and places he would use to start his search for A R Dixon.

The IRS was surprisingly quiet after they knew I had obtained the proof of A R Dixon's Delaware Corporation and they postponed issuing any formal tax evasion charges as a means to avoid scheduling VAMCO's case in Tax Court.

John had found a number of other places where A R Dixon had lived in the United States and a District of Columbia Corporation A R Dixon had formed prior to making his Delaware Company. That Company was still an active corporation and John had obtained a copy of its Corporate Charter with A R Dixon's name and signature on it. All of John's efforts to find A R Dixon triggered an unusual response from his former employer. They sent two Agents to visit him and they wanted to know why he was looking for Dixon.

John was smart enough to use the name of Cindy Baker who I had told him had been Dixon's girlfriend when I ran into him in Petersburg Virginia back in 1990. John claimed he had been hired to find Dixon for her as Dixon had gotten her pregnant and then dumped her. It did not matter if these Agents believed his story as the CIA also knew about Cindy.

John's other Agency contacts had told him A R Dixon was a Company-man and his real name was Benjamin Harris. John was allowed to read Benjamin Harris' classified personnel file dating back to his 1954 Agency assignment to the "Saigon Military Mission" in Southeast Asia. Harris's assignment had more to do with Laos than Vietnam.

Benjamin Harris was the son of Andrew J Harris and a Japanese woman from Hawaii. Ben Harris had graduated from Penn State in 1953 with a degree in Finance and Accounting. He had been one of the CIA's financial managers for "Air America" during the Vietnam War and then spent time in Germany and in Beirut Lebanon before he became the CIA's Banker at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in Luxembourg.

The CIA used BCCI to support the Afghan Mujahedeen rebels against the Soviet Union and launder drug money for the Cocaine sold in the United States, especially in California. It was no surprise that BCCI was used to handle the Iran-Conta funds, along with most of the CIA payments to support their clandestine operations in the Communist Eastern European Block Countries and the Soviet Union.

A year before BCCI was forced to shut down in 1991 by the combined economic powers of the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and most of Europe, Ben Harris disappeared and apparently took a sizable amount of money with him.

The CIA personnel file on Ben Harris aka A R Dixon remained open with the notation, "Pending further investigation. Agent is missing, kidnapped or he may have gone off the reservation."

There were dated follow up investigations dealing with the reported sightings of A R Dixon in all parts of the world since he left BCCI in Luxembourg in 1990. When John came to see me after reading A R Dixons file, he was not sure he remembered all the date and places listed in the Dixon file. However, John was sure that the file said Dixon had been in New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Richmond and Petersburg Virginia, Charlotte, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Pakistan, Lebanon, Zurich Switzerland, Bonn Germany, London and several off shore Banking Islands in the Caribbean. When I asked John about specific places and dates when I met with A R Dixon on business John was able to recall these dates were listed in these follow up reports as being in the same location I had met A R Dixon.

"Tell me John, if the CIA was following Dixon that close, why didn't they pick him up?" I had to ask him, as this did not make any sense to me.

"It may have been what Dixon was doing for them and BCCI's records were so screwed up they could not prove how much money Dixon took. On the other hand, we do not know everyone Dixon was working with. Maybe his former bosses are too high up in the food chain and by protecting Dixon, they are also protecting themselves and all the other Agents involved in money laundering schemes the CIA was running through BCCI.

If I were Dixon, I would have created a poison pill file as an insurance policy that someone would release to the Newspapers if anything strange happened to me. This must be the case as otherwise Dixon would be dead already." John told me and he wanted to know if I still wanted him to continue to check where Dixon had been when I was dealing with him.

"Let's just call it an insurance policy as I will have your documented proof of what you already know as I don't think the CIA will share their records on Dixon with me." I stated and I insisted he allow me to cover his expenses as Brian had refused to take any money for his efforts.

The noose was tightening round the NSSA's neck after taking several damaging depositions from the key NSSA players in bringing the false charges and the loss of the NSSA's approval on my company's 1855 Artillery Model barrel. This irrefutable evidence had left the NSSA without a defendable position and the new NSSA Commander Gary Crawford knew the Association was in serious trouble if we went to court. The NSSA's Attorney petitioned the court to take another deposition from me claiming he had new evidence he wanted me to answer. My attorney had no reason to object as he felt the NSSA was clutching as straws.

The deposition did not go well for the NSSA, as my attorney would interrupt and claim I had already answer that question and unless the NSSA Attorney asked questions on his "new evidence" the deposition would be over. When the NSSA did not ask anything new, my attorney went on record stating the NSSA had abuse the Court's authority to require this deposition and he would asked the Court for sanctions against the NSSA's attorney.

The NSSA of course demanded a hearing, which was put off several times to delay bringing the case to trial. Somehow the NSSA found out Bill Edwards had made a cash offer to buy 1,000, 1855 Artillery Model Barrels when the barrels were approved for NSSA Competition during the May 1993 Board of Directors meeting.

Since the NSSA's approval of my company's barrels disappeared from their records, the NSSA's willful and malicious act could make them liable for the actual financial loss to my company and Bill Edwards plus ten times that loss in punitive damages. The NSSA petitioned the court to take Bill Edward's deposition and the court granted their request even though Bill Edwards had not made a claim and he was not part of my Lawsuit.

# 34. HON SEN MAKES HIS MOVE AGAINST PRINCE SIHANOUK

A Special TV News Breaking Report claimed Hon Sen had assumed the powers of a Military Dictator. His Army was making a military power grab to overthrow the legitimate elected government of Cambodia with the coordinated assistance of the Communist Army of Vietnam. The Special Report claimed there had been some minor military engagements with an unknown number of casualties when Hon Sen's Army had encircled and trapped Prince Sihanouk's Army against the Vietnamese Army. The Vietnamese were in a blocking position along their western border.

The way the American news media was reporting this, Hon Sen and the Communists in Vietnam were about to annihilate Prince Sihanouk's Army at any moment. The United Nations was calling for an emergency session of the Security Council to deal with it. The efforts of the News Media to reach Prince Sihanouk who was reported to be in Paris France on an official Cambodian Mission had not been successful.

Reverend Cong Chin called me when he heard the news reports and he told me Hon Sen had not followed all the steps we had outline in the plan to remove Prince Sihanouk from Office. Reverend Cong Chin wanted me to outline the reasons for each of these steps and then tell Hon Sen what he should do to make up, for his mistakes. This was not an easy task, as I needed to understand what actually took place and compare it with the suggested course of action. I also needed to know how much of what our News Media was reporting was true.

I asked Reverend Cong Chin to outline the current situation in Cambodia and fax it to me along with the most urgent problem Hon Sen was facing. Each Fax required Reverend Cong Chin to translate my Faxes into Cambodian before sending them to Hon Sen. As the responses came back I understood the most critical area seemed to be the failure to get the leaders of Prince Sihanouk's political party to actually impeach him and replace him with Ohn Hoot as their Party's new Prime Minister. The second problem dealt with how the American News Media was exaggerating the military confrontation as a major battle in the renewal of the Cambodian Civil War.

In reality there was only one of Prince Sihanouk's General's grandstanding for one American Television Reporter and claiming his men were willing to fight to the last man to preserve Democracy. The only thing Hon Sen had done according to the plan was to encircle and trap Prince Sihanouk's Army against the Vietnamese border where the Communists had moved up their Army.

I recommend the Funcinpec Party impeach Prince Sihanouk and remove him from Office pending a trial on the corruption charges. They needed to hold a Press Conference to make this announcement. This would make up for the mistake of not doing this before Hon Sen made his military move. It would also send a message to the Prince's Army that their leader had been removed from power by his own political party and what Hon Sen and Chia Simm were asking them to do was to pledge allegiance to Cambodia. This pledge allegiance was a risky move, as the Public Relations Campaign of creating a Unified Cambodian Army had not been done.

The failure to show the common soldiers of Prince Sihanouk's Army how much better off they would be, as part of the Unified Cambodian Army would restart the Cambodian Civil War if the Prince's Army chose to fight. I made the suggestion to send unarmed representatives to the Prince's Army to make a personal plea not to fight for a leader who was a puppet of the Chinese and he was in France taking even more money to keep the country from rebuilding.

Reverend Cong Chin sent a number of his highly respected Monks to speak directly to the men in Prince Sihanouk's Army and they carried copies of the Cambodian Newspapers announcing Prince Sihanouk's Impeachment and the appointment of Ohn Hoot as their party's new Prime Minister. Within 48 hours, the American Television Reporters were carrying the news Hon Sen had not made a power grab but he was trying to prevent any of Prince Sihanouk's Generals from becoming a rogue Military Force like the War Lords of the past who controlled parts of Southeast Asia.

Reverend Cong Chin called and told me his Faxes were not getting through to Hon Sen yet his faxes were still coming to me at Berclair. He believed the American Government was interfering with his fax lines to Cambodia. He wanted to send me his translated faxes and have me send them directly to Hon Sen.

This worked for several messages until I called Reverend Cong Chin after I sent my last Fax to him. These follow up phone calls had become our normal procedures to make sure we both clearly understood all the details of what I was suggesting. Although my Fax Machine confirmed the delivery of my message to his Fax number, Reverend Cong Chin used the code word to indicate he had not received it yet.

Reverend Cong Chin had anticipated something like this and he set up a code based on numbers before I left Minneapolis. True or a "yes" statement would have the number "2" or what would sound like "True" in it and false or "no" statements would mention what sounded like the number "4."

The moment he said, "Before we began I have a 3 o'clock meeting and I will need to call you back." I knew whatever he said after the word "B 4" would be to mislead any listener and I should call him on his Cell Phone as he used the code word number "3." The ability of the government to tap a Cell Phone call required a listening device to be in the same room and his white noise jammer would block it out.

However, one of the problems in using a white noise jammer was the moment you turned it on whoever was listening would know you were aware of their bugs and you were jamming them. John was one-step ahead of the "state of the art" in listening devices and he rigged up a dummy play back tape recording, to fill in the sound gaps when the jammer was used. This was a recording of the normal sounds of the typing on a computer key board, moving around in my office and talking with someone, who had come into my office. John had flown out to California and he installed a similar system in Reverend Cong Chin's home and Office.

While I was talking to Reverend Cong Chin on my Cell Phone, he received my FAX 10 minutes after I had sent it. After we discussed the content of my FAX, Reverend Cong Chin explained someone had installed a Fax Trap on my normal dedicated Fax line. This was all new to me, but I had to admit the 10 minute delay would indicate it must be true.

I had 6 phone lines coming into Berclair, so when Reverend Cong Chin called me on his Cell Phone to tell me he was about to send his Fax I would tell him to wait "x" number of minutes. The x number would be the Berclair phone line that I had now hooked up to my Fax machine. I would use another phone line when I sent Reverend Cong Chin's Fax to Hon Sen. This must have pissed off whoever was trapping my Faxes as all my phone lines went dead at the same time. When I called Reverend Cong Chin on my Cell phone to report this he thanked me for my assistance, as he believed we had accomplished all we could.

It took two days for the Telephone Company to fix the problems with my phone lines at Berclair. They claim they had repaired a break in my phone lines caused by an unusual power surge. My experience as the Communications Officer in Alfa Battery told me the odds of having all my 6-separate phone lines, which had not been installed at the same time, as being affected by the same power surges was next to impossible.

A week later, I received a formal invitation from the Cambodian Government to come the first week in August and sign the VAMCO's Representation Agreement with Hon Sen, Chia Simm and Ohn Hoot on all the Projects and the Nation Rebuilding Proposals I had made.

This was a damned good reason to celebrate and it had been a long time in coming. Carol arranged a dinner party for Saturday night with Clif, Ting Tang, John and their wives.

BOOK THREE

### THE DEVIL TURNS MY WORLD UPSIDE DOWN

# 1. IN THE CROSSHAIRS

The next morning when I came back from church, I received a phone call from Willey Strickland who was VAMCO's Business Partner in the North Carolina Housing Subdivision Developments East of Goldsboro. He wanted to let me know my name was in the Raleigh North Carolina Newspapers and it was reported that I had been indicted in the US District Court of North Carolina as being part of an 8-year investigation in an Excess Tobacco Marketing Scheme.

He agreed to Fax me a copy of the Newspaper Article and he wanted to know if it was true, as it could affect our business relationship. I told Willy I was surprised as he was, but I did not think I had done anything wrong. After reading the Newspaper Article I did not know any of the others who had been indicted but I might have known them by their nicknames, as just about everyone in the Tobacco Business had a colorful handle they had earned sometime after they were born and before they could walk.

My first thought was to call Jim Brake, as he would know who these people were. When I called the last phone number I had on Jim, I found it was disconnected and the Phone Company had no other listing on him. I had to think back to the last time I talked with Jim and it must have been when I visited him at the Federal Prison Camp at Seymour Johnson Air Force base almost two years ago.

I called Jim's brother Henry and I was told he was at a Skirmish in Virginia. Henry's wife Kay did not know where Jim was living now but he should be at the Shoot in Capron Virginia. This did not make any sense as Jim was a convicted felon and the NSSA did not allow felons to be a member of the Association.

Kay told me Royal Inge had the NSSA change its By-Laws so Jim could be a member and shoot with the 5th Virginia Cavalry. This also did not make any sense as Jim could not own any firearms but maybe owning Black Powder guns did not apply as they were not considered firearms if they were made before 1898.

My next thought was to find out how serious this was and I knew there would be few attorneys I could reach on Sunday to get a better understanding. I was also wondering how I could be listed in the Newspapers before I was arrested.

I do not remember how long I had been sitting at my desk thinking about all this before Carol came into my office and asked me what was wrong. I told her I had just received a copy of a Newspaper Article from Willy and it said I have been indicted in the Excess Tobacco Marketing Scheme in North Carolina.

"That's ridiculous," Was her first response. "You have not been in the Tobacco Market since the fall of 1992. Have you called Jim?"

After I told her about my efforts to reach Jim and my conversation with Kay Brake, Carol suggested I call the North Carolina Attorney I had used several years ago. I had hired him when Jim told me he was taking a Plea Bargain for cashing checks for more than 10 thousand dollars and I wanted to know more about the things Jim had mentioned but he did not want to discuss in any detail.

I was surprised to reach Randolph Riley at home and I explained why I was calling him. He suggested I turn myself in to the North Carolina Federal Authorities and he would make all the arrangements with the US Attorney's Office in Raleigh North Carolina.

On Tuesday morning, I flew myself down to the airport at Raleigh North Carolina and Randolph Riley picked me up. He took me to the Federal Building for my Arraignment. The moment we walked into the Federal Building I was separated from Mr Riley, handcuffed and taken to a holding area, where I was stripped searched, put into an orange jumpsuit and then put in a cell.

Over the next few hours, a half a dozen people came to talk with me and told me they wanted to help me. I only told them I had come to turn myself in after a friend had faxed me a Newspaper Article, which said I had been indicted. Lunchtime came and went without me getting anything to eat.

Special Agent Ed Dayo who I had met in the US Attorney's Office two years ago told me I was facing 390 years in Prison and 5 years on Probation unless I cooperated with him. I politely told him I did not know what I was being charged with but I was sure it was not murder.

Special Agent Dayo had handcuffed me and he was going to take me to my Arraignment Hearing in the Orange Jumpsuit when Mr Riley walked in. Mr Riley had words with the US Attorney. I was given my suit back and then I was escorted into the Court Room without handcuffs.

The Indictment was read and the US Attorney was asking for immediate confinement claiming I was an International Fight risk with over-seas bank accounts.

I Pled "Not Guilty" to all the charges and the Judge asked Mr Riley how I had come to be in his courtroom today. The fact I had not been arrested and came to turn myself in after a friend had faxed me a copy of a Newspaper Article with my name in it did not set will with the US Attorney's claim I was a flight risk. The Judge wanted to know when I receive this fax? When I told him Sunday about noon, he turn to the US Attorney. "If Mr Corrigan was a flight risk he could have already left the country as you had not even issued an arrest warrant. I understand Mr Corrigan is an international businessman and his company could suffer by his absence. I am therefore releasing Mr Corrigan on his own recognizance and I am asking him to turnover his Passport to the Court, next Case."

As Mr Riley drove me back to the Airport, he told me I was lucky to get this Judge for my Arraignment as the other Judge who was part of the Courthouse gang would have supported the US Attorney's position and locked me up without Bail.

Having established his knowledge of how the Federal Court's worked in North Carolina, Mr Riley made his pitch to represent me on this case. When he claimed his family was in the Tobacco Warehouse Business and he had represented a number of clients in Federal Court he told me his fee would be 50 Thousand Dollars, I was surprise that it would cost so much to defend me.

Rather than agree to his fee, I told him I needed a chance to decompress from what happened to me during the last few days. When I asked him for a copy of my Indictment, he became visibly nervous and he claimed he needed to make a copy before he would send it to me.

In business I would have seen his reaction as being afraid he was about to lose the deal and as long as he withheld the Indictment he was still in the game. Rather than read anything into it, I gave him my Fax number and when he agreed to send it to me, I asked him to send the Case Citations of the clients he represented in Federal Court and what Tobacco Warehouse his family owned.

All the way back home, I felt uncomfortable as if I had missed something. I tried to write it off as the eye opening experience of being confronted by the Federal Court System and how close I had been to spending months in jail while my business went to hell.

Carol had more questions than I had answers for and without a copy of the Indictment I could not tell her what I was actually charge with. She was pleased the Judge had been responsible and he had released me without bail. Carol did not seem surprised that Mr Riley wanted $50,000 dollars to represent me and suggested since the Tobacco Business had been one of VAMCO's ventures it should cover my attorney's fees.

Mr Riley did not send a copy of the Indictment, the list of the Federal Court Cases he had been involved in or the name of the Tobacco Warehouse his family had run. Instead, he sent a list of all the things he had to do before he could represent me in my case and the name of his Bank he wanted me to wire transfer his fee.

I was composing my response when a second Fax came in from Mr Riley claiming he was being pressured by the US Attorney to file his representation as my attorney with the Court. My Fax response was short and to the point."Where is the copy of the Indictment you promised to Fax to me?"

The 179 page Indictment came in the next day without any comments from Mr Riley. After reading it, I was even more confused as I could not see I had done any of these things. I could not understand what I had done could have been a crime as everything I did in the Tobacco business was done according to the ASCS Regulations. I needed some straight answers and the only person who had those answers was Jim Brake but he was nowhere to be found. I went to the library and used their law books to research the charges listed in the Indictment. My research did not improve my understanding of the crimes I was charged with or what the government claimed I had done.

I went to see VAMCO's attorney and he was able to translate the charges into simple English, which helped my understanding. When I told him about my concerns with Mr Riley, he told me he would contact an attorney he knew who might be willing to take my case.

When I got back to Berclair, Mr Riley had sent another Fax demanding his fee. I was not comfortable with this demand as once I paid a fee to an attorney I would be stuck with him without any guarantee of his performance.

I had learned from my past business experience I needed a Representation Agreement outlining the steps I expected an attorney to accomplish and when those steps were satisfactory made, the attorney would be paid to accomplish the next step. Otherwise, once you paid an attorney his full fee they forgot who is paying them and acted as if you were working for them.

I called Mr Riley to outline the procedures in which I would engage him as my legal counsel. When he told me he did not work that way, I told him I did not need him and to send me a bill for his work at the arraignment hearing. Ten minutes later, he called back to discuss this Agreement.

I told him I would pay the first ten thousand dollars to outline the case against me, conduct basic discovery of what evidence the Government had to prove their case and provide his recommended defense. Then based on his understanding of the case if he can convince me his recommended defense was based on sound case law, I would pay him a second payment of ten thousand dollars.

For this second ten thousand dollars he was to do an in depth investigation of the Government's case, identify and obtain any documents withheld by the government through additional discovery and conduct interviews with all the governments witnesses. Since there would be evidence the Government did not want us to have, I would pay him the next ten thousand dollars to obtain that evidence. I would pay him the balance of his fee of twenty thousand dollars on the Friday before the week of my scheduled trial date.

When Mr Riley causally agreed, I surprised him by telling him I would send him a written Representation Agreement for his review and once he signed it I would wire transfer the first payment to his bank.

I used the basic VAMCO Representation Agreement I had in the computer's document file and filled in the appropriate specifics as I had outline to Mr Riley over the phone. An hour later, Mr Riley had sent back the signed agreement without making any changes.

That evening, the Fredericksburg's Free Lance Star Newspaper carried an exaggerated story of my Indictment. The only two truths in the story were I was a Registered Tobacco Dealer and they spelled my name right. I called the Free Lance Star and asked to speak to the reporter who wrote the story.

After I introduced myself, I asked if he had tried to contact me before he published the story. When he admitted he had not, I asked how he checked and verified the facts in the story.

"Well it came from the government," He responded as if that was enough.

"So you believe everything the government tells you?" I asked him. When he did not responded I told him, "That would not absolve him of the responsibility, as a Report to make sure the facts in the story was true. If you want the truth you are welcome to interview me." Although he asked for my telephone number, he never called back.

I received a phone call on my Cell Phone from Reverend Cong Chin who had received an anonymous Fax with a copy of the Fredericksburg Newspaper's Story. He was not surprised, by the content of the News Article. He believed the Government had sent it to all the people who were involved with VAMCO's efforts to rebuild Cambodia. Even Hon Sen and Chia Simm had received a copy of the Newspaper's story in the attempt to discredit me.

Reverend Cong Chin had warned Hon Sen and Chia Simm to expect something like this from the US Government after the plan to remove Prince Sihanouk had been successful. Reverend Cong Chin had already told them of the US Government's attempt to stop him with a trumped up charge he had filed false reimbursement claims in his casework for the State of California.

The bases for the US Government's involvement, was the State of California had received Federal Funds. The bogus charges were now being handled Pro Bono by one of the top criminal lawyer's in the City. This attorney established someone in the Government made a clerical "error" of adding another "zero" in Reverend Cong Chin's Reimbursement Claim Form even though the reimbursement check had been issued for the correct amount. The Government had not dropped the charges and they continued to hold his Passport.

Reverend Cong Chin informed me Hon Sen was willing to postpone our meeting to sign the Representation Agreement for as long as it took and he wished me luck that things would be resolved quickly.

The next day I received a Fax from Shriekon Jane and Ali Hazerit reporting they too had received a copy of the Fredericksburg Newspaper's story and they wanted me to call them. Knowing all my Berclair office phone lines were bugged I made all my calls on my cell phone with Brian's frequency jammer turned on.

Shriekon understood matters better than I thought he would. He explained my Indictment was more than a coincidence, as Swami G had been charged in Great Britain of fraudulently taking charitable contributions. Shriekon believed this phony charge was a deliberate international effort to force the Indian Prime Minister to separate himself from any influence of his religious advisor.

Shriekon claimed Swami G had not been in England for more than two years and he had only gone there at the invitation of the British Hindu Community to bless their new Ashram. Shriekon had gone with him. He knew everyone Swami G had met and Swami G had never met the man claiming this fraud.

Although John had assured me the Government did not have the capability to tap Cell Phone communications, Ali's landline phone may not be secure. Ali immediately told me not to say anything over the telephone. He claimed to understand the motives of the international interests who were involved in removing the key players from the Cambodian Projects.

Ali stated he had already discussed the situation with our mutual friends referring to Shriekon and Reverend Cong Chin. Ali suggested since the Reverend and I did not have our Passports we would not need them to come to a meeting in Toronto Canada. Ali did not need to state the purpose of this meeting was to discuss what affect all this government interference would have on proceeding with VAMCO's Projects. Ali already knew I needed permission from the Court to leave Virginia and this meeting would be scheduled when I had obtained it.

With everything that had happened to Swami G, Reverend Cong Chin and me, there was a justified level of paranoia. In a roundabout way of communicating without actually saying it over the government tapped phone lines, we agreed for security reasons to use Clif Jenkins's home Fax number for all further written communications. Just how long that line of communications would remain secure would be about as fast as the Government would determine what we had done and put a trap on Clif's Fax Line.

I called Clif and asked him to find John for a meeting at his place, as I would be there in 20 minutes. As I drove to Clif's place, I remembered the simple identification code the neighborhood kids on 107th Street used when we played at fighting in a war. Every rock pile in every farmer's field was a "Fort" identified by a "Six-Puff 'odd' number" and every member of our 'army' had his "Six-Puff 'even' number." The rock pile in the field across the street from my house was "Six-Puff-Five" and I was "Six-Puff Ten."

Perhaps it would be wise to establish a code word or number for each of us to keep whoever was interfering with us, guessing. Then I remembered Reverend Cong Chin had already established a code out of necessity and all we needed to do was established a code name for each of us.

After telling Clif and John what had happened to me, Reverend Cong Chin and Swami G, we sat down to establish the code names for each party's location and their individual numbers. We had to risk sending the codes on the first Fax from Clif's phone as we did not know how long it would take for the Government to set up a Fax Trap on Clif's phone line. I drafted the cover letter to explain how the codes worked and I explained why Clif's Fax number had to be used until further notice. I also told them John was building a frequency jammer for Hon Sen, Shriekon and Ali and I would bring them to our meeting in Toronto as soon as the Court allowed me to come.

Mr Riley made the formal request to the North Carolina Court for my travel to Toronto on business and it was granted without objections from the US Attorney. With the date for the meeting set, Shriekon and Reverend Cong Chin flew into Toronto while Clif and I arrived in my Airplane. The meeting went surprisingly well as Reverend Cong Chin had covered everything with Hon Sen and Chia Simm. Both Cambodian leaders wished us well and they hoped my situation would be resolved quickly so we could proceed with VAMCO's Proposals.

Ali told Reverend Cong Chin to offer a one million dollar contract-signing bonus, to each of the three leaders of Cambodia as a gesture of appreciation for their understanding and to show our good well. There was nothing in the United States law about giving a signing Bonus to a foreign national once the deal had been made, as it was not considered a bribe.

Once we had done what could be done to protect VAMCO's Proposals for the rebuilding of Cambodia, Shriekon and Ali discussed other possible business opportunities in India and Canada.

When Ali explained, some of the problems he was having with the company he was trying to do business with in India Shriekon looked at me and I nodded back to him. Without saying a word, I knew Shriekon would be protecting my interests in any business that might be developed from this meeting with Ali.

One thing lead to another and one of the commodities Ali wanted could best be supplied from the former Soviet Union. Shriekon looked at his wristwatch and asked if he could call a friend in Russia to confirm what they were discussing. Since Shriekon and his Indian Company Chanar had been India's Trading Partner with Russia, he was well aware of who might be able to make this deal happen.

Shriekon called the Russian Prime Minister Boris Yeltsin on his personal phone line and the preliminary proposal was made. It was agreed that Shriekon and Ali would fly to Moscow from Toronto in three days to negotiate the final terms of the agreement Shriekon would Fax to Yeltsin within 24 hours and it had happened that quick.

It was time to celebrate and go out to dinner. Ali as a Muslim was observing Ramadan and we agreed to wait until after dark when he would be allowed to eat with us. Although Ali protested he did not want us to wait, I insisted that we deserved to celebrate together and I told him, we did not want to tempt him into breaking his religious fast. This simple gesture of my understanding of his religious obligations would be remembered and appreciated.

# 2. FALLOUT OF THE INDICTMENT

My attorney handling the Lawsuit against the NSSA called to express his concerns as he had received a call from the NSSA's Attorney. The NSSA's Attorney wanted to know if I would be dropping my case now that I would be concentrating my efforts to defend myself, in this criminal case. There was an implied threat of sanctions against my attorney if he continued to represent me as a known criminal. This confrontation by the NSSA's attorney was too much of a coincidence as the NSSA was desperately trying to avoid going to court on this damage lawsuit.

The truly guilty members of the NSSA Board of Directors knew they could not defend what they had illegally done to me by bringing the false cheating charge and what they did to lose the NSSA's approval of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's new 1855 Artillery model barrel in a court of law. Now Kay Brake's comment about NSSA Commander Royal Inge changing the NSSA'S By-laws to remove the bar to convicted felons being a member of the Association made sense. The NSSA had bought Jim's testimony to include me in his Excess Tobacco Marketing scheme.

My business associates in North Carolina came up with another reason Jim was testifying against me. They had been telling me Jim Brake had made a deal with the Government to testify against me to protect his brother, Henry who had also become a Registered Tobacco Dealer in Jim's tobacco operation. I could understand Jim's efforts to protect his brother but to include me in his excess tobacco marketing scheme for the ability to shoot in the NSSA was very hard for me to accept. However, I had to believe it until I knew otherwise.

I was able to convince my attorney he already was treating me as if I were convicted and the NSSA could be behind the Government charging me so I would drop this lawsuit. He accepted this possibility as he had already seen the underhandedness of the Navy Arms Company's dealers on the NSSA Board of Directors. He agreed to remain on the case and hold the scheduled NSSA's deposition of Bill Edwards.

I called Willy Strickland and asked him to check out what pressures the Government was putting on Jim Brake to testify against me. Willy agreed to approach Jim directly and ask him. Willy reported Jim was the Government's principle witness against me and he was doing it as part of his deal with the Government to protect his brother from being indicted. Willy added he had a message for me from Jim. "Tell Mark I am sorry but these bastards have me in a bind. I am being forced by Ed Dayo to lie about his involvement. If Mark's attorney will ask me about this when I testify I will tell the court all about it."

Willy had another key piece of information. A local attorney named Richard Stearns seemed to be involved with the US Attorney's Office but Willy did not know what his connection was in the case. Unfortunately, I did and it established the direct link back to the NSSA. Richard Stearns was the NSSA's attorney who had engineered the false cheating charge with Earl Coats and Bucky Malson to use Charley Brooks' testimony as his eyewitness. Richard Stearns had also been the NSSA's prosecutor who used Bucky Malson's unproven bullet-hole theory during their sham trial.

However the most significant event was Clinton granting Full Diplomatic Recognition of Vietnam on July 12 1995 over shadowed all the other possible enemies who would benefit from my being indicted. The 1993 rumors of the Singapore businessmen bribing the Clinton White House to recognize Vietnam now made sense. VAMCO was within days of signing the formal agreement with the Cambodian Government to rebuild their country when I was indicted in this Tobacco scheme.

The fact Cambodia could have a country wide electrical power system in 2 years was an economic threat to Vietnam becoming the dominate Regional Power in Southeast Asia. The secret Nixon deal to provide North Vietnam with billions of dollars of economic aid to become the major industrial power in Southeast Asia for the 1973 Peace Agreement to end the war with South Vietnam had fallen apart, when Nixon was forced to resign over the Watergate. North Vietnam feeling cheated and deceived by the United States had renewed their war and easily defeated South Vietnam on April 29 1975 as the United States Congress had refused to consider aiding the Government of South Vietnam.

How much of that original economic aid to North Vietnam belonged to the US Investors, who could not openly invest in Vietnam until it was recognized, might be found behind the false front of the "Singapore businessmen" who had bribed Clinton. Clinton had delay the recognition of Vietnam for almost 3 years after he took their money. However once Prince Sihanouk had been removed as the obstacle to VAMCO's Cambodian projects maximum pressure was put on Clinton to act.

Clinton had recognized Vietnam in spite of the strong opposition of the American people who wanted a full accounting of the 2,200 American Servicemen who were still missing in the Vietnam War. Although Clinton's act opened the door to open economic investment in Vietnam it did not stop the advantage VAMCO was about to achieve in making Cambodia the economic powerhouse in Southeast Asia. If VAMCO was the wagon hauling the load I was the linchpin in the wagon's tongue hitched to the horses pulling it.

This was like what happened to me in Hopewell all over again. I had to be stopped by bringing false criminal charges against me. Only this time instead of the Chemical Company trying to hide their involvement in the illegal production of Kepone, it was the Clinton President trying to make up for delaying Vietnam's recognition after taking their money.

Clinton's delays had allowed VAMCO to gain the advantage of developing Cambodia years before Vietnam would ever be in that position and even then, Vietnam would always be second best. I should have seen this coming when we found the Government's wiretaps on VAMCO's phones and listening devices planted in the Main House at Berclair Plantation. When we overcame these bugs with our frequency jamming and white noise devices, the government must have used more advanced and sophisticated equipment to circumvent our efforts and they knew how close we were to signing VAMCO's agreement with Cambodia.

Knowing the charges against me were false just like the false charges I faced in Hopewell did not mean I could take them lightly. I needed someone like Frankie Moneymaker who had broken the Hopewell false charges wide open and made the continued prosecution of the charges a sham on the courts. The only man I could think of doing something like that in this case was Alex Ballwin and I had no way of finding him.

# 3. NOTHING IS FAIR OR JUST IN THE FEDERAL COURTS

After several weeks of pushing Mr Riley, to obtain specifics on the charges of the indictment and the need for discovery he called and told me the Government was opening its records for our review. I flew down to Raleigh North Carolina to help Mr Riley review the evidence of the Government's case against me. However rather than providing a list of the prosecution's evidence in response to our Discovery request, Agent Ed Dayo showed us a large room filled with boxes piled to the ceiling and he told us all the evidence against me was in there and we were welcome to find it.

I told Mr Riley this was ridicules as we were on a wild goose chase and we would have no idea what value or importance any of these documents in the hundreds of boxes would be to my defense. Mr Riley surprised me when he told me this was the only discovery we would get. When I asked him if this was normal in Federal cases he refused to answer me.

Faced with an impossible and unreasonable situation, I told Mr Riley we needed to hire 10 temporary clerks to help us look through these boxes, as I was not going to pay him his hourly fee as an attorney to do a clerk's job. When Mr Riley looked as if he were a deer caught in a car's headlights, I grabbed the phone book and I called several Temporary Employment Agencies and told them what I wanted.

By noon, we had a crew going through the boxes looking for anything with my name on it. However, at 4:30 we were told we had to leave as the Office was closing. The next day I had double the number of Temporary Clerks and we found one document with my name on it. It was a statement of a Tobacco Dealer, who said he had heard I was a Tobacco Dealer but he had never met me or conducted any Tobacco Business with me. I was the last one to leave that night and I was surprised when the room was not locked to secure the evidence.

I was the first one back the next day. I asked one of the secretaries to open the Evidence Room and she told me it was never locked. When I walked around the corner towards the Evidence Room, I saw Agent Ed Dayo coming out with a box and he was in such a hurry to carry it into a room across the hall he did not see me. I was not sure calling out and exposing what Ed Dayo was doing would help me, as I did not have any witnesses. I thought it was bad enough to be forced into this ridicules method of discovery but now it was even worse as the Evidence Room was not secured and boxes could be added or removed without our knowledge.

When I was in the Army this knowledge was military Intelligence on the enemy and once you knew what the enemy was doing you might be able to use it to your advantage. What I needed to know was how much time Ed Dayo had to move these boxes as it would tell me how many boxes he had moved into the other room. I should be able to get this information from the Secretary by asking her what time Agent Dayo came in. Unfortunately, she was not aware Agent Dayo had come in as he had an appointment at the Federal Building this morning.

While the Temporary Clerks were going through the boxes, I left the room and tried the door across the hall and I fund it was unlocked. This room was also filled with evidence boxes and I knew I would not have time to check them all before I was discovered. If Agent Dayo was moving the evidence boxes in and out of our evidence room, he had to know which boxes to move. I could not see any marks on the boxes, which might tell me what boxes he had moved.

With so many evidence boxes in our room I had marked the ones we had already inspected with an "X" followed by the date. I was sure Agent Dayo had seen these inspection marks and I planned to trick him. I marked all the exposed boxes in this other evidence room with just an "X" and no date.

While everyone else went to lunch, I exchanged five boxes we had already inspected from our evidence room with five boxes just inside the door of the other room. I hoped Ed Dayo would think he made a mistake when he quickly moved them in and out of our evidence room this morning.

None of the five boxes I moved from the other evidence room contained anything about me and I would put them back. However, the next morning I found two boxes I had marked with just an "X" in our evidence room. These boxes contained canceled Tobacco Checks I had cashed from the Warehouses I had done my tobacco business. I could not understand why Ed Dayo would think it was so important to hide these checks from us.

Each day during lunch, I moved five boxes from the room across the hall and replaced them with the ones I had taken the day before. None of these boxes had anything to do with me and I had no way of knowing I had inspected all the boxes Agent Dayo had been moving.

After 5 days of going through the evidence boxes, we found three documents that had anything to do with me and these documents did not represent any damaging evidence of what Mr Riley was calling a "smoking gun" to prove the Government's case against me. I suggested Mr Riley filed a Government Agency wide Discovery Request as someone must have something the Government would be using to make their case.

When Mr Riley told me this was not normally done in a criminal case, I asked him, who he was working for and I insisted he do it. He filed the Discovery Motion and the court denied it. I told him to appeal it and Fax me a copy. If he did, I never received a copy.

Months went by and Mr Riley kept telling me the Government did not have a case yet the date for my trial had not been set. When I called Mr Riley about the trial date and asked about the "Speedy Trial Rule," he told me North Carolina did not have a "Speedy Trial Rule." This did not make any sense to me as all Federal Courts where bond by the same Federal Law.

_What I did not know at the time was Mr Riley was using North Carolina State's Trial law and the Government had filed for a number of Continuances in my case and Mr Riley had agreed to all the Continuances without telling me what he had done_.

# 4. MARKING TIME TO DISASTER

The NSSA's Deposition of Bill Edwards went reasonably well to establish his interest in buying 1,000 Artillery model barrels until the NSSA's approval had been lost. However, after the Deposition was over my attorney refused to proceed with my case against the NSSA until my criminal trial was over. My business partners in VAMCO's projects for Cambodia were becoming more concerned as my criminal trial should have been held by now and I did not have an answer as to why it had not even been scheduled.

I could not get a straight answer from Mr Riley about his failure to interview the Government's witnesses or tell me what the Government's case was against me. I knew without this information, he could not tell me what his recommended defense would be. As I continued press Mr Riley he claimed he was making progress but he needed more money to get the discovery I had asked him to do.

He let me believe he was working on the Government Agency wide discovery. He claimed he could not tell me what the Government's case was against me until he had this discovery and the cost of this additional discovery was not foreseen in our Representation Agreement. He was therefore asking for the second ten thousand dollar payment. Then he surprised me with the question to know if I would consider a Plea Bargain.

"What for?" I responded. "You have been telling me for months the Government does not have a case. Only guilty people are interested in a Plea Bargain when they could plead guilty for "J walking" rather than go to trial for the murder they had committed. I want you to push for a trial date as this is just taking too long."

"Well I am required to ask if you would consider a Plea." Mr Riley stated.

"Required by who, the Prosecutor? I will tell you what I am willing to do. I am willing to take a lie detector test and the government can ask me any questions they want. However when I pass the lie detector test the Government will drop all the charges." I told Mr Riley to tell the Prosecutor.

"May be we should have you take a practice lie detector test to see how will you do before we make this proposal to the Prosecutor." Mr Riley suggested.

"Hell, I do not need to practice telling the truth. Get it done." I stated.

In the months that followed, Mr Riley produced no discovery evidence nor did he establish who the Government's witnesses might be other than Jim Brake. We had already discussed what Willy Strickland had told me about Jim Brake being forced to lie to protect his brother. Although that part of what Willy had told me might be true, we could not count on Jim Brake telling the court he was being forced to lie about my involvement in his Tobacco scheme.

I told Mr Riley my multi-million dollar lawsuit against the NSSA had given Jim Brake another motive and I could not be sure which way Jim Brake would testify in my trial. I wanted Mr Riley to interview Jim Brake as soon as possible and have him on the record. If Jim Brake admitted, he was lying to protect his brother than perhaps the Government would drop the case against me. Mr Riley claimed he understood the importance of interviewing Jim Brake and he said he would do it.

I realize now Mr Riley was telling me what I wanted to hear and what I knew what was true, the Government had no case against me. Yet Mr Riley did not interview Jim Brake, he had not followed up on my offer to take the Lie Detector Test and he could not explain why the charges were not dropped, as he had predicted.

I was extremely busy in January, February and March with our broodmares giving birth to this year's foal crop and picking up cooled semen from our stallion Coosa Lad standing at the Cloudcroft Horse farm. The number of outside horse breedings to Coosa Lad had dropped off significantly due to the publicity of the criminal charges against me even though I did not own Coosa Lad. Someone in the Government had spread the rumor in the AQHA that I was already convicted and if they bred their mares to Coosa Lad, I would not be able to honor their breeding contracts.

Mike Hay, our stallion manager did an outstanding job dealing with those rumors as he simply told potential breeders to check with the AQHA to confirm Carol Stewart was the only owner of Coosa Lad and it had always been that way since she bought the horse. In spite of Mike's efforts, Coosa Lad was only able to breed 72 Broodmares and 35 of them were our Broodmares. This was the lowest number of breedings Coosa Lad had in any year. I felt sorry that what was happening to me would adversely affect Coosa Lad's career as one of the finest stallions in the AQHA as he did not deserve the breeding limitations caused by someone in the government.

As luck would have it, the Real Estate Agent we had hired to help us find a new horse farm in the Lexington Virginia area, called and said he had just listed a reasonably priced farm 2 miles from the Virginia Horse Center. He wanted us to come and look at it before he offered the farm to anyone else. To our surprise, this farm was located next to the Lazy Acres Horse farm we had already looked at off Route 39.

We had put an offer on the Lazy Acres Horse Farm but the owner's counteroffer was still too high. Although the location was ideal being so close to the Virginia Horse Center we would have to invest a considerable amount of money to build the Mare Care facilities we would need to house the outside broodmares who would breed to Coosa Lad. Something just did not feel right about the property and we had not been impressed with the house so we had delayed putting in another offer.

We told our Agent we would meet him at noon at a restaurant in Lexington to review what this new property looked like and then if we liked it he could take us to see it. He suggested he would fax the information to us and we could discuss the property while we drove to Lexington and he would meet us there. I call him on my Cell Phone when we were 30 minutes from Lexington and I told him we were interested in the property. After lunch, our Agents took us to see the farm.

The farm was located off the left split of Lazy Acres Road on Poor House Mountain. It had a long drive through rolling hills to a modern Log Home built into the hillside and it had a green house attached to it. Carol immediately fell in love with the house as she had always stated she would like to live in a Log Home with a greenhouse where she could raise her plants.

The house was adorable with a large field stone fireplace that took up most of the north wall to the top of a cathedral ceiling. There was a balcony along the east side of the house overlooking the Murray River Valley. It had a spiral stairway to the second floor loft with two bedrooms and a bath. It had three large rooms on the lower level with the entrance to the greenhouse and a door to the outside that was at ground level. I could see the family room on the lower level as my office large enough to hold business meetings. There was a bedroom with a bathroom and a workshop in the other two rooms on this level. I could not see anything I did not like about the house as it was Carol's dream house.

The barns in the immediate area of the Log House were not large enough to keep our horses but there was enough flat land behind the house to build what we needed. Since we would have to build, what we needed for our breeding farm any way, there was a large flat area just inside the property line where we could build a covered arena and build our outside mare care barn around it. This location would separate these outside broodmares from our own horses and help control the spread of any diseases the outside mares might bring to our farm.

We were in the middle of the flat area where we would build our outside mare care barn when our Real Estate Agent told us what the asking price was. It was lower than any of the other places we had looked at and half the price of the Lazy Acres Horse Farm. I looked at Carol and l knew she wanted me to negotiate the offer. Even through the property was worth what the owners wanted for it, there is the idea if we offered them their price the owner might think they sold it too cheap. However, I was at a loss to come up with an offer that would be high enough to let the owners know we were serious but not so low the owners would not make a counter offer.

The owner was renting the pastures to a neighbor who was grazing his cows on the farm. A cow walked up to us and I noticed the tag number 343 in its ear, which was the perfect bid to make our offer. Carol laughed when she realized where I had come up with the amount of our offer. However, she understood when things were supposed to happen, the Good Lord made it known to us in strange ways. Our Real Estate Agent asked if we were willing to consider a counteroffer and when Carol said we would, we went to his office to write up our contract offer.

With all the shit hanging over my head in this Excess Tobacco Marketing Case, which could also involve VAMCO, we had agreed Carol should buy this farm in her own name with the money her father had left her after he had died.

I suggested she get an 80% loan from a local Lexington Bank and use part of her money to build what we needed on the farm, which she was already calling "Sherman Station." "Sherman" was Coosa Lad's barn name and during the Civil War, a Railroad Station of the Orange & Richmond Railroad Line had been located on the property.

To be on solid legal ground we met with Charley Ayers VAMCO's Corporate Registered Agent at his office in Richmond Virginia the following day. We explain the situation of my indictment by the North Carolina US District Court in the Excess Tobacco Marketing Scheme and this tobacco business was one of VAMCO's business ventures. What we wanted to make sure was if Carol bought this farm with her own money she had inherited from her father the government could not put a lean on it.

Charley suggested if he could verify the source of Carol's independent money then he would have the North Carolina US Attorney sign off on the deal. When Carol told him she had left her father's money in the same account in the same bank her father had, Charley called the US Attorney. Charley told the US Attorney what Carol Steward proposed to do. The US Attorney told Charley if he could establish it was only Carol's money, she could buy the horse farm without any question from the Government.

Carol Faxed Charley a copy of her father's will and the Bank Statements of the account, that only had her name on it. There had not been any deposits to this account since Carol's father died. The only two checks drawn on the account where used to buy Coosa Lad. Within a week, the US Attorney signed off on Carol's purchase of Sherman's Station and we felt comfortable buying the Lexington Property.

Our Real Estate Agent called with the owner's counter offer and we suggested if the owners would split the difference, we would buy it. They did and the sales contract was signed for a closing in 60 days. The Lexington Bank offered the loan if Carol agreed to make 50,000 dollars worth of improvements on the property and they would make any additional loans on any major improvements Carol wanted to make for her horse business.

We called Mike Hay and had him meet us at Sherman Station. He was excited about the plans we had made to bring Coosa Lad and our horses on the same farm, as he knew we could not bring Coosa Lad to Berclair. He also knew we wanted to move our broodmares when we found out we had the fescue grass problem that endangered the lives of the foals unless the mares were given a special medication to counter act it. He loved the location and he told us this purchase was indeed timely as his lease on the Cloudcroft Horse Farm was about to expire.

Carol told Mike Hay we would build a house for him on the hillside of Poor House Mountain just inside the gate into the property so he would be close to the Horse breeding barn operation. She would also give Mike an option to buy the house and 10 acres for his own horse farm.

We had already put the Franklin Street house on the market months ago even though we were renting it out and now we listed Berclair Plantation for sale with Nick Calamos Real Estate office. Berclair Plantation was now worth 3 million dollars in the Fredericksburg Real Estate market. We kept the 8-acre core of the Plantation with the houses and barns and the 13 acres in the bottomland as one parcel. The front pastures could be made into a subdivision worth 5 million dollars when it was developed. We would sell the parcels separately for one price and the whole Plantation for a reduced package price. We had an offer for 2 million dollars the week after we listed the Plantation and the buyer was considering our counteroffer to split the difference.

# 5. LIGHTNING STRIKES AGAIN

Mr Riley called and told me the Government had not dropped the charges but had issued a superseded indictment against me and two other people neither of us knew. Mr Riley had no explanation of his previous legal opinion that the Government did not have a case against me and they would be dropping the charges. The Government had added the charge of money laundering and the forfeiture of Berclair Plantation, if I was found guilty.

My first reaction was this new indictment did not make any sense as I could not launder my own money and all my records and Tax Returns accounted for every penny I had made. After confirming, the Government had not included Virginia American Management Corporation in this new indictment, I told Mr Riley this forfeiture had to be a mistake, as I did not own Berclair Plantation.

When Mr Riley did not respond, I had the feeling he was not listening or he was distracted by something else. Knowing the Government had my phones bugged I knew I had already said too much. I told Mr Riley I wanted to meet with him tomorrow and to Fax the new indictment to me, knowing it would not matter if the Government trapped it. After two hours when the Fax did not come in, I tried to reach Mr Riley but I could only get his answering machine. For two days, I called Mr Riley and I finally sent him a Fax before he sent me his Fax. The only problem was Riley's Fax was not a copy of the superseded Indictment but a copy of the original indictment with a note on it telling me the Arraignment was scheduled for April 14, 1997. This time when I called Riley I could not even get his answering machine and I sent several Faxes, which he failed to answer.

When I sent him a Fax threatened to report him to the North Carolina Bar Association, he sent a Fax scheduling a meeting in his Office in Raleigh North Carolina. Although I had confirmed this meeting with a Fax, he was not at the Airport to pick me up. After several failed phone calls, I rented a car and drove to his Office, but it was locked. When I called Mr Riley on my Cell Phone, I could hear the phone ringing in his Office but his answering machine was not on and it did not record my call.

I called my Office and had them send Mr Riley a Fax asking him to call me on my Cell Phone as I was waiting for him at his office. I waited three hours outside of Mr Riley's office and he never called or returned to his office. When I got back to Berclair Plantation, I found Mr Riley's Fax telling me he had put the wrong date in his calendar and suggested another date for our meeting. Unfortunately, the same thing happened when I flew down for this meeting and after I returned home I found his fax and he used the same excuse.

The Arraignment was now just a week away and I still did not have a copy of the Superseded Indictment. When Mr Riley finally called me after three days of Faxing him a message to call me, he acted as if nothing had happened. We agreed to meet at 2 pm at the Motel in Greenville North Carolina the day before the Arraignment. I was there but Riley was not. I could not reach him by phone or Fax and his answering machine was not working.

About 2:30 in the morning, Mr Riley knocked on my Motel Room door saying he had been sick. I had all I could do to hold my temper. I suggested he go to bed and we agreed to meet at 6 am at the Restaurant across the street from the Federal Courthouse. At 8:30 am when Riley arrived, the only thing he wanted to discuss was the payment of the balance of his fee. He admitted he could not provide his recommended defense and he had lied to get the second payment in our Representation Agreement yet he still expected me to trust him that he would be prepared to defend me for my trial in 30 days.

I calmly told Mr Riley he was fired. Yet he continued to demand that I pay him his fees. When I just looked at him as if one of us were crazy, he repeated his demands louder and louder until the Restaurant Manager told us to keep it down or leave his restaurant. I threw a 10-dollar bill on the table and I walked out the door.

Out on the street Mr Riley sounded desperate when he told me if I did not pay him, he would not represent me. When I told him he finally understood that I did not want him to represent me, he agreed to tell the Judge at the Arraignment Hearing he had been dismissed and then he walked off towards the Federal Courthouse.

This was the first time I had a chance to see my Co-defendants Jimmy Wells and Cecil Humphries. I was even more surprised that Charley Ayers who was Virginia American Management Corporation's Resident Agent was representing Cecil Humphries.

Cecil Humphries was arraigned first and he pled guilty.

Jimmy Wells pled Not Guilty.

When I was arraigned I was asked if I understood the charges against me and I wanted to say I have not even seen them, when Mr Riley spoke up saying "He does."

After I pled Not Guilty, I turned to Mr Riley and asked him when he was going to tell the judge he did not represent me anymore. Mr Riley put his hand over the side of his mouth and said, "We'll discuss it outside."

"Like hell we will." I spoke louder than I intended. However, the judge was calling for a recess and I thought few people heard me.

Once outside of the courthouse building I grabbed Mr Riley by his necktie and pulled him over to the telephone booth. I dialed my Office phone number and dictated a letter formally discharging him and directing him to immediately inform the court he was discharged and Mr Riley could no longer speak for me in any matter. After my secretary proofread the letter back to me, I told her to read the letter to Mr Riley when I put him on the phone.

When Mr Riley handed me the phone, I told my secretary to send it by certified letter return receipt requested. When I hung up, I released my grip on his necktie and asked him, "Do you have any doubt in your mind that you have been fired and you no longer represent me?" He shook his head "no" and then took off.

As I walked back into the courtroom, Rob Smallenberg who was a member of Charley Ayers Law Firm asked what that was about as he had seen what I had done to Mr Riley.

"Oh that? That was a lesson in communications." I responded and introduced myself as the Executive Vice President of Virginia American Management Corporation and Charles Ayers was our company's Registered Agent.

"Yes I know, Charley told me." Rob responded and waited as if he wanted me to say something else.

"How come the court went into recess? I thought everything was done." I asked Rob, looking to see what he knew.

"It is and it isn't, depending on what Charley can do." Rob said. "Maybe you should stick around." He added.

"I just might do that. I don't know if you can tell me or not but why did Cecil Humphries plead guilty?"

"He did it, to protect his wife. The Government threatened to indict her even though she had nothing to do with his tobacco business. You are about to find out how dirty the Government and the US Court system is, if you do not know already. The prosecutor will do anything to win and the rules only apply to the Defendants." Rob told me.

"Do we have time for a cup of coffee?" I asked.

"Sure, but I better tell someone where I have gone just in case they are done early." Rob said before he went back into the Courthouse.

By the second cup of coffee at the Restaurant across the street from the Courthouse, Rob's curiosity about what he had observed between Mr Riley and me got the best of him. "It's none of my business but I have a feeling you were not too pleased with Mr Riley and the way he looked when I came out, you just fired him. Yet you seem to be very calm about it." He probed.

"He gave me no choice as he not only lied to me for the last 9 months he took a second payment as part of our Representation Agreement when he had not done the work. He was supposed to tell the Judge at this Arraignment Hearing that he had been dismissed but he did not do it. I learned a long time ago, that it is better to fight a battle alone than count on someone who will deceive you. To give you an example I have not seen a copy of this Superseded Indictment yet and Mr Riley has failed to keep any scheduled appointments since it was issued. If I had to guess, I would say Mr Riley is on drugs. But that is enough said." I advised Rob.

Someone from the Courthouse came in and told Rob the Judge was about to reopen the session in the Court. I was surprised to see Charley sitting at the Defense Table with Jimmy Wells and his attorney. When the judge called the court to order, Charley stood up and addressed the court.

He told the judge Mr Wells wanted to change his plea to Guilty based upon a new plea agreement reached with the Prosecutor. The Prosecutor presented the judge with a copy of the Plea Agreement and the judge went through the procedures of establishing this Plea was a voluntary agreement made by Jimmy Wells after consulting with his Defense Counsel.

It was a sweet heart plea where he would not serve any more time in jail than what he had already received from his conviction as the moneyman for the Montana Freeman Militia. The real kicker in the deal was if his Appeal over turned his Freeman Conviction, Jimmy Wells would be a free man.

Although I never met Jimmy Wells, I knew Jim Brake had worked with him on a subdivision development in Kinston North Carolina and in the tobacco market. They had a falling out before I started to work with Jim and from what I could understand each man hated each other's guts. Jim claimed Jimmy Wells had engineered the attack on him in the phone booth after the Skirmish at Capron Virginia.

Jimmy Wells had somehow become involved with the Montana Freemen and sold some of their Surety Bonds to several North Carolina Banks that the Government claimed was worthless. When the Government overran the Montana Freeman's Military Compound, they found financial agreements linking Jimmy Wells to the Freeman Organization. However, Jimmy Wells was found guilty in a separate trial held in North Carolina and he was sentenced to 12 years in Prison.

When the court adjourned, Prosecutor Thomas Swaim approached me and asked if I was ready to take a Plea Agreement. I told him since he was not interested in my offer to take a lie detector test to prove my innocence there was nothing further to be said. When he had this blank look on his face, I had the feeling Mr Riley never presented my offer. However before I could say anything else, Charley stepped in and told the Prosecutor he should not be talking with me without my counsel present.

I thanked Charley and asked if Carol and I could come and see him. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Rob nodding to him and Charley asked if tomorrow afternoon at 2 pm would be all right. I had just gone out the Courthouse door when Rob caught up with me and handed me a copy of the Superseded Indictment.

I called Carol on my Cell Phone as I drove back to Fredericksburg and told her about everything that happened. As a backup if Charley was not willing to take my case, I then called Willy Strickland and asked him for any suggestions he might have on a new attorney, I would need as I just fired my attorney. He called me back with the names of three attorneys he felt might be capable of handling my case in North Carolina. I had to pull off the Interstate to write down their names and phone numbers. I called each of these attorneys to schedule an appointment to talk with them tomorrow about my case.

For the first time since I was indicted I felt I had gain some control over the direction of my battle with the Government. As I had learned in the Army when you are about to conduct a military operation you needed to spend 10% of your time planning the campaign and I used the time traveling back to Berclair doing that. I knew my biggest problem in finding a new attorney would be overcoming their hesitation of taking a major case with only 30 days to prepare after I had just fired my current attorney. I could only tell them my reasons for discharging Mr Riley and if what Mr Riley failed to do was normal in the Federal Court legal system I was in deep trouble. Rather than consider this as a handicap, I felt I could use their hesitation as a way to screen out those attorneys who were not professionally confident enough to take my case.

By the time I came home, Carol had made a New England boiled dinner, which was one of my favorites and she had baked a pecan pie. As we ate our dinner, I told her what happened and I had made an appointment for us to see Charley Ayers at his office at 2 pm tomorrow.

To Carol's credit she had become a very good businesswoman and she asked a number of key questions to gain a better understanding. What she could not understand was how the Government could come after Berclair Plantation when VAMCO owned it. I told Carol that was another reason we needed to meet with VAMCO's attorney, Charley Ayers. I would also know more about the charges after I had a chance to read the copy of the Indictment Rob Smallenberg of Charley's Law Firm had just given me after the Arraignment Hearing.

After dinner, we both spent time reading the Superseded Indictment. Although I understood what was said in the Indictment it did not tell me what I had actually done. Everything I did was done to the letter of the Tobacco Regulations and if I mailed my Tobacco Sales Reports every week I was only doing what I was required to do.

It took awhile before I realized the Government was claiming I had made false reports for tobacco they claimed had been part of the excess tobacco marketing scheme. Then when I mailed these false Reports, I had committed a Mail Fraud. I realized I was faced with a criminal act I did not know could exist as part of the resale tobacco I had sold and I had no way of proving I did not know it was excess tobacco.

I made myself a stiff drink and then when up stairs to take a bath before going to bed. Carol had lit some candles and turned off the lights in the bedroom. Carol knew how to take my mind off my problems and after we made love, I slept like a baby.

I was up with the chickens working on my approach to the attorneys I had scheduled to call. Two of the three attorneys were interested in discussing my case and they asked me to send them a copy of the Superseded Indictment. The other attorney told me he could not represent me as he had a client who could be indicted in this excess tobacco marketing scheme. He did however suggest contacting another attorney, who was one of the attorney's Willy Strickland had already recommended, which made me feel good. Based on the questions the two other attorneys asked and their comments I was gaining more knowledge of what Mr Riley should have done and failed to do for the last 9 months.

Our meeting with Charley Ayers and Rob Smallenberg went well and I found out what Charley had done to convince Jimmy Wells to take a guilty plea. Cecil Humphries who took a Plea Bargain to protect his wife had been involved with Jimmy Wells in this excess Tobacco Marketing scheme for years.

Cecil told Jimmy Wells the Government would force him to testify against him and Charley was able to negotiate the sweet heart Plea agreement where Jimmy Wells would not get any more jail time than what he had received in his conviction as the moneyman for the Montana Freeman.

Although Jimmy Wells had been one of the principle excess tobacco dealers for years, he would not face any fines, forfeitures or restitution for his part of the Excess Tobacco Marketing Scheme. This was indeed a sweetheart deal, as Jimmy Wells would be keeping all the money he made in his illegal activities. This deal did not seem fair to me as the Government was paying Jimmy Wells millions of dollars for the 12 years he would be in Federal Prison.

Charley claimed he had won a bet with the Prosecutor Thomas Swaim for a box of cigars when he got Jimmy Wells to Plead Guilty. Charley explained the key to making this deal had been getting Jimmy Wells and his Attorney to agree to allow him to become Jimmy's Co-counsel without any objections from the Government.

I had the feeling Charley was telling us this story as part of his sales pitch to show us he knew how to get things done for his client's best interests. If this was Charley's sales pitch, I knew he would make his justification why he was import to be involved in my defense and he did not disappoint me.

Charley went on to explain, since he was VAMCO's Attorney and the Government was coming after VAMCO's asset of Berclair Plantation, he was already involved in my case. Therefore, there was no reason why we should not consider him becoming my Legal Counsel in my criminal trial, since he would be protecting VAMCO's interests by winning my case.

When Carol stated that made sense, Charley made it clear he was not violating any attorney client privilege by talking with Carol and me even though the Government had listed Cecil Humphries, Jimmy Wells and me as co-defendants in this Superseded Indictment. Charley pointed out that since Cecil and Jimmy had never met me, before the Arraignment Hearing and they had not done any tobacco business with me, they could not testify against me in my trial.

Charley confirmed the copy of the Superseded Indictment Rob had given me, yesterday was the first time I had seen it. Charley had a better understanding of these charges than I did and he outlined the Government's case against me. Charley told us he was prepared to defend his client Cecil Humphries until the Government threatened to indict his wife. Charley had obtained a copy of the transcript from the Rudy Hill trial so he knew all the weaknesses in the Government's case and how the Agent Ed Dayo had screwed-up to hand Rudy Hill his acquittal.

This however did not mean the Government would make the same mistakes in my case and he would need to do an in depth investigation before he would agree to represent me in my trial. To do this investigation he would need 20 thousand dollars and if he agreed to take my criminal case, he would need another 30 thousand dollars. If he did not take my criminal case, he would represent VAMCO for the original 20 thousand dollars.

Before I could suggest to Carol we should discuss this she told Charley she would wire the 20 thousand dollars to his firm's bank account by noon tomorrow.

Charley suggested we take a break while he arranged to have his secretary come in and record what I could tell him about my involvement in the Tobacco Market with Jim Brake, as Charley knew Jim Brake would be the Government's principle witness in my case. As I told my story of how I started in the North Carolina Tobacco Auction Market with Jim Brake and how VAMCO had developed the overseas Bulk Tobacco Market in South Korea and the cigarettes business in Cambodia, Carol would add things to confirm what I was telling Charley and Rob.

Charley then wanted to know how I bought Berclair Plantation. I told him I did not buy Berclair Plantation, VAMCO did. I explained my longstanding business relationship with A R Dixon, the written agreements VAMCO had made with him to buy Berclair as a long-term investment we were using as our American Quarter Horse breeding farm.

Carol told them about our horse business we started in 1987 and her buying Coosa Lad in 1995 with part of her inheritance she received from her father who had died in December 1994. Coosa Lad was already on the AQHA Leading Sire's List when Carol bought him and we were using Coosa Lad to breed our World Class broodmares to produce exceptional AQHA horses, several of which had become World Champions.

I explained how VAMCO's cigarette business in Cambodia was expanded into projects to help rebuild Cambodia. I had created the Cambodian Veteran's Rehabilitation Program with Reverend Cong Chin and through VAMCO's efforts to find funding for this program I had established International relationships with Swami G, Shriekon Jane of Chanar and the Indian Government. This had opened the door to VAMCO becoming involved in International commodity trading and our involvement with Ali Hazerit of Canada and the UN "Food for Crude" sale of Halal chicken to Iraq.

I explained how I had tried to get the company who had privatized Pakistan's electrical power to help Cambodia rebuild its country's electrical power system. When they were not in the position to make it happen, I became involved as Cambodia's Electrical Power developer after I made a deal to buy a 622 Megawatt Power Plant and have it built in two years along with the electrical distribution system after our agreement was signed.

I told them after President Bush lost the election we began to run into difficulties with the United States Government and from the White House who had stopped our chicken export business with Iraq. Then the Department of Agriculture refused to allow me to register as an ASCS Tobacco Dealer, which not only stopped my involvement in the Tobacco Auction Market it also shut down VAMCO's bulk Tobacco International sales.

While all this was going on and VAMCO was working on the Cambodian projects, all of VAMCO's phones were wiretapped and the Government put listening devises in our home and a trap on my Fax line to intercept all my correspondence to VAMCO's Cambodian development partners. Then the IRS started with an audit of our Partnership of Foonman Airlines and expanded this audit to include VAMCO and my personal Tax Returns.

When I was able to overcome the IRS's small claims by using their own regulations the IRS Agent claimed in spite of signed and notarized agreement with A R Dixon to buy Berclair Plantation, A R Dixon did not exist and neither did Dixon's companies I had worked with since 1973.

However rather than pursuing this claim the IRS denied 3 million dollars of VAMCO's normal business expenses and claimed VAMCO now owed the Government the taxes, fines and penalties on 6 million dollars.

We hired a Tax Attorney who conducted a complete audit of all of VAMCO's Tax Returns and found VAMCO paid its taxes to the penny. The Tax Attorney also found my personal tax returns were accurately filed. This Tax Attorney then wanted us to hire a Private Investigator to find A R Dixon to prove to the IRS that he did exist. This turned out to be an absolute farce as his recommended Private Investigator did not conduct an International search of the known areas I knew A R Dixon had been and conducted his business for the last 25 years. After I fired the Tax Attorney and his Private Detective, I went through my files on A R Dixon to put together a running history of my relationship with Dixon.

Clif Jenkins and John Jones can tell you an interesting story about getting a copy of the Delaware Registration on A R Dixon's Company he used to transfer the money he invested in Berclair Plantation. Once I had a copy of that company's registration the IRS seem to be delaying they efforts to take VAMCO and me to Tax Court.

I need to tell you Reverend Cong Chin and I helped Prime Minister Hon Sen and the President of the Cambodian Parliament Chia Simm to engineer the removal of Prince Sihanouk and replace him with Ohn Hoot. Prince Sihanouk was blocking all of VAMCO's Projects to help the country rebuild and once he was removed we were scheduled to fly to Cambodia to sign VAMCO's Representation Agreement.

It was then I was indicted and the court took my Passport so I could not leave the United States to go to Cambodia. Since then everything has been on hold for the last 9 months. I can only believe my indictment is directly linked to VAMCO's efforts to help Cambodia rebuild and they could not stop me and these development projects any other way." I told Charley and Rob.

I could see they were having some doubts about what I had told them and maybe Carol could see this too as she said. 'What Mark has told you is just half of all the things he has done to help Cambodia rebuild. I would suggest you talk with Clif and John and have them tell you all the things the Government has done to interfere with Mark and these projects. I would also suggest you talk with Mark's Secretary as she has been with us for over 10 years and she has typed all of VAMCO's contracts and agreements, to include the formal agreement with the Cambodian Government."

"Yes that is a good idea." Charley responded. "I would also like to get a list of names of any other people who have knowledge of all this as you never know how valuable this information might be and we need to determine if they would be good witnesses.

What I would like you to do now is concentrate on how you conducted the tobacco business with Jim Brake. From what I know about this excess tobacco marketing scheme, I will need to know how you could have been involved in this scheme with Jim Brake and not know it was illegal." Charley came to the point.

I told them about my meeting with the US Attorney and Agent Ed Dayo after Jim had told me he was taking a Plea Bargain for cashing his tobacco checks without completing the Currency Transaction Forms. The way Agent Dayo outlined how this scheme worked it was nothing like what I had experienced when I did my tobacco business. Once I had an agreement to sell my tobacco in a Tobacco Auction Warehouse I had very little contact with anyone at the Tobacco Warehouses other than to pick up my checks from the Warehouse's Bookkeepers for the tobacco I had sold at their warehouses.

Jim was handling all the buying and I would pay him for the tobacco when I had the pink copy of the delivery invoices to establish where and how much tobacco had been delivered at every one of the Tobacco Warehouses who had agreed to sell my tobacco."

"You mean you paid for the tobacco before it was sold in the Warehouse and not after?" Charley asked.

"That's what I said. I had the written proof of delivery of every pound of tobacco I paid for as every invoice had my Dealer's Card and the name of the Tobacco Warehouse imprinted on the top of them, just like a Credit Card Receipt. What you need to understand I was selling tobacco in 14 different Tobacco Warehouses in North Carolina and 5 Warehouses in Virginia and I needed a fool proof method of establishing how much tobacco had been delivered to each warehouse to keep track of my inventory and my Tobacco Books straight." I told them and added, "If there is one thing I learned when I started my International Businesses of Harpers Ferry Arms Company it was keeping track of my products on third party documentation and only paying for what I actually received."

"All right Rob and I need to come up with some questions to evaluate and establish your normal tobacco selling procedures based upon what Cecil Humphries has told us about this scheme. It might be helpful if we had Cecil come up here to ask you some questions as he has been involved in this excess tobacco for years and he would know how you could have been used without becoming aware you were involved in this scheme." Charley suggested.

"I would like you to do that as I would like to believe I had not been so easily taken in by Jim Brake." I told them.

For the next two days, we went over each year's Tobacco Books and I explained what I could remember of each transaction while the Law Firm's Accountant went over both VAMCO's and my personal Income Tax Returns. When we were done, the Tobacco Books were to the pound of tobacco I had sold and the Tax Returns were to the penny as I had filed them.

Charley Faxed a copy of what I had told him about the procedure I had used in selling all my Tobacco to Cecil Humphries for his comments and opinions. The Government must have known what we were up to as the Court was not willing to let Cecil Humphries travel to Richmond Virginia to meet with his attorney. However, Charley was comfortable with Cecil's responses.

By this time, the two attorneys I had sent a copy of the Superseded Indictment had reviewed my case. One attorney admitted he did not know enough about the tobacco auction business and he had me send a copy of the Tobacco Regulations. The other attorney had a scheduled trial in another North Carolina Federal Court at the same time of my trial so he could not be available unless I could get a continuance of my case.

When Clif and John came to Charley's Office to be interviewed, someone had followed them. Clif called us on his Cell Phone and reported the tail. John had suggested they would drive by Charley's Office and maybe we could get the license plate numbers of the two Vans that had been following them. Clif drove as if he were lost and he made two passes up and down the street Charley's offices were on. From Charley's Office window there was no doubt Clif and John were being followed as one of the two Vans made the same turns, Clif had made each time and the other dark windowed Van had parked across the street from Charley's office.

When Clif and John came in John had his camera and he asked if he could get to the roof of Charley's Office Building as he wanted to locate were the other Van had parked. John came down smiling as he said he had pictures of both Vans license Plates. After giving Charley the information on the two Vans license plates' he promised to send Charley a copy of the pictures of the Government's Vans with their license plates and maybe he would like to determine who they were without John telling him.

Charley did not need John's photographs to run the license plate numbers of the two Vans who had followed them. Once he did, it removed any doubt that VAMCO and I were targeted by someone in the Government and gave him confidence in what Clif and John were about to tell them.

Clif confirmed what I had told Charley and Rob about VAMCO's involvement in Cambodia and the Halal Chicken Business with Ali Hazerit. John reported all his efforts to locate A R Dixon and retrieve A R Dixon's Company Registration from the Delaware Corporate Commission. The story of their trip to Delaware, and how John had obtained the Registration Document of A R Dixon's Corporation with the date stamped on it added spice to their involvement with VAMCO and me.

The next few days Charley and Rob interview possible witnesses we might use in my trial. Carol had sent Charley a copy of a Fax sent by Mr Riley telling me the Government would be releasing copies of the Documented Evidence they might use in my Trial. Rob and I flew down to Raleigh North Carolina to pick up these documents without telling Mr Riley Rob was coming.

Assistant United States Attorney Thomas Swaim attempted to stall the release of the boxes of this evidence, none of which had the "X-dated" mark I had put on the boxes we had looked through in the Evidence Room.

"Where is the US Attorney's certification stating the contents of these boxes were in the Evidence Room when we were granted Discovery?" I asked the Prosecutor Swaim who claimed he did not know anything about it.

"You better find out who does, as unless I have that sworn statement there was no reason to take evidence that was not offered to be all the evidence against me 9 months ago. Since you have not claimed this is newly discovered evidence there should not be a problem, Right?"

"We can discuss it when Mr Riley arrives. I also want you to sign some stipulations on the evidence we obtained from the Banks you used in your Tobacco Business." Swaim responded.

I was about to tell him I was not expecting to see Mr Riley when he came through the door and I now knew why AUSA Swaim had been stalling. I met Mr Riley at the door and told him, "Just because you have not signed for that Certified Letter does not mean you are still my attorney. However now that you are here you can clarify my understanding of the Discovery we were granted 9 months ago when we spent five days going through all those boxes in the Evidence Room."

When Mr Riley acted if he did not know what I was talking about, I told him to move those boxes to his office and I would have someone pick them up. I turned to AUSA Swaim and told him to mail the stipulations to me and I would review them before I agreed to sign them. When AUSA Swaim stated that was not how things were done, and I told him I was not signing anything, he appealed to Mr Riley to talk to me. Before Mr Riley could say anything, I told them I was through here and walked out the door.

Rob did not say a word until we were flying back to Richmond. "Okay, tell me why, you did not want to take those evidence boxes?" He asked.

"I already know what is inside them even though they had not been in the Discovery Evidence Room 9 months ago. If you recall I looked inside those boxes while I was asking Swaim about the certification on the evidence."

Then I told Rob about Agent Ed Dayo moving the boxes in and out of our evidence room. I told him how I had marked those boxes with just an "X" and no date. "The only thing missing from those boxes, were the Tobacco checks I had cashed from the Warehouses and those were the checks Swaim wanted me to stipulate that I had cashed. If you think it is important to look in the boxes I will have them shipped to your office." I told Rob.

On the rest of our trip back to Richmond Rob wanted to know how long I had been flying. I explained how I had bought an airplane and learned to fly when I was stationed at a Hercules Air Defense Missile Site in Union Lake Michigan so I could attend the Civil War Rifle matches. I had used my Airplane when I was the Public Relations Officer in NORAD and after I resigned from the Army I used my Airplane when I was building Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Maynard Carbine and the French Flintlock I was making in the United States. I also told him how I use the Airplane in Carol's Vocational Rehabilitation Business and when I was putting together the projects to rebuild Cambodia.

When I arrived back in Fredericksburg to play it safe I sent Mr Riley a Fax telling him UPS would pick up the evidence boxes from his office the next day. Much to my surprise Mr Riley sent me, a Fax telling me we needed to get together to discuss my defense and he needed me to pay him the balance of his fee. I wanted to send Riley a fax asking him what part of his being fired he did not understand. However that would be a waste of time and my certified letter of April 29th was all the evidence I thought I needed to establish Riley no longer represented me in any capacity.

UPS called the next day saying there was no one in the Office where they were supposed to pick up the evidence boxes. Since the signed receipt for the original Certified Letter had not been returned, I sent Mr Riley a Telegram and another Certified Letter informing Mr Riley he had been fired and I wanted those evidence boxes sent immediately to me COD.

When the boxes arrived, I went through them before I took them down to Charley's office. These boxes were the same ones Ed Dayo had been moving back and forth between the two evidence rooms as they had just my "x" on them without a date following it.

# 6. EVERYTHING BUT FAIRNESS OR JUSTICE

That afternoon I received a phone call from Jim Brake who wanted me to meet him at 2 pm in the Restaurant parking lot across from the Texaco Service Station on Route 1 which was just south of Harrison Road where Berclair was located.

I knew Jim Brake was the enemy and the Court had specifically told me as a condition of my release I was not to have any private contact with any of the government's witnesses involved in this Tobacco scheme. No matter what Jim claimed, I knew this was a trap to get me to violate the terms of my release. On the other hand, if the Government was going through all this trouble, it would be good military Intelligence to know what Jim had to say.

I called Carol and told her about the phone call from Jim. She knew I could not meet Jim and she suggested I drop her off before Jim arrived, as she wanted to confront Jim about what he was doing to us. I dropped Carol off at the corner of the street and Carol walked south to the Restaurant parking lot where Jim and Pat his wife were already waiting. I circled around and found a position where I could watch Carol meet with Jim.

They talked for over a half hour and all the while, a Mobile Home was parked across the street at the Texaco Station. Carol stayed in the Restaurant parking lot until Jim and Pat left. Shortly after they left, the Mobile Home departed the Texaco Service station and I took a picture of its license plate. When Carol walked across Route 1 to the phone booth at the Texaco Station to call me on my Cell Phone two Fredericksburg Police cars came around the Restaurant and out of the parking lot heading north on Route 1. I did not believe the presence of these two Police Cars was just a mire coincidence and I was glad my angel was working overtime.

According to what Jim had told Carol, he claimed he was being forced to lie about my involvement in his excess tobacco business and the Prosecutor knew Jim was lying but did not care. Jim explained he did not need me to know what he was doing in this scheme as I had the money to pay for the farmers' excess tobacco before it was sold at my Tobacco Warehouses. Jim also told Carol how he and Rudy Hill would have the farmers deliver their excess tobacco to any Warehouse I was selling my tobacco.

"This now made sense." I told Carol. "Bringing in a Dealer's Tobacco to the Warehouse was the normal way an honest Tobacco dealer conducted his business and it explained why it was not necessary to bring me into their scheme but I did not know how I could prove it."

"That's what Jim said you would say about proving it." Carol said. "Jim also said you should check with Willy as he had already told you what your attorney needed to ask him. Does that make any sense to you?" Carol wanted to know.

"Yes it does, Willy Strickland had already told me what Jim wanted me to know. All my attorney had to do was ask Jim when he was on the witness stand, if he is being forced to lie about my involvement in the excess tobacco scheme. Jim would tell the court he was lying as part of his plea bargain agreement to protect his brother Henry and Agent Ed Dayo had told Jim what he had to say in court or Ed Dayo would make sure Jim went to jail for a very long time." I told Carol.

"The way Jim put it, the Government would be trapped and they could not withdraw his plea agreement for telling the truth on the witness stand." Carol told me and she was pleased by what she had learned.

"Did you notice the Mobile Home parked across the street at the Texaco Station while you were talking with Jim?" I asked Carol but she had not as she could not see that far.

I told her it was there before you arrived and I became suspicious of it when no one got in or out of the Mobile Home and then it left when Jim departed. I had just taken a picture of its license plate when two Fredericksburg Police cars came around the restaurant and headed north.

"Well if it was a trap, it did not work. If Jim is telling the truth we have something you can use in court and you will have my testimony to back up what he told me." Carol concluded.

I called Clif and he had his cousin the Prince George's Deputy Sheriff run the license plate and it turned out to belong to a Mobile Home rental company. The government could have rented it for this job and that meant the Government was getting smarter.

The next day we met in Charley's Office and he told us he was willing to defend me in my Tobacco Case. He was convinced I was right that the Government had more than a casual interest in me and what business VAMCO was doing.

Charley was preparing a motion to issue a Government Agency wide subpoena to get anything they had on VAMCO or me. He would be issuing subpoenas for the witnesses he felt he needed to present in my defense. He wanted me to know I was also right about what was in those evidence boxes as there was nothing material to my case in them.

When Carol and I told Charley and Rob about her meeting with Jim Brake and his wife Pat, Charley shook his head and he was not taking this lightly. He told us if this was a Government Trap, it had failed and they were getting desperate which would make them even more dangerous.

Charley did not want us to take any chances and he wanted us to call him immediately day or night if anything and he meant everything did not seem or appear to be a normal or a regular occurrence. I had the feeling Charley was enjoying this possible challenge and he thought he was ready to handle anything the Government might try next.

The next day Rudy Hill showed up at Berclair Plantation and before I could tell him to go to hell he put up his hands and told me not to say anything as he would do all the talking. Then he asked if I would take a walk with him and suggested going into the barn. When we were in the barn alone he took off his shoes and stripped naked to show me he was not warring a wire.

My first thought was what John had told me that the Government did not need to wire someone to record a conversation from a long way off and Rudy's demonstration of taking off all his clothes could be a deception to get me to lower my guard and incriminate myself. There was only one safe place in the barn and that was in the Barn's office with the jammer turned on. I turned and walked into the office and turned on the jammer before Rudy walked in.

Rudy stated he knew I had gotten a copy of his trial's transcript so I knew how dirty Ed Dayo was and what he was about to tell me would be no surprise. Rudy then told me the Prosecutor was forcing him to testify at my trial and if he did not, they would retry his case. However, there was another reason the Government had to make him, testify. He had been busted with cocaine in Johnson County North Carolina but they had not charged him with the crime yet. If he agreed to testify and say, what Ed Dayo wanted him to say, his cocaine arrest would be wiped from the books.

According to Rudy the Government was required to disclose any deals they had made with a party who was testifying to avoid prosecution. Since the Prosecutor would not be disclosing the cocaine bust, all my attorney needed to do was ask him about his cocaine arrest in Johnson County. He would tell the court about the deal the Government had made to force him to lie that you, Jim and me were equal partners in this excess tobacco business. Rudy believed when he did this, my attorney could get a mistrial and even get sanctions against the Prosecutor.

Rudy told me he had discussed this with the attorney he had used in his trial and his attorney had suggested that he tell me what was going on so my attorney would know how to deal with it. Rudy claimed his attorney also told him he would defend him at no cost if the Government was foolish enough to retry his tobacco case or if they tried to prosecute him on the cocaine bust.

Rudy gave me the phone number of his attorney and asked me to call him to confirm what he told me. He wished me "Good Luck" and after he left, I realized if the Government was somehow recording this meeting, Rudy never mention my name and I never said anything.

I called Charley on my Cell Phone and told him what happened and he seemed to be pleased that the Government's case was so weak they had resorted to such underhanded practices. Charley said he would call Rudy Hill's attorney and he wanted me to come down on Monday to go over my anticipated testimony.

He and Rob were preparing questions they would be asking me when I testified in my own defense and what questions they believed the Prosecutor would ask me. They wanted me to role play how I should answer these questions on the witness stand. Of course, they would know more about what they needed to ask me after the Prosecution presented its case at my trial.

My testimony rehearsal went well as both Charley and Rob made suggestions on improving my choice of the words I would use when I testified in my own defense. We would meet again on Friday the week before my scheduled trial to reinforce the points they wanted the jury to hear from me.

The US District Court on its own motion was challenging my use of the three new retained counsels I had hired to defend me. The judge, Malcolm J. Howard scheduled a Rule 44 c Hearing two days before my trial. The Prosecutor Thomas P Swaim was claiming Charley Ayres, Rob Smallenberg and their North Carolina Attorney Allen Gardner had a conflict of interest in being my defense counsels as they were also representing Cecil Humphries even though Cecil had already pled guilty.

Charley explained this was how the Government gets so many of its convictions in the Federal Courts. "Any time there is a chance the government might lose in a criminal trial, the Prosecutor will attempt to separate an effective defense counsel from all of the defendants. Then once each defendant had a new attorney the Prosecutor will make a deal with one of the defendant's to testify against the other defendants for a reduced sentence.

However, the fact Cecil Humphries never met you before the Arraignment Hearing and he never conducted any business with you will not prevent the Prosecutor from arguing he intends to have Cecil testify against you. He will claim we have a conflict in defending one defendant's best interests at the expense of the other defendant.

If this were a normal case without all the pressure from Washington to convict you as a means of stopping VAMCO from helping Cambodia rebuild we would have the prevailing argument before the judge as the Prosecution has not even listed Cecil Humphries as a possible witness in your case.

We have already seen how desperate the Prosecutor is by trying to trap you into meeting Jim Brake and violating the conditions of you release and what he is doing to force Jim Brake and Rudy Hill to lie at you trial.

You need to understand that the US Attorney's Office and this same Court Judge were really embarrassed when the Prosecutor's principle witness Agent Ed Dayo manufactured evidence in the Rudy Hill Trial. The Government's own witnesses refuted Ed Dayo's documents and testimony to the point Rudy Hill's attorney did not need to put on a defense to obtain Rudy Hill's acquittal.

Rudy Hill is perhaps the most widely known operator in this Excess Tobacco Marketing Scheme and you became the largest and most successful independent Tobacco Dealer involved in the tobacco market since the Department of Agriculture established the ASCS Tobacco allotment system.

The Government not only wants to convict you, they want to take everything you have and they do not care if the majority of your money came from legitimate business as they will clam it was all illegal tobacco money. Your trial represents the last chance the Government has to show the tobacco farmers that the government has punished all those who were involved in the Excess Tobacco Marketing Scheme."

"So you are telling me the deck is stacked against me?" I asked him.

"It could be but we have not lost the Rule 44 hearing yet. Holding this Hearing so close to the trial date is more than enough justification for the Court granting you a continuance to hire a new attorney and we will help you find one of the best if the court rules against us." Charley assured me.

The Rule 44 (c) Hearing was held on May 12, 1997 in Greenville North Carolina Federal Courthouse and I was surprised to see Mr Riley was there. It was then I learned that he still had not informed the court that he was formally discharged.

The Court spent most of the morning helping the Prosecutor establish his argument and ruled I could not use any of my three new counsels. Although the Court had me testify directly to the court, the judge told me to discuss my position with my attorney Mr Riley during the Court's recess. When I told Judge Howard, Mr Riley was not my attorney, I had fired him a month ago and I wanted a continuance to hire a new attorney Judge Howard ignored what I said and ordered the Recess.

When we were alone in a Courthouse conference room after I confirmed Mr Riley had not done anything to prepare for my trial, I asked him what he thought he was doing by not telling the Court he was not ready or that I had fired him.

When Riley refused to respond to my questions, for the first time in my life I wanted to kill a civilian and I must have scared him as he asked what I wanted him to do. I told him to tell the court I had dismissed you a month ago and you are not prepared to defend me. Then I wanted you to ask the court to grant me a continuance to hire new counsel who could defend me.

When the Court resumed Mr Riley asked the court to release him as my counsel but he did not tell the judge I had fired him or he was not prepared to defend me. Judge Howard denied his request and ordered Mr Riley to be my defense counsel for the trial in two days. When I openly protested, Judge Howard admonished me and told me if I had anything I wanted to say to the court, I should have my attorney address the court.

When I told the Court, I did not have an attorney in this courtroom, Judge Howard warned me again, if I said another word in his courtroom that did not come from my attorney, he would find me in contempt of Court and throw me in Jail.

I turned to Mr Riley and through gritted teeth told him to ask the Court for a continuance to hire a new attorney and to tell the court he was not prepared to defend me. Mr Riley told the Court my objection to him remaining as my defense counsel was not personal but if looks could kill, I must have put the fear of God in Riley. He stumbled through the request for a continuance so I could hire new counsel acceptable to the court to defend me but he did not tell the Court he was not prepared to defend me.

Judge Howard refused to grant me a continuance stating the Court had already granted a number of continuances but if I wanted to hire additional counsel, I was free to do so. The Court than adjourned and Mr Riley as my Court Directed Defense Counsel almost tripped over himself when he ran from the courtroom leaving me standing in total disbelief of what had taken place in this courtroom.

I turn to Charley and I wanted to know how Judge Howard could deny my request for a continuance, as I had not requested any continuances to delay my trial.

"You mean you did not know Mr Riley granted the Prosecution a number of continuances?" Charley asked as he opened the Court's Docket Sheet to show me all the times Mr Riley had agreed to a continuance that was granted by the Court.

"Hell no, I wanted to get this trial over as soon as possible. In fact, I had asked Mr Riley why things were taking so long. When I brought up my right to a Speedy Trial, he claimed North Carolina did not have a Speedy Trial Rule." I responded.

I had to wonder why Mr Riley would want to be my defense counsel, after I fired him and especially after our discussion during the court recess, when he could not tell me that he was prepared to defend me. Just as I did my best when I was under pressure to make a shot, my mind raced to find a solution for the problem Judge Howard had put me in during this Rule 44 Hearing.

I do not know where the thought came from when I turned to Charley and the words just came out of my month. "Charley, I want you to file a petition to the court to reconsider what had been decided at this hearing. I have been denied my right to legal counsel who represents me and not his own interests. I do not know what Mr Riley hopes to gain by what he did, as he surely is not representing me. As you know, I fired him when he lied to me to get the second ten thousand dollar payment outlined in our Representation Agreement and when after 9 months, he could not tell me what he was recommending as my defense. The Judge spent a lot of time to justify why you could not represent me, but he failed to determine why I had fired Mr Riley and why I wanted a continuance to hire a new attorney who was prepared to defend me." I told him.

"We can do that." Charley agreed.

My trial would be held in the Federal Courthouse in New Bern North Carolina, which would add a few hundred miles to my trip from Fredericksburg. I had the feeling it had been deliberately held there to make it more difficult for my witnesses and me to get there. Charley and Rob planned to be there to present my motion of reconsideration before the trial began.

All the way back home I did not know how to tell Carol what happened and I was stuck with Riley as my defense counsel, knowing he was not prepared to defend me thirty days ago and he had not done anything since then. For the life of me, I did not know what Riley hoped to gain by forcing himself to remain as my defense counsel.

Surely, Riley knew I would not pay him and if I would not be paying him for what could be several weeks in a trial, who was? I realized after everything the Clinton Administration had done to prevent me and VAMCO from helping Cambodia rebuild this was a stupid question. What better way did they have to stop me than to saddle me with an unprepared and hostel defense counsel who was being paid to take a dive.

Then it dawned on me that the Court had deliberately scheduled this trial so it would end on Thursday or Friday morning before the Memorial Day weekend. The Court would not even need to threaten the jury with a holiday sequester if the jury could not find me guilty as the jury would already be anxious to get home to spend the holiday with their families.

I could see the Prosecution using up 5 or 6 Court days of the 9 days of the trial between the start of the trial on the 14th and the 23rd, which was the Friday before the Holiday weekend. This would limit my Defense to maybe a day to refute everything the Prosecution had falsely presented before the case went to the Jury on Friday.

I was so distracted in my thoughts I missed my turn and had to double back to reach the I-95 Interstate Highway heading north. By the time I reached Berclair Plantation, Charley had called Carol and told her what happened. He was worried about me and concerned by the way I was acting when I left the Courthouse. He wanted Carol to call him when I got home.

When Carol told me she had talked with Charley, I felt a sense of relief as I would not be the one to tell her the bad news. I told Carol what happened in the courtroom as best as I remembered it and Carol's only comment was "How could they do this to you? This is the United States of America and not Russia."

What else Carol may have said I could not remember. I know I had a difficult night, as my racing thoughts would not let me fall asleep until it was almost dawn and Carol let me sleep until noon. She called Clif and he agreed to go with me to the Federal Courthouse in New Bern North Carolina for the first day of my trial. Carol would be coming down with John Jones on Wednesday.

Charley called and asked me how I was doing. He told me they had Faxed a copy of the Motion of Reconsideration to the Court and they would hand deliver a copy to the Clerk of the Court as soon as the Court's doors were open. Charley confirmed when I was leaving and he told me they would be flying down that evening and they would meet me in the courtroom.

Clif and I left Berclair Plantation so we would be passed Richmond before the rush hour traffic started. It was after 6 o'clock when we entered North Carolina and Carol called me on my Cell Phone. She told me Riley had just called and told her he needed me to send him a Fax with a list of my witnesses he had to give the court before my trial started. Carol had told him I had already left for North Carolina and he would need to get with me tomorrow, as there was nothing she could do now.

While Clif drove, I called Riley and gave him the list of witnesses I could remember Charley had planned to call in my defense but I was not sure I had them all. I told him if I thought of anyone else I would tell him when I met with him tonight. However, Riley was not sure where he would be staying and he could not think of a place where we could meet in New Bern. By now, nothing surprised me about Riley's failure to coordinate anything. I was hoping he would not show up in court as then I would have the justification for a continuance to hire an attorney who represented me.

I must tell you it took me three weeks to write this next part of my story. Each time I tried to write it I found myself becoming emotionally upset and physically sick to my stomach. When I pushed myself to write this part of my story I was plagued with frustrating nightmares of being held in a bamboo cage and tormented by Judge Malcolm Howard and Prosecutor Thomas Swaim while Riley was laughing and encouraging them. Yet I knew if I did not write about this, all my work on this book to reach this point would be wasted and I might as well give up trying to expose this grievous injustice. I found by re-reading the first few chapters of why I was writing this book, helped me remember I was a determined Irishman fighting a righteous cause, which was right in front of God and everyone.

# 7. THE FRAUD ON THE COURT BEGINS

When Clif and I arrived in the Courtroom, only Charley and Rob were there. According to Charley, the Motion of Reconsideration filed in the court was a bombshell that neither the Judge nor Prosecutor knew how to handle. Riley had been called into the Judge's chambers the moment he arrived.

When the Clerk of Court came out into the courtroom, he announced the court would be delayed another 15 minutes, Charley and Rob just smiled. However, when the Prosecutor and Riley came out neither of them were smiling and Riley did not even say hell-o to me. What really did not surprised me about Riley's legal preparations as my court directed defense counsel, was he only had a blank legal pad and he did not even have a briefcase with him.

When Judge Malcolm Howard took the bench and the court was opened he did not take up the Motions of Reconsideration, but proceeded with the jury selection.

Riley asked me if I had any questions I wanted him to ask the potential jury members to help him select the jury I wanted. He explained we had the right to challenge a member of the jury for cause and we could challenge five jurors without giving a reason. Riley then handed me a standard form listing the normal things a juror could be challenged for cause. When I suggested I wanted to eliminate any juror who had served on a Federal jury before, he asked why.

I told him the jury panel could be rigged, with only experienced jurors who already knew what the Prosecutor wanted and they had found a defendant guilty, otherwise they would not have been asked to serve again. What I wanted was a true jury of my peers who would not assume I was guilty just because I was here in court and charged with a crime.

When Riley said he could not do that, I asked him why not. "Are you telling me I am right about the Prosecutors stacking these Federal jury panels to insure a conviction?" I asked loud enough to be heard in the courtroom.

Judge Howard struck his gavel on the bench and instructed Riley to restrain his client from any further out bursts in the Courtroom. It took all morning to select the jury and when the Court recessed for lunch, Riley disappeared.

We were back in the courtroom at 1 o'clock and the Judge took up the Motions for Reconsideration. He told Rob Smallenberg he would not allow him to present these motions and when I told the Judge, I was not prepared to present them he told me if I did not do it, no one else would.

When I turned to Charley for help, he told me to do the best I could. I again protested I was not capable of presenting the legal arguments for these Motions of Reconsideration. Judge Howard stated if I was refusing to present these motions then he would deny them without my testimony. Judge Howard asked me again if I wished to present them. Not knowing what to do and faced without a choice, Charley nodded for me to present the motions.

Judge Howard began by limiting the issue to my right to represent myself and I tried to address the fact I had fired Riley for my lack of confidence that he understood my case and he was not prepared to defend me. I stated I had found new counsels who were prepared to represent me for the start of this trial.

I tried to explain I had no knowledge of any continuances the Court had granted in my case and if I had known about them, I would have objected to any delays to have my case heard.

Since the Court had denied my request for time to retain new counsel after the Court refused to allow my new attorneys to represent me just two days before this trial, I asked the court to reconsider my use of these counsels. However, if that was not possible, I restated my request for time to hire new counsel who was prepared to defend me.

In spite of my efforts to present what I could remember about the 4 Motions of Reconsideration outlined in the written Motions sent to the court and hand delivered that morning, Judge Howard limited his response to what he concluded was my sole request to allow my 3 new attorneys to represent me at this trial. He then denied my motion.

According to Charley, Judge Howard had really screwed up by forcing me to defend myself and present these Motions without any legal counsel. Charley explained I had the Constitutional 6th Amendment right to have legal counsel during all stages of my trial. Rob ordered a copy of the Pretrial Transcript from the Court Recorder and they would file an immediate appeal if the court found me guilty.

This was the start of the fraud on the Courts under Rule 60(b)3 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures and the conspiracy by Judge Malcolm Howard, his Clerk of Court and Prosecutor Thomas P Swaim to defraud the United States from performing its duty and rightful functions as outline in Title 18 USC of Section 371.

What I did not know for more than 6 years after my trial when the transcript was finally transcribed on June 10, 2001 was the transcript did not contain the Judge's decisions to deny Rob Smallenberg to represent me at this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing and force me to defend myself without any counsel.

_However the Judge and the Prosecutor must have concluded I had said enough in this Pretrial Hearing to overturn my conviction for the violation of my Constitutional 6th Amendment Rights to have legal counsel at all stages of my criminal trial if the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed this transcript in my Direct Appeal. Charley and Rob had filed an immediate appeal with the US District Court on May 27, 1997 and Locke Clifford the attorney who had filed a Rule 29c motion on July 15, 1997 were denied a copy of this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing to support their claims of the violations of my Constitutional Rights to counsel_ _._

The Prosecutor Thomas Swaim and Judge Malcolm Howard had the Clerk of US District Court delete the Pretrial Hearing from the Court's Docket Sheet. In doing this my Direct Appeal Counsel who was appointed by the Court had no knowledge this Pretrial Hearing took place and the US District Court delayed providing him most of the other transcripts of my trial for almost 3 years.

When he filed my Direct Appeal, he still did not have any knowledge of this Pretrial Hearing. Without a copy of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing Record, the Assistant United States Attorney, Anne Hayes was able to successfully claim in the Government's response to my Direct Appeal, that this Motion of Reconsideration was a Motion to Substitute Counsel, filed after the trial began. This false claim made by AUSA Hayes, eliminated the Constitutional question of my right to have legal counsel during all stages of my trial, from the fair review by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

# 8. LEADING THE LAMB TO SLAUGHTER

The court wasted no time moving on with the Trial. The Prosecutor AUSA Thomas Swaim presented the Government's Opening Arguments claiming I was involved in a conspiracy with Jimmy Wells and Jim Brake to sell excess tobacco as part of this scheme and it made everyone who was involved in it as guilty as the originators of this scheme. He claimed if anyone, continued to dig a tunnel to rob a bank started by the original parties, they were all part of the same scheme.

What Charley had told me was there were a number of Tobacco Dealers who had been involved in a number of independent groups who had basically used similar procedures for years to market this excess tobacco but that did not make their individual group's efforts part of the same criminal enterprise.

The way Charley explained it the Government was attempting to group all the activities of any Tobacco Dealers who had sold excess tobacco as being part of only one organization and one conspiracy. He said this was like claiming everyone involved in a traffic accident anywhere in the country on the 4th of July, had conspired and planned to cause all of these accidents.

As AUSA Swaim continued throughout the trial, he dropped the first name of "Jimmy" and just used the last name of "Wells." There was a "Ron" Wells who I had bought and sold tobacco with during the time I was involved in the Tobacco Market. I could see AUSA Swaim was doing this deliberately to reinforce in the minds of the jury that "Wells" had been an ongoing conspirator when "Jimmy" Wells had nothing to do with me.

My efforts to have Riley establish which "Wells" AUSA Swaim was referring to, fell on deaf ears. Riley never asked me what I thought was important to be included in his Opening Statement or if he should wait to give, his Opening Statement after the Government had put on its case.

If Riley had waited, at least he would have known what the Government's case was against me and he could use the opportunity to make his opening argument to plant the seeds of reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury.

Riley just got up and made his opening arguments, which sounded quite eloquent until you realized he had not said anything relevant to my case, my defense or me.

The Government's first witness was the North Carolina's current ASCS Administrator of Registered Tobacco Dealers. AUSA Swaim was deliberately leading the less than knowledgeable witness while she was testifying and at times AUSA Swaim would make statements as if he were testifying when the Witness failed to stated the points he wanted in the record.

However, I could not get Riley to object. During the first court recess, I attempted to talk with Riley about AUSA Swaim testifying and leading the witness but he walked out of the room. I went to a pay phone and called Willy Strickland to see what he could tell me about this Government Witness.

What Willy told me was this woman had been a Clerk in the North Carolina ASCS Office in 1993. When the Government eliminated most of the independent Tobacco Dealers, they needed someone to be the token head of the North Carolina ASCS Tobacco Dealers and she became the Administrator with no real responsibilities, as there were no independent Tobacco Dealers left in the North Carolina Tobacco Auction Market.

When the court resumed and the Prosecutor presented a prepared Document Book with the Tobacco Regulations and the forms used by the Tobacco Warehouses, to control the tobacco when it was delivered, sold at Auction, and paid for by checks. It also had a copy of a Registered Tobacco Dealer's Book, his Registration Card and the sales slips used to buy, sell and transfer tobacco to and from the Dealer's Books.

When I reviewed the Document Book, I realized it contained procedures that did not exist when I was a Registered Tobacco Dealer and they were in fact based on the 1997 ASCS Regulations rather than the Regulations for the years in which I had done my tobacco auction business.

This would be like putting a stop sign on a major road interception that did not exist in 1991 and the prosecutor saying I did not stop for it knowing the members of the jury traveled that road to the courthouse today.

When I attempted to point out the date of this Regulation with its changes were made after I was in the tobacco market to Riley, he told me it did not matter.

AUSA Swaim again had to lead the ASCS Witness when she stumbled to testify how the ASCS Regulation were used in the Tobacco Action Market. Based upon her testimony I knew she did not have the foggiest idea how the Tobacco Dealers actually conducted their business during the time I was in the Tobacco Market. Her only experience in the tobacco market was when she was a little girl who went with her father to sell their family's tobacco.

When AUSA Swaim attempted to have the Court declare her as an "Expert Witness" I wanted Riley to object as I tried to have him look at a copy of the 1991-1992 ASCS Tobacco Regulations I had brought with me to the Trial.

When Riley refused to look at the Regulations, I told him to ask the Court for a two minute recess but he refused.

Once the Court had granted the woman "expert witness status" I grabbed Riley's arm trusting the copy of the Regulation into his hand calling him, "a son of a bitch" and I told him, "He better take a look at this." Judge Howard immediately called the courtroom to order threatening to have me restrained before he quickly dismissed the jury for a short recess.

I knew if I did not confront Riley while we were still in the Courtroom he would disappear on me. "That woman is not an expert as she was an office clerk in 1993 and the ASCS Regulations being used in the Government's Document Book did not exist back then. Here look at this copy of the 1991-1992 Tobacco Regulations and read what I am telling you."

Riley took the Regulations and read part of it, before telling me he would recall her as a witness and confront her about her position in the North Carolina Tobacco Office.

"Sure and between now and then, the Prosecutor will be using that Document Book to mislead the jury and by the time you call her back, the jury will not remember what you are talking about. You forced yourself to remain as my attorney, the least you could do is act like you are representing me."

The next five days of my trial were a nightmare as Riley refused to talk with me or discuss anything about what the Government's witnesses had said.

The opportunity to confront Jim Brake as being forced to lie about my involvement in his excess tobacco marketing scheme was lost. Jim had taken three days to testify and his testimony was as boring to the jury as if they were watching paint dry. The only good thing was I forced Riley to ask Jim about A R Dixon.

Jim admitted meeting him and he described what A R Dixon looked like. What I could not get Riley to do was to ask Jim about the business dealings he had with A R Dixon in the NASCAR miniature racecar venture, the money Jim still owed VAMCO after this business failed and Jim's position as the Registered Agent for the North Carolina Company of Dixon International and Development Corporation. Unfortunately, that ended Jim's testimony.

The failure to establish Jim Brake's in depth business relationship with A R Dixon and the fact Jim still owed VAMCO a half million dollars, removed my claim of Jim's possible motive to testify against me as the Government had convinced Jim that after I was convicted he would not have to repay this debt.

_I was able to establish the government's false claim when I talked with Jim after he had testified_. _This opportunity came about when Ed Dayo approach me during a Court Recess and asked me how things were going. I told him the Prosecutor was making my defense easy knowing it would get back to AUSA Swaim and I would have created a doubt in Swaim's mind._

That evening Jim Brake called me on my Cell Phone and told me, we had to meet. Knowing this was a set up I took the battery powered Jammer with me. The Government could not take the chance I would have Jim strip naked to prove he was not wired before I would talk to him and the jammer would block any other listening devises.

The first thing Jim asked me was why my attorney had not asked him about the Government forcing him to lie to protect his brother. After that, we talked about a number of things and I finally thanked him for his testimony about A R Dixon.

This lead into Jim asking about the money he still owed VAMCO and I took the opportunity to point out that debt would not change even if I were convicted. When I saw the look on his face I knew I was right about what the Government had told him and I asked him straight out. "Did they tell you something different? If they did, it was a lie. Hay Jim, this is just between you and me, tell me, the truth." That was when Jim told me I was right about what he was lead to believe and I thanked him.

" _Jim when this is all over maybe we can have a rematch of that pistol competition we had years ago at your place." We shook hands as he said he would like that and I would not see Jim Brake again for another 15 years._

Riley refused to ask Rudy Hill why he was being forced to testify as part of an undisclosed plea agreement to avoid criminal prosecution of his cocaine charge in Johnson County. Rudy Hill did his best to establish Jim Brake had rented the Hill family's vacant tobacco Warehouse to receive tobacco deliveries and tumble tobacco for resale before it was shipped to the Tobacco Warehouses where I was reselling this tobacco. Rudy established when he did any business with Jim Brake they were always alone and Jim Brake never conducted any tobacco business with anyone unless they were alone.

The Prosecutor established Rudy Hill had seen a million dollars in cash used in the excess tobacco marketing scheme in Jim's Motel Room but Riley refused to ask Rudy Hill how normal Tobacco deals took place and how only cash was the reliable means to insure the tobacco was paid for when the tobacco transferred at the point of sale.

The Prosecutor claimed I had sold "air pounds" of tobacco bought from a "Dead Card Tobacco Dealer" to Lubby Brant's Carolina Tobacco Warehouse in Goldsboro North Carolina on a specific date. I knew this was not true as I watched Jim Brake buy this tobacco at Auction at the Big Brick Tobacco Warehouse in Goldsboro and transport it in one of VAMCO's Company trucks to the Carolina Tobacco Warehouse where I resold it. I had my Tobacco Book, which listed my purchase from Jim Brake along with a copy of his sales invoice from the Big Brick Warehouse.

Lubby Brant testified I had sold the tobacco that Jim Brake had delivered to his Warehouse just as he sold other Tobacco Dealer's tobacco. He claimed the only money he received was his Warehouse's Commissions listed on the tobacco checks and he had not paid Jim or me anything to sell this tobacco. He concluded by saying this was the only time I sold tobacco at his Warehouse that year.

His testimony did not establish the Government's theory of how the excess tobacco scheme worked. The Government claimed when the excess tobacco was sold the Warehouseman would go with the scheme's Tobacco Dealer to cash the Warehouse's checks at the Bank to insure the farmers and the Warehouse received their cut of the excess tobacco sale. It also did not fit the Government's theory that the Warehouseman would have his farmers who had excess tobacco to sell, bring his tobacco into the warehouse and it would be married up with the "Air Pounds" provided by the Scheme's Tobacco Dealer.

I attempted to show Riley my Tobacco Book with this transaction but he pushed it away saying it was not relevant. I told him it was relevant as it had Lubby Brant's signature on it and he could testify he had also seen the Big Brick Warehouse's invoice where Jim Brake had bought this tobacco and sold the same tobacco to me so it could not have been excess tobacco. He finally looked at the entries in my Tobacco Book. However when the court asked if Riley had any questions for this witness, Riley said "No your Honor" and the Court dismissed the witness.

When Lubby Brant left the witness stand, he walked by the Defense Table and said loud enough for everyone in the courtroom to hear. "I told the Prosecutor I could not testify you did anything wrong when you sold this tobacco but they forced me to testify anyway. Good luck, Mark." The judge was smart enough not to admonish Lubby for his "off the record comment" as that would have reinforced what Lubby had just said to me, in the minds of the jury.

The next Government Witness was Ben Smith of the Farmers Tobacco Warehouse in Farmville North Carolina who testified as if he were his brother "Jim" Smith who was the Manager at this Warehouse.

Jim Smith had died several years ago and I only knew Ben Smith was Jim Smith's brother who had been the Warehouse Floor Manager. Ben Smith was a hard worker but he was not very bright and he did not have anything to do with the management or accounting of the Warehouse's tobacco sales. I only dealt with Jim Smith while Ben Smith's duties were supervising the delivery and the flooring of the tobacco for the Warehouse's next sale day.

Yet Ben Smith testified I had wrapped each farmer's cash payments in the Warehouse's Sales invoices that sold their excess tobacco every time I sold it and before I left with their Warehouse's tobacco checks.

His testimony did not make any sense as I only had the Pink copy of the total amount of tobacco delivered to that Warehouse and according to the government's theory of this excess tobacco scheme only the Warehousemen knew what excess tobacco belonged to any farmer. What Ben Smith had done was establish how his brother kept track of each framer's excess tobacco to make sure he paid the correct amount to each farmer.

Ben Smith claimed their Warehouse had only done this excess tobacco business because every warehouse was doing it and to keep their farmers from selling their tobacco allotment at some other Warehouse who would sell their excess tobacco. He claimed they were never paid anything to do this for their farmers.

I passed Riley a note that said, "This man is lying. I never dealt with this man. I always conducted my tobacco business with Jim Smith, his brother who was the Warehouse Manager and he is dead. Ask him what he did in the Warehouse and what his brother "Jim" did in their Tobacco Warehouse Business. Then ask him when his brother died." Riley crumpled the note after reading it. He never asked Ben what his duties were in the Warehouse or established what his dead brother "Jim" did in their business.

The day ended with Ben Smith's testimony and Riley disappeared before I could talk to him. I called Willy Strickland and told him what had happened today in the Courtroom. He gave me an insight as to why none of the Warehouse men claimed they did not receive any money for handling the farmer's excess tobacco.

Willy told me all the Warehousemen who were forced to testify by the Government at my trial had agreed with each other to make this claim even though Jim Brake had testified how the money was paid to the farmers, the excess tobacco dealers, the Warehousemen and for the "Air Pounds" created by the Dead Card Dealers.

Willy explained the reason was simple as the IRS was going after them for the money they received for selling this excess tobacco. This had become a conspiracy within the greater excess tobacco marketing conspiracy. By testifying in Court that they were not paid and if none of the Warehousemen admitted he was paid, they would not be liable for not paying the Taxes on the money they had received.

Willy told me the Government knew these Warehousemen were lying about being paid and did not care, as the Government would claim Jim Brake and I were the only ones making any money that I had invested for Jim and my benefit.

This made sense, as these Warehousemen were in effect being paid for their false testimony to avoid any Income Tax liability. However knowing this might be true did not mean I could get Riley to use this information to discredit the Warehousemen's testimony.

The next Government Witness was Norman Archer known as the "Preacher" who managed the Top Dollar Tobacco Warehouse in Kinston North Carolina. This was one of the first Warehouses Jim Brake had arranged for me to resell my tobacco.

I remembered an incident during one of the first weeks in my second season when I drove a load of 12,390 pounds of tumbled tobacco from the Warehouse we had rented in Goldsboro and delivered it to the Top Dollar Warehouse. When I came back later that week to pick up my resale tobacco checks the Preacher was holding them and he demanded I pay him ten cents a pound, before he would release my resale checks, totally $5,951.40.

His demand amounted to $327 dollars for the 3,270 pounds of tobacco I had sold at his Warehouse. I tried to reach Jim Brake on my Cell phone to determine what I should do about this, but I could not reach him.

I paid the Preacher the $327 dollars and when I had my checks I also picked up the Tobacco Book and my Tobacco Dealer's card, I kept at the Top Dollar Warehouse and put it in my brief case. Then I told the Preacher not to sell anymore of my tobacco as I would come back with a truck and move it to another Warehouse.

The Preacher laughed and claimed I could not do that. I told him if he did not let me pick up my tobacco, I would come back with an ASCS Tobacco Agent and if he could not produce the tobacco listed in my Tobacco book, I would let him explain where my tobacco was to the Government Agent.

I went to the Gold Leaf Tobacco Warehouse in Kinston where I had not done any business and asked the Warehouse Manager if he would agree to sell my Dealer's resale Tobacco. He was not sure he wanted to be involved in selling Dealers tobacco until I told him I could deliver as much resale tobacco as his Warehouse could sell every week.

I told him I would keep one of my Dealer's Cards and a Tobacco book I would only use at his Warehouse. That way he would have my Dealer's Card to accept my tobacco deliveries any time during the week and I would transfer the amount of tobacco delivered to his Warehouse from my Master Accounting Tobacco Book to the Tobacco Book I kept there before any Warehouse sales were recorded in it.

He liked my straightforward method of doing business and he was willing to try it with no more than 10,000 pounds of resale tobacco. I told him I could deliver 9,120 pounds of resale tobacco in my own truck as that should be the amount of resale tobacco I still had at the Top Dollar Warehouse.

When the Manager at Gold Leaf Tobacco Warehouse agreed to sell my tobacco, I told one of VAMCO's truck drivers to pick up my tobacco from the Top Dollar Warehouse and move it to the Gold Leaf Warehouse in Kinston. I had done this before I was able to catch up with Jim Brake and tell him what I did.

Jim was pleased I had gotten into the Gold Leaf Tobacco Warehouse to sell resale tobacco but he told me I should have called him before I moved my Tobacco from the Top Dollar Tobacco Warehouse. I now realized as the Preacher was testifying he was selling his farmers excess tobacco on my Dealer's Card and Tobacco Books through his relationship with Jim Brake. When I brought in that load of tobacco the Preacher thought Jim was not going to pay him his share of this truck load of someone else's excess tobacco and he was not going to release my tobacco checks until he was paid his 10 cents a pound for selling it at his Warehouse.

Jim could not tell me what really happened without exposing his scheme, of using my ability to pay for the tobacco when he presented the pink invoice copy of the delivered tobacco to the Warehouses. I remembered Jim reminding me after this happened at the Top Dollar Tobacco Warehouse that as more and more Tobacco was delivered by the farmers to the Warehouses the floor reselling space would be at a premium and Independent Tobacco Dealers would pay the Warehouse manager as much as 10 cents a pound to sell their resale tobacco.

This was why Jim had told me we had to keep so much resale tobacco in each Warehouse after the tobacco auction market opened and keep supplying it so we would be guaranteed the floor reselling space when the tobacco auction market was flooded with tobacco, otherwise we would have to pay the Warehouse to sell it.

Jim began selling tobacco at the Top Dollar Tobacco Warehouse to hold the tobacco reselling floor space. However, I was not ready to deal with the man again. As far as I was concerned, the Preacher had taken advantage of me and he might do it again when I had a larger amount of money in his Warehouse checks. As our tobacco business continued to expand Jim convinced me he was too busy to make a special trip to Kinston and I needed to put my feelings aside and just do good business with the Preacher.

By this time, I was involved in selling cigarettes to Cambodia and in an effort to smooth things over between us I talked with the Preacher about buying selected grades of tobacco for me at his Warehouse. I had also talked with a number of other Warehousemen about doing the same thing. However I never had the Preacher buy any tobacco for me, as I had written him off as someone I would have trouble dealing with as he was born under the star sign of Aires and I never had much luck dealing with people born under that star sign.

The Preacher testified he had not been paid to sell his farmers excess tobacco and he had only done it or he would have lost his farmers to another Warehouse who would sell their excess tobacco. According to Charley and Rob this was bull shit as the Preacher had been the first Tobacco Warehouse to sell excess tobacco with Jimmy Wells and then with Jim Brake. It was the fact he was willing to deal in excess tobacco that had attracted other farmers who had excess tobacco to sell to sign up to sell their tobacco allotment at his Warehouse.

The Preacher claimed I had always paid him in cash for the farmer's share of the excess tobacco sales before I left his warehouse. The Prosecutor kept hammering to the jury there was no reason for a legitimate Tobacco Dealer, to bring money to the Warehouse other than to pay the Warehouseman who was selling this excess tobacco.

This was not true, as a Tobacco Dealer would bring money to a Warehouse on Friday to settle his account on any tobacco he bought from that Warehouse during the week. Only the truth is a defense against an out and out lie. I felt after my meeting with Jim Brake he would testify he was the only one who paid the Warehousemen for this excess tobacco. However, Riley had dismissed Jim Brake without preserving the right to recall him as a Defense Witness.

According to Charley and Rob, a good Defense Attorney would always preserve the right to recall a prosecution's witness as an insurance policy to have them available and to keep the prosecutor guessing why you planned to recall his witnesses.

The Government's next witness was Jeffery Daniels who was currently in Federal Prison serving a 10-year sentence on a Drug Charge. He was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs and chains wearing an orange prison jump suit. Since I had never met this man, Charley and Rob had briefed me on who Jeffery Daniels was and what he did in the Excess Tobacco Marketing scheme when they were preparing my defense for this trial.

Jeffery testified he personally had created and registered all the names of the "Dead Card Tobacco Dealers" with the North Carolina ASCS Office that were used in this excess tobacco marketing scheme between the years of 1987 through 1992. He bragged about how easy it was as he just mailed in the Registrations and the ASCS Office never asked to meet with him before they mailed him the Dealers Books and Cards to the addresses he had use for each of the Dead Card Tobacco Dealers.

He claimed he had sold the "Air Pounds" to most of the scheme's Tobacco Dealers and then to my surprise as I never met Jeffery Daniels he included me as one of these Tobacco Dealers. He claimed he had met me in the parking lot of a beer joint east of Goldsboro and I paid him $20,000 in cash for the "Air Pounds" I had bought from him.

The Prosecutor had Jeffery Daniels indentify his small hard covered black book he claimed he used to keep his accounting of all the "Air Pounds" he sold and the money he had received from each of the scheme's Tobacco Dealers. The Prosecutor offered the book as evidence after handing it over to Riley at the Defense Table.

When I examined Jeffery's "Accounting" Book there were no dates listed on any page to establish when the long list of numbers on that page had been made. There were no names, initials or any identifying marks or separate numbers listed on any page and one page looked just like the previous page. The Prosecutor did not indicate what time period Jeffery's "Accounting" Book had been used, as it could be more than 5-years based on Jeffery's testimony.

Jim Brake had testified he had paid 25 Cents a pound to the "Dead Card" Tobacco Dealers for the "Air Pounds" used in this scheme. However, none of these long lists of numbers had any decimal points to indicate a dollar amount. Nor were there any comas, to indicate these numbers represented the number of "Air Pounds" of tobacco involved in any transaction. There was no separate Accounting section in his book. I wondered how Jeffery kept track of the money he received for the "Air Pounds" involved or the money he paid to the people whose names were on the Dead Cards he was using in the scheme.

I came to the conclusion this Accounting Book had to be written in some type of code to conceal the identity of the schemes Tobacco Dealers, the amount of the financial transaction and the number of Air Pounds of tobacco that were sold along with a date this happened. I had almost given up trying to figure out Jeffery's Code when I found a Book Store's $1.59 price sticker dated 1997 on the back cover. I tried to call Riley's attention to the date on the price sticker but he told me he had already seen the book and he did not need to see it again.

"If you have, why don't you show me the date Jeffery claims he met me and the amount of money he claims I paid him?" I asked Riley. "Better yet, have Jeffery show the court, in his book when I met him before this book is entered into evidence?" I said as I pointed to the price sticker so he would look at it.

"We can do that after the jury has examined the book." Riley responded trying to pacify me but he missed the price sticker I was trying to point out on the back of the book.

The Court declared a 15 minute recess after the Jury had seen Jeffery's "Accounting Book." I watched as the book was placed on the Prosecutor's table rather than admitting it into evidence as the prosecutions next exhibit as he should have done before the Court recessed. Riley took off before I could stop him and tell him about the significance of the price sticker.

I realized I had brought too much attention to Jeffery's "Accounting" Book, when I tried to get Riley to look at the price sticker. I knew if I left the courtroom, someone would take a good look at the "Accounting" Book and that price sticker would not be on that book when the court resumed my trial.

No one touched the book during the recess and when the court resumed Ed Dayo attempted to hand the book to the Prosecutor and it fell to the floor. He picked it up with his back towards me and when I saw the book, again, the price sticker was gone.

Riley did not object to the "Accounting" Book being entered as evidence nor did he ask Jeffery Daniels to explain how he used this book to do his accounting or have Jeffery point out the date in his "Accounting" Book Jeffery had claimed he had met with me and sold me the "Air Pounds."

The next witness, who I had never met, claimed he had someone help him become a Registered Tobacco Dealer in North Carolina and when he received his Tobacco Books and Cards in the mail, someone stole them from his pick-up truck. He claimed he did not know his Tobacco Books were use in this tobacco scheme until the Government contacted him.

It took a while for the Prosecutor to establish that Golden Frinks had helped him become a Registered Tobacco Dealer and Golden Frinks had done business with Jim Brake using this man's Tobacco Books and Cards in the 1992 tobacco season.

The Prosecutor than tried to link this man directly to me by asking him to identify the man who had bought the tobacco listed in his tobacco Books. This man may have been overly coached as he said."The man with the eye glasses" as he pointed to the Defense table and the only one wearing glasses was Riley. The Prosecutor tried to correct him by saying, "You mean the man sitting next to the man wearing glasses, don't you?" The witness was obviously confused and he looked scared when the Prosecutor challenged him.

To Riley's credit, he rose to his feet to object that the Prosecutor was badgering his own witness. The court sustained Riley's objection and the Prosecutor realizing the damage was done, told the court he did not have any more questions for this witness. Riley did not have any questions for this witness either and the man was dismissed.

The next Government witness was a man I had heard had been caught in an excess tobacco scheme when I first started to work in the Tobacco Auction Market. It had been rumored this man had become a paid government informer to help catch other excess tobacco scheme Dealers.

He testified Jimmy Wells had brought him one of my Tobacco Dealer's Cards to see if he could use it to sell excess tobacco. The Government used an overhead projector to show the Tobacco Card he claimed Jimmy Wells had given him. It was a copy of my ASCS Tobacco Card but it could not have been one of my Dealer Cards, issued by my ASCS Officer in Richmond.

Each year when I received my Tobacco Books and Cards from my ASCS Officer, I had put a number in the bottom corner of the signature block of the Card as a method to control the Card and the Tobacco Book that went with it with the same number. I still had all my Cards and Books and I had brought them with me for this trial. This Card displayed on the overhead projector did not have a number on it and therefore this man's testimony was a lie, as he could not have gotten this Tobacco Card from Jimmy Wells.

This was the Prosecutor's attempt to link me back to Jimmy Wells. He claimed, Jimmy Wells brought Jim Brake into this Excess Tobacco Marking scheme and this Tobacco Card was the evidence I was involved in this continuing conspiracy to sell excess tobacco.

I realized this Tobacco Card was one of Ed Dayo's creative efforts to manufacture evidence and he could have made up this ASCS Tobacco Dealer's Card anytime with my name on it to support this man's testimony. My efforts to inform Riley about his man being a paid government informant and this Tobacco Card being shown on the overhead projector could not have been mine went nowhere.

I added this to my list of what I would testify in my own defense, just as I had listed the other things Riley had refused to ask the Government's witnesses. I knew from the trial preparation Charley and Rob had given me that unless I refuted the false testimony given by the Government's witnesses it would stand as being true to the jury.

The Prosecutor produced a Virginia Tobacco Dealer from Winchester Virginia. The Prosecutor claimed I flew him down to North Carolina in my airplane as evidence of my effort to insure he would be in the excess tobacco marketing scheme and he had worked for me. The Prosecutor failed to establish I even knew him before he became an ASCS Tobacco dealer or when we first met.

The truth was I did give him a ride to North Carolina in my Airplane as a one-time favor to Jim. Jim told me a friend needed to get to North Carolina but his car broke down and his wife would drive him down to the Fredericksburg Airport. This was the first time I met this man and I flew him down to Goldsboro, where Jim picked him up.

I did not know this man was a Tobacco Dealer until Jim Brake had sold him tobacco using my Tobacco Books. When the man did not pay me for the tobacco Jim told me the man had family problems and Jim took back all the tobacco Jim had sold to him. I do not know if this man ever sold any tobacco. If he did, he did not get it from me as I had my Tobacco Books to prove it. Of course, Riley refused to look at my Tobacco Books or cross-examine the Witness about what he actually did as a Tobacco Dealer.

The IRS Agent who had been dealing with me and VAMCO testified he had not found any errors in my accounting or in any of the income tax returns. Yet he claimed he had established I had failed to pay 3 million dollars in Taxes. He deliberately did not identify this 3 million dollar Tax liability, was in VAMCO's Tax Returns and not in my personal Tax Returns.

The IRS Agent never established how he had arrived at that amount of money, which had now doubled to 6 million dollars in fines and Interest. I could not get Riley to ask him if he had arrived at that amount of Taxes by denying all of VAMCO's normal business expenses. This denial included the money paid to VAMCO's employees as reported on the Corporation's Annual Income Tax Returns that included the amount of Taxes withheld and the amounts paid to Social Security and Medicaid. I tried to tell Riley that the IRS Agent had misrepresent the amount of taxes owed as it was not 3 million dollars but the claim of the amount taxes due on the 3 million dollars of business expenses the IRS Agent had denied.

Had this been in Tax Court the IRS Agent would not have been able to get away with his testimony. However, here at this Court Riley never questioned him on how he had come up with this amount of unpaid Taxes. I added this to my list of points I would make when I testified. My greatest fear was Riley would somehow screw this up as I had to use him to bring out all these issues.

The Prosecutor attempted to use Berclair Plantation's Settlement Statement they had obtained from our Lawyer who had represented VAMCO during the Closing on the sale of the property. The Prosecutor of course only identified me as the buyer of Berclair to the jury and he did not mention VAMCO. When the Court established this document was part of an Attorney/Client relationship and therefore privileged information, it denied the Prosecutor the use of the Document to establish what VAMCO had paid for Berclair Plantation.

The Court was not doing me any favors by denying the use of this document. It would have established what VAMCO had paid for Berclair Plantation from the Special Trust Fund Account I had established with A R Dixon's money at the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan.

I brought the canceled check used to purchase Berclair from VAMCO's Trust Account at the Fredericksburg Savings & Loan. I also had all of VAMCO's monthly Statements on this Account and the Savings & Loan's Signature Card showing A R Dixon's signature on that account. The Court could not stop me from presenting this document as evidence when I testified as I had the authority to wave the attorney client privilege.

The Prosecutor did not attempt to present any further evidence on the Government's Money Laundering Charge. Although the IRS and the Government had copies of all of VAMCO's and my personal Bank records which documented all the other business investments I had made for the last ten years, AUSA Swaim did not use any of them.

Special Agent Ed Dayo was the Government's next witness who testified how this excess tobacco marketing scheme was used to illegally sell, millions of pounds of excess tobacco as if it had been legitimate Tobacco Dealers resale tobacco. Agent Dayo did not produce any of ASCS Tobacco Records to support his claims even though these ASCS Records were available for each year's tobacco season.

It would have been a simple matter of totaling the number of pounds of tobacco authorized by the ASCS in the farmers' Allotments and then comparing it to the total amount of tobacco sold in that year. The difference between the farmers' Allotments and the total amount of tobacco sold would have established the number of pounds of tobacco sold in this excess tobacco marketing scheme.

However this actual amount of excess tobacco as reported in the ASCS Annual Reports would not have allowed Agent Dayo to lumped his total claim of millions of pounds of excess tobacco sales together and mislead the jury into believing I was responsible for all of it.

Willy Strickland had given me copies of the ASCS Annual Reports and I had separated the amount of excess tobacco sales for each year before and after I became involved in the Tobacco Auction Market. Using the real ASCS tobacco numbers I had the total amount of excess tobacco sold during my years in the Tobacco Auction Market. When I deducted the total amount of tobacco the ASCS had reported I had sold during those years I established Agent Dayo's testimony was a gross exaggeration of the total amount excess tobacco he claimed I sold.

The Government had already established there had been over 40 other independent Tobacco Dealers, who had sold excess tobacco during those years and the Government had not linked any of their activities, to me. Yet Agent Dayo had not separated the total amount of excess tobacco sold by these 40 other Tobacco Dealer from my tobacco sales.

Riley refused to look at these ASCS Annual Reports or the total amount of excess tobacco I had taken from these ASCS Reports. Riley never challenged Agent Dayo's testimony or questioned how Agent Dayo had established I was responsible for all this excess tobacco.

Agent Dayo claimed I had 24 Tobacco Dealer's cards I used to conduct this excess tobacco marketing scheme implying all these Dealer Cards had been the "Dead Cards" used to create all the "Air Pounds" in this Excess Tobacco Marketing Scheme.

Although Agent Dayo was right I did use 24 Tobacco Dealer Cards, they were all my own Tobacco Cards issued to me by the ASCS Office in Richmond Virginia. I had placed one of my Tobacco Dealers Card in the Tobacco Warehouses I did business with along the corresponding numbered Tobacco Book as an accurate method to control my tobacco inventory. My efforts to get Riley to listen to me about these Dealer Cards and they were all my own Dealer's Cards was a waste of time. This became a major point I had to clarify, when I testified.

When Agent Dayo failed to state how these 40, other excess tobacco dealers were involved with me I knew the Government could not establish this link as it did not exist.

I had to bring this out in my testimony by raising the fact the Prosecutor did not establish a relationship between me and Jim Brake with any of these other 40 excess tobacco dealers. Once I had reestablished this in the jury's mind that there were 40 other excess tobacco dealers in the same years I did my tobacco business I would use the official ASCS Annual Reports to challenge Agent Dayo's claim I was responsible for all the excess tobacco sold in each of those years.

Agent Dayo in his eagerness to embellish the millions upon millions of pounds of excess tobacco sales in his single diagram had given me a gift to challenge his claims. The major flaw in Agent Dayo's testimony was how he was counting the total number of excess tobacco pounds for all the years he had been investigating this excess tobacco marketing scheme.

If Excess Tobacco Dealer "A" sold 10 "Air Pounds" of tobacco to Dealer "B," who sold the same 10 "Air Pounds" of tobacco to Dealer "C" who had sold it to Jim Brake who sold it to me, was not a total of 50 pounds of excess tobacco but it still was only the original 10 "Air Pounds" of tobacco. As a result, of Agent Dayo's errors in quadruple counting, the total number of excess tobacco pounds grossly exceeded the total amount of excess tobacco in all of the ASCS Annual Tobacco Reports by over 500%.

I had obtained a copy of the transcript from Rudy Hill trial and this was same faulty testimony Ed Dayo had presented in the Rudy Hill case. Although I had sent Riley a copy of Ed Dayo's testimony, he either did not understand its significance or he failed to read the transcript as Riley refused to use it to discredit Ed Day's testimony.

I was surprised when the Prosecution rested its case, as AUSA Swaim had not presented any evidence to support the money laundering charge against me. After the court denied the Prosecutor the use of Berclair's Closing Statement as evidence of my Money Laundering Charge, the huge 4 by 4 foot photograph of the main house on Berclair Plantation used as evidence was displayed under the Judge's bench in full view of the Jury. I had to force Riley to have the Court order the Prosecution to remove it. However, after the next Court Recess, this photograph was back under the Judge's bench and Riley refused to do anything about it during the rest of the trial.

# 9. RILEY PUTS THE LAST NAIL IN MY COFFIN

Once the Prosecution rested, the Court directed Riley to present my Defense when the Court reconvened. Although Riley had not done anything to prepared me to testify, he told me he would be putting me on the witness stand. What was even more incredible and a demoralizing shock to me, was Riley wanted me to stall, delay and extend my answers in my testimony so he would have time to prepare my Defense. When I tried to explain he had not prepared me to testify, he simply said it was up to me, as the court would not allow us any additional time to prepare. Then he walked out of the courtroom leaving me standing there.

When I took the Witness stand, I had no idea what Riley would ask me or how he expected me to drag out my testimony. Faced with this totally unreasonable situation, I felt like a sitting duck on a small pond on the opening day of duck hunting season.

I do not remember what Riley asked me and normally talking should not have been a problem for an Irishmen. I knew I was rambling as I was trying to think of what I wanted to tell the jury to make the best first impression on them. Based on my trial preparations with Charley and Rob I knew I was failing miserably. A thousand important thoughts filled my mind and each one of these thoughts were trying to dominate all the other thoughts in my mind at the same time.

I tried to tell the jury about who I was, where I had come from, and how I had worked hard all my life to earn what I had. I told them I was just seven years old when I had my first job picking potatoes for the local farmers after school and on Saturdays for ten cents a bushel. I told them about all the different types of jobs I had growing up to support myself and contribute to the welfare of my family. I told them how everyone in my family had worked to survive after my father fell off the 4-story scaffolding when he was a carpenter working on a building. I explained how the money I made working on a Mink Ranch helped to support my family when my father lost his job as the Town of Granville's Building Inspector after the City of Milwaukee annexed the Town.

I told them how I had worked to support my hobby of shooting Civil War firearms on the 5th Virginia Cavalry Team and all the medals I had won in the NSSA's Individual and Team competitions. I went on to explain how shooting had become a major influence in the direction of my life.

I told them how my father's modest income supported his family of five children but it was not enough to send me to college. My parents encouraged me to go to college by offering me free room and board if I earned the money to pay for my tuition and books to the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

I told the jury about my natural talents as an ROTC Cadet who was a member of the four-time National Championship Pershing Rifles Drill Team and its Rifle Team that never lost a Pershing Rifles shooting match. I explain I shot on the University's ROTC Rifle Team and on the 5th Army's Advanced Marksmanship Unit, which took top honors at the National Rifle Matches at Camp Perry Ohio and in a number of All Army Matches held throughout the country.

When I graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee I had earned 37 individual ROTC Awards and I was a distinguish ROTC Military Graduate who took a Regular Army Commission. I explained I could have taken a Reserve Officers Commission and accepted a comfortable position on the All Army's Rifle Team but I wanted to put all my shooting behind me so I could make the US Army my career.

I explained how fate pulled me back into shooting and teaching soldiers how to shoot at long range when General Bonesteel, who was a Four Star General Commanding 8th Army in South Korea, drafted me for a Special Assignment.

I told the jury that there had been three almost simultaneous North Korean incidents but only two of them had made the International news. The first two incidents where when the North Koreans had seized the USS Pueblo off their seacoast and a North Korean Sapper unit had reached the lawn of Blue House of the President of South Korea before the North Koreans were killed.

The unreported incident took place along the Korean 38th Parallel of the DMZ when a US Infantry Company fired their entire basic load of small arms ammunition at a North Korean within 300 meters of their position and never hit him.

General Bonesteel conducted a formal investigation to establish none of the Infantrymen had fired their weapons, they had been pencil qualified and even worse, none of the weapons had a battle sight setting. This meant the bullets from their weapons were hitting the ground 50 yards from their positions and they could not have defended themselves if this had been a full-scale attack by the North Koreans.

I explained I was the only Commissioned Officer in 8th Army who had any competitive rifle shooting experience. I had been pulled out of the HAWK Air Defense Missile Battery I was commanding, promoted to a first Lieutenant and I was told to teach General Bonesteel's men in the 8th Army how to shoot and hit what they aimed at, so they could teach the men in their units how to shoot.

I was well into explaining how successful this assignment had been and how my involvement in training of 8th Army's soldiers how to shoot, had established the Sniper Program in Vietnam when my brother Dick walked into the courtroom.

When he sat down in the front row behind the Defense table, I could see him shaking his head in disapproval of what I was telling the jury. I knew by his actions I was really screwing up by going off on this dangerous tangent, which was making me look as if I had trained people to become professional killers in the most unpopular war in our nation's history.

Fortunately, the Court adjourned for the day so I did not continue to alienate myself, from the jury any more than I had already done. When Dick approached me after the Court adjourned, he asked. "What the hell were you doing up there? What kind of Defense strategy did your attorney have to allow you to testify like this?"

"That's problem, he doesn't have one. I don't know who he is working for but it sure isn't me." I attempted to explain.

"Don't say anything more as Carol has told me what happened and we do not need to talk about this where everyone else can hear us. Where did your attorney go?" Dick asked, as he did not see Riley leave the courtroom.

"Who knows?" I found myself saying in frustration. "That bastard has disappeared into thin air to avoid discussing my defense since the Court forced me to use him two days before my trial."

That evening over dinner with all the witnesses Charley had subpoenaed for my trial, Dick heard what a disaster my trial had been with Riley as my Defense Counsel. Some of these witnesses had been here for three days not knowing when they should have come to give their testimony. Since Riley had not spoken to any of them he had no idea what facts any of these witnesses were capable of testify in my defense. He also would not know which witnesses where critical to my defense in the limited amount of time I now knew the Court had planned for my Defense.

Just as I predicted the Prosecutor used up six days to present his case leaving only two days before the start of the Memorial Day Weekend. Judge Howard would push Mr Riley to conclude his defense by the end of the court day on Thursday, closing arguments would be made on Friday morning and the jury's instructions would be given before noon. The jury would be given lunch before they began their deliberations. The Judge would not need to remind the jury this was Memorial Weekend to pressure the jury into rendering a speedy verdict so they could go home and celebrate the Holiday with their families.

Knowing what each of my witnesses were capable of testifying, a prepared Defense counsel could easily used more than four days to present my defense and push the conclusion of my trial after the holiday into Wednesday or Thursday of the next week. However, I did not have that prepared Defense Counsel and I was limited in what I could do myself.

The proof that Judge Howard had limited the time for my defense is found in Darrell Frerichs's affidavit for a Rule 29 (c) Motion of appeal filed on July 15, 1997 when he states Mr Riley told him..."Mark had been limited to only three witness(s) and I probably would not have been called to testify."

When we adjourned to my motel room, Dick was relieved to hear I had prepared an outline on the issues and questions Riley had failed to address the prosecution's witnesses and how I had planned to bring out the facts in my testimony.

I explained how I could not rely on Riley to do anything right in my Defense and I had to assume I was the only one who could correct the errors made in the false and misleading testimony of the Prosecution's witnesses. I had hired a very good secretary who every night typed up the pages I had been working on for each of the Prosecution's witnesses as part of my Defense's Evidence Book. It was just like the Prosecution's Evidence Book, AUSA Swaim had presented to the jury at the beginning of the trial.

I only needed to add what I wanted to testify about the prosecution's witnesses who had testified today and then have my secretary make copies of the Defense Evidence Book for each member of the jury in time for the trial to resume tomorrow.

Dick had just started reading what I had prepared when my secretary arrived. I dictated what I had outlined in the courtroom to my secretary. While my secretary was typing the last pages of my Evidence Book, Dick was making suggestions how I might make a better witness in front of the jury tomorrow.

The next morning Riley was late coming into the courtroom and I could only show him the copies of my Defense Evidence Books I wanted to give to the jury before the trial resumed. AUSA Swaim immediately objected to the use of my Defense Evidence Book and the jury was asked to leave the Courtroom. Riley refuse to tell the court that my Defense Evidence Book was just like the Prosecution's Evidence Book entered into evidence before any witness testified to what was in it.

The Prosecution was given time to research the relevant case laws to support his objection while Riley just sat there as if he were in another world. Just how relevant the case laws used by AUSA Swaim was to the issue, was not challenged by Riley and the court ruled I could not give a copy of the Defense's Evidence Book to the jury. The court ruled Riley could use it to direct my testimony to the issues in my defense.

I was able to testify how I had become involved with Jim Brake in the Tobacco Auction business and how he had explained how the independent Tobacco Dealers could make money, reselling tobacco brought up from the tobacco markets that opened earlier in Florida and southern Georgia. I explained how the prices of tobacco continued to drop as more and more tobacco was brought to market. I outlined the business advantage to moving this less expensive tobacco into the northern markets that had just opened and using the Tobacco Warehouses that had the floor space to resell it.

I testified I had no idea the tobacco I was reselling was not legitimate resale tobacco. I was explaining how I had worked with Jim Brake in reselling this tobacco, when Riley change the subject and asked me when I had my first indication I may not have been dealing with legitimate resale tobacco. His question disrupted my testimony of how I had used my 24 Tobacco Books and Dealers Cards to control my inventory at the Tobacco Warehouses.

I could not avoid answering Riley's direct question. I responded to Riley's question by testifying I became concerned when Jim Brake told me he was taking a Plea Bargain for Structuring before I became involved with him. I explained he was guilty of Structuring when he cashed his tobacco checks for more than 10 thousand Dollars without completing the Federal required Currency Transaction forms. He also told me as part of his Plea Agreement, he was forced to claim he had created 14 million "Air Pounds" of excess tobacco. When I asked Jim if he did it, he said it was not true. Then he said I had nothing to worry about since I was not involved in any of this. However, he would not explain what "this" was before he left.

I explained to the jury when I did not understand how I could not have been involved after I bought so much tobacco from Jim Brake I made arrangements with an attorney to present myself to the US Attorney. I had hoped to find out the truth from the US Attorney who was prosecuting this tobacco scheme.

However, when I did this the US Attorney was not interested in any evidence I had and he wanted me to take a Plea Bargain and testify against all the Warehousemen I had dealt with. I was told I would spend 5 years in prison and the government would take everything I had and everything my company owned. To me this was no bargain. I had not done what the Government claimed I did. The way they had outlined how the scheme worked did not reflect what I had done and it still does not. I had asked my attorney to send the US Attorney a letter expressing my desire to cooperate without a plea bargain and I would provide copies of all my documents and tobacco records. However, he did not do that.

When Riley suddenly realized I was talking about him, he refused to ask me any more questions and he closed my Evidence book. When I attempted to testify where I left off when Riley interrupted me, Judge Howard stopped me by saying there was no question for me to address.

All the points I needed to make about the false and misleading testimony of the government's witnesses I had included in my Defense Evidence Book was lost when Riley stated he had no further questions. Riley's interruption had also prevented me from testifying how I had verified all the tobacco I had purchased was actually in these warehouses by using the pink copy of the tobacco delivery invoices with my Dealer's Card and the name of the Warehouse embossed on them.

I was not able to testify how I had legally ordered money from my bank and filed all the required Federal Currency Transaction forms for every dollar I had used to buy my tobacco and the IRS had verified it to the penny. This testimony would have established I was using my own money to buy this tobacco and therefore I was not guilty of Money Laundering or Structuring by cashing tobacco checks for over 10 thousand dollars without completing the Currency Transaction forms.

Perhaps the most significant testimony was I had not been able to establish was VAMCO's Cigarette business with Cambodia and the Bulk Tobacco Sales business in the Overseas Market. I had planned to tell the jury how the big tobacco companies control the Tobacco Auction Market and how Philip Morris had destroyed VAMCO's Cigarette market in Cambodia.

After Riley told the Court that, he did not have any more questions, the Court directed me to answer the questions of the Prosecutor who claimed he did not have any for me and I was dismissed as a witness. The Court then took a 30-minute recess. Since I had to move around the front of the Witness Stand Riley beat me out of the courtroom's door and he disappeared.

I realized the mistake I had made when I attempted to introduce my Evidence Book and why the court could not allow me to use it when I testified to the jury. I had given the Court and the Prosecutor an outline of my entire testimony, which would undermine the prosecution's witnesses to create reasonable doubt of my guilt in the minds of the jury. Whatever they had on Riley was enough for him to limit my testimony.

Dick could not believe what Riley had done. I have never seen him so angry about anything, as he knew everything I had put in my Evidence Book. Dick went looking for Riley and whatever Dick said to Riley during the brief encounter had made Riley turn white when he came back into the courtroom. Riley immediately asked the court for a few moments for him the go to the restroom without waiting for the Court's response.

I had been involved with people who took drugs in the Army and when Riley returned he was higher than a kite and blowing his nose into his handkerchief. He called my brother Dick to the witness stand and AUSA Swaim objected, as Dick was not listed as one of my witnesses.

The Court held a sidebar discussion and the Court agreed to allow Dick to testify subject to the Prosecution's objections after Dick testified. Dick started to testify he personally knew Jim Brake's reputation as a liar and a drunkard who had numerous convictions for drunk driving. He claimed the only reason Jim was testifying against me was to save his brother Henry who was also involved with Jim in this tobacco scheme.

The Prosecution objected and the judge sustained his objection, as Riley had not established the bases for this testimony. Riley for the first time acted liked my defense counsel and he made the argument Dick's testimony was relevant to the credibility of the Government's primary witness.

The judge dismissed the jury to hear further arguments. The prosecution renewed its objection to allowing Dick to testify citing several case laws and Riley backed down claiming there were other issues this witness was capable of testifying about.

When the jury was brought back in the Judge instructed the jury to disregard the last statements of the witness and Riley was allowed to proceed. Dick testified how I was a leading member of my community and an active member in Saint Mary's Parish in Fredericksburg. I had been elected a Director of the Virginia Quarter Horse Association.

Dick went on to testify that I was well known as a successful and honest businessman in the International Community since I formed my Civil War Reproduction company Harpers Ferry Arms Company in 1973. Dick stated I had been promoted twice in the US Army ahead of my contemporaries and I was a successful individual because I worked hard and followed the rules and regulations.

The Prosecution tried to trip Dick up by asking him if he knew I was in trouble with the IRS for not paying my Taxes. Dick told the jury he knew about the IRS audit and how they claimed I had not paid the Income Taxes VAMCO owed. He also stated from what he had heard about the IRS Agent's testimony the IRS Agent could not find any errors in my personal or Corporate tax returns.

Had Riley used my Evidence Book dealing with the IRS Agent's claim in his redirect question to Dick's response to the Prosecutor, Dick could have told the jury how the IRS Agent denied all of VAMCO's normal business expenses.

Dick could have testified that we had discuss this months ago and it was not three million dollars in Taxes but it was the taxes the IRS claim VAMCO owed on three million dollars. However, Riley was not paying any attention to me when I wrote the note to ask Dick about the IRS Agent's three million dollar Income Tax claim made in his testimony.

Riley called Carol Stewart to the witness stand as the President of Virginia American Management Corporation. He asked her if she ever met A R Dixon the man who had invested with VAMCO in Berclair Plantation. She claimed she knew who he was but she had not personally met him. However Carol explained this was not unusual for many of my business associates, as she had talked with him on the phone just as she talked with Ali Hazerit from Toronto Canada and Reverend Cong Chin from California who I had been in business with and she had never personally met them either.

Riley never asked Carol what she knew about my tobacco business before he dismissed her. The court took another 30 minute recess and Carol cornered Riley before he could disappear. She was outraged with Riley's failure to ask her what Jim Brake had told her about the prosecutor forcing him to lie to include me in his tobacco scheme.

It was then I found out Carol had paid Riley six thousand dollars to protect VAMCO's interests in Berclair Plantation after the court had denied VAMCO's Attorney, Charley Ayres from the case. Once the Court did this I realized Carol as the President of VAMCO had few options open to her. She knew I would not pay Riley after he had forced himself to remain as my Defense Counsel without telling the court he was not prepared to defend me.

If Dick had put the fear of God into Riley, Carol was damming him to hell, calling him every obscene name in the book for working for the Prosecution. She threaten to use every penny she had, to have him disbarred and she would sue him for everything he would ever own for his incompetence. No matter what Riley said only made Carol even angrier and as a red head she had a full head of steam in her boiler who was eating him a new asshole as she gave him no place to run or hide from her.

When the Court resumed the judge had a question from the Jury about Carol's knowledge of the terms and conditions of the purchase of Berclair Plantation. Carol was asked to retake the witness stand. She answer their question claiming as the President of VAMCO she was well aware of the purchase agreement on Berclair Plantation and how it had been a joint venture with A R Dixon.

Riley knew he had to ask Carol about her conversation with Jim Brake when he wanted to see me and I could not meet him without violating the Court's order about talking with the Government's witnesses. She laid out what Jim Brake had told her about the prosecutor forcing him to lie about my involvement in his tobacco scheme and she was not the only one Jim Brake had told about the prosecutor forcing him to lie.

AUSA Swaim jumped to his feet demanding to know if Jim Brake had said he was the Prosecutor who was forcing Jim Brake to lie. AUSA Swaim never denied what Carol had claimed, he just harangued on about how she could not claim he was the Prosecutor involved. Then he went on the counterattack asking her about the NSSA finding me guilty of cheating as a clear example of the type of person I really was.

Carol started to respond I had sued the NSSA but AUSA Swaim cut her off claiming the Court had not awarded me any damages. Carol tried to explain there were two lawsuits involved. The first one had established the NSSA could not have found me guilty of cheating and the damage lawsuit was still pending. However, AUSA Swaim would not let her continue and he kept claiming the shooting organization I had been so involved in most of my life had found me guilty as a cheater.

Riley did nothing to protect Carol from AUSA Swaim's attack or insure Swaim did not interrupt her when she tried to testify that he was wrong. Riley just sat there with a smile on his face watching AUSA Swaim's attack Carol until I stood up and objected.

"The Prosecutor is not allowing her to testify. If he is going to interrupt her with his own misleading testimony then he needs to take the witness stand to be sworn in so we can cross-examine him and challenge his false statements. The Prosecutor had every opportunity to ask me about this when I was on the witness stand and now when his star witness as been exposed for what a lair he really is, the Prosecutor wants to distract the jury from the truth."

The Judge banged his gavel and called me out of order."The jury will disregard the defendant's statements as it will be stricken from the record. Mr Riley, restrain your client or I will hold you in contempt of court." This direct threat from the Judge was enough to put Riley in his place and he refused to follow up with any more questions for Carol.

If Riley just asked Carol about the second multi-million dollar Damage Lawsuit the NSSA was about to lose, she would have defused Swaim's attack. I was not the only one suing the NSSA for damages in this second lawsuit, as VAMCO owned Harpers Ferry Arms Company. Carol as the President of VAMCO had become a Plaintiff in the Damage Lawsuit against NSSA for the lost of the NSSA's approval of her company's 1855 Artillery Model barrel.

I had already seen the NSSA's motive to change its By-laws to allow convicted felons to remain a member of the NSSA as payment to Jim Brake for his false testimony to include me in his excess tobacco marketing scheme. When Willy Strickland reported seeing a local attorney named Richard Stearns who was working with the Prosecutor, I knew the NSSA was using its Attorney to make sure I was included in Jim's tobacco scheme.

During my trial preparations, I had told Charley about my problems with the NSSA. When I explained how the NSSA was about to lose a multi-million dollar lawsuit, Charley prepared a motion to exclude this issue in my trial. The only problem was when the Court had denied me the use of Charley as my Defense Attorney and his motion was not addressed by the Court.

When Carol was dismissed as a witness she called Riley, "A sorry son of a bitch," loud enough for the jury to hear. After the Court took another 30 minute Recess, Riley started to call the witnesses Charley had subpoenaed without knowing what they could provide as testimony for my Defense. One of the worst things an attorney could do was to ask a witness a question without knowing what the witness would say.

Riley not only did not know what they would say, he had no idea what they could have testified about or the value of what they knew that was relevant to my defense. These witnesses knew the issues Charley had wanted them to testify about but they had no way to testify about these issues when Riley did not ask them. Riley's questions were limited to how these witnesses knew me. The result limited their testimony to claims I was a nice man who was a successful businessman.

John Jones was able to explain how I had hired him to find A R Dixon and he testified about all the places A R Dixon had lived. John testified he had obtained a copy of A R Dixon's Delaware Corporation Charter the IRS claimed did not exist. John was about to testify how the Government had tried to prevent him from obtaining a copy of A R Dixon's Corporate Charter when Judge Howard interrupted John and asked him if he ever met A R Dixon.

When John said he had not, the Judge made the joking comment. "We all have been waiting for someone to testify they had actually met this notorious A R Dixon."

This had been enough of a distraction for John to lose his train of thought and Riley did not ask John to continue with his testimony. As a result, John did not testify about the FBI Agents following him and Clif when they picked up A R Dixon's Corporation Charter in Delaware or when they were followed by Government Agents the first time they came to Charley Ayers office in Richmond.

The Judge, AUSA Swaim and Riley knew from my Evidence book that Charley had prepared John to testify about how someone in the Government was spying on VAMCO for years. John would have told the jury that he had found the Government's listening devices in my home, on my telephone lines and the Government's trap put on my fax line at Berclair Plantation. When Riley failed to ask John about this, the whole motive of the government's interference in VAMCO's efforts to rebuild Cambodia by convicting me in this excess tobacco marketing scheme would eliminate the threat to Vietnam becoming the dominate power in Southeast Asia.

Clif Jenkens started to testify about all the international business I was involved in as part of VAMCO's efforts to help rebuild Cambodia. The Judge claimed this was not relevant to the case and unless Clif had any information about this Excess Tobacco Marketing scheme Clif should step down.

Clif testified he had become a Registered Tobacco Dealer during the last year I was in the Tobacco Auction Market. He outline how he had dealt in a number of tobacco Warehouses in Virginia. He bought his tobacco from me based on the amount of tobacco listed on the delivered Pink Invoices. Clif claimed once he received their permission to resell his tobacco at a Warehouse his only interaction with anyone at those Warehouses was to pick up his tobacco checks and to confirm how much resale tobacco floor-space would be available for the next week's sales. Clif testified he was sometimes at the Warehouses to witnessed VAMCO's trucks deliver the tobacco I had sold to him and he claimed he knew most of the truck drivers I had hired.

Clif stated he had listened to the testimony of the Government's witness Agent Ed Dayo who claimed how this tobacco scheme worked. Clif stated Agent Dayo's testimony was nothing like what he did or what he experienced when he was reselling his tobacco with me. The Prosecutor tried to trip him up, but Clif never changed his testimony or had any doubt he was reselling legitimate resale tobacco according to the ASCS Rules and Regulations.

For some reason Riley would not call Jimmy Pitman as a witness who had been VAMCO's Business Partner in the Corporation known as Triangle East DMP. This North Carolina Company was established to manufacture the cigarettes VAMCO had sold to Cambodia. Pitman's testimony was critical to establishing VAMCO was a "Manufacturing Tobacco Dealer" according to the 1997 ASCS Regulations outlined in the Prosecution's Evidence Book. It would prove I was more involved in the tobacco business than just a Tobacco Dealer. The Prosecutor's whole case was based on the claim, I was an excess tobacco marketing scheme dealer only to make quick and easy money.

Because I argued with Riley about calling Jimmy Pitman to testify, Riley also refused to call Willy Strickland to the witness stand even when I told Riley that Willy had met A R Dixon before VAMCO invested in Willy's Subdivision. I could not believe Riley's response when he asked, "What relevance is Willy's Subdivision to the case?"

Riley asked if I had any more witnesses I wanted him to call. I told him, I wanted to testify about the Lawsuits against NSSA and pickup where I left off in my Defense Evidence Book." However, Riley just sat there until the judge asked him if he had any more witnesses.

"The Defense rests," I heard Riley say and I knew I was going to be convicted.

The Closing Arguments would start the next morning and the Court adjourned for the day even though there were several hours left in the court's day. Riley then turned to me and asked if I wanted to discuss the points, I wanted him to make in his Closing Arguments.

"Why are you asking me now? When you didn't want to listen to me during the trial?" I asked him.

Dick approached the Defense Table and told Riley we would meet him after dinner in my motel room, and Dick added you better be there by 7 pm. However, when Riley showed up, he was again higher than a kite and Dick had outlined the points he believed were important for the jury to hear.

Riley looked at Dick's list but he did not say anything. Dick could hardly miss the cold stare he received from Riley and he suggested Riley and I go over these points to see if this was the direction Riley's Closing Arguments should take. Dick then excused himself and left us in my motel room.

With so many missed opportunities to discredit the misleading testimony of the government's witnesses and Riley's deliberate and abrupt ending of my testimony before I could cover the issues outline in my Defense Evidence Book there were few legal points or factual issues we could use to sway the jury to believe I was not guilty.

I now knew how the goat staked out as bait to lure in the tiger felt. However, my situation was worse as the Court directed hunter had failed to show up with a loaded gun and his mind was blasted into la-la land on cocaine. However, what could I do now? I was tied up in a sinking rowboat surrounded by alligators and Riley was a blind man with the only paddle. My only chance was to tell Riley which direction the shore was and hope he would listen.

I felt the best way to get Riley to listen was to let him outline the legal points he wanted to present to the jury. After letting him ramble on aimlessly for more than an hour, I suggested he might want to write his ideas down so he could organize his thoughts and polish his presentation to the jury. I handed him a legal pad but it was as if his mind had gone blank and he could not remember what he had said.

I suggested he might want to point out to the jury the government's error in its failure to present any documented evidence of the real amount of excess tobacco the government claimed I had sold in this scheme or the real amount of money the government claimed I had laundered. I went on to state, I believed without this real evidence the jury could not convict me of an unknown amount of excess tobacco or an unstated amount of money.

I explained the US Department of Agriculture's ASCS Office published an annual report of all the tobacco sold in each Marketing year and those numbers in these Official Reports did not support the amount of excess tobacco claimed by Ed Dayo. I went back to what Jim Brake had told me about the 14 million pounds of excess tobacco the Government had forced him to admit he had created as part of his Plea Bargain even though he stated it was not true.

The government's witnesses made claims that millions of dollars had been money laundered yet no one presented any documentation to establish the amount of money actually involved. The IRS and the government had all my personal and business financial records and all of the Federal Currency Transaction forms I had filed for all the money I had obtained from my Banks. Yet the government had not used any of those documents to prove their Money Laundering Charge against me.

Riley agreed the government had failed to establish any real amount of excess tobacco or the amount of real money I had laundered and without this real evidence, the jury could not convict me of an unknown quantity of either excess tobacco or money. However, Riley explained the jury could still find me guilty.

I agreed that could happen but without the number of pounds of excess tobacco or the amount of money the government's case would be empty without the amount of damages the government claimed I had caused by being in this excess tobacco marketing scheme. I was surprise when Riley actually wrote this down.

I then went to the heart of the Government case against me as being Jim Brake's testimony. I pointed out both my brother Dick and Carol had testified Jim Brake was forced to lie. Dick testified Jim Brake was lying to protect his brother Henry Brake who was also a tobacco dealer involved in Jim Brake's excess tobacco marketing scheme. Carol testified Jim Brake told her he was lying and the prosecutor knew he was lying but the Prosecutor did not care as long as Jim testified the way the Government wanted him to do against me.

I pointed out all the defense witnesses had established I was a respectable member of the community and had the reputation of an honest businessman and the prosecution was not able to discredit their testimony. After Riley left with his notes, Carol came out of the bathroom and she was so upset she could not sit still or go to bed. We talked well into the night and we could not believe this was happening to us.

Although I knew why the government and the NSSA were behind this effort to get me I did not want Carol to become even more upset than she was already by reminding her of what I had already told her. I suggested we needed to prepare for the worst and protect her and all my business partners from the long arm of the government. I told her to take my name off her personal banking accounts and off all of the company business accounts VAMCO managed.

I also suggested if I were convicted, she should sell all the horses as her horse business might be too much for her to handle alone and if the government took Berclair Plantation, she would have nowhere to keep them. The experienced businesswoman Carol had become understood what I was telling her to do. However, she did not want to give up her horses or her horse business if there was any way she could keep them. I could understand this as Carol truly loved each horse she owned as if they were her very own children and grandchildren.

The Prosecutor made his closing Arguments first and he would have a second chance to rebut anything Riley said in the Defense's Closing Arguments. Riley started out very well but he failed to use the government's failure to present any documented evidence of the actual amount of excess tobacco or the amount of money claimed to have been laundered. Nor did he even mention Jim Brake's name. Riley started to ramble making unrelated statements and unsupported conclusions that had no foundation in any of the evidence presented. His ridiculous and outlandish statements reached the point where the jury openly laughed at him.

Hearing Riley's verbal disaster and seeing the jury's reactions, I did not realize my mind was shutting down as a means of self-protection from what was about to happen to me. The jury took less than 2 hours to find me guilty of all the charges.

Although I had told Riley I did not own Berclair Plantation, Virginia American Management Corporation did and I only owned 25% of VAMCO's Common Stock, Riley refused to call me as a witness or present the third part documentation on the Joint Venture with A R Dixon's money to buy Berclair Plantation. Without presenting any evidence on this forfeiture charge, the jury retired to discuss the forfeiture of Berclair Plantation.

I do not remember much after that other than the judge praising Riley for his efforts to defend me. I was immediately taken into custody and placed in a holding cell located in the back of the court room. Alone in this holding cell, I found myself on my knees praying to God that he would protect Carol, from these evil men who had destroyed me for something I did not do. I also prayed for the strength to endure this test of my faith and trust in the Good Lord. I always believed we were never tested beyond our capacity to overcome the adversity placed on us. I also believed the only time you actually lost, was when you admitted defeat and you gave up.

In all my pervious experiences, it was my belief in the Good Lord that had been the force to give me an extra effort to succeed when the odds were against me and I should have otherwise failed. Knowing I was "right in front of God and everyone," did not change what had happened and the worst mistake I could make would be to deny the reality of my situation. I had to accept my enemies were allowed to win this battle. However, they had not won by superior knowledge or skill or by any moral goodness or legal right but by lies, treachery, deceit and out and out fraud on the United States Judicial process, itself.

I knew I was not out of ammunition to win this war if Charley and Rob were right about the Judge making a major Constitutional error when he forced me to defend myself in the pretrial hearing. Surely, Judge Howard and AUSA Swaim realized this error by now as it was a matter of record and they knew Charley had ordered a copy of that transcript from the court recorder before my trial began. The fact no other transcripts had been ordered had to be a red flag to Judge Howard signaling him about how important this Pretrial Hearing was to overturning my conviction.

"If all this were true and my conviction would be overturned, why would Judge Howard continue with this trial?" I had to ask myself. "If the Government's case against me was a sure conviction, than giving me a 30 day continuance to hire a new attorney would not make any difference."

The only consistent factor since the court had denied my use of my three new counsels in the Rule 44 c Hearing two days before my trial, was to make sure Randolph Riley remained as my only defense counsel. Riley was not only unprepared to act as my defense counsel, he was my adversary throughout the trial.

"What did Riley have to gain by remaining as my Defense Counsel?" I asked myself. Riley already knew I would not pay him. If money was not his motivation than fear or ego were involved. Maybe the Government had something on him or someone had built up Riley's ego and exaggerated his capabilities into believing, he could win this case without my help as he surely avoided using any information I had tried to give him.

"Hell, Riley was not being forced to remain my counsel to win he was expected to lose. Once the Judge and the Prosecutor knew I had fired Riley before the April 14th Arraignment Hearing and I had hired three new highly capable defense attorneys their easy conviction was no longer possible.

They had not anticipated I would send Riley a certified letter formally discharging him and stating he had no authority to represent me or speak for me. By formally discharging Riley, I had circumvented the Court's control over who would be my defense counsel and they had to create the false issue of a conflict of interest with my new attorneys in the Rule 44 Hearing to reinstate Riley as my Defense Counsel. My Motion of Reconsideration had also caught the Court by surprise." I had concluded when the door to the Holding Cell opened and the US Marshal took me back into the courtroom.

As I stood before Judge Howard, he told the court, "I have reviewed your Probation Officer's report of your conduct while you were released on your own recognizance since your first Arraignment Hearing in July of 1996. The Report claims you did not miss any meetings, you did not used drugs and you did not violate any of the terms and conditions of your release.

Based on this report and your outstanding military service to your country as an Officer in the United States Army, I am releasing you on your honor to be available for your Sentencing Hearing under the same terms and conditions of your original release. Do you agree to those terms and Conditions?" The Judge asked and when I had agreed, the Court adjourned.

Riley made a quick departure from the courtroom and he just disappeared somewhere in the courthouse before I could catch him just as he did during the trial. This was the last time I had seen Riley alive and I never had the chance to ask Riley what motivated him not to tell the court he had been fired and he was not prepared to defend me at either the Rule 44 c Hearing or during the Pretrial Hearing. Sometime after the US District Court denied my Rule 29 c Appeal 5 months later it was rumored Riley had committed suicide.

Now that I think about his suicide, Carol's comment after I could not find Riley may have been right on target. "Forget about him. Let the Judas go and collect his 30 pieces of silver as he surely earned it. Isn't that right, Mr Swaim?" Carol said as she looked directly at the Prosecutor.

Most of the witnesses Charley subpoenaed had remained in the courtroom and I thanked them for all of their help and support. I suggested with the start of the Memorial Holiday weekend they might be anxious to get back home to their families and we would get together for a party next weekend.

If anyone did not know I had just been convicted they would have thought this party planning was a delayed victory celebration, which was exactly what I wanted my enemies to think. I had learned years ago that impressions count more than words and if I could convince my enemies they had not hurt me as much as they thought they did, they would retreat and regroup to consider what they did wrong.

Wars still could be won when your enemy did not exploit their victory in battle and allowed their enemy to regroup to fight another day. Using this tactic to confuse my enemies would give me time to reorganize my attack, throw a meat hook into their hearts, and jerk it as hard as I could.

Carol immediately caught on to what I had just said as she bubbled with excitement telling them she had a special recipe she wanted to try and she would call them to see if Friday or Saturday night was best for them. It was as if we were not concerned by what just happened to me then they should not be apprehensive either.

As Carol and I drove back home she had a full head of steam to fuel her thoughts and discuss the actions she thought we should take. The more she talked the angrier she became and I knew it was best to let her ventilate her frustrations rather than discuss what was practical to do under the circumstances.

"Mark, I didn't want to tell you this, but Jim Brake called me after he testified at your trial. He told me how poorly your attorney had been and Jim was surprised when Riley did not ask him why he was lying and forced to testify against you.

Jim claimed he told you how he would tell the court the truth if your attorney asked him, and the prosecutor could not do anything about it. Jim said that because your attorney did not do it he was sure you would be convicted and he wanted me to know he would take care of me after you went to jail.

I let Jim talk to see where this was going. He said he always admired me since we lived with him in Hickory North Carolina. When I told him we had fun back then, he came right out and asked if I would live with him again. When I asked him what his wife Pat would think about that, he said he would get rid of her. This was not the first time Jim had made such advances towards me. He did it just before he left us in that house in Hickory and he move back to Kinston when I turned him down.

I knew you and Jim were friends for a long time and I did not want you to become upset or believe Jim would make inappropriate advances towards me behind your back. I have seen what a womanizer Jim is and most men would not see that in their best friend. I do not know what I would have done if Jim had not left us in Hickory as I no longer felt safe being around him when you were gone delivering one of those cars for the Automobile Dealership."

I did not know what to say, but what Carol said made sense. "I am glad you told me Carol. It explains why Jim just moved out, without telling me he was going. I thought we had something going with making those 1855 Rifles.

Then just like that, Jim dropped the idea of forming a company and being in business together. You are also right. A woman can see what a man will never see in another man." I had to admit. I had to wonder if this was another motive for Jim to see me go to jail. It would not be the first time another man coveted his neighbor's wife.

If bad news travels fast, the news of my conviction went at the speed of light. The _Fredericksburg Freelance Star_ had already published a front-page article about my conviction and the forfeiture of Berclair Plantation.

There was a message on the answering machine from the attorney who was handling the Lawsuit against the NSSA telling me he would no longer represent me and he would be sending me the files. There were faxes from Ali Hazerit, Reverend Cong Chin and even one from Shriekon Jaen asking for explanations. Someone had obviously made a concerted effort to spread the news of my conviction directly to them. I could not think of anything I could say to them to control the damage or lessen the impact of my conviction.

After reading their faxes, Carol suggested we should check on the horses and tuck them in for the night, as I would have a long weekend to think about how I could answer them and I knew she was right. As we checked the horses water buckets and fed them their night's hay, the horses knew something was wrong as they acted as if they were children being very quiet and hoping whatever it was, it was not their fault.

# 10. AS THE DOMINOS CONTINUED TO FALL

For the first time in my life, I was faced with a situation where I felt trapped without a way I could win no matter how hard I worked to overcome the obstacles placed before me. The unfairness of it all had overwhelmed me. I did not realize I had started to retreat within myself looking for a safe place where I could find an answer to why this had happened to us even though I knew who most likely had been behind all this.

"I should have been smarter and I should have been better prepared." I kept telling myself but so much of what happened was beyond my control where the rules that should have protected me were suspended. This was just what the NSSA had done to convict me. All this still was no excuse as I had failed and I had failed to protect Carol who always depended on me.

When we made love that night, it was slow and tender as if we both had been so badly bruised by this whole ordeal that we needed to find comfort in each other's arms. Carol fell asleep in my arms while I remained wide-awake thinking about how all this had made a mess of our lives.

I must have fallen asleep when the first light of day came through the windows. From all my experience in Vietnam I had learned when the daylight came, the VC would not attack and it was safe to get some sleep. Carol let me sleep until noon and she brought me breakfast in bed. It would have been easy to accept the false comfort and safety this bed offered but I dare not surrender to inactivity as that would give me too much time to dwell on the unfairness that had happened to us. Carol was depending on me to get us out of this mess and a positive attitude would be the best way to show her I had not given up.

I had taken enough psychology courses in College to know the first reaction when something bad happens to us was to go into a state of denial. Either that denial was yet to come or I had already passed that point as I felt angry about what happened to me in that courtroom. I knew I had to clear my mind of all negative thoughts just as I did when I was shooting a rifle match if I were to effectively plan my campaign to beat these son of a bitches.

Most of the time anger can be a disruptive emotion but controlled and directed anger has the ability to overcome any self-pity and provide you with a shot of adrenaline you needed to get moving.

There were things I knew I had to do to make the move to Sherman's Station, as we could not stay here as long as the government could take Berclair Plantation. We needed to complete the improvements to the log house and build the barns for our horses. Carol had made a contract to build the covered arena and the outside mare barns. Mike Hay had agreed to the house plans Carol offered to build for him. With any luck, everything would be ready for the next year's horse breeding season.

Knowing the government was listening I made an innocent sounding call to Clif and Ting Tang to invite them and their wives to Berclair for a Sunday afternoon holiday cookout. The government might assume this party was part of the early celebration we had discussed in the courtroom after my trial. I had already told Clif before we left the courtroom we needed to make contingency plans for him and Ting Tang to take over managing my roll in VAMCO until I could clear myself of this conviction.

While the women were preparing the food for the cookout in the kitchen, I made sure the listening device Jammer was still on and working in my office before we said anything. I told them that someone, most likely in the government had contacted all of VAMCO's business partners immediately after my trial and they provided copies of the Fredericksburg Newspaper Article on my conviction. I gave Clif and Ting Tang all the faxes I received from VAMCO's Cambodian Business partners to read and I asked them for their suggestions on how I should answer them.

Once this had been done I outline my contingency plan where Clif and Ting Tang would take over VAMCO's role in managing the Cambodian projects while I worked to overturn this conviction. Clif and Ting Tang were given the Cambodian projects based on their knowledge of each project and their personal involvement with VAMCO's partners in these ventures.

I gave each of them a copy of my files on the projects they would be managing, which contained all my notes and agreements I had made with VAMCO's partners. Since all of the negotiations on these projects were completed and the contracts were signed by all of the parties I asked them to take these project files home with them and studied them. I told them not to call me if they had any questions about the projects. I wanted them to come back here where I knew someone could not hear our conversations.

I explained my greatest concern was how VAMCO's Cambodian business partners were reacting to the news of my conviction. My second concern was if they thought they could move forward with these projects without VAMCO. I believed it would be a mistake if VAMCO's partners tried this and we needed to convince them to remain loyal to their commitments as the success of our efforts was based upon my personal relationships with the leaders of Cambodia as such relationships could not be easily transferred to someone else.

However if the leaders of Cambodia are convinced I am still directing these projects through the two of you, they will feel confident these projects will still be successful. I realize I am putting a lot of responsibility on you but I do not know how the handle this any other way. If you do not think you can do this or if you have a better suggestion I need to know it.

When Clif and Ting Tang agreed to take on these responsibilities, I suggested we enjoy ourselves in the cookout the women were preparing. Clif and Ting Tang took their files to lock them up in their cars before joining the women.

On Monday, I sent a fax to VAMCO's Cambodian business partners and I told them what had happened at my trial. Although I was optimistic my conviction would be overturned, I believed it would be better for all parties concerned, if I turned over the management of VAMCO's projects in Cambodia to Clif Jenkens and Ting Tang. I pointed out they were already involved in all of VAMCO's business agreements on the Cambodian projects.

I sent similar faxes to all of VAMCO's United States business partners but I did not transfer the management of these investments to anyone else. Although I had kept, Carol informed about everything I had done in these businesses I did not have anyone like Clif and Ting Tang who knew enough about these VAMCO businesses to manage them for me.

I sent Charley and Rob a fax telling them about my attorney who was handling the lawsuit against the NSSA dropping the case and my need for them to deal with it or recommend someone else who might be better qualified to handle it. Tuesday morning I received a fax from Charley telling me they could handle the NSSA Lawsuit. They also told me I had an appointment at 1 pm Friday afternoon with the person who would be writing my Presentencing Report for the Court.

Since the US District Court had denied me the use of their law firm, they had made arrangements with an outside attorney in Raleigh North Carolina to go with me for this meeting. Charley suggested I come down on Thursday to discuss the NSSA Lawsuit and they would give me instructions about what I should tell the Presentencing Report Officer.

I discussed this with Carol who would go with me to meet with Charley and Rob and she would go with me for this interview on Friday. I sent a fax to Charley confirming our appointment to meet with him and Rob on Thursday at 1 pm.

Without any commitments for Wednesday, we went to Sherman's Station to check on the progress of making the improvements to the Log home, as we may need to make this move sooner than we had originally planned.

The contractor Carol had hired had made significant progress in making the improvements we had wanted done. However, it was obvious someone had talked to him about my conviction as he danced around when he would be paid. Carol simply told him she owned this farm and what had happened to me would not affect her ability to pay him.

When he did not seem to be convinced, Carol told him to stop what he was doing and she would hire someone else to complete his contract and bill him for any cost over runs. He had not expected this reaction from Carol and he back peddled to confirm he would complete the work on schedule. Carol then told him she would not accept any delays and he better do it right or she would cancel his Contract on building the covered arena and the outside broodmare barn. I should not have been surprised how well Carol had learned to use the carrot and the stick to get things done, as she had become quite an accomplished businesswoman, since we left Hopewell.

Our meeting with Charley and Rob went well. Rob gave me a copy of the immediate Appeal he had filed on the 27th of May in the US District Court. Rob told us he had not received the copy of the Pretrial Hearing's transcript he had ordered from the Court Reporter on May 14, 1997 but I was told not to worry as he had already called the Court Reporter who promised to send it.

We discussed what I was obligated to tell the Presentencing Report Officer and I was not to volunteer anything I had not been specifically asked. Charley explained this person was not a friend who would favorably include anything that would help me.

He then told me about the attorney who would be going with me to this interview even though the Presentencing Report Officer may not allow him to sit in on this meeting. If I ran into any problems, I was told to ask to speak to my attorney before I answered any further questions. Charley asked me to call him at his office or at his home and tell him how my interview went. I gave Charley the NSSA lawsuit files that came to Berclair Plantation on Tuesday and he told me he had already filed an appearance in the Loudoun County Circuit Court as the new legal counsel for VAMCO and me.

Carol and I met the attorney Charley had arranged for me in his office and he gave me the same instructions Charley had given to me about my Presentencing interview. Rather than tell him that Charley had already briefed me on what to say and not say to the Presentencing Interviewer I thank him for his advice.

When we arrived for this Presentencing interview, the person I was scheduled to see, had been changed to someone who was already working on other cases involved in this excess tobacco marketing scheme. This woman immediately threaten to have my presentencing release revoked and I would go directly to jail if she thought I was lying to her about anything she asked me. I responded with a polite "Yes Maam" and thanked Charley for preparing me to deal with this hostile interviewer.

"Now that you have been convicted of this crime, do you want to admit what you have done and cooperate with the government to prosecute those Warehousemen who were involved with you?" She asked.

"I may have been convicted but that does not mean I am guilty." I responded.

"Oh sure, you're just another poor innocent victim." She tried to goad me into saying something stupid but I just sat there not taking the bait.

"Okay, tell me why you are not guilty?" She said changing her tactics.

"I did not receive a fair trial. I fired my previous attorney and retained three new counsels who were prepared to defend me at my trial. Two days before my trial, the Court denied me the use of my prepared counsels than saddled me with the attorney I had fired. This attorney refused to tell the Court I fired him and he was not prepared to act as my defense counsel. During my trial, this attorney refused to talk to me or listen to me when I told him about the false and misleading testimony of the prosecution's witnesses. This attorney did nothing to prepare me to testify in my own defense. I had prepared a written outline of my testimony but he refused to follow it.

In spite of his failure to follow the outline I was presenting a reasonable defense until he stopped asking me questions before I could finish a tenth of my testimony. Then he put the witnesses my previous attorney had subpoenaed on the witness stand without talking to them or knowing that testimony these witnesses were capable of providing in my defense. I know if I had an attorney who was prepared to defend me there is no question I would not have been found guilty." I concluded.

"But you were found guilty and it would be to your benefit to cooperate as it could significantly reduce the amount of your sentence." She replied.

"I already agreed to cooperate when I first presented myself to the US Attorney four years ago." I told her and she looked at me as if I were pulling her leg.

"So what happened?" She asked.

The US Attorney was not interested in my documentation or anything I had to say and I can only provide the same information I would have given to him back then." I told her.

"What about all those Warehousemen you did this excess tobacco business with? I can see you want to be a stand up type of guy but you are being foolish and you owe them no loyalty now that you are convicted." She came back at me.

"I can only tell you the truth about my business relationships with each of them. I did not knowingly do anything wrong when I conducted my tobacco business and I will not lie to save myself no matter how much time you could promise me I would get off my sentence. If you continue to ask me to lie about anyone I did this tobacco business with, I want to speak to my attorney." I told her.

"All right have it your way, but I assure you, you will regret not talking to me about all of those you conducted this illegal tobacco business." She said and then paused for my comment. I just sat there waiting for her to ask me her next question.

She asked about my family and where I grew up and I told her. She wanted to know where my sisters and brothers lived and I told her. She asked about my education and the type of work I had done in my life. She wanted to know about Carol and if I thought, she would stand-by me now that I was convicted. Although I believed, Carol would remain my strongest supporter I suggested she should ask Carol about that.

She asked if I had ever done any drugs and when I told her I had never used drugs, she called me a liar. I laughed at her and told her to have me drug tested before she called me a liar again. She told me I was not cooperating with her and she was going to recommend my release be revoked. I knew she was baiting me and I just sat there waiting to see what she said next.

"This is your last chance to come clean with me. What is it going to be?" She asked.

"I have truthfully answered all your questions and if you are asking me to lie about the people I did business with, I have nothing further to say. If I were guilty as you say I am, I would be telling you anything I thought would get me out of this situation just as the people who falsely testified against me have done.

Now if you want me to lie, I will claim I used you to pay off these Warehousemen and I will produce an accounting book with dates and amounts of money I gave you to pay them." I stated.

"That is ridiculous as we both know that is not true." She quickly came back at me.

"All lies are ridiculous unless they fit into the government's agenda. You and the Prosecutor are not interested in the truth or the real facts that someone like me could have been used without his knowledge in this excess tobacco marketing scheme.

The possibility of not knowing I had been used by the real scam artists in this excess tobacco marketing scheme does not get the Prosecutor another conviction. However, what if the Prosecutor's next defendant is you Maam and we both know you are innocent. Should my lies put you in jail while I am let go with a reduced sentence?" I asked her.

"You should have used that argument in your trial." She stated bluntly.

"I tried to but my attorney cut me off from using my defense arguments I had outlined in writing for him to follow when I testified. The Judge would not allow me to continue testifying as he claimed there was no question for me to answer." I told her and I knew she did not believe me.

"All right I have what I need and I will be verifying what you told me. I may need to do a follow up if I have any other questions." She said as she concluded the interview.

# 11. THE REVELATION OF INCOMPETENCE

Carol wanted to know how this interview went. I told her it was worse than I thought it would be, as all she wanted me to do was lie about the people I did business with to get a reduction in my sentence.

"Carol has been telling me what happened in your trial." The attorney who was waiting with Carol said. 'Would you be interested in talking to one of the best defense attorney's in North Carolina to handle your Appeal?"

He took us to meet Tommy Manning and I told him what had happened in my trial. I explain how I had fired my attorney Randolph Riley and the Court forced me to use him two days before my trial. I went on to tell Tommy Manning that Riley refused to tell the court I had fired him and he was not prepared to defend me.

During my trial, Riley refused to talk to me or use the documented evidence I had to challenge the Prosecution's witnesses who presented false and misleading testimony. I told him Riley put me on the Witness Stand without any preparation and how I created my Defense Book but Riley stopped asking me questions before I was finished with my testimony. Then Riley put the Defense Witnesses Charley Ayers had subpoenaed on the witness stand to testify without talking to them or knowing what they could say in my defense.

When Carol told Tommy Manning this was all true, he asked the attorney who came with us if this was the same Randolph Riley who had been the Wake County Prosecutor. After the attorney said it was the same man, Tommy Manning proceeded to tell us how Randolph Riley had a nervous brake down and spent considerable time in a mental institution. After Riley had been released on medications everyone in all the North Carolina Courts knew he was not capable of handling any real legal cases other than uncontested divorces' and maybe simple traffic court cases.

Then Tommy Manning stopped and he called Riley on the telephone. He asked Riley if he had filed a notice of appeal in my case. When Riley claimed he had not, Tommy looked at his wristwatch and told Riley he had less than an hour to get it filed. Whatever Riley said made Tommy angry and he dictated what the Notice of Appeal should say and he told Riley to hand deliver it to the courthouse before Tommy slammed the phone down.

"I am truly sorry that you have been a victim in this trial as Riley has embarrassed the entire legal community by attempting to handle your complex case when he knew and so did the court know that Riley was in over his head. I wish I could help you but I have a client who could also be indicted in this tobacco scheme. He is the owner of the Big Brick Tobacco Warehouse in Goldsboro where Rudy Hill was his Manager. I am sure by now you know all about the famous Rudy Hill.

Let me give you some names of attorneys, who are eminently well qualified to handling your case and they should not have any conflict of interests with another client. You may use my name when you call them and I will tell them all about your dealings with Randolph Riley.

I thanked Tommy for listening to my legal problem and for telling me that I had not been wrong when I fired Riley. I told Tommy I would discuss his legal referrals with Charley Ayers. I thanked for his efforts to get Riley to file my Notice of Appeal on time as if Riley had not than all my appeal rights would have been lost.

What I did not know at the time, was Riley had not preserved my right to Appeal his Incompetence as my legal counsel or his Ineffective Assistance as my trial counsel under Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures. Riley's failure to include Rule 33 would be used against me when my Court Appointed Direct Appeal Counsel filed my Direct Appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. What further evidence did I need to prove Riley's Conflict of Interest or his Ineffective Assistance of Counsel? However, the 4th Circuit Court did not see it that way.

Unfortunately, this is not the only example of the misuse of the Local Court Rules and the Federal Court's Procedural Rules to protect the criminal fraud of the Officers of my Trial Court and preserve their illegal conviction without considering the merits of that conviction in my Appeals.

BOOK FOUR

### THE KILLING OF JUSTICE CONTINUES

# 1. A NEW LEGAL CHAMPION

I had finally settled on Locke T Clifford out of Greensboro North Carolina as my next Attorney. He was listed as one of the top four Defense Attorneys in the United States and he had talked to Tommy Manning before he agreed to meet with me. Since he was located outside the legal jurisdiction I could travel, he agreed to come to Berclair Plantation to discuss my case.

I am sure the effect of seeing Berclair Plantation in all its glory and all of our horses had a positive effect on him. If nothing else, the idea we had the money to afford his fees was more than evident. After we had discussed what happen in my case and what Riley had done to sabotage my trial he asked if I had any other witnesses who would be willing to provide sworn affidavits of what they had witnessed during my trial.

I gave him a list of people that had been in the courtroom at various times during my trial who were appalled by the way Riley had represented me and I had no doubt they would provide a detailed description of what they had witnessed. I also pointed out Rob Smallenberg who had been one of the three attorneys the Court had refused to allow to represent me had been in the courtroom for most of the trial.

I could almost hear Locke Clifford's thoughts as he was wondering with all these witnesses in the open courtroom, how did the Judge and the Prosecutor, expect to get away with what they had done. "Let me do this. Contact all these people and see if they are willing to provide affidavits to what they witnessed during your trial. If they are willing to help you, I want you to send me their names, addresses and telephone numbers and tell them to expect a call from me. Depending on what they are willing to tell me, I will decide if I am willing to take your case." He said and after a long pause, he asked me if I was willing to take a lie detector test in his office.

I agreed I would do what he asked. I had no problem taking a lie detector test on anything I did in the tobacco market or what I said about what Riley did or did not do in my trial. However, I was not sure he believed me, yet.

If I had been in Locke Clifford's position after hearing what Carol and I had told him, even after what Tommy Manning may have told him about Randolph Riley, I would have asked my potential client to take a lie detector test to be sure I was not being used under false pretences.

"Very well then, let me get back on the road, as it is a long trip back to Greensboro. I will call you after I have talked with your witnesses. I want you to get the court's permission to come to my office in Greensboro next Tuesday or Wednesday if I agree to take your case. I do have one more question." He stopped to ask before he got into his car. "Why did you fire Randolph Riley when you did?"

I told him after 9 months of Riley telling me the Government did not have a case against me Riley failed to keep our scheduled appointments after the superseded indictment had been issued. I explained what happened during our meeting the morning of the Arraignment Hearing. During a heated argument Riley admitted he still could not tell me what the government's case was against me and he had lied to get the second ten thousand dollar payment due in our Representation Agreement. That was when I fired him and I sent him a certified letter telling him he could no longer represent me.

Locke Clifford wanted to see the Representation Agreement and a copy of the certified letters I had sent Riley. After he finished reading them, he told me not to worry, as he would be taking my case. Charley was pleased to hear Locke Clifford would be representing me, but Charley was concerned that he had not received a copy of the transcript of the Pretrial Hearing yet.

At the time I did not realize how important the lack of this transcript was to document the immediate Appeal Rob had filed in the District Court on May 27, 1997. It would be almost three years before I realized the Court failed to list the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing on the Docket sheet. This fact became known to me when the Pretrial Hearing's Transcript had not been given to my court appointed Direct Appeal Counsel so he could document the violation of my Constitutional Rights to have legal counsel during this Pretrial Hearing when he made my Direct Appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Our meeting with Locke Clifford in his Office in Greensboro North Carolina established he was satisfied with the information he had obtained from the witnesses I had sent him. He agreed to represent me for $60,000 dollars and Carol wrote him a check.

# 2. BECOMING LESS THAN THE WALKING WOUNDED

Locke Clifford kept asking me if I was all right and I thought I was answering him and participating in the discussion but it was apparent to him and Carol I was not. I did not realize I had slipped into a deep depression and I had withdrawn into my own mind where I believed I was actively involved in the conversations and discussions but I was not talking at all.

The next thing I remembered I was driving back to Berclair Plantation and I had the feeling Carol was afraid of me. In my mind, I thought I was talking to Carol but I was not saying anything. When we arrived at Berclair Plantation Carol suggested I go to bed as I must be tired. I thought I had said I was not tired but she undressed me and put me to bed anyway.

I do not know how long I slept as it could have been years. When I woke up Carol was crying and no matter what I thought, I said to her, she would not stop crying. She took my hands and looked into my eyes to made sure I listen when she told me I was not functioning the way I thought I was and I needed help. Carol wanted me to trust her and she told me I did not understand what was happening to me.

She had called Mary Washington's Mental Health Hospital and she wanted me to go there and talk to the people who would help me. At first, I denied that anything was wrong with me. When she asked what day it was, I could not tell her. Then she asked if I knew what year it was, I could not tell her. Carol pleaded with me to trust her if I ever loved her, until I agreed to go with her to Mary Washington's Hospital. I do not remember how we got there as Carol had our Foreman drive us to Mary Washington's Mental Hospital.

We met a Doctor who asked me a number of questions I thought I had calmly answered and I had told him I did not think there was anything wrong with me. However, this conversation took place only in my mind as I had just sat there in a semi ridged catatonic state. My behavior alone had convinced the Doctor to admit me into the Mary Washington Mental Hospital.

I would learn later that Carol told the doctor that she was afraid I would hurt myself or I would take off and shoot all those who had been involved in my nightmare of a conviction. With the additional possibility that I was a danger to myself and other people, the Doctor accepted me as a mental patient.

I am not sure how long I had been in Mary Washington's Mental Hospital before my medications of Paxil and Trazodone started to take their affect on me. I remembered I was playing a game solitaire and I was not having any luck until I counted the cards and found the deck only had 51 cards. It was just like Eric Heathery when he sang "Playing solitaire til dawn with a deck of fifty-one" in the song _Countin Flowers on the Wall_ and I knew I had returned to the land of the living.

My Doctor was delighted by my improvements as I could now answer his questions about who I was and what had happened to me that caused me to mentally withdraw into myself. He claimed we had been lucky to find the right combination of psychiatric medications that worked on the first try. However, he warned me this could be a temporary condition and we may need to try something else before he was sure my condition was stabilized.

My first concerns were if Carol was all right and if she could come and visit me, as I knew she must have been worried about me. The Doctor asked if I remembered how I came here and when I tried to think, I said I was not sure. He then asked me what the last thing I remembered was. I told him I was in Locke Clifford's Office and he had told us he would take my case.

"Do you know how long ago that was?" He asked.

"I believe it was Tuesday." I responded.

"Yes it was on a Tuesday but what was the date of that Tuesday?" He asked and I could not remember as I tried to find a calendar in his office. When I found it, I saw it was already the month of July and I realized I could have been here since the middle of June. I was afraid to ask what date today was but I had to know how long I had been out of it. When the Doctor told me, I realized I had lost 21 days and I was even more concerned about Carol.

The Doctor wanted to know if I had any more thoughts of committing suicide or harming anyone else and his questions caught me by surprise.

_I could not believe I could ever think of committing suicide, as that would mean I was giving up and letting my enemies win. I had never given up on anything in my life and as a Catholic if I killed myself I would be lost forever in Hell for all eternity. However, if I could not remember what happened after Carol wrote the check to Locke Clifford, than I must have given her that impression. If this is what she believed, I could now understand why Carol had taken me to Mary Washington's Mental Hospital before I did kill someone or myself_.

"No, Doctor I do not have any thoughts about killing myself as I have too much to live for." I found myself saying. We continued to talk about how I was feeling and I made the mistake of saying I was not feeling anything.

I tried to explain my only concern was about how Carol was doing. No matter what else we talked about I always ended up asking how Carol was doing and my need to know she was all right until the Doctor suggested we could call her.

When I heard Carol's voice on the phone a great weight was lifted from my soul, as she was my lifeline to safety and hope. I do not remember how many times I asked Carol if she was all right in between questions about the horses.

Arrangements were made for Carol to come and see me the next day after lunch. I could not think of anything else but seeing her, holding her and thanking her for saving my life.

This was the first night I remembered dreaming when I woke up in the morning. What was even more alarming was I could not remember how long it had been since I had actually dreamed or what I had dreamed about. During my morning session with the Doctor, I told him about dreaming and being concerned I could not remember having any dreams for several years.

At first, he claimed it was normal that we do not always remember our dreams. When I insisted I usually did but I could not remember when I stopped remembering them he took what I said more seriously. When he probed into my reasons for believing this, I made it easy for him.

I told the Doctor I had taken a very interesting course in Dream Theory offered by the Psychology Department when I worked on my Masters Degree in Human Behavior and Marketing. I felt as if the Doctor was testing me and I found myself telling the Doctor about this course and some of the important dream theories I had learned.

We discussed Sigmund Freud's 1899 work _The Interpretation Dreams_ where Freud claimed, "nothing we do occurs by chance and every action and thought is motivated by our subconscious." According to Freud in order to live in civilized society, we have a tendency to hold back our urges and repress our impulses, however these urges and impulses must be released in some way and they have a way of surfacing in a disguised form, such as in our dreams.

We went on to discuss Carl Jung who had disagreed with Freud as Jung described dreams as messages the dreamer needed to pay attention to for their own good. Jung believed recurring dreams suggested the dreamer was neglecting an important issue that the dreamer was attempting to avoid as if the issue would just resolve itself without the dreamer's interaction.

We both agreed Fritz Perls had advanced Carl Jung's theory where he believed dreams were projections of parts of the "self" that have been ignored, rejected or suppressed. In cases where repression nightmares occurred, they were the reflection of fear, horror, anxiety and great sadness. However even nightmares offered a release as they could be studied and a safe haven could be found to overcome the real problem behind the nightmares.

The Doctor believed dreaming was important to good metal health and dreams had been recorded as far back as 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. The Bible was full of stories in the Old and New Testaments where God had used dreams to inform and protect his chosen ones.

The Doctor used the example that God told Joseph in a dream he should not be afraid to take Mary as his wife as she was pregnant with God's son who would save the world.

The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans believed dreams were messages from the Gods or from deceased persons who were warning us of a pending disaster much like what Carl Jung and Fritz Perls had suggested. Having established I understood the nature and importance of dreams, the Doctor suggested if I could not remember dreaming even nightmares, it could be a reflection of an emotional trauma, I had experienced and maybe it had occurred even before this latest tragedy.

My mind immediately jumped to my latest problems with the NSSA and the total unfairness of it all. Now that I thought about it, my mind cleared and I realized I had not dreamed since that happened. I was about to tell the Doctor this, when he suggested my mental problem could also be the result of a chemical imbalance in my brain that my medications were now starting to correct. Although the Doctor felt that restoring the chemical balance in my brain was an important breakthrough he wanted me to take a sleep study to eliminate another possible problem that could be affecting my ability to dream. He looked at the clock on the wall and realized we had talked way beyond our normal appointment time and he suggested we would discuss this sleep study tomorrow.

Seeing Carol was almost like seeing her again for the first time so many years ago as she was just as beautiful and I could not take my eyes off her. Carol was glad to hear my medications were working and I could now remember what happened since my trial.

I found myself realizing Carol was displaying a personal confidence that she was successfully managing Berclair Plantation and she had things going well. Carol told me that the new owners of the last of this year's foals had come to pick them up and the contractor was just about finished with the improvements on the Log Home at Sherman Station.

However, the most important news Carol had was Locke Clifford had obtained an extension from the court to file his Rule 29 motion, as he could not confer with me, his client in Mary Washington's Mental Hospital. He had obtained all the affidavits from the witnesses I had sent to him. The really surprising news was he had Randolph Riley willing to provide his affidavit of all the mistakes and errors he had made in representing me. Riley was willing to do this if I would agree not to sue him for his legal malpractice.

Carol had brought the agreement Locke Clifford wanted me to sign that said I would not sue Randolph Riley if he told the truth. I did not ask how Locke Clifford had been able to get Riley to agree to this but I had no problem signing the agreement as written. For the first time since my trial, I had the feeling that things had started to turn around and I would not be going to jail. Now I needed to get mentally well and get out of here.

Carol asked if I needed anything. I asked her to contact the pastor at Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Fredericksburg, as I would like to talk to him. Carol knew I had been one of the Parish's major contributors since we moved here and Father Munley had become a close friend.

Father Munley was allowed to visit me and after I told him what happened in my trial he wanted to know if I had confessed my sins. I realized by asking me this, Father Munley was really asking me if I was guilty and if the money I was donating to Saint Mary's Parish had come from this illegal activity.

"Father, you have been my confessor since I came to Fredericksburg and you know me with all my faults, failings and sins. I knowingly did not do anything wrong or illegal in this or any other business. Therefore, there is no need to confess anything I did, although it might now seem I had committed a grave sin." I told him to answer both his question and his concerns.

Father Munley accepted my answer. He blessed me and told me he would pray for me. He reminded me that praying was my strongest weapon against the evil that had befallen me and he gave me a rosary to use as both my weapon and my shield. I thanked him for coming and for all his prayers. I expressed the hope that I would be seeing him soon at Sunday Mass.

That evening I was taken to the Main Hospital for my Sleep Study and I was found to have a sleep disorder known as Sleep Apnea. A patient who suffers from Sleep Apnea stops breathing during his sleep and then abruptly gasps for air in an exaggerated loud snore to revive himself.

According to my Doctor in recent Clinical Studies, the lack of oxygen during these periods of not breathing can adversely affect the brain's functions and the thought processes of the patient during his waking hours. The most noted effect is the patient may not be able to think rationally or responsibly the longer he suffers from Sleep Apnea. The Mind has the ability to create escape mechanisms such as sleep disorders when we were faced with extreme anxiety. Sleep Apnea is known to cause anxiety but there were not enough studies to establish if anxiety can cause Sleep Apnea.

Although I would like you to take this Sleep Study again, your current test results indicate you are not getting more than 2 hours of restful sleep a night as you reported last night was typical of your normal night's sleep. Since one of the reported manifestations of Sleep Apnea is the patient's loud snoring, the Doctor wanted to know how long I had been accused of being a loud snorer. He laughed and explained the person who snores cannot hear himself snore even if he is rattling the windows with his snoring and he will not believe he is snoring at all.

"More than five years since I started to snore so loudly that Carol could not sleep in the same room with me." I told the Doctor. The moment I said this I remembered it was more than 5 years ago that the NSSA engineered the false cheating charge against me.

"That is a long time however it could explain how your body has adjusted to operating on so little real sleep." The Doctor stated. "Carol has told me that you are a workaholic sometimes putting in 20 hour days.

Where you ever in a situation, where you had to force yourself to stay awake for long periods of time?" The Doctor asked and I told him about my working with snipers in Vietnam when I was in the Army.

This revelation that I had actually been involved as a sniper rather than just training them, opened the door to the Doctor's questions about the possibility I could have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The Doctor wanted to know if I had any flash backs about what I had seen and done in Vietnam.

When I claimed I did not believe what I did in Vietnam had affected me and I did not have any flash backs, it was as if the Doctor was disappointed. He continued to ask more detailed questions about the sniper engagements I had been involved in and how many men I had killed.

I told him I had 86 confirmed kills but this number did not include as many unconfirmed kills I most likely made before Firebase 6. I explained how I had arrived at Firebase 6 and I could have killed 98 more as that was all the ammunition I had with me.

When I told him I did not remember the faces of those I killed, he then wanted to know if I ever thought about being wounded or dying in Vietnam. I told him I never thought about it even after I had a number of close calls where I could have died. He then wanted to know if I felt guilty when others had been wounded or killed and I had not received so much as a scratch.

_Although I believed the Doctor was trying to remain clinically objective I had the feeling the Doctor could have been against the War in Vietnam and he was having trouble dealing with someone who had knowingly killed men with great precision and without any apparent remorse. I found myself resenting his possible judgment_.

I would not allow myself to feel guilty about doing a job few other people could have done. This was the same moral attitude many Americans had about killing other human beings even in war. It had been my recognition of that "thou shall not kill" Judo-Christian moral attitude that had created my need to separate just good shooters from those who could stay alive as an effective sniper by the use of the sniper psychological screening test. The only thing I knew was, it had worked and as a result, none of my men lost their lives over a foolish mistake of missing their intended targets for a moral reason.

The progress I was making in my recovery placed me in Group Therapy where the Therapist wanted us to become "in touch" with our feelings to understand how our feelings influence our basic emotional responses. I did not need to learn I should be angry about the Court forcing me to use Riley as my defense counsel when I had fired him and replace him with three new counsels who were prepared to defend me. However, I found I did not hate Riley or want to get even with him. In fact now that I knew he was mentally ill, I felt sorry for him as he had been misused by the court and the prosecutor without any concern about Riley's mental health or what additional mental damage Riley would experience before this was all over.

I did not need to learn I should feel betrayed by the United States Justice system that had been misused to railroad me into this illegal conviction. There was only one feeling I could not deal with and that was my deep disappointment that all this could happen to me when our Constitution and the Bill of Rights had been enacted to protect people from the blatant abuse of power in the Federal Government. This stood in direct contradiction to everything I had studied and believed, about the country I had fought to defend and protect.

_I must have demonstrated that I was in touch with my feelings as I was released from Mary Washington's Mental Hospital with a perpetual need to take my psychiatric medications_. _Although my medications have been changed over the years I still need to take them as the legacy of the traumatic experience I have been forced to endure at the hands of unscrupulous Federal Court officials._

What I did not understand at the time of my release from Mary Washington Mental Hospital was that I thought I was doing fine, but in reality I was only running on 5 of 8 cylinders half the time. Mental wounds can run deep. They adversely affect so many of the mind's normal functions for years and sometimes they never completely heal unlike a physical wound where you can actually see the healing process take place.

I was not home a day before a man and his partner who claimed to be Agents of the Federal Government arrived at Berclair Plantation to inspect the property. When they flashed their identifications so fast no one could read them, Carol told them she wanted to make a photocopy of their "ID's" before anything else happened or she would call the Spotsylvania County Sheriff to have them arrested for trespassing.

She was already dialing the Sheriff's phone number when the two Agents agreed to produced their identification cards. While Carol continued to dial, she told me to make copies of them and then fax them to Charley.

"Gentlemen, now that we know who you are, you need to go back to whoever sent you as the government does not own this property, yet. My attorney has already advised the government that any inspections of Berclair Plantation must be coordinated and scheduled with his office in writing. Since you failed to do that, you are trespassing and I will have you arrested." Carol said and then she spoke into the phone.

"Yes, this is Carol Stewart at Berclair Plantation. We have some unwanted guests who may need to be escorted off the property. Yes I will sign a formal complaint if we need the Sheriff to come out here." Carol said and then she listened to the Dispatcher's response. "Let me asked them." Carol said into the phone before she turned back to the Agents.

"What is it going to be gentlemen? Are you leaving by your own will or does the sheriff need to come out here?" She asked and both men left the house and drove away without saying another word.

# 3. TAKING THE OFFENSIVE WITH HEAVY LOSSES

"Mark, I hope you are up for this, but we are moving to Sherman Station this Friday. I need you to haul all of the rest of the horses to Lexington over the next three days. I have fixed up the run-in sheds in the main pasture where the lake is located and the horses should be fine until we finish their stalls in the permanent barns.

What Charley has told me is the government wants us to lease Berclair from them for $5,000 a month to keep our horses here. Why the government thinks we should pay rent on our own property is beyond me as this would be pouring money down a rat hole. However, if we turn over the Plantation to them, until your appeal is heard it will be their responsibility to take care of it.

I would have told you about the need to make this move but I was not sure you would be able to handle it as long as you were still in the hospital." Carol told me.

"I understand and I would have done the same thing." I responded and I asked, "How many horses are left to move?"

Driving the horses to Sherman Station, gave me time to think and reorganize my life. Carol and I had reversed our roles where she was now making the decisions with a clear business head while I was still learning to mentally deal with what happened to me.

I thought about the time before I could not remember anything. It had been like a thousand thoughts were trying to occupy the same space at the same time in my mind. I thought I was successfully handling them as quickly as they came to me, but no one was listening to me. The harder I tried to be heard the more I felt I was being ignored and then like an electrical circuit hit by a surge of electrical power overloading a circuit breaker all my thoughts blew out.

My Doctor had told me everyone has an emotional limit and a psychological breaking point as the human body can only experience so much unresolved conflict before it protects itself and it simply shuts down the parts of the body most threatened. When this happens some people experience physical problems such as a heart attack or a stroke while in my case my mind had refused to allow any more input and it had blocked out everything in a temporary state of psychological apnea until it could heal itself. In the past before the development of modern psychotropic medications, the mind was not capable of healing itself. People lingered in a semi catatonic state for years and many never recovered.

What I needed to come back from my minds defensive state was a boost of a natural chemical substance produced in the brain called Serotonin. Serotonin is necessary in the transmission of signals between nerve cells known as a synapse. My low level of Serotonin could have been caused by my deep levels of anxieties over what happened to me in my trial.

This anxiety produced a major depression and limited my ability to think rationally to solve my problems. Once my brain had the correct amount of Serotonin from my medications I started to deal with my situation and help myself to think rationally again. This did not mean I was cured. It only meant I was starting to recover and I could make a full recovery, if nothing else caused me to suffer a relapse.

I never felt so vulnerable and helpless as I did now. I knew my life and my sanity hung on the merits of Locke Clifford's arguments in the Rule 29 c Motion that would be decided by the US District Court Judge Malcolm J Howard who had already done everything he could to insure that I would be convicted.

When I tried to understand why the immediate appeal filed by Rob Smallenberg had not been heard yet, my stomach began to roll, my throat became tight, I started to choke and it took all my efforts to keep from vomiting. I knew if I continued to think about the possible reasons behind this delay, the thousands of thoughts being held in check by my medications would break through into my mind again and I would find myself back in the mental hospital. I knew I could not let that happen, as Carol was depending on me to help her complete this move.

I remembered as a child when I started to become car sick, my mother told me to look out the window and find something that was too far away to know what it was. I was to keep looking at it until I could determine what it was and then I should look for another object and do the same thing. It was just a simple distraction to force me to think about anything other than being sick. It had worked then and there was no reason why it would not work now.

By Friday morning, I had moved the rest of our horses to Sherman Station. The Household Movers had packed everything and they were gone by noon. Clif knew we were leaving and he showed up to helped me pack up all of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's gun making equipment and machinery from the Carriage House into the Horse Trailer.

After going through all the buildings on Berclair, I was making a final check in the main house to make sure we had not left anything behind when the two Government Agents showed up. Rather than answer any of their questions, I handed them the keys to Berclair and then pulled out with the loaded horse trailer behind our Ford Crew Cab Dually truck. Clif followed me down the long driveway to Harrison Road where I stopped.

I did not know how I could thank Clif for all his help and support. Clif had been my business partner in the K G Greenfield Corporation, he had been part of VAMCO's Cambodian cigarette business and he had been my right hand man as the Cambodian Projects where developed. He had been there with me as Charley Ayers and Rob Smallenberg investigated my case before they agreed to represent me.

Clif was there with me as Charley and Rob organized my Defense. He heard what all of my Witnesses could testify in my defense giving him a unique perspective of what evidence Riley failed to use in my defense when Riley refused to talk to me during the trial.

Clif's affidavit to Locke Clifford had been clear, concise and accurate about Riley's ineffective assistance as my trial counsel. Clif's most damaging statements dealt with Riley's failure to discuss Clif's testimony or any of the defense witness's testimony before Riley put them on the witness stand.

Carol had told me the government had tried to get Clif to change his affidavit by threatening to indict him as a coconspirator in this excess tobacco marketing scheme and when they did indict him they would put a lean on his house, his cars and his family's bank accounts. Clif was expecting these threats from the government and he had John record all of the conversations and all the threats made by the Agent Ed Dayo.

When Agent Dayo came back with more threats Clif gave him a copy of the tape recordings and he told Agent Dayo to call his attorney, Charley Ayers if he had any questions. As a result, no one from the government contacted Clif again. No one could have been more loyal than Clif had been yet I had to ask him for one more favor.

I wanted him to write a Memo of Record stating I had given the keys to Berclair Plantation to the Federal Agents. I wanted him to mail a copy of his Memo to me in Lexington and send a copy to Charley's Office. When I said goodbye to Clif I did not know I would never see my business partner and very good friend, again.

I had not gone 10 miles before my rolling stomach, the coughing, the choking and tightness in my throat forced me to stop and puke my guts out. I may have been released from the mental hospital as being mentally competent but that did not mean I could take on the emotional stress and confrontational pressures I had been able to handle in the past. I knew this physical reaction was caused by my heighten awareness of the pressures the government was putting on me and on all my supporters. All this pressure by the Government had heightened my emotional sensitivity and reduced my ability to deal with the dangers these government agents represented.

In this all out war with the government, I had been seriously wounded emotionally during the battle of the Federal Courtroom. I was a psychological casualty with crippling injuries that had just started to heal in the protective environment of Mary Washington's mental hospital.

However in an all out war when duty calls and the enemy is attacking even the walking wounded are expected to man the ramparts and fight with the best weapon they had. My best weapon was the rosary Father Munley had given me. I could not tell you how many rosaries I prayed while driving to Sherman Station. By the time I reached Sherman Station, I felt I had regained control over my rollercoaster emotions. I knew I could not tell Carol about my emotional battle and I had to appear I was the man she could count on.

I was pleased to see Carol had so successfully planned and organized this move that everything had been unpacked and put where she wanted things to be in the house. Even my Office was set up in the main room on the lower level and it was ready for me to get back to work. Carol had sent a fax to all of VAMCO's business partners with our new fax and phone numbers.

Carol suggested we check on the horses while it was still light as she had made an Irish stew for supper and it would be just fine when we got back. The horses were in the lower pasture with their heads down eating the rich lush grass that they barely stopped eating to notice us. When we walked up to the run-in shed I noticed the feed pans I had set out before I left yesterday had not been touched. This just proved the horses found that grass to be more appetizing.

After supper, we sat on the balcony while I smoked my pipe and we listened to the frogs sing in our small lake. The peace and quiet on the side of Poor House Mountain was a welcomed change to what Berclair had become since my trial. This had been a good day and it turned out better than I had expected. We had safely made the move to Sherman Station before anyone in the government could come up with a reason, legal or otherwise to stop us.

We had been lucky, as the government had underestimated Carol's ability to plan and execute this move so quickly after I had been released from Mary Washington's Mental Hospital. If the two Government Agents had not come to Berclair when I was about to leave, the government may not have known we had left Berclair with everything we owned. Their arrival meant someone must have called them, as they had not scheduled an inspection of Berclair Plantation with Charley.

However since it was already late Friday afternoon by the time the government knew we had left Berclair the additional time over the weekend would also delay any action the government might consider taking. Charley had assured Carol there was nothing the government could have legally done to prevent us from leaving Berclair but following the law and operating within the law had not stopped the government from acting illegally in the past.

I would not have thought like this about the government before my trial. However, what I had experience before, during and since my trial had convinced me all the laws and our basic Constitutional rights protected no one from the people who were in the position to abuse and misuse the powers of the courts and the Federal Government. I could only hope Carol had made the right decision to abandoned Berclair and making this move to Sherman Station would not put her in the crosshairs of the government's sights.

As we prepared to go to bed, we found the upstairs bathroom had not been hooked up and none of the electrical outlets on the second floor worked. I found the water and sewer lines had not been installed. None of the electrical wiring had been hooked up to the Main Breaker Box. Rather than upset Carol, I told her I would take care of this tomorrow and we took a shower together in the lower level bathroom.

Carol had a bottle of wine chilling in the refrigerator to celebrate the first night in our new home. The wine helped Carol forget about the problems on the second floor and after we made love, she fell asleep in my arms. Unfortunately, I could not fall asleep even though I should be dead tired after hauling all the horses for the last three days and making the final trip with all of Harpers Ferry Arms Company's machinery and equipment. I tried to clear my mind to control the thoughts that kept coming back to me but one thought would not be silenced so I could fall asleep.

I kept thinking, "Whoever said, 'The truth is the best defense in a Federal criminal trial,' did not mention how difficult it was to have the truth be told in the courtroom. The "truth" is the first victim, on the prosecutor's sacrificial alter and he will be forgiven for his transgressions as long as he wins another conviction." However, understanding this was the reality of what happened did not change my situation and it did not help me to dwell on it now. I turned to my best weapon. I started to pray for the Virgin Mary's help and I fell asleep before I finished the rosary.

Carol was up before me and she was on the phone to the Contractor complaining he had not done the work he was paid to do. He claimed he did not know his man had not completed the job. He then promised Carol he would be sending his men back out today. When the Contractor's men did not show up, she could not reach the Contractor and his secretary did not know where he was. After Carol's fourth call, she left the message if he did not fix the bathroom and hook up all the wiring today she would hire another Contractor and bill him for all the costs to fix what he had not done. This last message should have gotten the Contractor's attention but he never called back.

It was just before noon when Carol woke me up with a kiss and a hot cup of coffee. I was into my third cup of coffee when Carol told me what she did but it had not worked. I could only think the government was behind this and they had convinced the Contractor not to do any more work for Carol on Sherman Station. However, I kept my thoughts to myself and I suggested we established what else the Contractor was paid to do but he had not done.

When the Contractor moved the door going into the Greenhouse to make a larger wall space for my office desk he had not connected the waterlines to the new location of the sink and the electrical wires were not reconnected.

None of the work to fix the existing horse barns had been done even though Carol had paid for the labor and materials as if the work had been done. We spent the rest of the day establishing other things the Contractor failed to do in the Contract Carol had signed with the Contractor. I estimated the Contractor had been paid over 20 thousand dollars for work he had not done.

Carol had trusted him and he had taken advantage of her inexperience in dealing with building Contractors. I blamed myself for this as if I had not been in the mental hospital I would not have paid the Contractor until I saw he had satisfactorily finished the work in the contract. A contract is not completed until all of its terms and conditions are met. The withholding of payment is usually enough for the nonperforming party to resolve the issue.

I had to tell Carol how the Contractor took advantage of her without blaming her for trying to do the best she could under the circumstances and the limited time she had to make this move. I knew it would not be easy and I did not want her to feel guilty that she was legally blind and if she were not blind, she would have otherwise seen what the Contractor had not done.

I suggested we check on the horses to see how well they were doing before I took her out to dinner. The horses were just fine eating the delicious green grass on the mountainside even though there had been a serious drought in the surrounding countryside. Sherman Station was high enough on the mountain that the morning's dew refreshed the grass as if it had rained.

After we ordered our dinner, I planned to tell Carol it may not be her fault the contractor did not finish the job, if my suspicions about the Government's involvement were true. However, Carol accepted the responsibility for letting the Contractor take advantage of her and offered no excuses. We discussed what we should do and we made plans how to do it.

We agreed to find several Contractors who would give us an estimate on finishing the work she had paid for. These estimates could also establish a legal claim against the Contractor, as he knew what he did not do in the contract he signed. To document our legal claim I would use VAMCO's video camera to record the existing condition of the house and the other jobs in the contract the Contractor had not done and he had falsely obtained payment for doing.

I then told Carol I could do most of the work myself except for the electrical wiring, which had to be done by a licensed electrician. When Carol gave me a strange look, I told her how Dick, my father and I had built the house on Brown Deer Road when I was just 12 years old. I went on to say I could hire workers to help me and I did not see where I could not fix up the barns and build the extra barns we needed for our horses this winter.

"Mark, are you sure you can do this?" Carol asked me wondering if my mental condition would let me do what I said I could.

"There is nothing wrong with my ability to do physical work and it will help me regain my confidence I can still do things that will help us beat the government's efforts to destroy me." I told her giving her confidence I was on the road to recovery.

That evening I contacted several building Contractors who would give us their estimates and I schedule their visits for the next day knowing the Contractor would not be showing up to finish his job on Sunday. Their bids just on the house ranged from 18 thousand to 35 thousand dollars to finish the job. I liked one of electrician's who said he could do the job the next day for a thousand dollars which would cover his work and all the materials he knew we needed and I hired him.

As expected the original Contractor never called and none of his workers showed up. The electrician was there Monday morning with a helper and he finished the job by three o'clock. He explained he was concerned about what had not been done and how the way the electrical wiring had been left exposed it could have easily started a fire. I videotaped that I had him point out what he had fixed to correct these fire hazards.

When Carol paid him, he admitted knowing the Contractor who had left this job and the Contractor had told him not to become involved with us, as we would not pay him. When I did not say anything against the Contractor or the way he had left the job, he wanted to know if we had any horses for sale.

He was an AQHA member and he knew we had Coosa Lad as our stallion. I told him we only had two yearlings we had kept as examples of the quality of horses Coosa Lad was producing. I looked at Carol and she suggested he was welcome to look at them if he was interested in showing them in the AQHA Horse Shows. The fact that we had kept these two yearlings to show the quality of Coosa Lad's offspring he knew these horses had to be outstanding prospects that needed to be shown and they would win big in the Horse shows.

He was impressed with both horses but he absolutely loved the bay filly called Sweetie and he wanted to bring his wife and daughter to see her. He asked if he could bring them after supper and his daughter fell in love, with Sweetie at first sight. His wife also loved the horse and she felt the 10 thousand dollar price was reasonable.

The electrician handed back the check Carol had given him as a down payment on the horse pending the Veterinarian's conformation the mare was sound. The next morning Sweetie easily passed the Veterinarian examination and Carol took the man's check for the balance. His daughter walked Sweetie into his horse trailer as if the filly knew she was going to a good home.

He could not believe how well the young horse behaved. We told him how we had desensitized all our baby horses right after they were born and we had fed the Broodmares in the horse trailer so her foal would learn not to be afraid to load into a horse trailer.

The electrician knew I had a number of Contractors give estimates on completing the work the Contractor did not do. When he asked if I had made up my mind on which Contractor I would use, I told him I was thinking about doing most of the work myself and I would be looking to hire some good workers to help me. He just smiled and said he would tell some of his friends I was looking to hire some reliable people. He suggested what I should expect to pay these people and he wished me good luck.

The next morning I tackled the plumbing problem in the upstairs bathroom first. Now after I studied where the plumbing pipes had to go I realize why the contractor may not have wanted to finished the job. He had not determined where these pipes could go to connect to the septic system in a house with solid log walls. My solution was to build a hollow column where the stairs came down from the second floor as if the column was actually supporting the staircase and the upper floor. By using this false column, I could run the pipes down through both floors and into the bottom floor's workshop, where I could tie in the water lines and run the wastewater pipe into the main sewer line to the septic tank.

I went to the Hardware Store in Lexington to pick up what I needed. Plumbing was no longer the problem it had been when you had to run galvanize and cast iron pipe after threading their ends in a pipe-threading machine. Plastic replaced all these pipes and all you needed to do was buy the correct fittings with the PVC cement and enough 10-foot PVC pipe lengths to complete the job.

I had run the pipes and had the water running in the upstairs bathroom before Carol came back in to start making supper. Before she could ask about these exposed pipes, I told her I would be building a false column to hide them. I told her I needed to go to the lumberyard before they closed and I would be back by the time she had supper ready.

I carefully selected the lumber so it would match the other woodwork inside the log house. However when I told the salesclerk what I was doing he had a better suggestion to keep the log look of the house. He had some 8 foot long 3 inch thick half rounded log faces that could be cut to give the appearance this was part of the log home.

It would take some careful mitering cuts to piece the log faces together so they would look like just one log used to support the second floor. After he showed me these log faces and I measured them, I knew I could make those cuts on the table-saw I still had in the horse trailer. The salesclerk gave me a deal on these log faces as he said they had been there for years and he was glad I could use them.

I spent several hours after supper planning the miter cuts I had to make in the log faces to give the appearance of just one log support column. As my father had taught me, I needed to plan how to use my materials and measure three times before I made my final cut. These cuts had to be perfect as I was using only the small slightly rounded center section of each log face. Since I knew how big this hollow log had to be to enclose the pipes I drew a circle and measured how each log face section needed to be cut to be fitted together like the pieces of a pie.

The next morning I unloaded the table saw into the garage and after measuring each saw cut 3 times, I completed the task of ripping each log face at the proper angle. After I carried them into the house, I needed Carol to hold each piece as I nailed them together to form the hollow log support column.

As I was building this hollow log, I realized I should make a hinged panel that could swing out if I needed to fix a problem with any of the pipes. After I built this panel, Carol thought it was neat to have this panel into a secret hiding place no one would think could exist in a solid support log. With the electrical wiring completed and the bathroom in working order my next task was to make the repairs to the existing barns and close in the open covered shed to make more stalls for the horses.

After determining what building materials I needed I established an account at the lumberyard and had everything delivered. I rented an air compressor and a nail gun as no one used a hammer any more when a nail gun could do the job of three men in half the time.

At each place of business I went as I was ordering things I needed, I asked if they knew of any reliable men looking for work as I was hiring men to help me and I would need them for the next few months. Two cousins named Allen and Jeff showed up with their own tools claiming the electrician said I was looking for reliable help. I showed them all the work I wanted done and when they said they could do it, we agreed on an hourly wage. I told them I would pay them every Friday at the end of the day.

I did not need to tell them where to start and after a few hours, I knew they could see and do the needed repairs on the existing barns without me telling them what to do. Carol came out with a pitcher of lemon aide and fresh baked cookies to meet the men I had hired.

By the end of the week, most of the existing barns were ready to receive the horses and every stall looked good with the rubber floor mats I had taken from our horse barns at Berclair. When I gave Allen and Jeff their pay checks for the week I also brought a six-pack of beer. As we drank the beer, I laid out my hand drawn plans I had made for inclosing the large covered shed and I asked for their opinions on how we should do this. We walked over to study the structure to see if I missed anything when I ordered the materials.

Allen the self-appointed leader asked about the windows I planned to use in this horse barn. I told him about using Plexiglas instead of glass that would be held in wooden window frames for support. They would be on the outside of the barns walls and could be slid open when the weather was nice or when we aired out the barn.

"So we will build them too?" Allen asked and I told them we would along with the barn doors and horse stalls. I showed them my plans to build removable Mare Care stall walls that when they were replaced would double the number of stalls in the barn for the weaned foals. When they claimed, they never heard of convertible stalls I showed them my plans and the detailed drawings for making the composite support posts in each of the stalls.

I explained by stacking the 12 foot 2 by 6 planks in the slots created by using two 2 by 8 planks nailed together with a 2 by 4 in between would make the support columns for these removable stall walls. The tops of these support columns would be nailed to the barn's roof trusses and their bottoms would be buried in the ground.

I explained when the broodmares were about to have their foals in January I could expand the size of their berthing stalls by removing the 2 by 6 planks from the center wall of each of the Mare Care Stalls. When I was confident that they understood my plans for the barn, I told them we would start building the stalls on Monday.

Allen told me he could barrow his family's tractor and he could grade the dirt floor to make it level before we started to build the convertible stalls. I accepted his offer and asked him to do it. I also told him I appreciated his thinking and planning to make this job easier, which pleased both men.

After we talked about all the other things I need to build before winter, I learned both of these men had been laid off three weeks ago by the Contractor who had been working here. They did not know at the time that the Contractor had pulled his men off the Sherman Station job and the Contractor's senior employees were put on the job they had been working on. The Contractor told Allen and Jeff his other job had fallen through and he did not have enough work to keep them.

Now that they had worked here, they told me that they knew the Contractor had lied to them, as there was more than enough work for his other men to do here. It was their roundabout way of asking what happened without appearing to be overly nosey about someone else's business.

I saw no reason not to tell them as I was sure the electrician must have told them why he had done the electrical work the Contractor failed to do. Besides these two men might know why the Contractor pulled out before the Sherman Station job was finished.

Jeff the quiet one of the two said his sister was friends with the Contractor's secretary and according to the Contractor's secretary, "two suits" came to see the Contractor and that was when the Contractor pulled his men off this job.

To make sure I understood what he meant by the "two suits" I asked, if he meant these two men were from the government.

"They must have been, as only the Bankers and Lawyers wear suits around here." He confirmed my earlier suspicion that the government was up to their dirty tricks.

The timing of the Contractor's departure was more than a coincidence. I wanted to ask if he knew what these "two suits" looked like but I did not want to draw undo attention to the incident and I felt once we knew each other better I could ask him to find out through his sister.

Allen said he could come over tomorrow afternoon with the tractor and get the grading done, so it would be done before they came back to work on Monday. I thanked him for his suggestion and for thinking ahead.

When I walked into the house, Carol told me. "Locke Clifford had just called and I was coming to get you as he wants you to call him."

As I dialed Locke's number I had the feeling what I was about to hear would not be good news otherwise Locke would have told Carol. My first thought was the court had denied my Rule 29 Appeal but I was wrong.

"I am glad you called. Mark I don't know how to tell you this, but the Court has ordered you to report for a 30 day Psychiatric Evaluation at the Medical Facilities located at FCI Butner North Carolina on Monday.

Normally when a defendant seeks psychiatric treatment, the government has the right to conduct their own psychiatric evaluation to counter any defense claim of mental incompetence to stand trial. I do not need to tell you this has nothing to do with establishing your mental competence as the court was given a copy of all your doctor's reports and at no time did your doctor make the claim you were not mentally competent."

What Locke did not say was I was not willing to roll over and play dead after my conviction, but I had assumed an aggressive role by going on the offensive. Rob Smallenberg had immediately filed an Appeal challenging the Court forcing me to defend myself without any legal counsel in the Pretrial Hearing.

Then Locke Clifford filed the Rule 29 Motion with Randolph Riley's affidavit where Riley admitted he had failed to provide the effective assistance of counsel during my trial. The supporting affidavits from my defense witnesses claimed Riley failed to talk with them before Riley put them on the witness stand and they confirmed Riley had refused to talk with me during the trial. This 29 Motion had challenged the basic integrity of the Court and it put the Prosecutor and the Judge on the defensive to preserve their illegal conviction.

_Carol not only refused to pay the government "rent" on Berclair Plantation she had challenged the two government Agents by threatening to have them arrested if they did not leave and she told them not to come back until they scheduled their inspection with her attorney. Then on top of it all Carol moved the horses and everything from Berclair to Sherman Station dumping Berclair Plantation into the government's hands before they could stop her. Although the Court knew, what Carol did was legally within her rights, it did not stop the Court and the Prosecutor from retaliating and punishing her by removing me as the person she needed_ _to help her reestablish her horse business at Sherman Station._

Locke suggested I should drive down to his home north of Greensboro North Carolina, leave my car there and we could talk about this when he drove me to FCI Butner on Monday. He told me what personal items I could take with me into the Federal Prison. He also suggested I take a hundred dollars in cash so I could buy things I needed while I was there.

When I told Carol what happened she gritted her teeth and calmly said, "Those dirty bastards are going to pay for this either on earth or in hell and I pray it is in both of them. You better fix me a drink as we need to plan what can be done while you are gone."

I outline what I felt the two men who had worked with me could do in 30 days to complete the work on the covered shed and build the fences to divide the pastures into areas we needed to separate the broodmares and their foals from the other horses.

Carol and I had already discussed our plans for where these fences should be built based on the location of the new mare care barns we needed to build before winter. My design for these mare care barns would be like the ones we built at Berclair. This barn would have more stalls built in a connected "U" shape located northwest and behind the log house to offer the most protection from the wind and it would have easy access to the water well.

I suggested we call Allen and Jeff and have them come over tomorrow, so I can show them what I wanted them to do. Before they came we needed to stake out where the fences should be built so Carol would know what these pastures looked like on the ground and where the inter connecting gates should be located. This fencing plan was like the connecting pastures we had at Berclair, which allowed us to channel the Broodmares and their foals into the pastures we wanted them to go eliminating the time and effort for someone to walk them to the right pastures.

When I called Allen and Jeff I told them something had come up and I would be away from the farm for 30 days. However if they could come over tomorrow I would lay out the work I wanted them to do while I was gone.

It took all morning to stake out the fence lines and the location of the gates. Allen arrived with the tractor and Jeff brought along Allen's brother Frank. Allen wanted to know if I would hire his brother, as Frank was also an experienced carpenter and construction worker who would help them complete the work I had laid out for them.

Again, I thanked Allen for coming up with a solution to replace me while I was gone. They did not have a problem understanding what I wanted them to do. Frank asked, if there was something else I wanted them to do if they finished the work I had out lined.

I suggested they could run the water lines from the well to the barns and the pastures and if they got this done we needed the area in front of the covered shed graded for the round pen that needed to be built. I took them to the area where we planned to build our mare care barns and showed them the plans to build them.

Allen stated he had a friend with a large earth moving end loader who could level the area for the round pen and as long as he had his equipment here, he could level the ground for the mare care barns. This suggestion made sense as we needed to level the ground anyway and once it was done, the men would not be held up if they finished their work early. It also gave them confidence they would have the work I had promised them.

Monday morning before I left Sherman Station at 7 o'clock all three men had already started working and I felt confident that they would get the work done. I could not think of anything else I could do to help Carol build her horse farm and be prepared for the winter.

Carol had called Charley last night to update him on the possibility the government had interfered with her contractor and she told him what the Court had done to take me away from helping her establish her horse farm at Sherman Station. Charley had already sent the Contractor a letter demanding a refund for the work he had failed to do and he outlined the Contractor's liability for his breach of contract.

Locke Clifford wanted to know how Carol was holding up. I told him about the Contractor who had left the job after he had been paid for work he had not done and how we had been able to find people to help me build want we needed to do to establish Carol's horse business.

He did not seem to be surprised when I told him what I had learned about the government's possible interference with Carol's Contractor. Although Locke Clifford was an experienced trial lawyer who could maintain a professional demeanor, I could see he was having some difficulty controlling his anger when he discussed what was happening in my case.

He could not explain or understand why it was taking so long to have the Rule 29 Motion heard by the court. It was his opinion that the Court and the Prosecutor were putting the maximum pressure on me to admit my guilt and agree to testify against the warehousemen, I had used in the excess tobacco marketing business. He reminded me as my attorney I could tell him what really happened in confidence and he might be able to help me.

I told him if I had done what I had been illegally convicted of doing, I would have been looking to help myself before I went to trial, just like all those who had taken a plea bargain. Since Locke was not at my trial, I explained how I worked with Jim Brake and he did not need me to know what he was illegally doing as everything he did with me was normally done as a Registered Tobacco Dealer who was reselling legitimate tobacco.

Locke questioned me, as if he was the prosecutor and I was on the witness stand. After I answered all his questions, he seemed to understand how I could have done this excess tobacco marketing business without knowing I was violating the law.

I then explained if I did not know what Jim Brake was doing than I would not know the warehousemen I did business with were selling excess tobacco either. I told Locke I would not lie to save myself and I had offered to cooperate with the government 4 years ago with all my records to help them convict those who were involved in this scheme but they were not interested.

Locke changed the subject and he told me what to expect during this psychological evaluation, which had the sole purpose of establishing if I was mentally competent as defined by the law. He also felt once the government had me in custody they would try to extend this 30-day evaluation period for as long as they could. He told me what he planned to do to prevent this, as there was no reason he could think of for extending this evaluation since my own Doctor had not claimed I was mentally incompetent and therefore it could not be used in my defense.

Locke made sure my money was deposited in my inmate trust account before he wished me good luck. Locke promised he would be back in 30 days to pick me up.

Locke was wrong about what I could take into prison as everything I brought with me was taken away from me and even the rosary Father Munley had given me. During the In Processing, I was required to strip naked and have all my body cavities probed for contraband. I was given a pair of used and soiled boxer shorts as my underwear and an orange jump suit to ware.

I was then handcuffed with a black box used for dangerous inmates and fitted with leg chains that came up to a chain around my waist that locked my hands and feet to it. I was then marched to the Maximum Detention Center known as the "hole" where I was put in a 4 by 8 foot cell with another inmate who called himself, "Michael the Archangel."

This was my first confrontation with a real crazy person as he paced the cell day and night screaming that I was his enemy, Satan who was preventing him from protecting the world. The worst part was he did not remember when I was put in his cell and he would suddenly challenge me as if I were one of Satan's devils who had just appeared to do battle with him.

I had to be constantly on guard that he would physically attack me and the only sleep I could get was when Michael the Archangel had exhausted himself by his pacing and constantly yelling until he fell asleep for a few hours. My day and night orientation had been destroyed as the light in the cell was on all the time. The only way I knew it was morning was based on when we received breakfast food.

Eating was also a nightmare as Michael the Archangel had an insatiable appetite and he would constantly ask if I was going to eat what had been put in my compartmented food tray and he would become angry if I did not give it to him. The only things he did not want was milk and fresh fruit as he claimed the milk was laced with drugs by the government and the fruit was the instrument of the devil who had used it to tempt Eve and caused the fall of man from paradise.

The only other thing Michael the Archangel could not have was my medications as the guard would hand them through the small slotted door in the cell's door and watch you take each pill. Then the guard would inspect your mouth to make sure you swallowed it.

Some days later, I still had not been allowed to take a shower and I was brought before a panel of Doctors and Prison Administrators. They asked if I had any coconspirators of my crimes here in the Compound that I thought would try to hurt me.

I told them I thought that was a ridiculous question as I did not conspire with anyone and if I had, I would not know if they were here until I saw them. Their next question was equally ridiculous as they asked if I was afraid to be released into the Prison's General Population implying that if I was afraid, I could not be released from my current confinement.

I told them I did not have any problem being released into the Prison's General Population but I did not tell them nothing could be as bad as living with a really dangerous psycho. I had to sign a statement I was not afraid to live in the Compound and I was released to the Duke Medical Unit.

These Psychiatric Medical units were located in a separate section of the Compound from the other inmate housing units and they were named after the Universities in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Once I had been assigned a cell and given regular prison uniform and I was able to take my first shower since I arrived there.

Being able to go to the Cafeteria in the Duke Housing Unit's Rotation and eat what I had been given without someone trying to take it from me was a welcome change I could now deeply appreciate. That evening I was allowed to make a 15 minute collect phone call to Carol and tell her I was alright. We had agreed before I left, we would not talk about what was going on at Sherman Station as the prison's phones would be monitored and there was no reason telling the government what was really going on.

The next morning I received a routine physical examination and I was found to have a blood pressure of 220 over 150 with a heart rate of 97. This alarmed the Doctor who wanted me to immediately start taking a High Blood Pressure Medication, as my normal blood pressure for years had been 135 over 70 with a heart rate of 62.

I wanted to ask the Doctor, what did he expect my blood pressure to be after spending time with a real nut job I could not turn my back on, who took most of my food and the only time I could sleep was when my cell mate fell asleep for a few minutes.

I had the feeling that all this was planned to give me the "full treatment" to give me an idea of what prison life would be like for me and I would suddenly want to "cooperate" with the Prosecutor. The only problem was the prosecutor was not interested in the truth I could tell him, as my truth would not fuel his rising ambitions to political stardom.

It would not be the first time a prosecutor had built a political career on his success in a major criminal case. Governor Chris Christie made a name for himself as the US Attorney who personally prosecuted long term Democrats, one of which was the Mayor Sharpe James of Newark New Jersey in 2008. I met Mayor Sharpe James in FCI Petersburg. Based upon the documented evidence he shared with me Chris Christie convicted him of a crime of exchanging sexual favors for real estate sold by the City

However, this property the City owned was sold by an Independent Bipartisan Commission. Christie never established Mayor Sharpe James had any influence over the actions of any member of the Commission and none of them had been indicted. Surely if Mayor James had committed this crime, he did not commit it without the majority of the Commission who approved this sale otherwise his conviction made no sense. The trial of Mayor Sharpe James had all the sensationalism the Newspapers loved but was his conviction done in the name of Justice.

The truth is always stranger than fiction. If Chris Christie was not politically motivated and the Mayor's motive of this crime was only sex as Christie claimed, his proof was based on the Plea Bargained false testimony of the woman who walked away with the money she made on the illegal resale of the city's property.

I could only compare the Mayor's case with my own. I had been convicted by the Plea Bargained false testimony of Jim Brake. I could not blame Jim alone as Riley refused to ask Jim why he was falsely testifying against me. The way the government could put pressure on a guilty man, he would have sold out his grandmother with any believable lie the prosecutor wanted to hear, for a favorable Plea Bargain to avoid going to a trial just as 40 of the excess tobacco marketing dealers did. If I had been the ringleader of the excess tobacco marketing scheme, a Plea Bargain would have avoided all this extra ordinary punishment by giving the prosecutor what he wanted.

However, what did I really know that I could give the prosecutor to save myself? Nothing but the logic, the prosecutor was not forced to admit during my trial. The actions of a guilty man is to hide his crime, while the actions of an honest businessman has nothing to hide and he relies on documented facts and the truth to establish he is innocent.

This logical and major difference between the guilty and an innocent victim could have been established in my trial if I had a real defense attorney when I testified. I still believe it would have made a difference in the outcome of my trial if the jury had heard all the testimony I had prepared to make from my Defense Book. However when Riley stopped asking me questions, I lost the opportunity to rebut all the false and misleading testimony of the government's witnesses that Riley had refused to ask them.

I could not correct Agent Dayo's false claim I used 24 Dealers Cards, as "Dead Cards" in this excess tobacco marketing scheme when these 24 Dealer Cards were in my own name and issued to me by my ASCS Office in Richmond. I also lost the opportunity to tell the jury how I used these 24 Dealer Cards and the 24 Dealer Tobacco Books to control my tobacco inventory at each tobacco warehouse where I sold my tobacco.

I also lost the opportunity to establish the differences between myself as an honest Tobacco Dealer who openly accounts for all his money by using the Federal Currency Transaction Forms while a guilty excess Tobacco Dealer will avoid creating any financial record and hide the source of his money to evade paying any taxes.

The fact that the IRS Agent established I had kept detailed records of every penny I made, reinvested that money in traceable transactions here in the United States and paid all my taxes on time would have established my actions were that of an honest businessman. However, guilt can be established as a matter of false perceptions. Without the opportunity to challenge the IRS Agent's misleading testimony on his claim of the 3 million tax liability left the jury with the conclusion that if I was guilty of not paying my Taxes I must also be guilty of being an Excess Tobacco Dealer.

I started to have daily appointments with the Psychiatric Counselors and every other day I met with the chief Psychiatrist. I was given a battery of psychological tests and IQ tests like the ones I took at Mary Washington's Mental Hospital.

The only thing I complained about was not having my rosary and I was told the reason why I could not have it. The rosary could be used as a weapon and it may be strong enough to hang myself. I had no choice but to accept this and make do. I thanked the Good Lord for giving me 8 fingers and two thumbs to pray the 10 Hail Mary's in each of the five decades of the rosary.

After two weeks of counseling with the Chief Psychiatrist, I was told what I already knew about why I had suffered a nervous breakdown from my Doctor at Mary Washington and I was legally mentally competent, which was the court's only "legal" concern for conducting this Psychiatric Evaluation.

When I called Locke Clifford about what the Doctor had told me, he wrote a letter to my Doctor, asking for a written copy of his opinion. I spent most of my remaining days reading books and taking long walks as part of my daily exercises. These walks also gave me time to think about what I had to do at Sherman Station when I returned home.

Two days before I was to be released, I was told the government needed an additional 45 days to complete my psychiatric evaluation. This was just as Locke had predicted the government would do.

I did not know I would be released until I was told to immediately report for Inmate Out-Processing. I had not even obtained the Duke Housing Unit Officer's signature on FCI Butner's Inmate Clearance Form to verify I had turned in my bedding and my other prison uniforms at the laundry. I was rushed through the Inmate Out Processing Unit and out the Prison Compound's door to the Prison Casher's window where I was paid the money; I still had in my inmate trust account. Although I was given more money than I knew I had in my trust account I was told not to worry about it as they just wanted to get me officially off the Prison Compound before 4 pm.

On the way back to Greensboro North Carolina to pick up my car, Locke told me he had filed a motion for an emergency court hearing on the government's attempt to extend my evaluation. He used the copy of the Chief Psychiatrist's report that stated I was mentally competent and therefore the government could not legally hold me for more than 30 days without violating my rights.

The government withdrew its attempt for my further psychological evaluation without a Court Hearing but I had the feeling the prosecutor would not take Locke Clifford's swift intervention lightly and Locke may have made himself a prime target for the government's retaliation. I thanked Locke for his efforts to protect me, but he did not share my concerns that he had made himself a target of the government.

It was after dark when I arrived in Lexington Virginia and I was feeling good to be coming home. Seeing Carol's bright smile at Sherman Station was like seeing the face of an angel as I passed through the gates of heaven from the depths of purgatory. Her worm embrace reassured me I had escaped from the trap of the government's plan to hold me and I was truly home.

Carol grabbed a flashlight and she took me outside to show me all the work that had been done while I was gone. The ground in front of the covered shed had been leveled and the round pen had been built with sand spread on the ground just as it should be. The covered shed had been transformed into a respectable horse barn with the rubber mats on the floor of the horse stalls.

The water lines had been run to the barn and to the new fenced pastures just as I had planned. The area where the new mare care barns would be built had been leveled. There were piles of the lumber to make the slotted posts and beams, stacks of "T one eleven" plywood for the sides of the barns, all the manufactured roof trusses and sheets of metal for the roof I had estimated we would need to build these barns.

Allen's brother Frank had been right about his estimate of how much work they could do while I was gone. Carol explained the men had just completed running the last water lines to the pastures today and they had gone home early knowing I would be home today. They would be coming in early tomorrow, to get started on the mare care barns, as they were not sure how I had planned to build them.

Carol had made a pot of corn-beef and cabbage and fresh cherry pie for dissert. After supper, Carol showed me she had the men finish the inside of the house and they had painted the walls on the days that rained when the men could not work outside.

Carol told me she had to tell the men what had happened to me as they had heard rumors about me and they wanted to know the truth. She took the chance they would not walk away from the job, if she told them and they didn't. In fact, they seemed to work harder to help us.

I had the feeling all this good news was leading up to something bad that had happened and I was right. The government had convinced Mike Hay who was Coosa Lad's breeding manager that his reputation in the AQHA could be severely damaged if he continued to be involved with someone who was a convicted criminal.

Mike Hay reluctantly brought Coosa Lad to Sherman Station a week ago. Carol had put Coosa Lad in the old barn on the top of the hill, which had its own well and a small fenced in pasture around it. Hearing this I wanted to see Coosa Lad.

Carol and I walked up to the old barn on the hill and before I slid open the barn door Coosa Lad whinnied a welcome and I found him quite comfortable in a large stall the men had fixed up for him. When I went into Coosa Lad's stall to pet him on his withers, he brought his head down over my shoulder as if to hug me and I just stood there in his welcome home embrace.

Horses and animals are smarter than we give them credit for having. I always believed as an Irishman, horses could talk to me. I was always felt blessed and grateful for this a gift from the Good Lord. I just knew I could trust what a horse told me if I had any doubts about buying them. Just holding Coosa Lad around his neck and communicating with him made all my problems disappear for a few moments.

I took a very hot bath with a good cigar in the upstairs claw footed bathtub to wash away all the uncleanness I brought with me from my 30-day stay at FCI Butner. After a good long soak in the hot water, Carol came in, took the cigar from my mouth and joined me in the tub.

Carol had built a nice fire in the fireplace. We made love in front of it on the bearskin rug I had made from the bear I had shot with one of Harpers Ferry's 1861 Springfields on a hunting trip to Canada while we still lived on Franklin Street in Fredericksburg. Carol had remembered I always wanted to make love to her on that bearskin rug in front of a roaring fireplace since I brought the bearskin home.

I was up early the next morning staking out the first part of the mare care barn when the men arrived. I had already attached the posthole digger on the tractor. Allen started to dig the holes for the mare care barns slotted posts while the other two men and I started to build them. As soon as we had built one it was carried to the freshly dug hole and both men set the post and shoved the dirt back in and tamped the earth around it. Using the nail-gun I was able to make the slotted posts as fast as the men could erect them. We had all the posts in place for this section of the mare care barn by noon.

I explained we needed to bring in loads of sand to spread on the floor of the stalls before we started to erect the roof trusses or close in the sides so the trucks could maneuver and spread the sand evenly on the ground the lengths of the barns. After lunch, we staked out the other two wings of the mare care barn and Allen continued to dig the slotted postholes. By 5 o'clock, we had all the slotted posts in place in one more of the mare care barn's wings. Based on the rate of progress we had made we should be able to install the slotted posts in the last wing of the mare care barn by noon tomorrow and I would order the sand for delivery after lunch.

The next day while the men finished setting the slotted posts in the last wing of the mare care barn, I confirmed my estimates of the number of yards on sand I needed delivered. I called the Sand and Gravel Pit and confirmed we were on schedule for them to start delivering the sand I had ordered.

Once the first mare care section had a uniform layer of sand on the floor, the men started nailing the top braces to the slotted posts. This was taking some time as they had to measure each slotted post and notch them so the top braces made with staggered 10 foot lengths of two 2 by 8's nailed together would be level and the same height from one end of the barn to the other end. When the last truckload of sand had spread its load on the floor of the mare care barn it still had half a load. I had the truck driver spread the rest of the sand on the approach to the mare care barn as if I had planned it that way.

I had the men erect two of the roof trusses on the end of the first section of the mare care barn, as it was a building tradition that once the roof had been started the owner would celebrate by buying the workmen beer. Carol had called the wives and families of the men to come to a party and the wives brought covered dishes of food to supplement the food Carol had already made. This was like an old fashion trashing crew meal of years ago when the men who worked on their neighbor's grain fields were fed by the farmer as part of the unwritten agreement for their help.

After everyone had eaten and they were still drinking the beer, Allen brought up the subject of forming their own Construction Company and becoming a building Contractor. He had learned from Carol I had formed a number of companies in VAMCO and he wanted to know if I would help them form this company.

It took a while to explain all the different forms of business from simple partnerships to Sub S Corporation and complex Regular Corporations people called a company and the advantages and limitations of each form of company. In their particular situation, I suggested they should form a Sub S Corporation as they could convert it to a Regular Corporation if their circumstances changed.

I wanted them to understand a Corporation was like creating another person who could legally do what any person could do within the limitations of the company's By-laws. It could buy, sell and own property, invest in things they could use for the company's benefit such as tools and equipment and even trucks and cars. But the best reason to form a Corporation was to protect their personal property, their homes and other assets from the company's debts and liabilities if their corporation was sued or if their company went bankrupt.

I told them they did not need to hire a lawyer to form a Corporation although they may want to have one, as they would need a Registered Agent as their official corporate representative with the State. When I said I would help them form a corporation for them they wanted to know what it would cost.

I explained the basic corporate charter fees of the State of Virginia's Corporation Commission and I could get their Corporate Books, Company seal and their Stock Certificates for 50 dollars from a company who specialized in producing these things that I had used before when I formed my own Corporations.

Once they had the Corporate Charter from the State, it was a matter of completing the forms in the Corporation's Books to reflect the company's by-laws on how they would run their corporation, elect its officers and conduct their business. All this would be established during the company's initial organizational meeting based upon the decisions made by majority of the Stockholders.

Jeff asked how the Corporation made its money. I went through the process of bidding on jobs. Their bid would cover the cost of labor and materials before adding the company's profit margin. The profit margin had to cover the costs of insurance, the people who ran their office, managed their business and provide a reasonable return to the Stockholders. In their type of business, the company needed to cover the risks it was taking by doing the job and any unexpected cost overruns. If things went well this profit would generate the company's income that would be paid to the Company's Stockholders after all the Taxes had been paid.

I pointed out that there were legitimate ways of reducing the amount of taxes they had to pay by buying tools, equipment and trucks used in their work, which became assets of the company. These assets could be depreciated over time to reduce the amount of their annual Taxes and these assets would increase the overall value and net worth of their Corporation.

I told them to go home and think about what I told them. If they wanted to form a corporation, they should come up with a company name and I would help them do the rest. This information was a pleasant end to our barn building party as it was a reward for all their hard work and it offered a promise that the future of their ability to work together would produce a greater reward.

That night I received a phone call from Jerry Johnson who was a man who worked in Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Maryland factory. I realized I had not heard from Bob Williams since my conviction.

When the NSSA's approval of 1855 Artillery barrel was lost, I had helped Bob land the production contract to build the rifled barrels, receivers and special barrel interlocking bolts for a California Company's 50 caliber rifle. This contract would have kept Harpers Ferry's Maryland Company going for years with a reasonable profit while I dealt with the NSSA and they realized what Bucky Malson had done to sabotage the approval of my 1855 Artillery Model barrel.

Jerry claimed he had tried to reach me since Bob had packed up most of the key gun manufacturing machinery in a Semi-Truck's trailer and moved to Montana a month ago and I could read between the lines. Bob thought with my conviction the government would be coming to take all of Harpers Ferry's machinery and equipment. The fact VAMCO owned Harpers Ferry made no difference to the way Bob was thinking. Bob felt he was justified in grabbing what he could and move it for his own benefit. The logic of a thief can justify anything for his own benefit and he thought it was better for him to have the machinery and the gun making equipment, than let the government have it, as I would lose it anyway.

Jerry told me there still was a lot of machinery left in the building and the State would be coming to take it for payment against the Economic Development loan Bob had received to produce the 50-caliber stuff. This was the first time I heard that Bob had received any money from the State of Maryland for Economic Development.

I had discussed this loan with Bob over a year ago and the State wanted VAMCO to cosign for the loan. I had refused to do it and I pointed out the profits from the 50 caliber project should be able to cover our operating costs without creating a debt or encumbering VAMCO's assets. According to Jerry, he thought I had signed the papers for the Economic Development Loan as Bob said I did when the State gave him the $100,000 dollar loan.

Jerry went on to say he had a buyer for all the machinery and equipment that was still in the factory's building. Jerry wanted me to send him the authority to sell it, implying he needed to do this before the State took it. When I told him to go to the State and get the State to agree to this sale to repay the loan, the phone line went dead. At first, I thought we had been disconnected but when he did not call me back, I realized Jerry had not given me his phone number and he had hung up.

For all I knew the government had put Jerry up to this. If I had agreed to send Jerry the authority to sell all this machinery and equipment the government would have a tape recording of our conversation and they would have a real case of a conspiracy to commit a fraud against me.

The more I thought about this Economic Development loan, the only way the State would have granted this loan was if VAMCO cosigned the loan and Bob must have forged my signature on the loan agreement. I was afraid to think any more about this as if I did I would put myself back in the mental hospital. Yet I had to admit Harpers Ferry Arms Company had suffered a major setback if not a final deathblow that I could not do anything to prevent.

When I told Carol what happened to Harpers Ferry Arms Company she cried, as she knew how much that company meant to me. She also knew my whole life since she met me at Greenfield Village in 1961 revolved around making and shooting guns. Harpers Ferry Arms Company had become the logical extension of my desire to make and shoot the best guns anyone could make.

Her tears turned to anger. Harpers Ferry Arms Company belonged to VAMCO and Bob had stolen her property. When her mind cleared, she wanted me to get the Harpers Ferry file and find the copy of the Maryland State Economic Development Loan Bob had wanted me to sign. It was too late to call the State of Maryland tonight, but she would call them the first thing tomorrow.

She planned to ask them to fax a copy of the loan agreement. Once she had it, she would have the proof that Bob Williams had forged my signature to get this loan. Then she would tell them what Bob had done and a Jerry Johnson was trying to sell all the remaining equipment and machinery.

We were setting the roof trusses on the first section of the mare care barn when Carol came out with a copy of the Economic Development Loan agreement the State of Maryland had faxed to her. My signature on the Loan agreement was not even a good forgery. Carol had faxed them a copy of my signature she had taken from VAMCO's last State Income Tax Return as proof I had not signed that agreement and therefore VAMCO and the State of Maryland were victims of Bob's Fraud.

The best Carol could get out of the Director of the State's Economic Development was his comment they would look into it. Carol followed up on her reporting Bob's fraud, his stealing of VAMCO's property, Jerry's attempt to sell VAMCO's equipment along with her detailed conversation with the Director by sending him a Fax of her signed and dated Memo for Record.

I told Carol she had done a great job and she had done everything I would have done. At least now, VAMCO was on record of reporting Bob's crime of forging my signature to obtain this loan and VAMCO was denying any responsibility or liability for Bob's illegal actions.

# 4. BAD LUCK DOES NOT ALWAYS COME IN THREE'S

Since Bob Williams' fraud on the State of Maryland and his departure with VAMCO's key gun making equipment was the first piece of bad luck I wondered what would happen next. Two days later Locke Clifford called to say Thomas Swain the Prosecutor had Randolph Riley sign a second affidavit contradicting the sworn affidavit he had given Locke Clifford for the Rule 29 Motion. The Judge had used this second affidavit to deny the Rule 29 Motion without a hearing. Locke's immediate appeal of the judge's decision was also denied. Locke said he was appealing this to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals but he did not feel they would rule on it before my sentencing hearing, which was now scheduled for January 13, 1998.

To say I was stunned would have been an understatement. How could Riley give two sworn affidavits, which contradicted each other and the Court refused to consider holding a Hearing. What further evidence did I need to show Riley's metal incompetence, his conflict of interest and his ineffective assistance of counsel? What about all the other affidavits from my defense witnesses in the Rule 29 Motion which established Riley's infective assistance of counsel and their affidavits had confirmed that Riley had stated in his first affidavit? Judge Howard had somehow completely disregarded all of their claims make in their sworn affidavits without a hearing.

I asked Locke if he talked with Thomas Swain about how he had obtained this second sworn affidavit from Riley. Locke responded and quoted the Prosecutor Thomas Swaim as saying. "It took a fine piece of lawyering."

"A fine piece of lawyering, my ass, that bastard has had something on Riley since I used him in my first Arraignment Hearing in July of 1996. Whatever it is has kept Riley in Swaim's pocket and Riley was more afraid of him than losing his license to practice law. Surely, Riley knows by giving this second affidavit I have no obligation to honor my written agreement not to sue him. On the other hand if Riley could lose his license to practice law no matter what he did, I could see Riley gambling that Swaim would protect him and Riley will take his chances with me as I will be locked up in jail." I told Locke and he made no comment.

The storm of this fiasco had hardly passed when I received a phone call telling me Willy Strickland had died. I knew I needed to go to his funeral and conducting business at his funeral would normally not be in good taste. However, I also knew I did not have enough time to observe all the social niceties.

Willy had been the key man in VAMCO's Subdivision developments and we needed to hold a Corporate Board Meeting to establish who would be Willy's replacement. I was impressed with Willy's son-in-law who had a Real Estate License and he had been a capable Sales Manager for these properties.

Carol and I went to Willy's funeral and his wife understood my situation and the need to hold a Board Meeting. It was agreed we would hold this Board meeting after the relatives and funeral guests left her home. Willy's Lawyer and Accountant would be staying for the meeting.

The first order of business was the election of the Company's new President and Willy's son-in-law filled the position. Then Willy's lawyer presented a grim tale of how Willy's management was not as good as everyone believed it was. Willy had borrowed against these properties to the point the company had more debts than the properties were worth. Willy's Accountant backed up what the lawyer said with loan documents and accounting ledgers.

This did not make any sense as Willy had no authority to borrow any money against these properties without VAMCO's consent as VAMCO and Willy each held 50 percent of the company's Stock. However taking what the lawyer and accountant said at face value, I wanted to know how these loans were used. They did not seem to know. As I scanned the Accountant's Ledgers, I could not help but notice that the large sum entries added up to the total amount that VAMCO had invested in these Subdivisions years ago.

What also bother me was someone had used a common BIC Ink pen to make all the ledger entries after the receipt of the loans when the large expenditures were listed on a page. Otherwise, there was no unusual expenses on the page and all those entries were made by a fine pointed pen. I paged back through the Ledger's pages to see if I could find any other BIC Ink Pen entries and there were none. Whoever did this was not thinking like an Accountant.

An Accountant would know a detailed audit would expose these false and duplicate entries. He would also know any transfer of money or even if they were made by checks would be traced back to who had received them. The Bank's monthly Statements would also have all the disbursements made to anyone by the date of the check or by the hour of the wire transfer.

Willy had been one of the witnesses Riley had refused to call, as Willy had met A R Dixon as the investor behind VAMCO's investments in these Subdivisions. I had clearly outlined the value of Willy's testimony in my Defense Evidence Book so the government knew it. Willy was prepared to testify about dealing with A R Dixon and he would have made a great witness as everyone in the community knew him as an honest Tobacco Warehouseman and he had sat on the Loan Committees of several major banks in North Carolina.

When I was first indicted in 1996, Willy must have feared the Government would be coming after VAMCO's investments, when it claimed this money invested in these Subdivisions had come from my illegal tobacco sales. Although Willy knew, all of VAMCO's initial investments had come from A R Dixon and A R Dixon had been paid off from the sale of building lots, the Government could still tie up our Subdivisions for years, until A R Dixon's investments were proven to the Prosecutor's satisfaction.

Willy must have taken out these loans to show the Prosecutor that VAMCO had been bought out of these investments. As an added protection, all the properties would appear to be encumbered to the point of near insolvency in the company's books and the government would not look beyond the entries in the Accountant's Ledgers.

Although there were too many holes in Willy's plan, I could believe Willy was trying his best to protect VAMCO's investments and once this storm had passed these loans would disappear and he would make things right. The only problem was Willy had died and if the Lawyer and the Accountant knew about Willy's plan, they were not saying anything about where Willy put the money. Willy owned a number of farms and other businesses where he could have easily hid this money in any one of them.

Would the Attorney and the Accountant steal this money knowing I was about to go to prison and I could do little about it? In a heartbeat as almost 2 million tax-free dollars, was enough to tempt a normal man but a lawyer with a license to steal would consider it as his just compensation even if he had to share it with Willy's Accountant.

On the way back to Sherman Station, I shared my beliefs about Willy's actions with Carol. I told her to get a copy of the Bank Statements as VAMCO's name was on that account since it first made the investments on those subdivisions. Although Carol agreed to do it, I could see all this grabbing of VAMCO's assets by its business partners was taking a heavy emotional toll on her.

Just before we left for Willy's funeral we found out the government had frozen my personal bank account and all of VAMCO's business accounts. The government had charged me as an individual and the Prosecutor did everything he could to avoid recognizing VAMCO as the Corporation I used in this tobacco business. However now that the trial was over the Prosecutor was treating this independent and separate legal entity of a Virginia Corporation as if the company were an individual who was also convicted of this crime. I could not think about this anymore and I put all my energy into getting Sherman Station built so our broodmares would have warm stalls, this winter when they had their foals.

Locke had secured the Court's permission for me to take some of our broodmares to the AQHA World Horse show sale in November. I was able to find several other members of the VQHA who would also be going to the AQHA World Horse Show. They agreed to take a larger horse trailer and haul some of our horses to Oklahoma. It was hard to decide which broodmares we had to sell, as they all had become part of our family.

There was one other thing I had to do before we left for Oklahoma. I had to sell the Airplane that was still back at Shannon Airport in Fredericksburg. I ran an ad in the _Trade-a-Plane_ magazine looking for the best offer. I accepted a reasonable offer based on a mechanic's inspection at Shannon Airport in Fredericksburg Virginia. The man and his mechanic flew up from Georgia. They found the airplane to be in the condition I claimed it was in the advertisement.

The worst position to sell anything is when the buyer believes you are desperate and you had to sell it. When the man attempted to buy the airplane for 10 thousand dollars less than we had agreed, I told him I was sorry he made the trip. When he upped his offer 5 thousand dollars, I told him I had another buyer who would be here tomorrow if this deal fell through. It took everything I had in me to start to walk away.

"All right, I will buy the plane." The man said and I continued to walk away. "Hay, we had a deal." The man called out.

"Yes we did but you backed out of it so that deal no longer exists." I found the horse trader in me saying back to him as I continued to walk towards my car. I ended up selling the airplane for 5 thousand dollars more than the original agreed price. The man was smart, as he had brought a number of Cashers Checks in different amounts so he could make the deal he wanted.

I took his checks to the Fredericksburg Bank that had Foonman Airline's Account and when I found out the government had not touched that account I cashed them and closed out the account. I took 5 thousand dollars in cash to cover our expenses on our trip to the World Horse Show Sale and I had the Bank issue a Cashier's check for the balance in Carol's name, as she was my legal business partner since we formed this Airplane business.

Our Broodmares sold for what we thought they would even though it was like selling our children into slavery. Carol had insisted we buy some carrots for the horses we sold as a parting gift to say we were sorry we had sold them. The 24 hour trip back to Sherman Station was marked with very few conversations as I knew Carol did not want to sell those horses. We sold enough of our broodmares to give the rest of our broodmares a horse stall this winter.

The weather on Poor House Mountain had remained mild after an early snowstorm. The work on the last Mare Care Barn was finished except for cutting off two slotted end posts and adding one more sheet of tin roofing I needed to buy. For some reason there never seemed to be enough time to finish this final task on the mare care barn.

I was busy buying several loads of quality horse hay and delivering them to Sherman Station, helping our workers land their Company's first job and getting a hundred other things done before I left in January. Allen, Frank and Jeff had formed their Corporation, obtained their Contractor's License and they asked me to go with them to help win the bid on their first job. I could hardly refuse to help them when I realized they might not have any experience in estimating a job and negotiating the terms and conditions of a building Contract.

Before we met the owner, I told them no matter what I said in front of the owner about the job, it was to make sure they got the contract at a price they would make money and I had taken into consideration all the possible risks involved in making their bid.

It was a remodeling job on a very old house built before the Civil War and it would give them inside work over the winter. It did not take very long to find out that several other Contractors had turn down the job based upon the cost guarantees the owner had wanted. I had the feeling the owner was trying to take advantage of this new Contractor. I asked the owner if he ever lived here. When he said he had just bought the place I knew he had no idea what he had gotten himself into or he already knew the troubles he had.

"Well sir, this job could become a nightmare if you want us to put in a flat fee contract in on the job, as we do not know what we could run into before the job is done. These old homes have more problems than Carter has Liver pills and by the time you find out what is wrong with it, you could have built this place from scratch and saved yourself a ton on money." I began to tell him and I could see Allen, Frank and Jeff grinning behind his back.

The first thing I wanted to see was the electrical wiring and the electrical panel box as this would tell me how old the electrical service was and when the last electrical work had been done in the house. I showed the owner the spool and wire electrical system that must have been installed, sometime during the 1920's. I told the owner we would have to rip it out of the walls and replace all the wiring to the current electrical code. Allen and his business partners were beginning to understand why the other Contractors had turned this job down base upon the owner's instance on a fixed cost contract.

The plumbing was not in any usable condition and we had not even examined the heating system or the condition of the floors, the structure of the house and its roof. It was time to find out just how much money the owner was willing to pay to remodel this house before we wasted any more time.

When he said he was not sure, I politely asked him what the other Contractors had told him about what this job would cost. When he claimed it was under a hundred thousand dollars, I told him he should have taken it without telling him I knew he was lying.

"The only way we will consider taking this job is after you have this house inspected by a licensed Home Buyers Inspector and then based on what he finds we will do the job on a "cost plus" contract. You will need to put that amount of money in an escrow account so we can draw it from the bank every week. When you run out of money the job stops." I made our best offer to him.

"Once we have a copy of the Home Buyer Inspector's cost estimates you will have five days to accept our offer as we have another job we could start next week or we could put it off until spring." I said as I attempted to close the deal.

"I need to talk to my wife." The owner said and changed his mind when he asked how we could proceed. I told him to get the Home Buyers Inspection done. Then our attorney would draw up the terms and conditions of our contract and send him a copy so he could take it to his own attorney to get his opinion and advice before he signed it.

We all shook hands with the owner before we left. I told them not to start celebrating until they had a signed contract and the owner had put his money in the escrow account at the Bank. Three days later, we had a copy of the Home Buyers Inspection report and the cost estimates.

I went with them to their friend who was an attorney in town and I explained the terms and conditions they needed in this contract. When their attorney understood why these terms and conditions were necessary in the contract he felt they were reasonably protected.

When the contract was signed and the money was in the bank they asked me what they owed me. I told them to do a good job and just look after Carol and help her as much as they could. They understood what I meant, as they knew I would be sentenced in January. They insisted Carol and I go out to dinner with them to celebrate their first business contract.

The next piece of bad luck came when Locke Clifford sent me a copy of my Presentencing Report. Charlie had predicted I would serve a year or two in a Federal Prison Camp based on this was my first nonviolent offense and it was a white-collar crime. Charley told me doing time in a Federal Prison Camp, commonly known, as a "Country Club" would be easy. However, all of Charley's predictions were blown out of the water with a double-barreled barrage fired by the Presentencing Report Writer.

The government was now claiming I had laundered 23 million dollars they were adding to the Mail Fraud Charge and the same about of money was used to enhance my degree of criminal activities in the Money Laundering Charge. The result of this double use of the 23 million dollars had significantly raised the total point level of my criminal offense.

The government had created a major Federal Criminal Charge out of a noncriminal act that was not a charge in the indictment and it had not been given to the jury to decide. They added 4 points as a "leader" in this criminal activity by claiming I had introduced a Tobacco Warehouse-check cashing procedure into this excess tobacco marketing scheme to obtain large amounts of cash from a number of banks.

This legitimate Tobacco Warehouse check cashing procedure of completing the Currency Transaction Forms as required by Federal Law should have reflected the actions of an open and honest businessmen to account and document all his cash transactions. However, the Government was not interested in the facts or my compliance with the law. As a result, of all these sentencing enhancements made in this Presentencing Report, I would be facing a sentence of 188 months in Federal Prison.

I called Locke and asked him how the government could come up with this double counting of the additional 23 million dollar money laundering charge when it was not presented to the jury during my trial. To me this was giving the government a "second bite out of the apple" when the prosecutor failed to bring up any evidence of the Money Laundering Charge during my trial for the jury to decide.

Locke explained this procedure was used by the Court as another way of punishing me for going to a trial rather than taking a Plea Bargain. The Court could find me guilty based upon the "Preponderance of Evidence" at sentencing which was a lesser standard of conviction than the "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" standard required by the jury to convict me. So much for the Constitutional right to be tried by a jury and the fairness of our Courts as the Judge could convict you of additional crimes after the conclusion of your trial.

Locke agreed to challenge how the government arrived at this additional 23 million dollar Money Laundering Charge when I told him the IRS Agent had established I had accounted for every dollar used in this business. I also explained the ASCS Office published the real amount of excess tobacco sold every year and the total amount of excess tobacco sold in all the years from all of the convicted 40 excess tobacco dealers was not worth 23 million dollars. Even a Drug Dealer could not be charged with more drugs than he had. I had only been in the tobacco auction market for three years and this excess tobacco marketing scheme had been going on for years before the government started to investigate it more than 10 years ago.

I told Locke how Agent Ed Dayo had multiplied the number of pounds of excess tobacco by counting each transaction a dealer had made to another dealer to come up with 4 or 5 times the real amount of tobacco involved.

This form of illegal sentencing enhancement was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Apprendi v. New Jersey 530 US 466 on June 26 2000, seven days after the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals denied my Direct Appeal. Yet my Title 28 USC Section 2255 Appeal was denied the use of this Supreme Court's decision in Apprendi as a constitutional change in the sentencing law without the Appeals Court issuing a published opinion.

Going to Midnight Mass at Saint James Catholic church in Lexington Virginia and celebrating our first Christmas at Sherman Station was a somber occasion as no matter how hard we tried, the cloud of my 188-month sentence loomed over our heads. The full weight of the government was taking its toll on me as I felt my mind was again playing tricks on me, yet I still wondered why we had not heard anything from Charley on the appeal Rob Smallenberg had filed immediately after my trial.

Between Christmas and New Years, we made arrangements with a Lexington Veterinarian to handle Coosa Lad's breedings for the coming year as the first AQHA horse breedings would began on February first. The gestation period of a horse is 11 months and if the broodmare was bread on February 1 she could deliver her foal just after the first of January the next year.

Most mares stop their menstruation cycle when the days become shorter as the amount of light is nature's way of assuring their foals will be born when there is plenty of food to eat in the spring and summer months. However, in the horse business the age of a horse is determined by the year they are born after the 1st of January.

A foal born on the 1st of January has a growth and age advantage over a horse born later in the year as they both will be a year older on the first of January next year. To trick nature, the horse breeders will put their broodmares under artificial lights, which will simulate longer days and the mare will start her menstrual cycle so she will be ready to breed on February first.

We put our Broodmares who will be having their foals in early January in the Mare Care Barn's stalls under lights on the first of December. The other Broodmares were put under lights since then. I still needed to cut off the tops of slotted posts in the end of the last stall and nail on the last piece of metal roofing before I could close in the end of the barn.

I took a tall stepladder and the chainsaw to cut those slotted post off beneath the roofline. I was cutting off the last slotted post when the chainsaw started to jam in the cut and I unconsciously stepped off the stepladder with one foot and put it on the top of the bottom board in the roof's truss. When I did this the stepladder started to move away from the barn and I knew I was about to fall with a running chainsaw in my hands. As I was falling, I threw the chainsaw away from me to protect myself and by doing this; my body was propelled in the opposite direction of the chainsaw. When I fell, I hit my ribs on the top of the unfinished barn wall of the last stall.

In spite of the pain, I drove with Carol to the Lexington Hospital where I was treated for 4 broken ribs with several shots of morphine. However after I was released just breathing was enough to send shooting pains from my ribs and I could not move, sit or lay down without hurting even with the large doses of Percocet the Doctor had given me.

Carol called Allen and told him what happened to me. Allen and the men came over to complete the Mare Care Barn that night. Carol bought me a zero gravity chair, which allowed me to rest and sleep a few hours at night. Two days later, our first two Broodmares give birth to their foals and I was grateful they did not have any problems giving birth as I would have trouble helping them.

When our hired man did not show up for work, Allen and his men came over to help Carol feed and care for the horses every morning before they went to work. They were back every night after work until Carol hired a cousin of Allen and Frank who could work full time at Sherman Station.

Within a week, I was now sleeping most of the night when I was not up with a broodmare who was giving birth to her foal. We had nine new good-looking foals, on Sherman Station when I left the afternoon before my Sentencing Hearing scheduled for 9 am on January 13, 1998.

Locke Clifford told me I would have 45 days after I was sentenced to report to my assigned Federal Prison, which he believed would be in Beckley West Virginia as it was the closest Federal Prison to where I now lived. I packed enough of my medications to last for three days as I would be staying in a motel in Greenville North Carolina tonight and I would be home tomorrow. Carol put on a brave front when I kissed her good-bye, as I knew she did not want me see her cry. Little did I know that I would never see Carol again.

Locke Clifford's arguments at my Sentencing Hearing fell on the deaf ears of the Judge. I was immediately taken into Federal custody by the US Marshals and I was locked in a holding cell in the Federal Courthouse. When Locke came to see me at noon before he left, I asked him to call Carol and tell her what happened. I gave him the keys to my car and told him I needed someone to take care of my car as it was parked on the street. I also told him I had broken four ribs and I needed my pain medications that were in my travel bag. I explained I was taking this pain medication every four hours and I was already hurting since the last time I took my medications was at 7 am this morning.

"Mark, I am obligated to tell you the Prosecutor has made a final offer to reduce your sentence if you agree to cooperate and testify against the Warehousemen you were involved with in this excess tobacco business." Locke told me.

"I already told you I will not lie as I do not know if they did anything wrong and I knowingly did not do anything illegal with anyone." I told him.

"I am not telling you to lie." He quickly responded.

"So you don't believe me, either?" I asked him.

"It does seem unlikely you could have done all this business and not know what was going on. When did you have the first indication this business may not have been on the up and up?" He asked me.

"I already told you. It was when Jim Brake told me he was taking a Plea Bargain for cashing tobacco checks for over 10 thousand dollars and I went to see the US Attorney after that. However, the way they claimed this excess tobacco marketing scheme worked, it was not what I had experienced when I sold my tobacco.

Perhaps if they had been willing to considered, there was another method of doing this excess tobacco business beyond Ed Dayo's pet theories, they would have been interested in hearing what I had to say about my experience in the resale tobacco market. I believe with all my tobacco books and what I could tell them how I conducted my tobacco business might have exposed the warehousemen who were illegally selling this tobacco. However, all they wanted to do was put me in jail and take everything I owned. Even after my trial which only reinforced Ed Dayo's false conclusions, I still cannot tell them any more than what I knew back then." I told Locke Clifford and he just walked away.

# 5. THE MISUSE OF POWER EXCEEDS LEGAL AUTHORITY

When I was finally brought a sandwich and a coke for lunch at 1:30, I told the Deputy US Marshall I needed my pain medications for my broken ribs that were in my car but nothing was done to get them. By 3:30 pm when the Deputy US Marshalls came to move me to the Pitt County Jail, I could hardly move as I was bent over in severe pain. I asked about my pain medications and I was ignored. I was handcuffed with a black box and my legs were chained together and then locked to a chain around my waist and into the black box.

_A black box is used to control the most dangerous and violent criminals. If I were such a criminal, I would not have been released on my own recognizance for all this time. I could only believe this was done as an additional punishment for the Prosecutor's belief I was not willing to cooperate in his attempt to expand this excess tobacco marketing scheme to those he could not convict otherwise_.

I was taken out of the holding cell and into an enclosed parking area where a prisoner transportation Van was parked. Cecil Humphries and Jimmy Wells who were also sentenced that day were already in the Van. When I tried to get into the Van, it did not have the normal step between the ground and the floor of the Van and the chain around my ankles was not long enough for me to step directly into the Van.

When I tried to stand on my tiptoes to make the chain longer, I nearly doubled over from the pain in my ribs. Anyone who has ever had a broken rib will tell you, standing on your tiptoes will cause your broken ribs to hurt more than ever.

Deputy US Marshall, Dove was getting impatient with me, as he believed I was deliberately taking too long to get into the Van. I tried to tell him my broken ribs were killing me when I tried to stand on my tiptoes but this just made him more annoyed and he threatened to throw me in the Van if I gave him any more lip.

I gritted my teeth to endure the pain in my ribs, stood on my tiptoes while the chain dug into my legs until I could finally step up into the Van. However when I brought up my left foot I stepped on the chain and I could not move my right foot until I took my left foot off the chain. I had just started to left up my left foot when Deputy US Marshal Dove shoved me forward and since I was already off balance, I was propelled forward.

I could not break my fall with my hands as they were black boxed to my waist and my body had become rigid before my broken ribs hit the top of the back of the seat. Something popped in the middle of my back and my neck snapped in a whiplash after my body, suddenly stop against the seat.

By the time, I reached the Pitt County Jail less than 15 minutes later, I knew I had reinjured my ribs and there was something wrong with my neck as it hurt like hell, when I tried to move my head. My request to see a doctor was ignored.

After I was strip search I was allowed to take out my emergency 100 dollar bill from my wallet before all my clothes and personal belongings were taken from me and put in a shipping box that would be sent to Carol in Lexington Virginia.

As part of the Jail's normal inmate intake procedures, I was interviewed by a member of the Jail's medical staff and I told the Jail's Nurse Ms Atkins what happened to me in the VAN. I also told her about my High Blood and Psychiatric medications and the Percocet pain medication I was taking for my four broken ribs. I gave her the names of my doctors and she said she would called them to confirm the medications I was prescribed.

Even after Nurse Atkins physically confirmed I may have re-broken my ribs and she noticed my pain reaction when she felt my neck, I was still assigned to a cell on the second floor of "D" Block in the Pitt County Jail. That evening after supper, I was given my medications and I was told they would take X-rays the day after tomorrow. In jail, there is no such thing as a Zero gravity chair to sleep in. Their beds are cold steel shelves bolted to the walls with a thin canvas mat and maybe a small pillow if you were lucky.

My pain medications were not helping as I could not sit or lay down on the steel bunk. My least painful position was standing up and leaning lightly against the wall. I must have slept standing up as I was still in that position when the trap door on the Cell's steel door slammed open to wake me for Pill Call and breakfast.

It took me forever to walk down the steps from the second floor to a slot in the main door of Cell Block D. I was the last inmate to receive his medications in a small paper cup with my name on it from a jail guard. He asked me if I was feeling all right, as he claimed I did not look good. When I claimed I had trouble walking and my neck hurt, he said he would be back after breakfast and take me to see the Nurse.

I went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. My neck had sullen up to the point it looked as if I did not have a neck and my head was resting on my shoulders. There was a different Nurse on duty. She wanted to know if I had eaten something I was allergic to as it appeared to her I was having an anaphylactic reaction. When I told her, I hurt my neck in the Van before it brought me here and I was scheduled to have X-rays taken tomorrow, she made a note in my medical file. She said she would have me moved to a first floor cell so I would not need to walk up and down the stairs in Cell Block D.

The next day I was taken to the medical clinic for my x-rays. There was a man with a portable x-ray machine like the Veterinarians used on horses. He took x-rays of my back and spine but not my neck. When I mentioned the problems in my neck, he told me his orders were to x-ray my back and no one said anything about taking x-rays for any problems in my neck.

I saw Doctor Mark Cervi who was the Pit County Jail's contract physician. The x-rays confirmed an old injury to my vertebrae at T-12, which had a bone fragment pressing on my spinal cord a half-inch that was the result of a 1971 Airplane crash and my recent 4 broken ribs. Doctor Cervi did not say anything about my complaints of the swelling in my neck.

Doctor Cervi did not respond to my complaints of the progressive lost of feeling in my legs and numbness in my face, arms and hands. He prescribed the continuation of my Percocet for the pain in my ribs and my other medications for high blood pressure and my psychiatric disorder. He told me if I continued to have problems with the pain, I should let him know and he would see me to prescribe something different.

That afternoon I learn how to make a collect phone call from the Pitt County jail to Carol who only knew I had been immediately taken into Federal custody. After I found out how Carol was doing, I told Carol what happened when I was shoved down in the Van by the Deputy US Marshall and the doctor was avoiding the problems in my neck and the growing numbness throughout my body. Carol said she would call Locke Clifford to see what could be done to find out how serious I may have been injured.

I told Carol my pain medication was not working as my ribs hurt as if I had just broken them and I was having a weakness in my legs making it difficult to walk. She had me describe in precise detail what I felt when I was shoved down in the Van. I told her how my neck snapped and how I felt something pop in my back when my ribs hit the top of the back of the seat.

She had me describe all my physical symptoms in the order and sequence they had manifested themselves just as she would have done with the injured workers she had worked with as part of her job as the Director of Vocational Rehabilitation for American Rehabilitation Inc.

Carol knew I had a high threshold for pain and if I was willing to admit that I was hurting there had to be a real problem. Carol told me to write down everything that happened since I was shoved down in the Van.

Carol wanted me to document who and when, I reported these physical problems and what the County Jail did to treat them. There was no doubt our conversation had been recorded by the Pitt County Jail and it was passed on to the Pitt County Jail's medical staff, the US Marshalls and the Prosecutor as all my pain medications were cut off.

Once the government knew I had reported that I was shoved down in the Van by the Deputy US Marshal and I was having some real physical problems, a decision was made to cover up what happen and maybe the problems would just go away with enough time.

I thought when the swelling in my neck when down I would start to feel better. Unfortunately, I was wrong, as my medical problems seemed to be getting worse. I could hardly walk with all the pain in my ribs. Each step became a major effort as the muscles in my legs felt as if they could not hold me and I had a heavy weight tied to my feet. The only way I could walk was to throw each leg forward and hope I would not fall when I put my weight on that leg so I could move the other leg for my next step.

The sharp pain in my ribs made it extremely uncomfortable to lay down. The deep throbbing pain inside the muscles of my legs, the cramping pains in my feet and the aching pain taking over my body, would not allow me to fall asleep until my body became so exhausted I could not stay awake no matter how much I hurt. To help take the pressure off my ribs, the jail's night guards allowed me to use a second mattress as a back support so I was in a semi-reclining position.

Over the next two and a half weeks, I made 12 consecutive written "sick call" requests to receive my prescribed pain medications and see the Pitt County Jail's doctor as he had instructed me to do, if I had any problems with my medications but all my requests were ignored.

While this was going on Cecil Humphries became my Cell Mate. Between him and Jimmy Wells, they were trying to get me to talk about how I conducted my tobacco business. I had the feeling the Prosecutor had offered them a reduction in their sentences if they could get me to incriminate the Warehousemen I had worked with in this excess tobacco marketing scheme.

Although I knew talking with them would be used by the prosecutor, I also knew that both Jimmy Wells and Cecil Humphries had been involved in this scheme for years and I felt it worth the risk to learn just how this excess tobacco scheme actually worked. I hoped by exchanging information with them I would learn how Jim Brake was able to deceive and use me, when I had religiously followed all of the ASCS Regulations required of a Registered Tobacco Dealer to resell my tobacco.

From the time when Jim Brake told me he was taking a Plea Bargain and after I presented myself to the US Attorney I had looked for something I should have known or I had overlooked that would tell me how my trusting Jim Brake had over shadowed my good judgment.

My Trial had not provided me with the answers I was looking for, as it was only Ed Dayo's theory and his testimony of how this scheme worked. Ed Dayo's testimony did not reflect what I had done or how I ran my tobacco business. There had to be a change in how Jim Brake operated when I became involved with him. I had nothing to lose by telling Jimmy Wells and Cecil Humphries how I conducted my tobacco business as I had not done anything illegal and there was nothing I could say that would help them get a reduction in their sentences or allow the Prosecutor to use it against me.

When I explained how I used my Tobacco Dealer's Cards and Books at each Tobacco Warehouse to control my inventory they seemed to understand why I had been able to work in so many Tobacco Warehouses they knew would not have become involved in dealing with excess tobacco.

Their comments confirmed my belief these Tobacco Warehousemen were not involved in this excess tobacco marketing scheme and I would have been wrong if I had agreed to cooperate with the Prosecutor and falsely testify against them.

After I outlined how I ran my tobacco business and how I used the Federal Currency Transaction Forms to generate large amounts of Cash to buy more tobacco, they realized I really did not know how this scheme normally worked. There was a noticeable change in direction of our conversation when they realized if I could not tell them anything incriminating about the Warehousemen I had worked with in the tobacco market then I could not help them get a reduction in their sentences.

They told me who started this latest excess tobacco business. According to Jimmy and Cecil there had been some type of tobacco scheme to beat the tobacco allotment system since the ASCS established the farmers' tobacco allotments. The latest scram of using none existent ASCS Registered Tobacco Dealers was created by Jeff Daniels' father and Golden Frinks in the early 1980's.

To make the scheme work so everyone got paid his share from the sale of this excess tobacco the farmers and the Warehousemen had to work together. The farmers had to deliver their best grade of tobacco so it would bring the highest ASCS Support price. For years, the Warehousemen had used the "Croker Handshake" to bribe the USDA Inspectors to rise the Grade of the tobacco. If the Grade of the farmers excess tobacco would not cover the costs the Warehouseman would ask the USDA Inspectors to re-grade the tobacco. When the tobacco grade was raised the Warehouseman would thank the USDA Inspector with a handshake that had a folded 100 dollar bill in it. The Warehousemen had another thing going for them when the big Tobacco Companies Buyers were bidding on the excess tobacco. Since these buyers were not using their own money to buy the tobacco it was easy bribe them to raise their bids and the Warehouseman's signal to raise their bid was say, "I need a little help, here."

Jeff Daniels had perfected the scheme into an art form when the North Carolina ASCS Office accepted mailed in Dealers Applications without verifying if the applicants were real people before they sent out the Dealer's Books and Cards. Jeff Daniels would pay some poor son of a bitch 50 dollars to use his address as a mail drop and Jeff would have the North Carolina ASCS Office send out the Tobacco Dealer's Books and Cards to these factitious Dead Card Tobacco Dealers Jeff had created. Every year Jeff created more and more Dead Card Dealers to the point he was selling Air Pounds to everyone. When Jeff became too greedy, others learned how Jeff had obtained these factitious Tobacco Dealer's Books and Cards from the North Carolina ASCS Office and they went into business for themselves.

By 1991, this excess tobacco marketing scam had exploded into an epidemic. There were hundreds of independent excess tobacco marketing dealers operating in Florida to Virginia in the Flue cured Tobacco Market. Nearly half of these excess tobacco dealers were involved in the Burley Tobacco Market that open after the Flue curd Tobacco Market closed.

When I questioned Jimmy's numbers, since the government had only prosecuted 40 tobacco dealers, he laughed and said they were only some of the excess tobacco dealers who had operated in North Carolina. The Federal Court in Raleigh North Carolina was the only US District Court in all the States involved in the selling of this excess tobacco to take any legal action against any of these excess tobacco dealers.

I was surprised to learn which Tobacco Warehouses I had used were actually involved in this excess tobacco marketing scheme and the Preacher's Top Dollar Tobacco Warehouse in Kingston North Carolina had been the first Warehouse to use this new scheme. Knowing the truth now, would not help me as I would be lying and incriminating myself if I now claimed these Warehouseman had been involved in this scheme when I did not know they were when these sales took place.

Based on what I told them about paying for only the tobacco delivered to the Tobacco Warehouses on the pink copy of the tobacco invoices, they told me how Jim Brake had improved on this scheme. For those Warehouses who were already in the excess tobacco scheme Jim Brake would pick up the Pink invoice copy directly from them and pay the Warehousemen a dollar ten cents a pound. The dollar went to the Tobacco Farm who provided the excess tobacco and the Warehouse man kept the dime. For all of your new Warehouses who would not have been involved in this scheme Jim Brake had eliminated the need to have anyone involved at these Tobacco Warehouses as he and Rudy Hill were delivering the excess tobacco directly to each of these Warehouses. They had eliminated the need to use a warehousemen to coordinate the delivery of his farmer's excess tobacco or pay the Warehouseman 10 cents a pound.

In fact Jim would have the farmers who had excess tobacco deliver this tobacco to any Warehouse other than the Warehouse they would normally sell their allotment tobacco. Those farmers were paid a dollar a pound, when they give Jim Brake the Pick invoice copy as proof of delivery.

I had been looking for this answer to explain why Ed Dayo's theory of how this scheme worked, did not fit what I knew. There was no need to have a Tobacco Warehouseman go with the Scheme's Tobacco Dealer to the Bank to cash the Warehouse's checks to make sure he got his cut and his excess tobacco farmers were paid.

I realized this was an added benefit of Jim Brake's system as he was saving the 10 cents a pound paid to the warehouseman who would not have participated in this excess tobacco marketing scheme but they were willing to sell my tobacco as I was delivering it like any legitimate Tobacco dealer would do. This also explained why Jim had encouraged me to open and develop my resale tobacco business in the Tobacco Warehouses in Virginia and why he was willing to send so much tobacco to Virginia.

Jimmy Wells then explained why those Warehousemen who were involved in this scheme and forced to testify at my trial claimed they had not been paid anything. Yet this fact was in direct contradiction to Jim Brake's and Agent Ed Dayo's Testimony.

This had become another conspiracy within the excess tobacco marketing conspiracy between the excess tobacco marketing Warehousemen, who understood by testifying against me that the Government would be making me the moneyman who received all the money from this scheme. In this way, the IRS would not be going after the Warehousemen for the money they had received and they had not paid any Taxes on the money they made.

Jimmy confirmed what Willy Strickland had told me that the government knew the Warehouseman had been paid for their part in this scheme. However, the Prosecutor was willing to let them get away with the money they made as payment for their cooperation and their testimony in my trial. Jimmy claimed the fact the government had added 23 million dollars in Money Laundering at my Sentencing Hearing would satisfy the IRS's interest in not going after the Warehousemen for any back taxes.

What I could not understand was the only people who could produce this excess tobacco were the tobacco farmers yet not a single tobacco farmer had been indicted as part of this scheme. Cecil explained this had been a political decision to limit the amount of adverse publicity the government was already receiving by their failure to control the abuse of this Federal tobacco program for so many years. However if the Government also indicted the excess tobacco farmers the publicity of losing their farms would have been even worse.

The honest tobacco farmers were pressing their Congressmen to do something and government could not ignore Congress and the legitimate complaints of the honest farmers. The government decided to go after only those who ran this excess tobacco marketing scheme. The government wanted all the scheme dealers to admit what they did and the scheme dealers would be given very lenient sentences in their Plea Bargains just as the 40 excess tobacco dealers had done.

However, the way you conducted your business and the amount of tobacco business you did became so great, that it could not be ignored. I now understand why you were not interested in taking a Plea Bargain as you did not believe you did anything wrong.

You must understand, nothing pisses off the government more than someone who will not cooperate with them. When you refused to take a Plea Bargain, you gave them the perfect solution to demonstrate to the tobacco farming community, that the government had resolved the excess tobacco-marketing problem. They could turn the possible adverse publicity into a major "win" for the government when they made your trial into a major show for the tobacco farming community.

There is another reason why no excess tobacco farmers were indicted. Judge Howard's brother sold excess tobacco from the Howard family's farm to the Preacher's Tobacco Warehouse in Kingston by an excess Tobacco Dealer named Martin Van Lee who worked for Jimmy.

When Van Lee took a Plea Bargain, he threatened to expose Judge Howard's brother, which meant Judge Howard as one of the farm's owners had also profited from this scheme. As proof of this, Van Lee was released from Prison and he served his time in home confinement.

Judge Howard should have disqualified himself but by that time, he had sentenced most of the scheme's tobacco dealers and their Plea Bargains would be appealed to overturn their convictions. With this known conflict of interest, Judge Howard should not have conducted your trial.

"The only reason I can think of was he wanted to make sure his brother was not exposed as one of the farmers who sold excess tobacco and by staying on your case Judge Howard was protecting himself and his family."

Jimmy confirmed what Cecil told me. He offered to provide me with his sworn affidavit I could use in my appeal. His affidavit would state Martin Van Lee sold the Howard family's excess tobacco at the Top Dollar Tobacco Warehouse operated by the "Preacher" when Van Lee worked for him.

This explained one of the reasons why the Prosecutor AUSA Swaim and Judge Howard had forced me to use Randolph Riley as my defense counsel. Riley was a legal outsider to this tobacco scheme and he did not know what happen in any of the other excess tobacco cases.

This and Riley's mental condition would limit his legal capabilities to function as an attorney, was the insurance policy that Riley would not conduct any investigation of any of the other excess tobacco dealers cases that could expose Judge Howard's conflict of interest when he sat in judgment of my case.

The government must have been listening to all of our conversations and the government had not expected Jimmy and Cecil to provide me with so much information on the tobacco scheme and Judge Howard's personal conflict of interest to protect his brother. The government had to move quickly as they had no way of knowing what else they could tell me. Early the next morning, Jimmy Wells and Cecil Humphries were abruptly transferred from the Pitt County Jail.

Fortunately, Jimmy Wells had already given me the phone number of his sister in Zebulon North Carolina. She would know how to reach him and she would tell Jimmy where to send his affidavit to me.

Six months later, I would see Cecil Humphries when he was passing through FCI Petersburg. I would learn the government had changed his Plea Agreement to give him more time in prison and I had the feeling this was his punishment for telling me about Judge Howard and his brother.

The nightmare of my injuries continued and the problems were not limited to my pain in my ribs, neck, back and legs as something was affecting my hearing and nothing I ate had any flavor or taste. I found I was only eating because it was time to eat as I had lost my appetite. The numbness had spread across my face and traveled down my arms into my hands and when my legs suddenly gave out from under me and I fell to the floor, I was not even taken to see the Jail's Nurse.

For two days, I lay in my bunk before the pain in my legs and feet came back and I could move my legs again. I was not sure which condition was worse. Not being able to walk or dealing with the pain and muscle cramps in my legs and feet.

Falling down and not being able to stand up had been a frightening experience but what really scared the hell out of me was not knowing why it had happened and the fact no one in the Pitt County Jail's Medical Department cared or was willing to do anything about it. When I made a formal written complaint to the Pitt County's Inmate advocate to see a doctor but my complaint was ignored.

# 6. THE PROSECUTOR'S ILLEGAL REACHING

Things were not going well for Carol as the government had frozen all her personal bank accounts and as a result, the only money she had was the money I gave her from the sale of the airplane. Carol would run out of money to feed the horses and her ability to pay the Veterinarian who would be handling Coosa Lad's breedings of our Broodmares that would began on the 1st of February. The adverse publicity of my conviction and now being sentenced to 188 months in Federal Prison had limited the number of outside breedings to Coosa Lad to the point she did not have enough outside breeding fees to continue her horse business.

Unknown to me and Carol, the Prosecutor AUSA Swaim and Judge Howard held a hearing on December 11, 1997 and AUSA Swaim added the forfeiture of Coosa Lad and the property of Sherman Station in Lexington Virginia as ill-gotten gains of my criminal activities. AUSA Swaim had the Court issue an Order to all of the "Third Parties" who were my business partners to re-file their claims within 5 days and pay $580 dollars in Court costs to hear their claims. Carol as one of the third parties had previously filed as part of her third party claims that Virginia American Management Corporation owned Berclair Plantation and I was only a 25% minority stockholder in VAMCO.

AUSA Swaim now knew he had made a mistake when he issued my criminal forfeiture charge on Berclair Plantation. To compensate for his error AUSA Swaim illegally use the Court, to circumvent VAMCO's rightful ownership of Berclair Plantation and eliminate Carol's legitimate third party claim as the 75% Stockholder of VAMCO.

To further AUSA Swaim's conspiracy with Judge Howard, none of the Third Parties had been notified of this December 11th Court Hearing and after Judge Howard issued the Court's Order, it was not sent to any of them. Then on January 5, 1998, AUSA Swaim went back into Court and claimed none of the Third Parties had re-filed their claims or paid the $580 Dollars to hear their claims in Court. AUSA Swaim had Judge Howard issue a Forfeiture Order against all the Third party claimants for their failure to comply with the December 12, 1997 Court Order. However, this new Court Order was not sent to the Third Parties until after the time to Appeal this Court Order had expired. Even then, this Court Order was not sent to Carol or to her established personal legal counsel Charles Ayers who was also VAMCO's Registered Agent.

Just before our broodmares were to be bred on February first the government used this fraudulently obtained court order, to pick up Carol's stallion Coosa Lad at Sherman Station and move Coosa Lad to an unknown location. This illegal government confiscation was done in spite of the irrefutable documented evidence that Charley Ayers had already provided to the US Attorney to establish there was no possible way any tobacco money or any of my money was used to purchase Carol's Stallion Coosa Lad. Carol had used funds she had inherited from her father and she had used the same account her father had established when she paid for Coosa Lad.

Without any access to her own money, Carol could not breed our Broodmares to any other stallion as the government had also put a lean on Sherman Station in spite of the US Attorney's written agreement to allow Carol to use her inheritance to buy this property. Without the ability to use Sherman Station as collateral, Carol could not barrow any money to support herself or her legitimate horse business. By locking up all of Carol's personal assets Judge Howard and AUSA Swaim had also removed any possibility of Carol hiring Locke Clifford to file my Direct Appeal.

Prosecutor AUSA Swain and Judge Malcolm Howard as the illegal instruments of the United States Government abused their power and authority in the Federal Court to punish Carol for her testimony at my trial when she accused AUSA Swaim of using Jim Brake as a witnesses, he knew was lying about my involvement in this excess tobacco marketing scheme.

Carol was not going to allow the government to get away with this as she had a full head of steam and a clear business head when she contacted her attorney Charley Ayers. It took Charley Ayers several days to establish what AUSA Swaim had illegally done with the cooperation of Judge Howard. Charley found out the government planned to sell Coosa Lad at the Horse Auction scheduled for February 28, 1998 at the Virginia Horse Center in Lexington Virginia. I do not know what Charley Ayers did but he forced Judge Howard to hold an emergency hearing on the forfeiture of Coosa Lad. The hearing was held on Tuesday four days before the scheduled Horse Auction of Coosa Lad.

Judge Howard agreed to postpone the Auction of Coosa Lad and schedule a formal Appeal Hearing, if Carol posted a 400 thousand dollar cash bond. AUSA Swaim and Judge Howard knew Carol could not raise any money as the Court had tied up all her assets.

However, they had again underestimated Carol's business capabilities as she had the Insurance Company who had a 1.2 million dollar insurance policy on Coosa Lad issue the cash bond to the Court on Thursday. However, Judge Howard refused to accept this cash bond issued by a major Insurance Company and Coosa Lad was sold at the Horse Auction on Saturday February 28, 1998 for only $262 thousand dollars.

While this court fight was going on Locke Clifford obtained a Court Order on February 23, 1998 for me to see my own doctor for treatment at my own expense for the injuries I received when I was shoved down in the Van, by the Deputy US Marshall on January 13, 1998.

When I talked with Carol, she told me about the Court Order and she hoped I would finally be treated for my injuries. Carol arranged for me to be evaluated and treated by Doctor Tomachec in Raleigh North Carolina, who knew both Carol and me. We had used this renowned medical expert in Neurology a number of times to evaluate injured workers when Carol was the Director of Vocational Rehabilitation. He understood my situation and he would make himself available to see me on short notice.

Months later through a Freedom of Information Act request I received a copy of AUSA Swaim's February 23, 1998 Memorandum to the United States Marshall informing him of the possible liability the US Marshall's could be facing as a result of this incident. Although the US Marshall's name was blacked out on the first page, it was not blacked out on the second page. AUSA Swaim's intentions were clear and what happened to me next was a direct result of this Memorandum.

Without seeing the Pitt County Jail's Doctor Mark Cervi or any of the Jail's Nurses, my pain medications were again provided to me. I was taken to the Greenville Hospital and given a MRI of my back. I tried to tell the Technician who was giving me this MRI that my neck had also been injured and I asked him to take an MRI of my neck and head as I was experiencing problems associated with injuries to the head and neck.

Based upon my own experience with MRI's when I worked with injured workers I knew where the imaging recording functions of the MRI were located. Since my head and neck were never in this location, I knew there would not be any MRI images of my reported injuries to my neck and head. Although I had formally requested copies and the results of this MRI a number of times during my lawsuit no one would admit I even had this MRI.

Just after breakfast on Friday March 7, 1998 I assume the Court Order to see my own Doctor had been served on the Pitt County Jail as two Deputy US Marshalls put me in a Van I thought was transporting me to see Doctor Tomachec. However, the US Marshalls did not take me to see my doctor but delivered me to the Wilson County Jail without any of my personal property, my medical records or any of my prescribed medications.

What I did not know at the time was AUSA Swaim's February 23, 1998 Memo for Record had warned the US Marshalls of their possible liability when Deputy US Marshall Dove shoved me down in the Van on January 13, 1998. What the US Marshalls had done to protect themselves and the Medical Staff at the Pitt County Jail was move me from the Pitt County Jail as the Court's Order, which had already been inappropriately delayed for two weeks had been served on the Pitt County Jail.

Although the Greenville Hospital's MRI's would not show the injuries to my neck and head, the MRI's would reveal the re-injury to my broken ribs and the dislodging of my T-12 vertebrae I had originally injured in my 1971 airplane crash.

With this objective medical evidence, the government knew they could not allow me to be examined and treated by my own doctor, as he would confirm they were responsible for this new damage to my ribs and vertebrae but also for the damage to my neck and head.

I would not be able to establish the serious nature of these Van injuries until after I was released from the Federal Bureau of Prisons on May 10, 2010. The Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed the VAN injuries in their evaluation of my Service Connected Disabilities. Although I was found to be permanently and 100% disabled I received a 40% Service Connected Disability on my back for the 1971 Airplane crash. However since my head and neck were injured while I was in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons those disabilities were denied as not being Service Connected Disabilities.

The Wilson County Sheriff, Jessie Barnes claimed he did not know anything about my Court Ordered Medical Appointment. However, he claimed he had my medical records from the Pitt County's jail and I would receive my medications as they had been prescribed for me.

When I did not receive my prescribed pain medication due at noon, I was told I had to see the Wilson County Jail's Nurse Carmack before they could give them to me. My efforts to be seen by the Wilson County Jail's Nurse Carmack to get my medications were postponed hour after hour. By 4 pm, I was experiencing serious pain throughout my body as if all my muscles were on fire, but my request to see the Jail's nurse was ignored and I was now told the Sheriff had gone home. I immediately vomited up my supper and I could not even keep plain water down.

This was followed by a bad case of diarrhea and stomach cramps that kept me doubled over. When I called for a Jail guard and told him what was happening to me he said there was no one in the Medical Department and he left me laying on my bunk in the Cell Block.

When I broke out in a cold sweat and I could hardly stand up with my stomach cramps the Jail Guard refused to see me. The Jail Guards did not make their normal and required rounds to check on the prisoners in the Cell Blocks on the third floor of the Wilson County's jail. As my condition worsened and I was curled up in my bunk sweating, the inmates in my Cellblock became concerned and they repeatedly called for the Jail Guard to see me.

When the new Jail Guard finally came to my Cell, he warned me if I did not stop making trouble he would throw me in the "Hole."

I managed to tell him I did not care what he did as long as I could see a doctor. Some of the other inmates pleaded with the new Jail Guard and told him he needed to do something to help me. They told him they had seen the physical changes in me since noon that day. The Guard's response was to issue another threat to "lock down the whole Cellblock and turn off the Television."

This was one of the longest night's I have ever experienced in my life. In between the sharp stomach cramps that doubled me over with the dry heaves, I spent the night on the toilet with diarrhea. I was sure I had died and gone to hell as every part of my body was on fire and the Jail's guards were not guards at all, but devils sent to torment me.

The only saving-grace in my ordeal was the inmates in my cellblock kept telling the Jail's Guards who came through on their rounds that I was really sick and I needed medical help. In spite of the inmates efforts to help me not one of those Jail Guards came back to see me.

The next morning I was taken to see Nurse Carmack. When I told her about the failure to receive my prescribed medications she claimed there was nothing she could do for me. She claimed she did not have any of my medications or my medical records that should have been sent with me when I came from the Pitt County Jail. I pleaded with her until she agreed to call the Pitt County Jail to confirm my prescribed medications and get my Medical Records.

When I told her about the pain in my broken ribs, my pain in my back and legs, and I how I had spent the night with stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea she gave me 12 regular Tylenol tablets. She had me take 4 of them and she instructed me to take 2 more Tylenol every four hours.

I just made it back to my cell when I vomited up the Tylenol along with the water I had taken with them. My concern about the total pain that engulfed my body was replaced by a greater concern of dehydration as my lips were already cracked and I could not produce any saliva when I met Nurse Carmack.

Yet I was only given Tylenol and nothing to control my continuing stomach cramps and diarrhea. Just giving me Tylenol was no substitute for all of my prescribed medications and by now Nurse Carmack had more than enough time to call the Pitt County Jail to confirm all of my prescribed medications. When I asked a Guard to see Nurse Carmack about my medications I was told the Nurse had gone home. As far as I knew, no one knew I had been abruptly transferred to the Wilson County Jail. I tried to clear my mind and deal with my situation without a copy of the Court Order or my Medical Records.

Being here in the Wilson County Jail on a Saturday without any access to a phone reinforced my feelings of being trapped in hell. When I did not eat my lunch, a new Jail Guard had come to check on me. When he found me in physical duress, he asked if there was anything, he could do for me. I told him about the failure to receive my prescribed medications and I asked him if I could make a phone call to my lawyer, as I was sure he did not know I had been transferred here.

This Jail Guard was the first human being I had met on the Wilson County Jail's Staff. He took me down stairs to the Office and I tried to reach Locke Clifford. When I could not reach him, I asked if I could call my wife and let her know I needed to get in touch with my lawyer.

When I reached Carol, she wanted to know how my examination went with Doctor Tomachec. I told her I had not seen Doctor Tomachec and I had been abruptly transferred to the Wilson County Jail Friday morning without my prescribed medications, medical records or any of my personal property. I told her I had not received any of my medications since I left the Pitt County Jail. I explained after becoming sick yesterday and all last night I was only given some regular Tylenol for my stomach cramps and diarrhea. I told Carol how I was really hurting throughout my entire body as if all my muscles were on fire.

"Why those dirty bastards." Carol said before asking what I wanted her to do. I told Carol to call Locke Clifford and tell him what happened.

"Let me turn on the recorder as I don't think he will believe this." Carol stated."Ok it is on. Tell me everything that happened." I gave Carol the names of all the people who I had talked with at the Wilson County Jail about my prescribed medications, what they had told me and what they failed to do. After Carol had me describe my symptoms and the physical problems I was experiencing she made the comment it sounded as if I were experiencing a drug withdrawal and she asked what I had been taking. When I described my pain medications Carol looked them up in the Physician's Desk Reference Book

What Carol said about a drug withdrawal did not register with me at first until I realized when the Pitt County Jail resumed my pain medications I was given a different type of pill for my pain. Base on my description of the pill I was given for pain Carol said it was Percodan. This is a highly addictive and a very potent narcotic, which had stopped my complaining about my pain and my inability to sleep, as I was in "la-la" land every four hours.

This was another reason why I could not be allowed to see my own Doctor. My doctor would have immediately taken a blood sample to confirm his suspicions that I had been over medicated with a dangerous and addictive medication.

What the Pitt County Jail did to protect themselves was to transfer me out of their jail and without any medications knowing I would suffer a drug withdrawal under the Wilson County Jail's jurisdiction and without my medical records to document I was given Percodan the Wilson County Jail's medical staff would cover up the Pitt County Jail's medical error.

By transferring me without my personal property, which contained my written record of everything that happened to me since I came to the Pitt County jail, they thought they had covered their tracks. What they did not know was my Cell Mate took and hid my Note Book I was recording everything that was happening to me and he knew how important it was. He had brought it with him knowing he would be going to FCI Petersburg where he heard I would be going according to the inmate rumor mill.

After suffering more than 5 days with a drug withdrawal, I could finally keep some food down in my stomach and my diarrhea cleared up. The fire in my muscles had diminished but the pain in my neck, back and legs remained.

When a group of Pitt County inmates arrived at the Wilson County Jail l was told I would be transferred with them on a Prison bus to the Federal Prison in Petersburg Virginia.

My request to call my wife to tell her where I was going was denied. Since my money in the Pitt County Jail's Inmate Trust Account had not been transferred to Wilson County's Jail and my postage stamps were left behind in my personal property I could not send Carol a letter. When I asked for a postage stamp from the Wilson County jail, I was told I could buy postage stamps on my Commissary day next week.

My Pitt County Cell Mate was put in a different Cellblock but somehow he was able to send my notebook to me. I spend the day writing down everything that happened to me at the Wilson County Jail. I had already started to experience the racing thoughts that were all trying to enter my mind at the same time. I knew without my psychiatric medications, it was a race against time to make this continuing record before I would slip back into the catatonic state I had been in when I first entered Mary Washington's Mental Hospital.

The ride to FCI Petersburg in the back of a bus without any of my prescribed medications was another nightmare as my neck and back felt every bump and crack in the road. I prayed I would not slip back into my poor mental state. However, my painful condition was fueling my thoughts into paranoia and I was falling into a deep depression that made killing myself seem to be an attractive alternative to living this nightmare any longer. The fact I was thinking this way scared the hell out of me and I prayed harder.

It was no surprise to me, when I was told at FCI Petersburg that they were not expecting me. This also meant I did not have any medical records or any evidence that I had been receiving any prescribed medications for my high blood pressure, my psychiatric condition, my four broken ribs or my injuries of January 13, 1998.

The way this was playing out, it was like a classic Mob hit. The initial killer, Pitt County Jail had been eliminated by the Wilson County Jail than the Wilson County Jail had been eliminated by the FCI Petersburg leaving no evidence to support any of my claims.

I would later learn FCI Petersburg was one of the worse prisons in the Federal Bureau of Prison's system and by sending me here was another way of punishing me for the Prosecutor AUSA Swaim's belief I was not willing to cooperate with him.

Normally Inmates are sent to the closest prison to his home in the Federal Bureau of Prison's attempt to maintain the Inmate's family ties. Carol was my family and the FCI Beckley West Virginia was only a few hours away from Lexington Virginia if Allen took her. While FCI Petersburg was over 200 miles away and an all day bus ride for Carol, who was legally blind and she could not make the trip alone.

# 7. GOING DOWN FOR THE COUNT

While I was being interviewed by a FCI Petersburg Guidance Counselor, I was having trouble hearing him or understanding what he was telling me. I must have slip further into myself as he kept asking me if I was all right. The harder I tried to understand what he was saying, the less I heard and the next thing I knew I was in a Suicide Watch cell.

When my conscious thoughts were restored, I could not remember how long I had been there or how the Prison Psychiatrist established what psychiatric medications I had been taking. Just because I could not remember did not mean that somehow I had told her. I would learn that during one of my counseling sessions with the Prison Psychiatrist I had told her about being in Mary Washington's Hospital. She had called Mary Washington Hospital and after she talked with my doctor, she knew what medications I was taking. Her primary focus was now on if I had any thoughts about killing myself. By then my psychiatric medications had restored my sanity and I knew if I told her the truth I might never get out of here.

Based upon my own studies in Psychology and what I had learn during my stay at Mary Washington's Mental Hospital I knew what the FCI Petersburg Psychiatrist wanted to know was what had caused my current state of mental distress. After I outline what happen to me since I was taken into Federal Custody on January 13, 1998, the Psychiatrist took me to the FCI Petersburg's Medical Facilities and she supervised my complete physical examination.

When my Blood Pressure was found to be 210 over 140 the Psychiatrist started to believe my story. The tenderness in my ribs should not have been present for an injury that occurred over three months ago in Lexington Virginia. My difficulties in walking and turning my head reinforced my claims I had hurt my neck when I was shoved down in the Van.

To verify my claims of numbness in my face, arms, hands and legs I was pricked with a pin all over my body and I felt nothing. To eliminate the possibility I was somehow controlling my body's response to these pin pricks this test was repeated when I had my eyes closed and my body did not react. It was only when the pins were pushed deeper into my body I could feel them.

The Psychiatrist and the examining Physician left the examination room to discuss their impressions of my condition. When they returned, I was asked to sign the Medical Release Forms to give the Pitt County Jail the authorization to release all my medical records and the results of my MRI's taken at Greenville Hospital to FCI Petersburg's Medical Department.

I was given my High Blood Pressure medication and Tylenol before I was released back to Richmond Hall, which was the temporary Housing Unit for the newly arrived Inmates at FCI Petersburg. That evening was my first opportunity to make a collect phone call to Carol.

She was extremely upset that I had not called her, as she had no idea what happened to me. The Wilson County Jail would only tell her I was no longer there. She feared the worst after my call from the Wilson County Jail. Even after two weeks, Locke Clifford had not been able to find out where I had been sent. Carol had called all the local Hospitals in and around Wilson North Carolina before she called all the hospitals in the Raleigh Durham area. She called the Federal Medical facilities at FCI Butner and then she called FCI Beckley as she believed I was to be sent there. None of the hospitals had me listed as a patient and no one at these Federal Prisons knew anything about me.

My heart sank to a new low after hearing this. Carol did not deserve the mental anguish of not knowing what happened to me. Carol knew from my Wilson County Jail's phone call that someone had interfered with the Court Order Locke Clifford had obtained for treatment of my injuries in the Van. She also knew I was suffering from a drug withdrawal and without my psychiatric medications, she feared the worst.

Carol had become my champion since my illegal conviction and my protector when my mind shut down. She had legally out maneuvered the Government to protect VAMCO's assets and her horse business. What she did not deserve was the sadistic actions taken against her by Prosecutor AUSA Swaim who was misusing the Court to punish her.

He wanted his revenge for Carol telling the truth about him using perjured testimony in my trial and then for Carol refusing to roll over after my Conviction. I was almost afraid to tell Carol what had happen, since I last called her from the Wilson County Jail as I felt she could be at the breaking point to deal with it.

I told Carol my 15 minute phone call was almost up. I told her I was in the Federal Prison at Petersburg Virginia and gave her my address. I promised to call her back as soon as I could and I would tell her what happened. These words were just out of my mouth, when my phone call was cut off by the prison's inmate telephone system.

It was more than two hours before I could get another turn to use the inmate telephone. This delay had given me time to organize my thoughts and write them down but I still was not sure I should tell her everything. I was caught between telling her the truth so she would know how to deal with it and if I did not tell her everything, she would know I was holding something back and that would create even more anxiety for her.

When I heard Carol's voice, I knew she had settled down and she was ready to hear the truth. I prayed I would use the right words to explain what happened. When she told me, the phone recorder was on, I told her without my psychiatric medication I had flipped out for a number of days and I was put in the suicide watch cell, after I arrived at FCI Petersburg. Once Carol understood what happened, she was not surprised by my reaction to being denied my psychiatric medications.

Carol suggested I should tell my prison Psychiatrist to call my doctor at Mary Washington's Mental Hospital and the Doctor who had treated me for my broken ribs in Lexington. These doctors would be able to provide the history of my psychological problems and my rib injuries along with their prescribed treatments. Carol told me she would send me a copy of the Court Order and I still might be able to use it to be treated by my own doctor if the Federal Bureau of Prisons did not take care of me. Carol had just told me she would be sending me some money in a Postal Money Order when the phone call was cut off before I could tell her I loved her.

With the resumption of my psychiatric medication and the return of my conscious sanity, the pain throughout my body was controlling my life. Dealing with this pain consumed my every thought and dominated my existence to the point I lost all sense of purpose and the passage of time.

The deep dull pain in my lower back was like the discomfort I had experienced just prior to being struck down with a kidney stone years ago. My legs and feet were experiencing a constant deep aching pain and the tingling muscle cramps ran down from the center of both sides of my butt through the backsides of both legs to the tips of my toes. Any leg movement only made this pain and cramping worse.

Walking during the scheduled 10 minutes to move from one location in the prison's compound to another such as the dining hall, chapel or the library became a battle of will and my mind over matter determination to deal with the pain.

I had learned in working with injured workers in VAMCO's Vocational Rehabilitation Division that there are two types of pain. The first type of pain is the body's natural reaction to protect itself from further injury or damage such as pulling your hand away from a hot stove. This first type of pain also deals with uncorrected nerve damage or injuries the body cannot correct itself without some type of surgical intervention.

The second type of pain exists as a residual aspect of an injury. It exists regardless of what you do, and you are not necessarily causing further damage to your body if you can learn to manage this pain. A whole section of medical treatment known as "Pain Management" had been developed to deal with this second type of pain called "Chronic Pain." The patient's type of pain can be established by a doctor's complete medical evaluation using the results of x-rays and MRIs. In my case, I had been given an MRI at Greenville's Hospital of only my back but I was denied the results and I had not been seen by a doctor. Therefore, I did not know if I was creating any further damage to my body, by moving those body parts that hurt the most.

Having been denied this medical knowledge left me no choice but to force myself to move through the pain by using all my powers of concentration I had developed when I was shooting. Making a perfect shot required blocking everything else out of my mind and focusing on the perfect sight picture to let my subconscious pull the trigger at the right time. The alternative to forcing myself to move in pain was to give up. I knew if I gave up I might as well be dead and being dead was still not an option for me.

I had to believe the Good Lord does not give you a problem so great that you could not overcome it and he will give you the grace to deal with it. If I had no choice but to deal with my pain, I might as well offer my suffering as a sacrifice for the repose of the poor souls in Purgatory and hope by forcing myself to move with this pain I was not creating any additional permanent damage to my body.

What I did not realize by internalizing the management of my pain I was excluding everything else from my conscious thoughts. I could not say my rosary on my fingers without repeating that prayer I thought I had missed when I attempted to manage my pain. I did not have time to think about the immediate May 27, 1997 appeal filed by Rob Smallenberg that should have been heard in the Court by now.

Through my selfish thoughts to control my pain, I had completely blocked out how Carol was dealing with the government's interference in her life, how they were destroying her horse business and how they were trying to take Sherman Station away from her. My pain forced me to develop and establish coping mechanisms to deal with normal life in prison.

Once I moved somewhere in the Prison's Compound I would remove my shoes to help relieve the cramping pain in my feet. However, sleeping was a different matter. The pain in my legs and feet would keep me awake until my body became completely exhausted and in my body's self-defense, sleep would win out.

Over the years my body learned how to protect itself from this continuing pain and cramping by laying perfectly still as any movement in my sleep would change the controlled level pain in my body legs and feet and I would wake up. Then I would need to mentally overcome the pain again before I could fall back asleep. Not moving in my sleep became my body's self defense mechanism to avoid the pain. This is just what my body does now when I finally fall asleep using a number of prescribed medications given to me from the Department of Veterans Affairs, as I wake up the next morning in exactly the same position that I fell asleep in last night.

For the next two weeks, the Prison's Psychiatrist saw five days a week. I discussed the nature of my conviction and the unfairness of my trial. I explained how I had been injured in the Van, all the problems I had trying to receive treatment for my injuries and how I had been moved to Wilson County Jail to prevent me from using the Court Order to be treated by my own doctor.

I shared my problems walking and the sudden collapsing of my legs when I least expected it. I told her about my difficulties sleeping at night due to the pain and cramping in the muscles of my legs and feet. All this time, we waited for the Pitt County Jail to forward my Medical Records and the results of the MRIs taken at the Greenville Hospital but none of these records were ever sent.

On the first Sunday, after I was moved back to Richmond Hall I went to Mass at the Prison's chapel. This was the first time I could attend Mass, since I was taken into custody by the US Marshalls on January 13, 1998. After Mass, I introduced myself to the Catholic Priest and I asked him for a rosary.

While the Priest was getting the rosary, he welcomed me to his parish and he asked when I arrived at FCI Petersburg. The fact I had arrived at FCI Petersburg three weeks ago and the fact that he as the Head Chaplin at FCI Petersburg, did not have a copy of my religious preference form to establish I was a Catholic no longer surprised me. However the Catholic Priest had heard a number of rumors about me since I arrived at FCI Petersburg and as a Priest, he wanted me to know he was available to see me any time I needed him.

Normally I would have welcomed his offer but by now, I was not sure I could really trust him even if he was a Catholic priest. There were wild bullshit inmate rumors about the Priests using the Inmate's Confessions to inform the government about crimes the inmates had committed.

The one thing in his favor was he gave all the inmates absolution for their sins if they were truly sorry for them before the Mass began. This type of absolution eliminated the need to go to Confession before receiving Holy Communion. However until I knew more about this Priest I would proceed with due caution without rejecting his kind offer of help.

"Thank you father, I can use all the help I can get especially from a servant of our Lord." I managed to say to the Priest.

The next Wednesday after supper and every Wednesday night after that, I went to the Chapel to attend the scheduled praying of the rosary. My confidence in the Priest continued to improve and I made an appointment to see him.

At first, we talked about my experience as a Catholic, where I grew up and what I did in my life before coming here to FCI Petersburg. Eventually after several meetings, we talked about why I had been in the Suicide Watch Cell when I first came here and he asked if I had considered killing myself.

"Father I will not lie to you. I have thought about killing myself and at times, it was a very attractive temptation. However, like all temptations I could not allow myself to succumb to it, as if I did, I would be lost for all eternity and I would lose any chance to get my life back.

I will admit my mental ability to deal with everything that happened to me has been compromised and I know I need the help of my psychiatric medications. Without these medications, my mind can be reduced to an overloaded circuit that cannot separate my racing thoughts or allow me to focus on dealing with the simplest things of normal daily life.

My mental breakdown happened to me after my conviction and I spent time in Mary Washington's Metal Hospital in Fredericksburg. I knew what to expect when I had been denied all my medications since I left the Pitt County Jail on the morning of March 7. By the time I arrived here at Petersburg my mind and my ability to communicate and function had been reduced to a semi-catatonic state which resulted in my being placed in the Suicide Watch Cell." I told the Priest to answer his concerns about killing myself.

I told him how I was shoved down in the Van by a Deputy US Marshal, all the problems I had getting my pain medications and what the government did to prevent me from establishing the documentation of my injuries in the Van. I told him about the February 23, 1998 Court Order my attorney Locke Clifford had obtained to allow me to be treated my own doctor. However rather than following this order I was abruptly moved from the Pitt County jail to the Wilson County Jail without any of my Medical Records and none of my prescribed medications. I told him how I had suffered a drug withdrawal from the highly addictive pain medication Carol had identified as Percodan in the **Physician's Desk Reference** **Book.**

The priest pull out his own copy of the Physician's Desk Reference Book and then he had me describe the pill I was given to confirm my claim of a drug withdrawal from Percodan. I went on to explain that after I was denied all my prescribed medications and by the time, I had arrived at FCI Petersburg, my mind had shut down. I had anticipated the Priest's next question and I gave him a copy of the Court Order, Carol had sent to me, as I wanted to show him some written proof to support my unbelievable story.

After the Priest finished reading the Court Order, he asked, "So what you are telling me, this transfer from Pitt County was done intentionally and they knew by withholding your prescribed medications you experienced unnecessary pain and suffering?"

"You are right." I said after I thought about he said.

"You know just because you are in Prison, you still have the right to received proper medical treatment and when you do not, you have the right to sue the Bureau of Prison for unnecessary pain and suffering. I would suggest you go to the library and find the Case laws dealing with acts of "Deliberate Indifference" as I think you have a valid case.

Since you started to come and talk with me, I obtained a copy of your Presentencing Report. I could not help but wonder how you could have accomplished all the things the government claimed you did. Perhaps one day after you have more confidence in me, you will be willing to discuss how you became involved in this tobacco business as you do not seem like a person who would break the law." The Priest stated.

"Father, I have no problem telling you what I did in my tobacco business as everything I did was done according to all the ASCS Tobacco Regulations.

Father if you think my injury and the denial of medical treatment since I was taken into Federal Custody is bazaar, then if I told you who I believe is really behind the need to illegally convict me, you would think I was really crazy." I told him.

"The truth is sometimes hard to believe but if you feel you were illegally convicted, I would like to hear about it as nothing surprises me anymore, about what the Federal Courts are capable of doing." The Priest said before he blessed me as he always did when it was time for me to return to my housing dorm, Richmond Hall.

Carol sent the names, addresses and phone numbers of my close friends from my address book so I could put them on my approved inmate telephone and visitors list. Just as we had agreed when I was in FCI Butner, we would not discuss anything over the telephone or in our letters that we did not want the government to know. If there was something important going on we would use one of my friends who would visit me to pass it on.

I had anticipated Carol's decision to move from Sherman Station. Carol was faced with all of her financial assets tied up by the government and she had made the only logical business decision still open to her. She had to sell off everything she could at Sherman Station and then turn over the Lexington property to the court, until her claims of individual ownership on the property would be decided by the Court.

Although Carol was willing to take any type of job, she could fine to support herself few local employment opportunities existed for a blind person. Since Carol had to move, find a job and a place to live, she as a blind person had to place a priority on having access to reliable transportation.

Carol remembered what I had said about the job market in the Washington DC Area after we learned the Virginia Vocational Rehabilitation business was not what she had been promised when we made the move. If I could find a job with Mr Green when no one was hiring anyone in the entire country due to the poor economic times of the early 1980's than going there now would be the best place for her to find a job. She also knew that living there she would have access to reliable transportation of the Washington Metro System.

My visitor told me he had helped Carol dispose of all the horses and sell all of the other property she could not take with her. He and my Lexington "friends" of Allen, Frank and Jeff had helped her move her household goods to an apartment in Alexandria Virginia.

He said Carol would write me a letter after she knew the court had been notified of her decision to turn over the Lexington property to them pending the Court's decision on her individual ownership claim. What he did not tell me and I could only guess was how hard it had been on Carol to sell all her horses as she loved them as if they were her children and grandchildren.

When Carol sent me her new address and phone number, I sent her a letter and then I called her after I had put her phone number on my authorized Inmate phone-calling list. She had rented a 3-bedroom apartment in Alexandra Virginia less than three miles from where my brother Dick and his wife lived.

Carol optimistically told me she had my office set up in one of the bedrooms. She told me about her first experience in using the Metro System and the job interviews she had with the US Department of Labor and the City of Washington DC. Although the position with the Department of Labor was the better paying job, it might be 6 months before they would be filling the position and she did not have enough money to wait that long.

Although Carol tried to reassure me she was doing all right and I did not need to worry about her, I could sense things were not going well and she did not want to burden me with her problems. Carol's new attorney who was now dealing with the Court trying to take Sherman Station and all of Carol's money, made arrangements to call me at FCI Petersburg.

He had all of VAMCO's Business Records and Accounting books and he wanted me to explain how I had listed the financial transfers from Carol and the three main VAMCO Bank Accounts to the Berclair Plantation's Business Bank Account at the Fredericksburg Saving & Loan.

Once I told him I had used a circled "T" for money transfers and a circled "L" for the signed notes located in the company's "Loan File" he said that was simple enough and he understood how to use VAMCO's primary Account Ledgers and files to follow all of VAMCO's financial transactions. I never asked this new attorney, why he was now representing Carol and VAMCO or what happened between Carol and Charley Ayres that she would change attorneys.

Phone calls on the BOP Inmate telephone system required the party receiving the phone call to accept the call before the direct connection on the phone line was made. I would call Carol, every Saturday evening and when my phone calls went to her answering machine; I could not leave a message. After three days of trying to reach Carol, I called my brother Dick and asked him to check on her.

When he could not reach Carol either he told me he would find out what happened and I feared the worst. What I did not expect was a call to report to my Housing Units Manager's office. Carol's Psychiatrist had arranged with FCI Petersburg for me to call him.

My brother Dick had tracked Carol down to a Metal Hospital in Northern Virginia and Carol's Psychiatrist told me that Carol had suffered a nervous breakdown and she was under his care. He explained after several counseling sessions with Carol he learned about my conviction and how the Court was trying to take her property in Lexington and all her personal assets.

When Carol tried to tell him what was happening to me after I was shoved down in the Van by the US Marshals, she would breakdown and cry. However, the worst part came when Carol broke down again she stopped talking. The Psychiatrist believed until he could get Carol to talk about what happened to me and have her realize she had done everything she could to help me receive medical treatment and over turn my conviction, she may not be able to recover and she could be in the Metal Hospital indefinitely.

The Psychiatrist was asking me not to call or write to Carol as my attempts to contact her could cause a setback in her recovery. As much as I loved Carol, I understood why the Psychiatrist was asking me to do this and I had to do it, if there was any hope Carol would recover. Every night as I said my prayers I asked the Good Lord to protect Carol and allow her a complete recovery.

# 8. EFFORTS TO RECEIVE PROPER MEDICAL TREATMENT

The number of times my legs collapsed from beneath me increased. The first time it happened during the 10 minute scheduled inmate move I was put in the "Hole" for being "out of bounds." After spending a night in "Special Housing Unit" known as the "hole" my new Virginia Inmate Housing Unit Manager wanted me to be released back to his Unit, claiming I could not walk and the FCI Petersburg Medical facilities did not have any hospital beds in the "Special Housing Unit."

However, nothing happened as my Unit Manager was told they were investigating the incident. After three days when I could walk again and when my Psychiatrist found out what happened I was released back to the Virginia Inmate Housing Unit. My physical condition continued to deteriorate and when after two months the Pitt County Jail had refused to provide copies of my medical records and the results of the Greenville Hospital's MRI's I filed an Official Complaint.

All Inmate actions and official requests had to start with a "Cop Out" which is the Administrative Complaint Form sent to the correct department you were requesting an entitled action to be performed or granted.

My Cop Out to the FCI Petersburg Medical Facilities required their response in 15 days and when they failed to answer my Cop Out, I filed a Cop Out to the Warden. I claimed Pitt County's Jail had refused to provide my medical records and this was preventing my proper medical treatment at FCI Petersburg. I included a copy of the February 23, 1998 Court Order to see my own doctor for medical treatment the Bureau of Prisons had failed to provide.

This Cop Out was also ignored beyond the 15-day response time and then my Cop Out was denied with the claim this Court Order did not apply to FCI Petersburg. I filed an appeal to the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which had the jurisdiction over FCI Petersburg.

While my appeal to the Mid-Atlantic Region was being processed FCI Petersburg retaliated by assigning me to work in Food Service without any work restrictions. Food Service is a fancy prison name for working in the dining room and kitchen. I went to see my Housing Unit Manager who had been sympathetic to my medical problems. I had told him about my January 13, 1998 injuries when I had been assigned to his Housing Unit and he had confirmed what I told him about my physical difficulties with my Psychiatrist.

I told him I was not refusing to go to work, but I need to be medically evaluated to establish what I could physically do on this job. He thought that was reasonable concern and he called my Prison Doctor who did not know anything about releasing me to go to work even with work restrictions.

Two days later, I was assigned to a different Prison Doctor who had released me to work in Food Service without examining me or even seeing me. My Housing Unit Manager again intervened and he insisted my new Prison Doctor at least examine me and make sure he was not opening himself up for a lawsuit if I was injured on the job when he did not make sure I was physically capable of working in Food Service without work restrictions.

A week later, I was seen by a different Prison Doctor who did not examine me either yet she claimed there was nothing wrong with me and she was assigning me to work in Food Service without any work restrictions. Rather than protest being assigned to work in Food Service, I wanted a witness to hear what the Doctor was doing. This caught the elderly Doctor Shaw, from India by surprise and before she could protest, I opened the door and asked the Physician's Assistant who was taking the next Inmate's blood pressure to come into the doctor's office. "I want you to be a witness as Doctor Shaw has released me to work in Food Service without examining me to establish my physical limitations." I told him.

"I am not part of any of this." He protested as he started to back out of the doctor's office.

"You are now and I will call you as a witness when I sue Doctor Shaw. You can be a witness or I will include you as a defendant." I told him.

Fortunately, I could not have asked for a better witness. This Physician's Assistant had been the one who had taken my Blood Pressure after I was released from the Suicide Watch Ward.

He had also worked with my first FCI Petersburg Prison Doctor. He was the Physician's Assistant who processed the Inmates medical prescription orders from the Psychiatric Department. If anyone knew, what the Medical Facilities at FCI Petersburg were trying to do to cover up Pitt and Wilson County Jails mistakes, he would and he wisely told me to step out of Doctor Shaw's Office before he closed the door.

Instead of going to work in Food Service, I was scheduled for X-rays that afternoon. When I had problems climbing up on the X-Ray Machine's table I was given my x-rays standing up but no x-rays were taken of my neck. Two days later I was assigned to work in Food Service with the work limitations of "Part time work four hours a day, sedentary work only, with no standing, walking or lifting over 5 pounds." However, when I was denied the results of these x-rays I sent a "Cop out" to see the x-rays and receive a copy of the medical findings, as it was my right to know what medical evidence these x-rays had found.

I went to work in Food Service rolling silverware in napkins from I pm to 5 o'clock every day for 10 cents an hour. At 5 o'clock I was released from Food Service to the evening Pill Line for my medications. My biggest problem on this job was the pain in my aching feet, as I had to keep my shoes on.

My Psychiatrist who was also a medical doctor had been denied the results of these x-rays and she took me to the Medical Facilities to get them. She was not buying the claim these x-rays had been misfiled and she said if they could not find them, they needed to retake the x-rays.

I was taken to the Veteran's Hospital in Richmond for MRI scans of my back. When I was not sent back to the Veterans Hospital to see one of their Doctors to discuss the results of these MRIs, Doctor Shaw refused to discuss the objective medical findings of these MRIs with me.

When my Cop Out requests for a copy of the results of the MRI were denied to me and even my Psychiatrist could not get them, I filed a follow up complaint with the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. However my efforts to receive the medical results I was entitled to have, brought further retaliations.

Now that I was making money in prison, FCI Petersburg wanted me to pay 25 dollars a Quarter to the Court on my $5,000 dollar fine the Court had imposed on me at my Sentencing Hearing. By making 40 cents a day for 90 days this payment would take more than 69% of my prison income. Carol had been sending me 50 dollars a month until she went into the mental hospital. Since then my brother Dick was sending me the 50 dollars a month.

However, my 62 dollar a month "income" was still short of the 70 dollar a month minimum "income" level the BOP had established by regulation before I would be required to pay anything on my fine. It did not matter what the BOP's Regulations were as I was told if I did not agree to pay this 25 dollars a Quarter on my Court Fine I would be put on "refusal status" and I would only receive an inmate maintenance pay of 5 dollars a month. In addition, I was threatened with having restrictions placed on my Commissary purchases to just buying postage stamps and personal hygiene products and I could be denied access to the Inmate phone system. For a loss of 25 dollars a Quarter and the removal of the threat to being cut off from making phone calls it was wiser to let the court extract its pound of flesh.

I tried to read case law on being deliberately denied my prescribed medications and medical care, along with the deliberate violation of the Court Ordered examination and treatment by my own doctor. The more I tried to read case law the more confused and frustrated I became. My mind was not working as it did in the past. Nothing was making any sense to me, as I could not concentrate on what I was reading.

Within the Prison system, there are a great number of want-a-be "jail house lawyers" who for the payment of several cartons of cigarettes or enough books of postage stamps, would write your official lawsuit against the government or against any officials in the Bureau of Prisons regardless of the legitimate nature of your complaint.

Since I did not have any money a clerk in the Law Library gave me an outline on how to file a Bivens Lawsuit against the US Marshalls who had violated the Court's Order and those who had denied my prescribed medications at Pitt and Wilson County jails. Bivens vs. Six Unknown Federal Narcotic Agents in 403 US 388 (1978) had become the precedent for inmates to file a Title 42 USC Section 1983 lawsuit in Federal Court.

The bases for this type of lawsuit was the claim of "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" as a violation of an inmate's Constitutional rights under the 8th Amendment. My initial filing of this lawsuit, Case Number 5:98-cv-667-BR I claimed that the Pitt County Defendants of Ms. Atkins, Ms. Bollot and Doctor Mark Cervi and the Wilson County's Defendants of Sergeant Bailey and Pitt County Nurse Carmack had denied my prescribed medications and circumvented the Court Ordered treatment caused me to suffer "cruel and unusual punishment." I filed "Freedom of Information" requests for the production of related documents of my Bivens Lawsuit from the US Marshalls, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Sheriff's of Pitt and Wilson County Jails and the County Commissioners of Pitt and Wilson County.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons failed to provide any response and the response from the US Marshall's was next to useless, as just about everything on the documents had been blacked out. However a week later in an unmarked envelope I received a copy of Prosecutor AUSA Swaim's Memo for Record he sent to the US Marshall on February 23, 1998 warning them of the liability they might be facing as a result of a Deputy US Marshall shoving me down in a Van.

Whoever sent this, had blacked out the names on the first page of this Memo for Record but the names on the second page were not blacked out. Based upon this newly discovered evidence, I supplemented my lawsuit to include the US Marshall Berryhill and the Chief Deputy US Marshall Larry Jones who received AUSA Swaim's Memo and took action to move me to the Wilson County Jail in their efforts to circumvent the Court Order. I also added Deputy US Marshall Dove who had shoved me down in the Van and AUSA Swaim who had acted outside of his normal duties as a Prosecutor and as an Officer of the Court to interfere with my Court Ordered medical treatment.

I filed my Motions for Discovery from the Defendants and as the Defendants responded from the Pitt and Wilson County jails, I had the names of the other Jail Officials and the Medical Staff who had been involved in the denial of my prescribed medications. I supplemented my lawsuit and added the Wilson County Jail's Nurse Dewald, Officers Barns and Adams and both Pitt and Wilson Counties as additional Defendants.

Before US District Court Judge Boyle who was assigned to my Lawsuit realized it, I had all the documented evidence to prove my claims of "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" in my lawsuit and I was asking for a Court date.

The US District Court for the Eastern District Court of North Carolina, Western Division did what it always did when an inmate filed a damaging Lawsuit in their District Court. The District Court Judge would stone wall any response to an inmate's filing and delayed any timely action on the inmate's complaint. By using this tactic the Judge was circumventing the law that protected the rights of an Inmate to be heard in court.

As proof of this US District Court's normal delaying tactics, I reference the immediate Appeal filed on May 27, 1997 by Rob Smallenberg was delay for over a year now. What I did not know then was this was just the tip of the iceberg of the criminal acts committed by this US District Court.

Judge Howard was willing to commit a fraud on the court rather than allow an inmate to prevail in an appeal, which would overturn his conviction. The proof Judge Howard never had any intentions to hear this appeal is the May 27, 1997 immediate Appeal is not listed on the Trial Court's Docket Sheet. This US District Court and Judge Howard was willing to commit another fraud on the court when it also failed to list the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing on the Trial Court's Docket Sheet. This was done to prevent my Direct Appeal Counsel from knowing this Pretrial Hearing took place and to eliminate the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals review of my Constitutional 6th Amendment claims that I had been denied legal counsel during all stages of my trial.

My appeal to the Mid-Atlantic Region of the BOP to obtain the Pitt County Jail's medical records and be treated for my January 13, 1998 injuries, did not produce any records as those records would establish my complaints in the lawsuit. However, FCI Petersburg was required to send me back to the Veteran's Hospital for a complete set of new MRIs. A week later, I was taken back to the Veterans Hospital to be seen by a Doctor, who was also a Neurologist at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia.

We discussed the problems I was having after I was shoved down in the Van. I had problems walking, my legs giving out under me, the pain and muscle cramps I had in my legs and feet and the difficulties I had falling asleep because of the pains throughout my body. The Doctor went over the objective findings in my MRI's with me and once he knew I could read the MRI's from my experience in working with injured workers, he pointed out the damage areas in my neck and my old fractured vertebrae at T-12 from my airplane crash.

After I described what I experienced when I hid the back of the seat while handcuffed and black boxed he believed that a part of this damaged vertebrae had broken lose and it was pressing a 1/2 inch into my spinal cord. He also believed I had suffered a whiplash, which produce the damage to my neck.

The Doctor was recommending immediate traction on my neck before he would consider a surgical intervention. However, since the detached bone fragment had already fused itself back to my vertebrae he would not be recommending surgery, unless I became paralyzed as surgery in that area of the spine could be difficult and it could cause more damage than it could correct. The Doctor ordered several medications to help relieve my pain, which should also help me sleep with the pain at night. Since I knew as a Veteran I was entitled to any medical records the Veterans Hospital had, I asked if I could have a copy of his report sent to my brother.

Just knowing I had real medical problems, which was causing all my pain was a relief, as now I knew I was not imagining these problems and I was not crazy. My Psychiatrist was pleased to hear the results of these new MRIs, the Doctor's findings and his course of treatment.

Unfortunately, because of my pending lawsuit these objective medical findings had to be suppressed. They would prove my case and expose the Defendants who thought they had avoided the consequences of their illegal actions when they had moved me to the Wilson County Jail without any medical records.

FCI Petersburg would not do anything to correct these medical problems or even follow the course of treatment their own Doctor had ordered. I was not given traction for my neck, I was denied the medications and I was denied a copy of the Doctor's medical report as if I had never had these new MRIs and if I had never been seen by this doctor.

FCI Petersburg had no way of knowing I already had a copy of the Doctor's report where he had discussed his findings in depth with me and he had told me the course of treatment he was ordering. My Psychiatrist had also called the Doctor after my appointment with him and she had called my brother Dick when FCI Petersburg refused to provide the medically ordered traction. Dick was willing to rent or buy the equipment so I could receive the traction ordered by the doctor.

Between the intervention of my Psychiatrist and one pissed off brother who had political connections in Washington, I was immediately transferred to the Federal Medical Center at Lexington Kentucky. Knowing what happened to my medical records the last time I was transferred I sent copies of my medical records to my sister in Wisconsin. I called her to send copies of my medical records to me at Lexington Kentucky. I also reduced the size of the copy of my current medical prescriptions to a 3 by 5 inch piece of paper I could carry with me in my prison jump suit pocket. However, I was not sure I would be allowed to keep this copy of my prescriptions after I was strip-searched.

My brother knew my medical conditions from his conversation with my Psychiatrist and the Medical Reports from the Veterans Hospital. His offer to charter a medical flight to fly me to Lexington Kentucky was turned down by FCI Petersburg.

Instead, FCI Petersburg put me on a BOP bus without any medications to FCI Atlanta. I stayed there five days and I received my medications before I was flown on the BOP's Con-Air Prisoner's airplane to Oklahoma City where I stay two days without any of my medications before I was put on another BOP bus to Lexington Kentucky.

As expected when I arrived at the Federal Medical Center at Lexington, they did not have any of my medical records or my current medical prescriptions. Fortunately, the Medical screening individual who took my skyrocketing Blood Pressure accepted my 3 by 5 copy of my medications and issued them to me.

I told him I would have a copy of all my medical records as my sister had mailed them to me here at Lexington and my brother would be sending copies of the Doctor's reports from the Veteran's Hospital in Richmond along with his medical orders. By telling him this I was putting the Federal Medical Center at Lexington on notice if they planned to put off my medical treatment as part of the BOP's efforts to protect the US Marshalls, AUSA Swaim and the officials at the Pitt and Wilson County Jails, it would not work.

Within a day, after I arrived at Lexington I had the medical records from my sister and I made copies before I turned them over to the Medical Department. Within a week, Dick sent me a copy of the Veterans Doctor's report with his ordered course of treatment and again I made a copy before I turned over the Doctor's report to the Lexington Medical Department.

I was given new MRIs before the traction on my neck was started and I would receive two hours of traction a day five days a week. Within a month, the pain in my neck had lessened and my ability to taste started to return. In the past, a half of a pack of Sweet & Low was enough to sweeten my coffee but now it took four packs for me to taste it. However, the numbness in my face, arms and hands remained and my hearing had not improved.

The traction had not reduced the pain throughout my body when I tried to fall asleep at night or my problems walking as I continued to fall down when I least expected it. I had fallen down enough times I had learned to "tuck and roll" my body as a parachutist does, when he hits the ground but I was not always that lucky to react in time.

When I did a swan dive in the middle of the main hallway, I split the skin on my forehead and broke my glasses. As a result, of this fall I was given a wheelchair. With the resumption of my psychiatric medications, I was seen by a FMC Lexington's Psychiatrist twice a week.

# 9. JUST AS A LEOPARD CANNOT CHANGE ITS SPOTS

Before I left FCI Petersburg, I had sent all the Defendants in my Lawsuit and the US District Court a change of address as required by law. It was three months before I received the Court's Order granting the Defendants Motion for Summary Judgment to dismiss my lawsuit. The Court's dismissal was based on the claim I had 'not suffered a serious injury' and I had no choice but to immediately file a notice of appeal of the US District Court's decision.

When the concerted efforts to conceal the injuries I sustained on January 13, 1998 were exposed by the MRIs taken at the Veterans Hospital in Richmond and the Doctor's report, the North Carolina Court and the defendants knew I could win my lawsuit. The additional fact I was sent to the Federal Medical Center at Lexington for treatment further supported my injury claims against the Defendants as I did not have these problems before January 13, 1998.

What the Defendants had done after they received my notice of change of address, was to file their Motions for Summary Judgment and deliberately send them to FCI Petersburg knowing that FCI Petersburg would not forward any of my mail to FMC Lexington Kentucky. It did not matter that these Motions were sent in the US MAIL that is required to be forwarded for a year as FCI Petersburg had their own interests to protect. When I failed to respond to the Court with my arguments against granting the Defendant's Motions for Summary Judgment, US District Court Judge Boyle used the Court's Local Rules to grant the Defendants Motions to dismiss my lawsuit. However, if you just looked at the case file it would appear to be in order and a fair judgment had been reached, as I had not challenged the defendants' claims.

In order to Appeal the US District Courts Order I needed copies of the Defendants Motions for Summary Judgment to know what the Defendants had claimed. When I could not get copies of these Motions for Summary Judgment from the US District Court, I filed a motion for the extension of time to file my 4th Circuit Court Appeal until I had these Motions and I outlined what the Court had allowed the Defendants to do. There was no proof I was served the Defendants Motion for Summary Judgment after I had sent the Defendants and the Court my change of address.

Someone at the 4th Circuit Court must have checked the filing dates of these Motions for Summary Judgment. When it was established these Motions were filed after the date I had filed my change of address and I had already left FCI Petersburg I received the copies of the Defendants Motions for Summary Judgment and copies of all the Court's Orders issued in my case.

The most glaring error in their Motions for a Summary judgment was the Defendants claim "of the lack of a serious nature of my injuries" was not established by any medical authority or by any medical findings. The fact the x-rays taken at the Pitt County Jail and the MRIs taken at the Greenville Hospital were not used to support the Defendant's claim, now established why I had been denied this evidence.

I used the evidence I obtained in Discovery to establish Doctor Mark Civic at the Pitt County jail did not withdraw his prescribed medications and the withholding of those prescribed medications 58 times at the Pitt County Jail would create the "Cruel and Unusual Punishment" claimed in my lawsuit. I established my transfer to the Wilson County Jail without my medical records and prescribed medications violated the Pitt County Jail's written Rules and Procedures.

Pitt County Jail's failure to send my medical records and the list of my prescribed medications to FCI Petersburg after I had signed the medical release forms compounded their "deliberate indifference" to my established medical needs.

Wilson County Jail's failure to obtain my medical records and prescribed medications from the Pitt County Jail became their "deliberate indifference" to the suffering I had experienced while I was there. The response from Wilson County to my Freedom of Information request contained the Wilson County Jail's reports of my efforts to receive my prescribed medications and these jail's reports established I had not received any of my prescribed medications.

Judge Boyle had denied my Amended Complaint to include the US Marshall Berryhill, his Chief Deputy US Marshal, Deputy US Marshal Dove and AUSA Swaim as defendants. This was done after I had filed my change of address and during the time, the Court had continued to send my legal mail to FCI Petersburg.

My Brother Dick understood my need to have medical evidence to support my Appeal and he made arrangements with Doctor Kiefer, a Neurologist in Lexington Kentucky to provide an independent medical evaluation of my injuries. However, the Federal Medical Center at Lexington refused to allow this doctor to examine me either at the Federal Medical Center or in his office. My Cop Out requests for copies of the actual scans of the MRIs taken at Lexington went unanswered. They knew Doctor Kiefer could use these MRIs to establish his Independent Medical Evaluation and his opinion would support my lawsuit.

In my Appeal to the 4th Circuit Court, I challenged US District Court Judge Boyle's denial of my Supplemented Petition to include the Defendants indentified in my Legal Discovery and in the Freedom of Information Act responses. I challenged Judge Boyle granting of the Defendant's Motion for Summary judgment without any medical evidence or medical authority to support the Defendants claim that I did not have a serious injury.

The Defendants claim should have been a nonissue as once the Pitt County Jail's Doctor Mark Cervi proscribed a course of treatment with medications. The proof of the Defendants "cruel and unusual punishment" was established when Doctor Cervi's proscribed medical treatment was not followed.

I provided a copy of the Veterans Doctor's report that documented my serious injuries. I used copies of my medical records since I arrived at the Federal Medical Center at Lexington Kentucky to establish the treatment I was now receiving for my significant injuries.

I claimed the Defendants had medical evidence of my injuries but they deliberately chose not to acknowledge it. I referenced the X-Rays taken on January 15, 1998 at the Pitt County Jail and the MRI's taken at the Greenville Hospital on February 26, 1998, which the Pitt County Jail had refused to provide to the Medical Department at FCI Petersburg. I included a copy of my signed Medical Release Forms authorizing the Pitt and Wilson County Jails to provide all medical records, prescriptions, x-rays and the MRI's taken at the Greenville Hospital.

I further claimed the lack of "due process" when the Court and the Defendants failed to provide proper notification of their pending legal actions when I had timely filed a change of address. Due to this lack of proper legal notification, I claimed the Court ruled on the Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment knowing I could not file my response to the defendant's motions. I pointed out the first indication I had of the Defendant's Motion of Summary Judgment was when I received the US District Court's Judgment Order dismissing my lawsuit three months after I arrived at FMC Lexington. Even with all this documented evidence the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rubberstamped the US District Court's decision granting the Defendants Motion for Summary Judgment and all my further attempts to appeal the 4th Circuit Court's decision were denied.

When I tried to understand what I had failed to do to present the documented evidence of my injuries and how the 4th Circuit Court could support the District Courts' dismissal of my lawsuit knowing I had not been served any legal notification I had suffered a setback in my mental recovery.

_Looking back at it now, I realize that I was just going through the motions of trying to survive in prison. I had tried unsuccessfully not to think about what Judge Boyle of the Eastern District of North Carolina had done_. _He had used his position as a Federal Court Judge to illegally protect the local communities of Pitt and Wilson Counties from a major liability lawsuit_

# 10. THE FARCE OF MY DIRECT APPEAL

For over two years, my Court Appointed Direct Appeal Counsel Mr H. Gerald Beaver who was a prominent defense attorney in Fayetteville North Carolina was unable to obtain a copy of my criminal trials transcripts from the Clerk of the US District Court Eastern District of North Carolina Western Division. Motions filed in the Court were delayed for months and when they were finally heard, the Court issued sanctions against the Court Reporter. However, Judge Howard never enforced the sanctions. Additional motions were filed with the same results. Finally, when a motion to dismiss the case for a lack of transcript was filed the Court Reporter provided some of the transcripts but he delayed providing all of them. Mr H. Gerald Beaver had to file another Motion before the Court would compel Mr Mckenize, the Court Reporter to produce the transcripts.

I received a letter from an attorney Richard Glazier who worked in Mr Beaver's law firm telling me he had enough of my transcripts to file my Direct Appeal. Although I had sent Mr Beaver an outline of the issues I thought were important in my appeal I did not feel comfortable with the idea we did not have all the trial transcripts when this new attorney was about to file my Direct Appeal.

I sent a letter back to Mr Glazier asking him if he was now my Court Appointed Direct Appeal counsel. I again stated how being forced to defend myself in the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing when the Judge denied me the use of my retained counsel violated my Constitutional rights and this was the primary appeal issue. I referenced Rob Smallenberg's May 27, 1997 immediate appeal on this Constitutional violation that had not been heard yet.

As proof of my conflict of interests and irreconcilable differences with the court directed defense counsel, Mr Riley I referenced the written Motion of Reconsideration filed in Court on May 14, 1997 by Charles Ayers and Rob Smallenberg and the Hearing that took place before my trial began.

I wanted him to call Locke Clifford who had filed the Rule 29 Motion on July 15, 1997 with Randolph Riley's sworn affidavit admitting his ineffective assistance of counsel. I wanted him to explain how the court could refuse to hold a hearing before it denied this Rule 29 Motion when AUSA Swaim had Riley provided a contradicting affidavit. However, he did not respond to my letter. When I received his letter telling me he had filed my Direct Appeal with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, he had failed to send me a copy of the Appeal he had filed.

I called Mr Beaver's Office and asked him what was going on. I wanted to know how he could send in my Direct Appeal without talking to me or sending me a copy before it was filed. Mr Beaver danced around the issue and claimed it must have been an error made by one of the secretary's. I asked for a copy of my Direct Appeal but I never received it.

When I received a copy of the Government's response to my Direct Appeal filed by AUSA Anne Hayes I found she had claimed the Motion of Reconsideration filed by Charles Ayers and Rob Smallenberg had been a motion to "substitute counsel one day after my trial began." AUSA Hayes therefore concluded the Court had rightly denied the untimely motion. I could not believe this and I immediately called Mr Glazier and asked him to explain how AUSA Hayes could make such a claim. When Mr Glazier tried to put me off, I told him to re-read the letter I had sent to Mr Beaver and the one I sent to him outlining the key issues that should be contained in my Direct Appeal. When Mr Glazier agreed to review the file, I told him he needed to supplement the Direct Appeal before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed the case.

Mr Glazier sent me a letter dated May 20, 2000 claiming there was no reference to the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing listed in the trial court's Docket Sheet and he included a copy of the Docket Sheet.

Mr Glazier was right and I just thought this had been a clerical error. However when I noticed the immediate appeal filed by Rob Smallenberg on May 27, 1997 was also missing from the Trial Court's Docket Sheet I realized both these omissions could not be a simple clerical error. It would take years before I realized these omissions were part of a continuing conspiracy by the Officers of the Trial Court to defraud the United States of its rightful function and their acts were a fraud on the court.

I called Mr Glazier and I gave him a list of six witnesses who were present in the courtroom when this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing took place. I asked him to call them to confirm what I told him and then file a Supplement to my Direct Appeal. His response was I could appeal this in my Section 2255 Appeal to the US District Court and then he hung up the phone.

Their Law Firm refused to accept any of my phone calls to Mr Beaver and Mr Glazier. All phone calls from inmates must be accepted before the call could be put through. When none of my letters received a reply, I could not understand what I had done to create this lack of communication.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals denied my Direct Appeal on June 19, 2000 with an unpublished opinion.

Mr Glazier's suggestion I could file a Section 2255 Appeal on the issue of the missing Pretrial Hearing was a cruel joke, as I needed the proof that this Pretrial Hearing took place. My efforts to receive a copy of this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript took more than 6 years after my trial. US District Court Judge Malcolm Howard for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Western Division did everything he could to use the Court's Administrative Procedures to confuse the issue and delay his response to prevent me from receiving a copy of this Pretrial Hearing's Transcript. This Pretrial Hearing was finally transcribed on June 10, 2003, after three years of using the Court's own Federal Rules of Civil Procedures to get it.

What Judge Howard did first was to denied my August 21, 2000 request for a copy of this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript claiming the court was not obligated to provide me with a "free" transcript.

This was pure bullshit as Judge Howard had issued an irrelevant response to an issue he had created and used to support his ruling based on the selective use of the Court's Administrative Procedures to avoid exposing his criminal fraud on the court. The irrelevance of Judge Howard's ruling was my Direct Appeal Counsel had the right under the law to receive this transcript and all of the other transcripts from the Court before he filed my Direct Appeal.

The claim I was not entitled to a "free" transcript was equally irrelevant. When the court declared I was indigent and appointed my Direct Appeal Counsel we were entitled to receive all of the trial transcripts without charge. My financial situation had not changed and therefore I could file all my petitions "in forma paupers" which also meant I was still too poor to be required to pay for this missing transcript.

In my Motion of Reconsideration of Judge Howard's denial, I offered to pay to get this transcript, to overcome his reason to deny me the transcript.

In spite of my offer to pay for this transcript Judge Howard would sit on my Motion for Reconsideration for almost a year and then he would deny it on August 26, 2002. This delay put any Section 2255 Appeal over the one-year time period to file this appeal. With or without this transcript the time clock to file my Section 2255 Appeal within a year had started to run on June 19, 2000 when the Circuit Court denied my Direct Appeal

While I waited for a copy of this transcript, I created an alternative to having this transcript by filing a FRCP Rule 10 c Motion when a transcript is not available or missing. Rule 10 c required me to send a sworn statement of the content of the missing transcript to the Prosecutor and the Clerk of Court giving them the opportunity to add their own recollections of the content of the missing transcript.

When the Prosecutor AUSA Swaim and the Clerk of Court Mr David W. Daniel did not respond and after 90 days, I sent another copy of this FRCP Rule 10 c Motion this time by Certified Letter Return Requested to the Clerk of the US District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina and to the Prosecutor AUSA Swaim.

60 days after I received the receipts of these Certified Letters and I did not received their required responses I filed a Habeas Corpus Section 2241 Petition, Case Number 5:01-00021 in the US District Court in Lexington Kentucky. In this Appeal I claimed I had been denied the evidence to support and make any meaningful Appeal of my conviction by the wrongful withholding of the Transcript for the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing.

I included a copy of the written Brief filed for this Pretrial Hearing. The Brief claimed the Trial Court had saddled me with a discharged counsel during a Rule 44 c Hearing without making any inquiry as to the conflicts of interests and irreconcilable differences I had with Mr Riley when I timely discharged him. I claimed the missing Pretrial Hearing's transcript would show the trial court denied me the use of my retained counsel and forced me to defend myself in violation of my 6th Amendment Rights to have counsel during all stages of my criminal Trial.

I was asking the US District Court in Lexington Kentucky to help me obtain a copy of the missing May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's Transcript from my trial court and then rule on the evidence of the Constitutional Violations contained in this transcript. I included a copy of my first and second FRCP Rule 10 c Motions to create this missing transcript. I also sent three affidavits from witnesses who were at the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing to establish this Pretrial Hearing took place.

The Lexington Kentucky District Court denied my Habeas Corpus Appeal claiming under the Court's Administrative Procedures that it did not have the jurisdiction to require my Trial Court to produce this missing transcript. The Lexington Court completely disregarded the primary issue of my Appeal that I had been denied this transcript, which prevented a fair hearing on my Direct Appeal and I could not make a successful Section 2255 Appeal without a copy of this transcript. The court also disregarded my sworn affidavit under FRCP Rule 10 c to present the missing Pretrial Hearing transcript.

This US District Court's response did not make sense to me, as this was a classic _Catch 22._ If I could not receive this missing transcript from the Trial Court who was required under the law to provide it and I could not use the US District Court, who had jurisdiction over me now to obtain this missing transcript; where is the justice we were taught to believe existed in the Courts of the United States of America?

I filed a Motion for Reconsideration, which the Court also denied and the Judge threaten to bring sanctions against me. I appealed the Lexington Kentucky US District Court's decision to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati Ohio on March 13, 2001. I filed the 6th Circuit Court's Transcript Order requesting the May 12, 1997 Rule 44 c Hearing and the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing transcript from the Eastern District of North Carolina Western Division. I mistakenly believed the 6th Circuit Court would help me to obtain these missing transcripts if my North Carolina Trial Court refused to provide them. By January 24, 2002 when the 6th Circuit Court still had not received the Ordered Transcripts I filed another request to the Eastern District of North Carolina Western Division to obtain them.

Dan Frendly was one of the law students from the University of Kentucky's Law School who came to FMC Lexington to assist Inmates file their appeals. He agreed to help me after he heard my problems in obtaining the missing May 14, 1997 Pretrial Transcript to support my appeal in the 6th Circuit Court.

Dan Frendly called David W. Daniel the Clerk of Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina and he agreed to send him a copy of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript. When the transcript did not come, Dan Fendly called again and he was told the transcript had been sent to him.

However, the Clerk David W. Daniel could not tell Dan Fendly what address he used to send it. Dan Fendly's additional efforts to obtain this missing transcript were unsuccessful. The last time I saw Dan Fendly he was about to graduate. He told me if he ever received a copy of this May 14, 1997 Pretrial transcript he would mail it to me.

The 6th Circuit Court denied my Appeal from the US District Court in Lexington Kentucky and I file for an En Banc Hearing. I again requested the 6th Circuit Count's assistance to obtain these missing transcripts to support my Appeal. I also made another request for a copy of these transcripts from the North Carolina US District Court to support my petition for an En Banc Rehearing in the 6th Circuit Court.

The combination of Dan Fendly's efforts and my additional requests to obtain this transcript prompted Judge Malcolm Howard to deny all of my motions on August 26, 2002. Judge Howard claimed. "That the defendant has failed to make a showing of a particularized need, under 28 USC Section 753 (f), and his request is hereby dismissed for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12 (b) (6)."

I could not understand how Judge Howard could deny the 6th Circuit Court's Transcript Order to produce this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's Transcript. I had clearly stated I needed this documented evidence to support my 28 USC Section 2241 Habeas Corpus Appeal in the Lexington US District Court and my Appeal to the 6th Circuit Court.

At the time I blamed myself as a Pro Se Petitioner for my lack of legal knowledge and somehow my failing to legally state this request in the proper manner. Not knowing what else I could do, I filed a motion to the US District Court in North Carolina for Reconsideration of its latest denial to provide the transcript of this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing.

It is hard to put myself back into the same frame of mind I had at that time, as I still believed that "truth" and "justice" in a court of law meant the same thing. I may not have realized I still had a lingering mental cloud over my ability to think clearly, deal with complex issues and resolved problems since the injustice of my conviction had forced me into a mental hospital. The unfairness of the Court to consider Rob Smallenberg's May 27, 1997 Appeal and the way it denied Locke Clifford's July 15, 1997 Rule 29c Motion combined with the illegal actions of Prosecutor AUSA Swaim against Carol Stewart had become further setbacks to my mental recovery.

However, the greatest impediment to my mental recovery had been my January 13, 1998 injury in the VAN. My juries were compounded by the determined efforts of the government to prevent me from receiving the Court ordered medical treatment from my own doctor and to deny me the medical evidence to support the claims I made in my lawsuit.

It had taken me almost 18 months before I was allowed to see the Doctor at the Veterans Hospital in Richmond Virginia and I had seen the objective findings of my injuries in the last MRI's taken by the Veterans Hospital. The Doctor had warned me that my back condition could become worse. Now that I was in a wheelchair, I was preoccupied with not knowing why I had this constant pain in my legs and feet would only allow me to get a few hours of sleep after my body became so exhausted I could not stay awake any longer. The numbness in my arms and hands and the loss of feeling throughout by body could have been caused by my neck injuries but the numbness in my face and the loss of hearing was something I could not understand.

_It would take me another 6 months and hours of legal research in the FMC Lexington's Law Library before I would recognize what was really going on in my attempt to appeal my conviction_. _I had not been in error in my legal right to have this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript and so did my Direct Appeal counsel before he filed my Direct Appeal in the 4th Circuit Court._

In the Army, I had learned a properly filed document such as a Supply Requisition Form could cover the missing trucks your unit was supposed to have during an Inspection. However, that Supply Document was a poor excuse for the Army's failure to provide your trucks in the first place.

Now in the Federal Court Judge Howard's willful 'denial' was just a nicely worded piece of paper as part of his questionable use of the Court's Administrative Procedures. If this piece of paper covered Judge Howard's failure to provide this transcript, it could not cover the smell of his part in the continuing conspiracy to defraud the United States. This had began when Judge Howard directed his Clerk of Court to criminally delete the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing and the May 27, 1997 Appeal filed by Rob Smallenberg from the Trial Court's Docket Sheet to become a fraud on the court.

Unlike the Army's Supply Requisition Form on the missing trucks in my Unit there was no one "inspecting" Judge Howard's denial as being valid. Or if his Court had complied with its legal duty and obligation, to provide a copy of this transcript to me and my Direct Appeal Counsel, in the first place. The 6th Circuit Court's Transcript Order of March 13, 2001 to produce these transcripts to support my 28 USC Section 2241 Habeas Corpus Appeal should have left no doubt of my need for these transcripts and the rightful legal claim to have them.

I now realized it was this clarity in my Motion for the production of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript that left Judge Howard no choice but to protect himself by delaying the ruling on my Motion to produce this transcript for as long as he could before he denied it.

The pretrial Motion of Reconsideration of the May 12, 1997 Rule 44 Hearing had caught Judge Howard and the Prosecutor AUSA Swaim by surprise. They thought by saddling me with the incompetent attorney, Randolph Riley and they would have an easy conviction in the necessary Show Trial to convince the legitimate tobacco farmers that the government had punished the excess tobacco schemers.

Rather than admit they had been caught and grant me the opportunity to hire a new attorney, Judge Howard had created an illegal domino effect after he forced me to defend myself in the May 14th Pretrial Hearing.

The first domino quickly fell when Judge Howard refused to rule on my immediate appeal filed on May 27, 1997 by Rob Smallenberg. Perhaps it was then Judge Howard and AUSA Swaim realized this immediate Appeal could not be perfected or ruled upon by the court, without a copy of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript. If the lack of a trial transcript stalled this Appeal than the lack of a record of this Pretrial Hearing on the Trial Court's Docket Sheet would eliminate all future Appeals.

I cannot say when the Clerk of this US District Court deleted the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing from the Trial Court's Docket Sheet. However, the Clerk of this Court would not have criminally altered this official Federal Record on his own authority. When he also altered the Docket Sheet to give the appearance that the written Motion of Reconsideration filed by Rob Smallenberg on May 14, 1997 was made after the trial began, he removed any doubt of the Officers of the Trial Court's criminal intent to alter the Official Trial Court's Records.

The second domino fell when Locke Clifford was denied the knowledge of the Pretrial Hearing he would have successfully used in the July 15, 1997 Rule 29 c Motion to overturn my conviction. By limiting the 29c Motion to Riley's ineffective counsel Judge Howard eliminated the exposure of his fraud on the court when he denied the Motion without a hearing. This denial of a Hearing was totally unreasonable after AUSA Swaim obtained the second affidavit from Riley, which directly contradicted the affidavit obtained by Locke Clifford.

Three years later the third domino fell when Richard Glazier using the Trial Court's Official Docket Sheet published on June 18,1998, filed my Direct Appeal without the knowledge that this Pretrial Hearing took place.

The Government's Brief filed by AUSA Hayes took advantage of the lack of evidence of this Pretrial Hearing on the Docket Sheet and easily convinced the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals that the Motion of Reconsideration was a motion to "substitute legal counsel one day after the trial began."

The fourth Domino teetered in the wind waiting for Judge Howard's response to the 6th Circuit Court's order to produce the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's Transcript to support my 28 USC Section 2241 Appeal.

Judge Howard knew if he sent the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Transcript my Section 2241 Appeal would overturn my conviction in his Tobacco Show Trial. However of an even greater personal concern was Judge Howard could not allow the 6th Circuit Court to expose his and the other Officers of the Trial Court's conspiracy to defraud the United States of its lawful duties and their continuing fraud on the Court. Judge Howard had waited until the 6th Circuit Court had denied of my En Banc Appeal, before he denied my Motion of Reconsideration to obtain this missing Pretrial Transcript.

Since I still had another Motion of Reconsideration filed in the Trial Court, I filed a FRCP Rule 21 Mandate to produce the Pretrial's transcript. Knowing that both of these Motions would be significantly delayed by Judge Howard, I started to construct my 28 USC Section 2255 appeal to the US District Trial Court in North Carolina. I would claim the absence of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing Transcript and its failure to be listed on the Docket Sheet had unjustly prejudiced Rob Smallenberg's May 27, 1997 appeal, Locke Clifford's Rule 29 c Motion, my Direct Appeal and my ability to provide documented evidence to support a normal 28 USC Section 2255 appeal.

# 11. MEDICAL ANSWERS FROM AN UNEXPECTED PROFESSIONAL SOURCE

It was now 6 years since my trial, more than 4 years since I came to the Federal Medical Center in Lexington Kentucky for medical care and 3 years since my Direct Appeal had been denied. I had received traction for 9 months on my neck. Even with three times the normal weight used in Traction, I did not see any improvements of my problems beyond what I had recovered after the first 3 months of traction.

I knew from working in Vocational Rehabilitation when nerve damage was involved, what nerve function the injured worker was able to recover during the first two years was what he would get back. By the time I received this traction on my neck, it was already over 18 months since I was shoved down in the Van so I was lucky to get this traction and get back any nerve functions lost by this neck injury. What I had no way of knowing was a major cause of the nerve damage throughout my body was not just from the injuries in my neck.

With pure determination, extensive Physical Therapy and specific exercises I worked my way out of the wheelchair, onto crutches, and then to just using a cane. The frequency of falling down had been reduced to once a month and then to just once every few months. The fact I was still unexplainably falling down was completely ignored by my Doctors and the Medical Staff at FMC Lexington.

When I was assigned a new treating physician, he ordered new MRIs and then sent me to be examined by Doctor Blazer who was the Chief of Nero-surgery at the University of Kentucky's Medical Center in Lexington Kentucky.

During my initial examination when Doctor Blazer found I did not, have a "gag response" she wanted to know when I had my head injury. When I told her I did not have a head injury and told her about being shoved down in a Van by a US Marshal on January 13, 1998, she wanted FMC Lexington to send the original MRI scans taken when I first arrived at Lexington in 1999 and the recent MRIs so she could compare them.

Three times, I was sent to see Doctor Blazer and each time the MRIs that were to be sent with me had not been sent. On the third time Doctor Blazer ordered the University Medical Center to give me, a Nerve Conduction study and a Brain Scan that involved electrodes attached to my head and the wearing of earphones in which sound waves were sent into my brain.

A Nerve Conduction Study involves sticking needles attached to wires along the normal neural paths in the body. A small electrical charge is sent between the needles to record the speed and the loss of the amount of the electrical charge send through the tested nerve. During the Nerve Conduction Study that took more than two hours, I fell asleep as I never felt the needles put into any part of my body.

When these tests were concluded Doctor Blazer told me I had significant nerve damage throughout my body with a disruption of 25 to 75% of the normal nerve function of my nerve transmissions. She believed part of this nerve disruption, my loss of hearing, my lack of a "gag response" and numbness in my face, arms and hands was the result of cranial nerve damage compounded by the injuries to my neck and spine.

Since I did not have these cranial nerve problems after my 1971 Airplane crash and I did not have any other head injuries she concluded, I had suffered this cranial nerve damage at the same time of my injuries to my neck and spine on January 13, 1998.

However until Doctor Blazer was able to examine the missing MRIs she had no way of establishing what effect the other injuries to my neck and spine contributed to the loss of nerve conduction throughout my body. Doctor Blazer explained how injuries to any part of the spine and especially in the neck, can affect any part of the body below the injury with numbness, pain and muscle spasms on one or both sides of the body. Unfortunately, with the passage of so much time since these injuries took place she could not offer any corrective medical intervention and I would have to learn to live with it.

I suggested if Doctor Blazer could not get the MRIs from FMC Lexington, she could contact the Doctor who worked at the Virginia Commonwealth Medical Center and at the Veterans Hospital in Richmond Virginia. I explained he would have the MRIs that were taken before I came to the Federal Medical Center in Lexington Kentucky. I do not know if Doctor Blazer received my MRIs from FMC Lexington or from the Veterans Doctor, as I was unable to obtain a copy of Doctor Blazer's reports.

FMC Lexington acted if I had never been examined by Dr Blazer and I was not allowed to see her again. This prevented me from personally thanking her for her professionalism and the medical answers she gave me. Knowing what injuries I actually had, also helped to improve my mental health and my ability to start thinking clearly again.

By this time, I had accumulated enough "good time" that my inmate security level would allow me to be transferred to a Federal Prison Camp. I put in a "Cop Out" to be transferred to the Federal Prison Camp in Oxford Wisconsin. I claimed this Prison Camp was close to where most of my relatives and family members lived in Wisconsin.

My request was reviewed but instead of going to Wisconsin, I was to be transferred to the Federal Prison Camp at Petersburg Virginia the end of June 2003.

Had I been transferred to Oxford Wisconsin I could have been allowed to go to my mother's funeral. However, the costs for a Prison Guard to go with me, our airfare and our Motel rooms was so far beyond reason that I could not ask my brothers and sisters to pay it. Even if my family were willing to pay these expenses, FMC Lexington would still need to agree to let me go, which they were not willing to do.

The last time I saw my mother, my sister Sue Ann and her husband John had brought her to see me at FMC Lexington Kentucky two years ago. Every Sunday night I would call her and we would talk about things that happened while I was going up. She would also tell me never to give up.

# 12. RETAKING THE LEGAL OFFENSIVE

On February 28, 2003, Judge Howard had denied my Motion of Reconsideration to obtain these transcripts six months after I had filed it. However, I did not receive a copy of Judge Howard's denial until April 10, 2003. No knowing that Judge Howard had denied my last motion I had continued to bombard the US District Court in the Eastern District of North Carolina Western Division with repeated Motions to obtain this May 14, 1997 Pretrial transcript. Just because Judge Howard had denied my previous Motions of Reconsideration and my Mandate to produce this transcript, did not stop me from re-filing additional Motions.

I had taken the Law Clerk's Course offered at FMC Lexington by the Inmate Education Department and this helped me understand how to use the Law Books in the Law Library to do legal research on my planned 28 USC Section 2255 Appeal. Although my Section 2255 Appeal was within the number of pages allowed in this Appeal the attachments and documents supporting this appeal was 162 pages. Within 10 days after filing this Appeal in the North Carolina US District Court I received a letter from the Clerk of Court stating if I agreed to pay the estimated cost of $65 dollars to transcribe this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Transcript, I could have it.

$65 dollars is not a lot of money in the real world unless this $65 Dollars represented more than your total monthly income. I called my friend Darrell Frericks who was on the Civil War Cannon team and he agreed to send the $65 dollar Postal Money Order to the US District Court's Clerk.

On June 10, 2003 the six-pages of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's Transcript was transcribed by Stefanie Wolf. On June 13, 2003, I received this transcript and a refund check. The presence of this check immediately raised my greatest fears. The May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing had lasted over 30 minutes and this transcript only contained the last ten minutes of it.

All of Judge Howard's discussions and his decision to deny my use of my retained counsel, Rob Smallenberg to present this Motion where missing. All of my objections that I was not capable of presenting the issues contained in the Motions of Reconsideration were also missing. Perhaps the most significant thing missing in the transcript was Judge Howard's threat, "If you don't present them, no one else will."

This sanitized version of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing was nothing new from Judge Howard's Court. The sanitized transcript of the May 12,1997 Rule 44 Hearing, did not contain any of my objections to Judge Howard's appointing Randolph Riley and Judge Howard threatening me with contempt of court if I said one more word in his courtroom.

The first good thing about the production of this May 14, 1997 Transcript was it established this was a "Pretrial Hearing" and it was not a "Motion to 'substitute counsel, one day after the trial began," as claimed by AUSA Hayes in the Government's Brief filed in response to my Direct Appeal.

The June 10, 2003 transcription date, of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing clearly established that my Direct Appeal Counsel could not have had a complete trial record to make my Direct Appeal. It also meant the withholding of this May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript circumvented the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal's ability to make a "Fair Appellate Review" of the claims made in my Direct Appeal.

The only other good thing this transcript established was "no attorney spoke during this Pretrial Hearing" which proved I was forced to defend myself in violation of my 6th Amendment Constitutional Rights to have counsel during all stages of my trial.

When a Trial Court violates a defendant's fundamental 6th Amendment Constitutional Right to legal counsel, it loses its jurisdiction to proceed with the trial. Although I had already made this claim in my 28 USC Section 2255 Appeal to the North Carolina US District Court, I now had the documented evidence to support my claim made in that Appeal.

The next day I wrote the Supplement to my 2255 Appeal and attached a copy of the recently transcribed May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing. I had just put this Supplement in my Housing Unit's mailbox when I was notified I would be transferred to the Petersburg Federal Prison Camp the next day.

By now, I knew nothing happens in the Federal Prison system by accident but like all large federal bureaucracies, their ability to act quickly may not have been fast enough. I had the feeling that Judge Howard may not have known his new Clerk of Court had authorized the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing to be transcribed and sent to me. The odds of winning the Powerball Lottery were better than the coincidence of being moved within 5 days after the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing was transcribed and sent to me.

To complicate matters, I was told all my personal property had to be shipped and the Inmate Shipping Department was closed for the day. I had the feeling this was designed to force me to leave all my legal records, behind. Then after I departed FMC Lexington, all my personal property and my legal records would be lost in shipment to remove all the evidence of the Trial Court's actions to prevent me from obtaining this missing Pretrial's transcript.

Fortunately, I kept all my Legal Work in the boxes that the copy-machine's paper had come in and my Housing Unit Officer allowed me to use his Scotch Tape to seal them after he inventoried each box and attached the Inmate's Property Shipping Form. He told me not to worry about my property, as he would personally make sure it was shipped to me at FCI Petersburg.

All the rest of my Inmate property I gave away to those inmates I thought would really need it. The last thing I did before I went to bed was to mail a change of address to the North Carolina US District Court. I included a second copy which I asked to be date stamped as "filed" and returned to me in the enclosed self addressed stamped envelope using FCI Petersburg as my return address.

I had learned that mail sent to the Courts was usually opened by a low level Deputy Clerk in the Clerk of Court's office and when I provided a stamped envelope the clerk would not need to ask anyone before date stamping the document and then put my copy in the outgoing mail. With my date stamped copy of my change of address, the court could not claim it never received it.

The next morning when I processed out of FMC Lexington, I was given my medications. I was transported without handcuffs in a Prison Van all the way to FCI Atlanta Georgia by two Prison Guards. The fact the BOP would spend this type of money to transfer me, confirmed my belief this was no ordinary inmate transfer. The only other possible reason for this "rushed transfer" could be Doctor Blazer had done something unusual to get my MRI's and FMC Lexington did not want to follow her medical treatment plan.

When I arrived at FCI Atlanta, my inmate uniform was taken from me and I was issued an orange inmate jump suit. Then I was put in a normal Inmate Transfer Cell. I stayed there for two weeks before I was handcuffed and put on a Prison bus to FCI Petersburg Virginia. This 2-week delay in FCI Atlanta further established this was not a normal transfer.

# 13. WELCOME BACK TO "SWEETERSBURG"

I spent three days in the new Medium Security Prison facility that had been built here at Petersburg since I left there in 1999. Nothing could confirm the overcrowding in the Federal Prison system more than the three bunks stacked in the same space as the normal two inmate bunks in a BOP's prison cell. I was given a middle bunk as I could not climb up to the top bunk or crawl into the bottom bunk that was just two inches from the floor. The noise level throughout the entire building was horrendous even for someone like me who was hard of hearing. There were more than three fights a day in my Cell Block, which required the Prison Guards to intervene and send the offending parties to the "Hole." The number of other fights that ended quickly was too many to count.

What fascinated me the most was watching contraband being delivered to the inmates who had the means to pay for it. Contraband is anything the inmates are not authorized to have and Cigarettes, postage stamps, and cans of Mackerel were the inmate's medium of financial exchange. I could understand the value of cigarettes and postage stamps as they had been the standard items of inmate barter since I came into the Federal Prison system.

I was told the cans of Mackerel were in high demand by the inmates who were involved in bodybuilding as this was a prime source of addition protein. The amount of protein in prison food had continued to decline to the point it was just above the minimum daily dietary requirements. Although bodybuilding was an activity throughout the BOP, being locked down 23 hours a day at the Medium Security Prison left most inmates with little to do. Suddenly they became bodybuilders who wanted extra protein as they could do pushups, setups and run in place in the limited space of their Cells.

Most of the contraband came in with the Cell Block cleaning crews or it was delivered by the inmates who served the meals. Rather than risk being caught delivering contraband to each inmate, certain Cells became the "store" who would receive all the goods and pay for it. Then those inmates in the "store" would make the distribution to those inmates who had ordered it. Anyone who thinks inmates cannot deliver contraband from one end of the Cell Block to the other end has underestimated the criminal mind to overcome any obstacle the BOP could devise.

A shuttle string was made from the threads taken from the inmate's uniforms. It was tied to a domino and shot from under the crack beneath the cell's door across the hall floor to a Cell on the other side of the Cell Block. Once this Cell had the domino the contraband was tied to the string and pulled into the receiving Cell. From there the process was repeated by throwing the domino across the hall to the next Cell from the store. The contraband would continue to move back and forth across the Cellblock's hall until the goods were delivered to the correct party. The process was repeated when the payment was sent back to the store. What surprised me was no one took the payment or the contraband when they were pass on, until I learned most of the fights had been over an inmate's failure to pass on the goods or had taken the goods without paying for it.

When I was able to obtain a book to read I was asked to read it to my cellmates. I did not realized how starved the inmates were for any entertainment. Within a day, I was reading the book loud enough through my cell's door so all of the other inmates in the Cellblock could hear it as the whole Cellblock was quiet. When a Guard came into a quiet Cell Block, he wanted to know what was going on as the last time it had been this quiet, an inmate had been stabbed and he nearly died.

The Guard confronted me. "What are you getting for this, Corrigan?"

"The opportunity to read a book with the Cellblock quiet while I am reading it." I told him and smiled which left him standing there trying to come up with a reason to stop me before he turned around and left the Cell Block shaking his head.

On the morning of the fourth day, I was moved from the Medium Security facility to the Federal Prison Camp. The overcrowding in the Camp had inmate's bunks setup in the normal open areas of the building and they lined the hallways on all three floors. I was assigned to a bottom bunk on the first floor where an inmate was to be released at 8 am today but he had not been. Inmate Lenny had completed his full sentence and he was going home. His parents had come to pick him up but Mr Danny Tucker one of the Camp Councilor's had "lost" his release paperwork.

While Mr Tucker was allegedly looking for the "lost" paperwork or redoing it, Lenny who was on crutches was not allow to inform his parents of the problem with his paperwork nor would Mr Tucker allow anyone else at the Prison Camp to talk with Lenny's parents.

Lenny's parents sat all day in the Visitors Parking lot wondering what happened to their son. From time to time when other inmates found that Lenny had not been released yet, they told stories about Mr Tucker's sadistic reputation of "loosing" other inmate's paperwork that would unfairly delay the inmate's official release.

I had been in the Prison system long enough to know Inmates will exaggerate their story's for their own benefit. It would take asking the right questions to establish the whole and real truth. However, too many Inmates told similar stories about Mr Tucker taking sadistic delight in his ability to inflict his personal brand of additional punishment on Inmates. These inmates were helpless to do anything to stop him as making a formal complaint would delay the inmate's departure and the inmate just wanted to get out of here.

At 3:30 pm, Mr Tucker gave Lenny his release paperwork. Lenny had just enough time to clear the facilities of FCI Petersburg, before the mandatory Federal Bureau of Prison's 4 pm "Lock down" for the nationwide Inmate "standup count" to verify that all the inmates were alive and where they should be in the Prison system.

What Lenny and the other inmate victims of Mr Tucker's personal efforts to inflict additional punishment on them could have done was not clear the FCI Petersburg's facilities before the 4 pm standup count. Their delay in clearing FCI Petersburg before the BOP's Stand up count would create an error in FCI Petersburg's inmate head count and all of FCI Petersburg's Inmate Housing Units would remain "locked down" until the error in the inmate count was found.

This error in the Inmate count would expose Mr Tucker and his vindictive game he was using to inflict "cruel and unusual punishment" on inmates in violation of their Constitutional Rights under the 8th Amendment.

If you recall, the violation of my rights to be held beyond the 30 days of my psychiatric evaluation was the same reason why I had to clear the facilities at FCI Butner before the BOP's 4 pm stand up count. To understand why an inmate would be reluctant to consider doing this, you need to understand by the time most inmates were transferred to a Federal Prison Camp they had become so institutionalized that they had become sheep and they would not even think of challenging the actions of their Camp's Counselor. These inmates were blinded by the light at the end of their long incarceration tunnel and they were willing to endure anything for a few more hours before they were finally free.

# 14. ADJUSTING TO CAMP LIFE

Although it is said, the prisons in the United States are a lot better than most countries prisons, being in any prison even in a Federal Prison Camp is no picnic. The government would have the general-public believe that being in a Federal Prison Camp was like "doing time" at a Country Club.

Having been a member of the Jordan Point Country Club outside of Hopewell I can assure you a Federal Prison Camp is nothing like a Country Club. I came to believe if such Prison Camps did exist, it was only in the minds of the Politicians who wanted to eliminate any idea they were "soft" on crime. In reality, these same Politicians voted to increase the number of Federal Prison Camps as these Camps would cost the BOP less money to operate and fewer guards to control hundreds of inmates.

To my surprise Doctor Allen, my Prison Camp Doctor actually took an interest in my medical condition after reading my extensive medical records and files. In the first three months after arriving at the Petersburg Federal Camp, I was sent to the new medical facilities at FCI Butner North Carolina for new MRIs, a sleep study, and an Audio evaluation.

I was issued a C-PAP Unit for my sleep apnea, two hearing aids and he shared the results of the MRIs with me. The MRIs confirmed the damage to my neck, the dislodging of my old injury at T-12 and he admitted my lower back was a neurological mess. He issued an unheard of order for a second mattress on my bunk and an extra pillow to provide additional comfort to my neck and back so I could get a reasonable amount of sleep at night.

Doctor Allen wanted to try several new none narcotic drugs to relieve my constant pain throughout my body. Doctor Allen was also trying to relieve this pain long enough I could fall asleep. Doctor Allen issued new work restrictions of no lifting, sedentary duty only and working for only four hours a day.

Although Doctor Allen was a true medical professional who would have cared for all his patients, the Government and the Federal Bureau of Prisons had waited until I could no longer appeal my Lawsuit against Pitt and Wilson County Jails before they would provide any real medical treatment. I also had to believe Doctor Blazer had some influence in my receiving this delayed medical care.

I went to work in the Prison Camp's Food Service again rolling the eating utensils in napkins for four hours after the noon meal. The Camp Food Service Manager was a reasonable man to work for and when I had completed my job, he allowed me to go to the Camp Library for the balance of my shift.

Now being able to hear what was on the Television did not diminish my rabid interest in reading all types of books. I could read a normal 450 page paperbacked book in less than a day. These books offered an escape from the reality of my confinement. My sister Sue Ann sent me a dozen of the latest published paperback books a month and my friends sent another dozen. The Inmates would contribute their paperback books to the Federal Prison Camp Library after reading them so there was always something new to read.

However, there was another very important reason why I chose not to watch the televisions located on the three floors of the Camp's Housing Unit. The moment you became interested in a Television program someone would come in and turn the Television to a basket ball game or a show he wanted to watch then he would dare you and all the other inmates who were watching the other program to challenge him.

Most of the fights in the Federal Prison Camp were over the television and which program someone wanted to watch. I was never someone who regularly watched television and watching a particular program was not worth fighting over.

The only thing I missed was going to a Catholic Mass although it was offered in FCI Petersburg's Low Security Facility by a local Priest who was under contract to say Mass. Every other religious denomination except for the Jews and the Catholic inmates were provided a religious service at the Prison Camp. When I complained, I was told there was not enough money in the FCI Petersburg Chaplain's budget to provide a Catholic Service at the Camp. It took awhile to check this out and it was obvious the Head Chaplain who was a Muslim, Inman wanted to use the majority of the budget to support his religious following.

It would take two years of filing repeated "cop outs" and the help of my brother Dick's Congressional contacts before a Rabbi was provided for the single Jewish inmate and a Priest came to say Mass for me and the two other Catholic Inmates at the Prison Camp every week. This local priest knew what my brother had done to open the doors for the Catholic and Jewish Inmates at the Prison Camp. He took a personal interest in my case when I told him what happened to me at my criminal trial.

# 15. ADDITIONAL ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURAL GAMES OF MY TRIAL COURT

Although I had file my Section 2255 Appeal in June which is the third Quarter of the Government's fiscal Year, Judge Howard did not deny my Appeal until August in the fourth Quarter of the next fiscal year, 14 months after it was filed. Judge Howard's denial was based on his claim my Section 2255 Appeal was "Untimely filed" without considering the circumstances that he had denied me a copy of the Pretrial's Transcript for over 6 years or merits that his actions had created the impediment to file this appeal earlier.

I filed a well-documented Appeal, Case No. 04-7152 to the 4th Circuit Court on August 30, 2004. They promptly denied it without comment of the merits of my Appeal, merely "rubber stamping" Judge Howards decision. I filed for an En Banc Review but it was also denied.

I filed a Motion of the violation of my Civil Rights under 42 USC Section 1983 for the lack of Due Process in the Courts. I claimed Judge Howard, his Clerk of Court David W. Daniel and the Prosecutor AUSA Swaim had failed to provide a copy of the missing Pretrial Hearing's transcript for over six years and this failure to provide this transcript had prevented any timely 2255 Appeal. I also claimed my Direct Appeal Counsel had been denied a copy of the Pretrial transcript, which prevented the 4th Circuit Court's review of my Constitutional Right to legal Counsel and I am being illegally held without any legal recourse to be heard in Courts.

Judge Boyle in the North Carolina District Court ruled I could not sue the Judge or the Prosecutor. My case was dismissed without taking into consideration the documented evidence that the Trial Court had violated both my Civil and Appeal Rights when this transcript was illegally withheld. The 4th Circuit Court denied my appeal.

I then filed a 28 USC Section 2241 Habeas Corpus Appeal in the Eastern District of Virginia, as FCI Petersburg is located in its Jurisdiction. I again provided the documented evidence of the Trial Court deliberately withholding the Pretrial Transcript for six years had prevented any timely Appeal. After several months, this US District Court sent my Section 2241 Appeal to the US District Court in North Carolina without ruling on the merits of this Appeal and this District Court failed to rule on my objections.

Judge Howard changed my 2241 Appeal to a normal 2255 Appeal and Judge Howard took another two years before denying it for the same reason claiming my "2255" Appeal was "untimely." My Appeal to the 4th Circuit Court was denied and so was my In Banc Appeal.

I refilled another 28 USC Section 2255 Appeal to the North Carolina Trial Court. I claimed the Trial Court had created its own impediment to "timely" file my pervious 2255 Appeals when the Trial Court had withheld the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript for six years after failing to list it on the Docket Sheet.

While I waited for the North Carolina Trial Court to respond I wrote my first book, _Soft Touch_ in which I created the character of Captain Michael Patrick O'Neil as my alter ego. I used Captain O'Neil to tell the story of how I killed a Southeast Asian Drug Lord during the Vietnam War. Then I wrote the Book _Soul Pole_ , which dealt with the African Slave Trade in the early 1700's through the American Revolutionary War and the forming of the United States of America.

I found when I sat down in front of the typewriter the words would just appear on the page and they would continue to flow as if I had written the stories before. I would write 40 books with their manuscripts running between 250 to 400 pages typed in single space, before I was finally released from the Petersburg Federal Prison Camp on May 10, 2010. I had quite a following in the reading inmate population who wanted to read more of my stories. The popularity of the character Captain Michael Patrick O'Neil produced the book _Three Toed Tiger Tales_ as it allowed me to use my experiences in the Army to tell some of the untold events in the Vietnam War.

The Book _Blackmoon Rising_ told the story of a South Dakota full-blooded Sioux Indian named "Blackmoon" who was one of my first sniper students in South Korea's 8th Army. He used his Native American Indian skills to rescue me and save my life in Vietnam after I was capture by the NVA. The popularity of these books and character Captain Michael Patrick O'Neil produced the sequel to _Soft Touch_ , which dealt with the killing of the Russian First Secretary, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov in 1984.

One of the men I most admired was Karol Jozef Wajtyla. He had lived through the Nazi occupation of Poland during Second World War II and when he became Pope John Paul II, he and President Regan helped to engineer the Soviet Union's collapse to end the Cold War. I was inspired by the accomplishments this truly remarkable man. I used the attempt on Pope John Paul's life in this book called the _Page of Diamonds_.

When Pope John Paul died on April 2, 2005, I prayed through his intercession to help me end this nightmare and get me out of Prison before I lost my sanity and all my faith and belief in the American Justice system.

BOOK FIVE

### A NEW LIGHT IN THE END OF MY INCARCERATION'S TUNNEL

# 1. A SECOND CHANCE

As if my prayers were answered President Bush signed the Second Chance Act into law on March 7, 2008. This was an opportunity for none violent elderly inmates over the age of 65 who had completed 75% of their sentence to be released early. The objectives of this new Law was to reduce Prison overcrowding and the BOP's costs in caring for the elderly inmates who like most people of advancing age would require significantly more medical care.

The simplicity of this new Law appeared to be clear and the early estimates of the number of elderly inmates in the BOP who could qualify for this early release were close to 400 individuals. However, after nearly five months the implementation of this new law by the Federal Bureau of Prisons was not forthcoming. The idea of letting out elderly inmates early was not in the best interest of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Prison Employees Union.

Somehow, they believed if any inmate was allowed an early released it would jeopardize the BOP's budget and it could reduce the number of Union Jobs. The longer the BOP dragged its feet to implement this new law, the fewer number of inmates would qualify for this early release before the time limitations of this new Law expired.

Not knowing when the provisions of this new Law would expire or when the BOP would act I wanted to stake my claim before the time ran out. On June 28, 2008 when I celebrated my 65th birthday I met the age requirement of this new Law I submitted a "Cop Out" to my Camp Councilor Mr Danny Tucker asking to be considered for this Second Chance Act as I would complete 75% of my sentence in 2009.

When Judge Howard denied my last appeal and so did the 4th Circuit Court, I was asked to make an IN RE Appeal directly to the 4th Circuit Court. I was to outline the complete issue and the prejudicial effect on my appeals due to the missing May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript. I could not help but believe this unusual opportunity to file this IN RE Appeal had been the result of my prayers for Pope John Paul's intercession. However overcoming my illegal conviction would still take a miracle to win this appeal.

By this time, the Catholic Church had already recognized one miracle Pope John Paul had performed and he only needed one more miracle to be considered for Sainthood. As I wrote this IN RE Appeal, I felt Pope John Paul was inspiring me to choose the right words to clearly document the issues of the unfairness perpetrated upon me by the Officers of this trial Court. I filed this IN RE Appeal on July 26, 2008 and I actually believed the merits of my appeal would finally be heard and the 4th Circuit Court would overturn my conviction. I wrote the Book _Back to Granville_ as if I had won my appeal and I had gone back to my family's roots in Milwaukee Wisconsin to rebuild my life.

By February 2009, the BOP still had not published its procedures to implement the Second Chance Act. The other legal issue of this law was it could expire for me on March 7, 2009. An inmate has just one year after the passage of a new law affecting his sentence to file a Section 2255 petition in court stating his claim to be release under that new law. I was preparing to file my Section 2255 petition before March 7, 2009 when Mr Tucker asked me to resubmit my "Cop Out" requesting my release under the Second Chance Act.

My application was filed and allegedly sent to the Central Office of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington DC. The BOP required a Second Chance Act inmate to be released to "Home Confinement" and my brother Dick offered to allow me to live with him. Mr Tucker notified the Virginia Probation Office who sent a Probation Officer to inspect my brothers home and he approved it as being an acceptable location to complete my sentence.

A month after my application was sent to the BOP, Ms Tammy True the other Camp Councilor sent in Jessie Hanks' application as the only other age qualified Second Chance Act Inmate at FCI Petersburg Virginia. Within two weeks, Jessie Hanks received his release date on the day after he completed 75% of his sentence yet I had heard nothing on my Application.

Knowing Mr Danny Tucker's reputation for losing, Inmates release paperwork I could not get Mr Tucker to make a follow up on my application. He not only refused to make any effort to check on my application he refused to see me or make an appointment for me to see him. After Jessie Hanks was released under the Second Chance Act, Mr Tucker still refused to see me. When I told my brother about the problems, I was having with Mr Tucker and his history of losing inmates paperwork, Dick contacted Virginia's US Senator Jim Webb and asked him to look into my case.

Senator Webb sent a letter to the FCI Petersburg Warden Stansberry who responded with a cover-her-ass letter saying I could see her or any of the Camp's Staff any time I had a question or a concern.

Senator Web's Office Manager sent me a copy of Senator Web's letter to Warden Stansberry, and her response that should correct the problem. Senator Web added a personal note to let him know if I had any more problems with my release under the Second Chance Act.

However, two weeks later Mr Tucker still refused to talk to me and I knew from my Unit Team Leader, Mr Tucker had not done any follow up on my application. I approached Warden Stansberry during her "Open house" in the Food Service dining Hall to make a complaint about Mr Tucker's unprofessional conduct in spite of her letter to Senator Web.

I did not expect her hostility or the threats she made."You and your Senator can do anything you want and we will do what we want to do."

Warden Stansberry's response did not go well with my brother or Senator Webb especially when the Central Office of the Federal Bureau of Prisons could not find my application. Having established I had a legitimate complaint Senator Webb initiated a formal Congressional Investigation into my "lost" Second Chance Act Application.

A member of Warden Stansberry's Office conducted the FCI Petersburg's investigation of the Congressional Complaint. His initial interview was held in my Unit Team Leader's Office with Mr Tucker, my Unit Team Leader and me. Mr Tucker claimed he had sent my application to the wrong party at the BOP yet when he could not identify the person he had sent it to, he still offered to make a follow up on it. When the Warden's representative expected me to believe this so he could close the case, I suggested we take this to the Camp Manager's Office.

After we reached the Camp Manager's Office Mr Tucker changed his story claiming he had sent it to the right party but he had used this party's personal email address. Warden Stansberry's representative was just as surprise by Mr Tucker's statement as I was. I do not know what happened after the Camp Manager directed Mr Tucker to immediately re-file my application as he asked me to leave his office.

When Mr Tucker had me sign my new application, I asked for a copy of the complete set of my early release papers. It was then I found out Mr Tucker had altered my Official Case Records and added criminal convictions I had not been even charged with. Mr Tucker had done this to other inmates release applications to make them ineligible or delay their timely release and now I had caught him red handed doing it to me.

When Mr Tucker claimed he had taken this information from my Official Records, I asked to see that Record. While Mr Tucker went up stairs to get my file I asked the other Camp Councilor to make a copy of what Mr Tucker had put in my application. When my Official Record did not have any of the convictions Mr Tucker said it did, I make sure the correct Official Record was attached to my new application.

Mr Tucker did not have the guts to ask me for the copy of his inaccurate record. The next day my cellmate saw Mr Tucker remove all of my legal files I kept in my wall locker. What Mr Tucker did not know was I always mailed copies of my legal files to my sister Sue Ann and the proof that he criminally altered my Official Record was now safely on its way to Wisconsin.

Within 10 days the Central Office of the Federal Bureau of Prison in Washington approved my Early Release under the Second Chance Act and I was given a release date of September 9, 2009. I started to believe I would be living with my brother, until two days before my release date. Mr Tucker took great delight in telling me the Virginia Probation Office did not have jurisdiction over me and I would have to redo my Release Application in the North Carolina Probation Office.

There was no excuse for Mr Tucker deliberately misfiling my Release Application in the wrong jurisdiction as my Inmate number ended with the North Carolina designation of "056." Misfiling an Inmate's papers in the wrong jurisdiction was just another one of Mr Tucker's established tricks to delay an inmate's timely release. I filed formal charges against Mr Tucker with the evidence of his latest deliberate misfiling and his criminally altering my Official Records.

Although there was an investigation, Warden Stansberry refused to give me the results of this investigation. By doing this, Warden Stansberry was concealing Mr Tucker's Federal Crime of falsifying Official Federal Records under 18 USC 1001a and she committed a Federal Crime herself under 18 USC 4 by not reporting his federal crime.

I knew I had to file a formal Tort Claim with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Office of the BOP and have the results of their investigation, before I could take any legal action against Mr Tucker and Warden Stansberry in a court of law.

That took place over the next 9 months caused me to put on 90 pounds and suffer from sleep depuration. My ability to concentrate and deal with my pain long enough to fall asleep was disrupted by my worries about what Mr Tucker and Judge Howard were doing to prevent my early release under the Second Chance Act.

My Early Release Application to the North Carolina Probation Office give Judge Howard's Court the opportunity to deny my brother's home as a suitable place for my Home Confinement. Judge Howard knew without an approved place to live, I could not be released under the Second Chance Act.

When the North Carolina Probation Office rejected my brother's place to live, Dick offered to rent an apartment for me in Middleburg Virginia. This apartment was accepted by the North Carolina Probation Office until Mr Tucker called the Landlord and scared him with the possible liability he could be facing when he had a known convicted criminal living in one of his apartments.

When the Landlord withdrew my use of his apartment, my brother found another apartment in Purcellville Virginia and the Manager of the apartment complex had no problem accepting me as a released inmate subject to home confinement in this apartment. When the North Carolina Probation Office approved this apartment, Mr Tucker tried to get this Manager to withdraw her agreement to lease this apartment to me. She was expecting his call and thanked him for his concern.

While my brother was paying the rent on the apartment in Purcellville all that remained was the North Carolina Probation Office issuing my early released date. This should not have been a problem as the BOP had already established I could be released under the Second Chance Act on September 9, 2009. However, month after month went by and still the North Carolina Probation Office did not issue my early release date under the Second Chance Act. Senator Webb became involved again demanding answers from the North Carolina Probation Office.

The North Carolina Probation Office quickly issued the order for my early release on May 10, 2010, 9 months after I should have been released. On the morning of May 10th the Camp Manager escorted me to the FCI Petersburg Inmate's Out Processing Section to make sure nothing else would delay my departure.

# 2. RELEARNING HOW TO LIVE

My brother drove me up to Fredericksburg to meet with my Virginia Probation Officer Jeffery Smihal before going to my new home in the apartment in Purcellville Virginia. My brother Dick and his wife Mary had made a huge financial commitment as a condition of my early release.

They agreed to pay my rent, all my utilities and my normal living expenses, as I did not have any money to take care of this myself. All this additional and unnecessary expense could have been avoided if the North Carolina Probation Office would have allowed me to live with them. As it was they had already paid over 1,000 dollars a month for the rent and utilities on this apartment for over eight months while my early release under the Second Chance Act had been held up by someone in the US District Court of the Eastern District of North Carolina's legal system.

When I opened the door to my new home I found Dick and Mary had completely furnished the two bedroom apartment making it a very attractive place to live. My office with a huge desk the size of the one I had at Berclair Plantation was set up in one bedroom. I had two televisions one in my bedroom and a big one in the living room which was hooked up to a VCR with over a hundred movies on disks and tapes I could watch on the VCR. Food filled the shelves of the kitchen and refrigerator. There was an eight place setting of dishes and eating utensils along with all of the pots and pans I would need. After seeing all this I was at a total loss of how I could thank them for saving my life as I had started to believe I would never get out and I would die in Prison.

Once Dick confirmed everything was in good working order in the apartment he left. The first thing I did was to kneel down and thank Pope John Paul for helping me. I also asked for his forgiveness when I started to doubt he would get me out of prison.

While I was on this early elderly release program under the Second Chance Act, I was required to wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet. A dedicated telephone line preformed the monitoring function of the bracelet, which meant I needed another phone line to receive and make phone calls.

I could only leave the apartment during the one hour scheduled exercise period, to attend Mass at Saint Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville and when I arranged to do my laundry once a week. I had to make arrangements with my Probation Officer every time I had a scheduled doctor's appointment at the Veterans Hospital in Martinsburg West Virginia, which was less than 40 miles away and Dick had to drive there. Otherwise, I was in home confinement 23 hours a day. This apartment was within walking distance to the food store and the Purcellville Public Library during my scheduled one hour out of the apartment.

My biggest shock as I explored my new world was the increased prices of everything as the cost of everything had doubled in price since 1998. This meant I had to readjust my thinking about the value of money, as a 10-dollar bill would only buy a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread and a small jar of peanut butter.

Dick and Mary were concerned I would go nuts living here by myself until I explained I wanted to spend my time rewriting the 40 manuscripts I had written while I was at the Petersburg Federal Camp and hopefully I would be able to publish them. Dick now understood why I told him I needed to write these books as long as they continued to flow from my fingers through the typewriter on the pages rather than rewriting just one of my books and trying to get it published.

To accomplish this object my Probation Officer, Mr Smihal allowed me to go with Dick and the Computer Expert from his company to buy a computer and a copy machine. I wanted a copy machine I could use to scan the pages of my typed books directly into the computer. The amount of time saved by not retyping my books would allow me to edit them into a final version, in a third of the time it took me to type the draft manuscript of the book. I knew it would work as I had set up the Vocational Rehabilitation's Job Placement coordinators' with computers that eliminate the need for our secretaries to retype their reports.

With my Home Confinement, rewriting my books would become my full time job. Just because I was my own boss, did not mean I did not need to setup a specific working schedule and actually work those hours. I knew from my past business experience my most productive working time and my greatest creative thinking was done between the hours of 8 pm to 2 am. Usually by 2 am my body was tired enough to overcome the pain and cramping in my legs and feet and I could actually get four to five hours of sleep.

My first priority was to establish my Service Connected Disability from my 1971 Airplane accident. This claim could become complicated due to the injuries I received when the Deputy US Marshal Dove shoved me down in the Van on January 13, 1998. The Department of Veterans Affairs could make a valid claim that my current medical conditions were due more to the January 13, 1998 injuries than my injuries I sustained in the Airplane crash.

I would not hide these injuries or deceive the Department of Veterans Affairs into believing all my current medical conditions were the result of my Airplane accident. I made an honest disclosure of my January 13, 1998 injuries. I outlined the specific nature of the medical problems I experienced because of this injury and I provided the Department of Veterans Affairs with the only medical records I had for the last 12 years that came from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

I prayed for the intercession of Pope John Paul to help the Department of Veterans Affairs separate all my medical problems and provide a fair determination of those conditions directly linked to my airplane accident. This was only the fair thing I had a right to expect for serving my country in the Army for almost 9 years. It would take almost 3 years before that miracle happened. The Veterans Administration established I was 100% Disabled and awarded me with a 40% Service Connected Disability for the airplane accident but they denied all my medical problems associated with my January 13, 1998 injury. The Veterans Affairs had provided an honest assessment and a fair decision of my service connected injuries and I was grateful.

Being free of the confinements of Prison life gave me the opportunity to evaluate what was left of my life. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a 90 pound over weight old man who had survived being beaten-down and abused by the Officers of my Trial Court who had misused their official positions to illegally achieve my financial destruction and eliminate my ability to help Cambodia enter into the 21st Century.

I felt my July 26, 2008 IN RE Appeal would finally exonerate me and restore some of the material things I had lost. However, I knew there were some things I could never replace. My relationship with Carol as the love of my life was one of them and perhaps what had happened to her by the North Carolina Court was the most painful of all. My brother gave me Carol's new address in Texas, however when I wrote to her my letter came back marked "deceased."

This put an end to the possibility that after I had restored my life, Carol would be coming back to me as she had done so many times before. Now after 7 years, the pain of her death became an emotional numbness that had run its course and it was time to let the dead rest in peace.

Years ago, we had talked about what we should do if one of us died. I knew Carol would have wanted me to find someone else not as her replacement but as someone, who would help to make the rest of my life complete. However when I looked into the mirror I did not see someone who could be attractive to a new partner. If finding someone new in my life was to be one of my objectives, I had to lose all my excess weight.

I always believed you were as young as you feel and in my mind, I was still 29. When I was 29, I made my first million and that year had been a major milestone in my life. Since that year, I no longer celebrated my next birthday but the anniversary of my 29th birthday. Back then it was a joke but now with the 36th anniversary of my 29th birthday it became as serious as a heart attack and I had to somehow make up for the 12 years of my life that had been lost in the Federal Prison.

My sister Sue Ann told me about a diet based on eating three almonds every three hours. Perhaps it was the crunching of almonds every three hours that convinced your mind you were eating and your stomach had something to digest even though 27 almonds had less than 78 calories. There was something in Almonds that suppressed your appetite and eliminated the feeling of being hungry. The weight loss would only be a pound or two a week even if you ate three regular meals a day.

When I started this 3-almond diet and since my ability to taste food was almost none existent I found I had to force myself to eat meals at the normal scheduled times. As you get older, I knew your body needs more calcium and protein in your diet or you would lose bone and muscle mass.

Although eggs and meat were high in protein, common beans had pound for pound even more protein in them. Anyone who lives alone can tell you cooking for just one person can be a problem. Foods packaged for single portions are twice as expensive and normal sized food containers can become leftovers lost in the back of the refrigerator no one eats.

My solution was using a crock-pot. The thighs of a chicken offer the most meat for the best price and there is only one bone to deal with. I would prime the crock-pot with a jar of RAGU and 6-chicken thighs. Then I added vegetables, which included several types of beans and let it cook all day.

By then, the chicken meat fell off the bones to form a type of Brunswick stew. After removing the bones, I would then add chopped onions, red and green peppers and let them cook for an hour, as they would be still crunchy. This provided six good high protein meals I would put in covered plastic containers and then freeze them.

I would microwave one of them for my main meal at noon. At night, I would make a big salad adding sliced boiled eggs, nuts, raisins, strips of ham and cheese. I would use vinegar and oil or one of the other low calorie dressings I bought when they were on sale at the food store. I would force myself to eat two-scrambled eggs in the morning with hot sauce so I could tease them.

I also used my experience as a high school and college wrestler to reduce my weight. I would put on a sweatshirt and sweat pants and then use a plastic bag with holes for my head and arms over them before adding a second set of a sweatshirt and pants over it. To hold in my body heat I put on a heavy winter over coat and wrapped a bath towel around my neck.

My limited ability to walk even with a cane prevented me from running. But by pushing myself as fast as I could walk I would break a sweat and each day during my hour outside the apartment I forced myself to walk harder and further than I did the day before.

The Washington and Old Dominion Railroad's right-a-way was located behind my apartment complex and it had been converted to a 40 mile walking and bicycle trail from old town Purcellville to Alexandria Virginia. The W&OD Trail's half-mile markers became my gage to measure how far I could walk without falling down. However, falling down was something I had to accept if I ever expected to regain the life I wanted to live again.

Based on the results of a number of MRIs and Nerve Conduction Studies that were done at the Veterans Hospital at Martinsburg, West Virginia their Chief Neurologist was expecting to see me in a wheelchair and not walking with a cane. Once he confirm I was the same patient with the back injury from the 1971 Airplane crash I had to explain how I became determined to walk again.

The Neurologist confirmed the medical opinion Doctor Blazer had given me, when she told me the continuous chronic pain I was experiencing when I moved was not an indication I was hurting myself but it was something I had to learn to live with.

The thought of coping with my chronic continuous pain did not make moving any easier. However if I could force myself to endure my chronic pain it was the price I had to pay to live like other people, who moved freely in the world. If athletes could learn how to deal with their pain as they improved their physical capabilities so could I. However, athletes worked through their pain believing it was only temporary while I had to learn to deal with my continuous pain as a permanent condition.

My only alternative was to use my mind and will myself into believing my pain was a form of pleasure, as it was the only feeling I had to prove I was still alive. It was a simple form of "mind over matter" or thinking an alternative thought to clear my mind, when I shot in competition and when I knew I had to make that shot as a sniper.

I also knew during stress and pain your body produces endorphins, which interacted with opiate receptors in the brain to reduce our perception of pain just like drugs where capable of doing. The pain athletes experienced was known to release endorphins to create feelings of euphoria such as a "runners high" and this "high" was as close to accomplishing my goal of turning my pain into pleasure I could achieve.

During my exercise periods, I would concentrate on trying to pray a perfect rosary to help take my mind off my pain. Each time I failed to think about the Virgin Mary as the mother of God and the suffering she experienced when her son died for all of us or let my mind slip into thinking about my pain, I vowed to concentrate harder to say the next "Hail Mary" better.

Since I could only be away from my apartment for one hour I had to make sure I did not walk too far so no matter how many times I fell, I still could make it back to my apartment on time. With so many other people using the W&OD Trail, I did not need them calling the Rescue Squad every time I fell down. When I fell down, I made it appear as if this was part of my intentional exercise program and I would do a few pushups or sit-ups. Just how well I fooled those watching me did not matter when I stood back up and moved on down the W&OD Trail.

Fortunately, I always wore gloves so when I skinned my hands and knees and when they would bleed they were covered by the gloves and my sweat suit. The day I failed to "tuck and roll" in time and I split open my forehead no one saw me before I made it back to my apartment. I knew how to use a butterfly band-aide to hold the skin together and reduce the size of a possible scar. By the time Dick stopped over to see me, a smaller normal band-aid easily covered the healing split. I knew there was no point in letting Dick worry about my physical problems when I took this risk to get my life back.

The trick of keeping off the water weight you lost in exercising was to remain bundled up and continue to sweat until your body completely cooled down before taking a shower. By then your body had adjusted to the loss of water and you did not have the urge to drink as drinking would only replace the water weight you worked so hard to lose.

During the 15 months I remained on Home Confinement under the Second Chance Act I achieved my personal goals of losing the 90 excess pounds and taking 8 inches off my waistline. I not only improved my physical appearance I also dropped 20 points in my high blood pressure. I felt really good when I had to take all the trousers Dick and Mary had bought for me to the tailor to have their waistlines taken in.

Although during my waking hours I became more successful in managing my chronic pain, when I tried to fall asleep my efforts to "will" my pain away became an obstacle to allowing myself to relax enough to actually fall asleep. The aching and cramping pain in my legs and feet would keep me awake until my exhausted body overcame the pain. The slightest movement of my sleeping body would wake me and I again had to go through the process of enduring the pain until my body again became so exhausted that sleep became my escape from the pain.

For as long as I had been receiving mental health care and taking psychiatric medications, my lack of normal sleep since being injured by the Deputy US Marshall on January 13, 1998 had not been seriously addressed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, beyond receiving a C-Pap machine to control my snoring.

After several in depth interviews and a number of Psychiatric tests, my Psychiatrist at the Martinsburg Veteran's Hospital expressed the concern that my lack of normal sleep was adversely affecting my mental health and this was why there had not been any real progress to improve my mental condition for the last 12 years. This lack of normal sleep was serious as it also disrupted my ability to dream which further affected my mental health.

My Psychiatrist explained if my inability to dream did not improve, my chances of making a full mental recovery would be highly questionable and this lack of dreaming confirmed what the Doctor at Mary Washington's Mental hospital had already told me. When I could not remember a signal dream I had since my Sentencing Hearing in January 1998 my Psychiatrist became even more concerned.

My Psychiatrist's recommendation to correct my lack of normal sleep was to consult with my Veteran's Affairs Neurologist on a possible medical solution to deal with my chronic pain long enough at night until I could fall asleep. After trying a number of neuropathic pain medications, the combination of Gabapentin and Amitriptyline taken 10 minutes before I went to bed at night was found to allow me to deal with a reduced level of chronic pain long enough that I could fall asleep and remain sleeping for up to six hours. My subconscious mind still controlled my body's movements while I was sleeping as once these medications wore off, any movement would wake me up.

Since I could only take these neuropathic pain medications once a night, going back to sleep, would only happen after my body became completely exhausted. After years of dealing with my chronic pain, my ability to use my subconscious mind to control my body's movements worked so well that the position of my body when I fell asleep would be in the same position my body was in when I woke up.

Normal healthy people turn and changed positions while they are sleeping at night. These movements allow all their body's muscles to receive a normal supply of blood that might be impeded by remaining in only one position all night. In my situation, the lack of body movements while I slept was a reasonable tradeoff to being able to fall asleep and actually receive a moderate amount of rest.

In less than a month, after taking these neuropathic pain medications when I woke up I remembered I had been dreaming. I also found my thoughts were clear as if a dark cloud was lifted from my mind. Just knowing this sleep solution was working, gave me the confidence for the first time that I could recover from my mental illness.

There was one significant drawback, to my newfound ability to sleep. My body had learned it could only protect itself from my chronic pain by not moving while I slept. As a result, my body did not want to give up this self-protecting mode of sleeping and I could almost sleep 24 hours a day. I knew I needed to overcome the seductive nature of painless sleep if I wanted to get a normal life back even if I had to accept and deal with my chronic pain during normal waking hours.

To do this meant I had to set my mind to wake up at the same time every the morning as if I were getting up to going to work. Although I worked where I lived, I still got dress as if I were going to work and began working as if I were punching a time clock. Anyone who has ever successfully worked for himself knows you are working for the most demanding boss in the world.

The process of learning how to use my new computer became a frustrating experience of trial and error, as I did not have the computer learning curve everyone else had over the 12 years I was in prison. The hardest part in doing my job, was trying to understand all the computer acronyms used for computer functions, which everyone else took for granted.

One of the first things I did on my computer was to file a Supplement on my July 26, 2008 IN RE Appeal to the 4th Circuit Court. However, I did not expect the answer I received on November 11, 2010. My IN RE Appeal had been denied within weeks after I had filed it and I never received a copy of this denial. This lack of notice of this denial from the 4th Circuit Court did not make any sense as all legal mail sent to inmates in Prison must be logged in the Prison's Legal Mail Logbook and signed for by the Inmate. What was also missing in the 4th Circuit Court's Order of Denial, was the legal opinion the Court used to deny my In Re Appeal.

I sent a notice to the 4th Circuit Court to appeal my case to the US Supreme Court claiming I never received the denial of my IN RE Appeal. However, the Clerk of the 4th Circuit Court, Patricia S. Connor sent it back claiming my notice to appeal was untimely received based on the 4th Circuit Court's use of its local Rule 26 for computing and extending time to file a notice. It was 6 months before the new Warden of FCI Petersburg confirmed in writing I never received any legal mail from the 4th Circuit Court on or after the date that the 4th Circuit Court had denied my IN Re Appeal. Even with this documented evidence of the lack of notification, the 4th Circuit Court again denied my right to appeal their ruling.

Since I was still under Home Confinement, my attempt to obtain permission to travel to the Leesburg Courthouse to conduct my legal research was denied with the claim I could find everything I needed on the Internet. This would be a reasonable alternative if I were not struggling to learn how to use the functions of my computer and if I had the knowledge of how to use the Internet to do legal research.

To me using a computer was as bad as learning a foreign language without a teacher or a book to translate what I wanted to do with my computer into English and the computer acronyms into words I could understand. When you do not know how to communicate with the right terms you cannot asked the correct questions to get help.

No matter what I typed in the search block of Google, I could not find the rules and laws cited by the 4th Circuit Court to appeal their rulings. Without the knowledge of the referenced Laws, I could not make a reasonable appeal and my time to appeal this denial was lost. The 4th Circuit Court left me no alternative but to re-file my IN RE Appeal when I learned how to use the Internet to do my legal research or when I could go to a legal library to do this research.

# 3. THE LEARNING CURVE TO EDITING MY BOOKS

My plans to scan the typed pages of manuscripts into the computer had its design limitations. The capacity of the scanning program of my Copier would not take all the pages of my book. I had to scan only 40 pages of the book in separate Word-processing documents. Editing each document was relatively easy, as I had predicted. I did not need to retype the pages and the "Spell Check" feature on my computer caught my typing, spelling and grammatical errors.

However, when I attempted to put these edited scanned documents together into one document as a finished book I ran into a nightmare. When I typed the pages of my book at the Prison Camp, I had no choice but to use the manual typewriter that was available in the Library. Many times these typewriters had different font styles and sizes. These font differences showed up in the scanned documents and it took me months to learn enough of the computer acronyms and how to used emails to obtain the assistance from the manufacture's "Customer Help" representatives to change the font style and size to a uniform font in the entire document.

When I had finished my book _Soft Touch,_ I found no publisher was interested in looking at the book's synopses from any unknown author. Having your first book published has never been easy. However, with the rising costs to print a book the Paper Book Publishing Industry was in sharp decline. The Publisher had to become more selective even with Published Authors as his book had no guarantee it would become a best seller.

Paper Book Publishing Companies were also under serious attack by the growing popularity of the Electronic Book publishers who could offer their E-books at a fraction of the cost a Paper Publisher could print just one copy of their book. If the E-Books were undermining the Paper Book Publishers the growing demand for Audio Books were also on the rise.

I let the information of my book publishing research work in my subconscious business mind as I continued to edit my other manuscripts into publishable books based upon the popularity of these books with the inmates at the Petersburg Federal Camp.

Having mastered my ability to scan my manually typed manuscripts into the computer with a uniform editing format I was rewriting a new book in just over a month. Without disclosing a company secret, I learned how to produce an Audio version of my books at a fraction of the normal cost of having a professional record my Audio Books.

If I could not find a Book Publisher who would publish my books, I explored to possibility of publishing my E-books and Audio Books myself. I found the Go Daddy website hosting company was willing to work with me and offer the technical assistance to help me publish my books on the website of I MARK PUBLISHING INC. Publishing my E-Books and downloading the size of them directly to my customers from my Website was not a problem. However, it took a while to determine how we could offer Audio Books, which were over 400 megabits in a MP3 Player format to become a direct downloadable product from my Website.

I Mark Publishing Inc became the first Website in history to offer Audio Books without having to mail a DVD disk to a customer. My customers could download their ordered Audio Books directly into their computers and once they received it, they could listen to it on their computers or transfer the Audio Book into any MP3 player.

# 4. FEAR OF THE LINGERING EFFECTS OF INCARCERATION

The biggest problem I faced since being released from Federal Prison was the realization of how much I had become institutionalized and socially isolated during my stay as the guest of the Government. In prison, I stopped thinking about the past as it was too painful and thinking about the future was not any better. In fact, the Bureau of Prisons did not want you to think at all, as any independent thinking could only get you into trouble.

Beyond knowing, where you were supposed to be on the Prison's Compound, thinking was not necessary as your guards and the prison's staff did all of the thinking for you. If you stopped using your mind to think about life's little things, than not thinking about the big things was even easier and the more you stopped thinking about anything the more you became dependent on the Bureau of Prisons to take care of you.

This dependence on the BOP made it easier for the Prison's authorities to control and manage your behavior. However, with this lack of thinking and the dependence on the BOP comes at a very high price to an inmate. The failure to use your mind in prison is like not using your legs for years and then wondering why you cannot walk out the prison gate when you completed your sentence.

Just think how frightening it would be to an inmate who was about to be released back into the real world after spending the last 20 or 30 years of his life in prison. I had seen long-term inmates who were about to be released deliberately commit a criminal act that would extend their sentences for years. Their favorite method to get more prison time was to assault an elderly inmate who was less likely to defend himself. This assault was worth at least five more years and a transfer to a medium security prison.

This happened to me while I was waiting to be released under the Second Chance Act. I was not only an elderly inmate but I was also physically impaired since my injuries, as I could not walk without a cane. I had just walked into the Camp Library and when I was about to set down, an inmate who was scheduled to be released the end of the week, sucker punched me in the face hard enough to knock me over the back of my chair. I knew the worst thing I could do, would be to hit him back as I would be thrown in the "hole" and I could not be released under the Second Chance Act until the investigation of the incident was completed.

Several inmates grabbed him and he did not resist as he had accomplished what he wanted to do. He would not be released back into the frightening world he knew nothing about and he would remain in the care of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. When the guards ran into the Library this inmate freely admitted I had not done anything to provoke him and after he said he just hit me, he refused to say anything else.

While I was receiving seven stitches in my forehead just above my left eyebrow in the Prison's hospital, the Commander of the Prison's Guards was questioning me and I could only tell him I knew who the inmate was but I had no idea why he hit me. I thought than as I was thinking now, when I realized how desperate this inmate had become to remain in the only world he knew for the last 30 years. I felt sorry for this man and I had to ask myself. "How close was I to becoming like this man?"

Even now after I had been released under the Second Chance Act, I had no way of knowing or measuring how institutionalized I had become. I had to wonder how much my mental escape into reading books and writing my own books had altered my ability to deal with the reality of the outside world.

_I would be deceiving myself if I thought time, the economy and the social changes stood still while I was in prison. I had to believe the fact I was able to think about the possibility of becoming institutionalized, had to mean I still had the capability to find a way to get back in step with this changed world. What I knew I could not do was to let my release to Home Confinement become another prison_.

# 5. PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

Although I could be released from my apartment, to find a job and go to work if I found a job, millions of able-bodied people could not find a job in this nationwide depressed economy. With my age and physical limitations to do a job, was further complicated by the fact I was also a convicted felon living in Home Confinement.

Since I never let the near impossible stop me before, I put together a professional resume and I sent countless copies to any employment opportunity who would accept one. The job market was so bad few potential employers would even acknowledge they had received my resume when I did a follow up call to see if they were still looking for someone to fill the position.

Going to Mass at Saint Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Purcellville on Sundays was my only social outlet beyond my contact with Dick and Mary. At first, Dick would take me to Mass until I found several church members who would pick me up at my apartment, drive me to Mass and bring me back home. Although Saint Francis was a half mile away as the crow flies the double highway of Route 7 put the Church on the other side of my apartment making the trip over three miles.

After several months as I increased my physical ability to walk further I discussed the possibility of walking across Route 7 to church with my Probation Officer. He agreed to let me try it and he gave me an extra hour out of my apartment to attend Mass. The Good Lord must have wanted me to do this as the fence along both sides of Route 7 where I needed to cross it to reach Saint Francis de Sales Church was down and it had not been repaired by the Virginia Highway Department. As strange as it might seem, it never rained when I walked to or from church.

Saint Francis de Sales Parish was blessed with two people orientated priests and a very active Knights of Columbus, Council. I saw becoming a member of the Knights of Columbus as a means to help the less fortunate and the Knights could become a possible net work to find a job..

The Good Lord wanted us to feed the hungry, take care of the poor and do good work for our neighbors. However, as individuals it is hard to know who was truly needy. In the past when I knew some family or person was in need, I would give them some money or leave food on their doorstep. With the Knights of Columbus, I knew I would not be acting alone as by our combine effort of 2 million members, 99% of the money we collected would help the less fortunate and all the food would go to those who actually needed it.

I was given permission to join the Knights of Columbus in October 2010 and one of the Knight's would pick me up and take me back to my apartment so I could attend their meetings the first Monday of every month. I was allow to participate in the Knights of Columbus fund raising events to collect money for the Mentally challenged, Handicapped children and pass out food collection bags for out monthly Food Drives.

During my first year with the Knights of Columbus, we collected and distributed 30 tons of food to the Food Bank in Leesburg. I gave blood every two months for the Knights of Columbus Blood Drive and we set new records for blood collected, during each successive Blood Drive. I was elected as an Officer of our Counsel known as the "Inside Guard" for the next fiscal year of the Knights of Columbus that began on July 1 and I was reelected the following year.

I completed my Second and Third Degrees in the Knights of Columbus before I was released from Home Confinement on September 11, 2011. I was then placed on normal Probation with a new Probation Officer, Ms Carolyn Nulf out of the Manassas Virginia Probation Office.

I was fortunate to have two outstanding Probation Officers since I was released from Federal Prison and I would find out later this was a two way street as I made their overloaded casework easier. My desire to be a positive example to continue releasing other elderly inmates under the Second Chance Act required me to be a model Parole. I also knew if I did what I was told to do, I kept all my appointments, I did not use drugs and I if I did not create any extra work for my Probation Officers they would leave me alone. My reward for being a model Parole was that the three years of Probation imposed on my by Judge Howard, ended two years early.

I planned to take my Fourth Degree in the Knights of Columbus on Saturday October 29, 2011; however, on Friday Virginia was hit with the earliest snowstorm on record. However, this unexpected bad weather would not cancel the event. The three of us from Saint Francis de Sales Council agreed to drive together in a 4-wheel drive vehicle on Saturday morning. I had just hung up the phone after we had coordinated our travel plans, when it rang again.

The woman on the other end of the line introduced herself as Evelyn Heath and she wanted to know if I were the Mark Corrigan who once owned Berclair Plantation. Evelyn claimed she was interested in buying Berclair Plantation. She also claimed the Realtor she was working with did not know much about the history of the property. Evelyn asked if I mind telling her what I knew about Berclair Plantation.

My first thought was she was someone from the North Carolina Court who already knew I would not give up trying to overturn my conviction. Having been released from Home Confinement since September I had done my legal research at the Leesburg Courthouse and I had been working on my IN RE Appeal to the North Carolina Court as it was the only jurisdiction I had to file this appeal.

My heightened paranoia put me on guard as this call might be the government's last chance to trap me into admitting I had used tobacco money to buy Berclair Plantation and the government would use my disclosure to avoid returning it to me when I overturned my conviction. There was also the 23 million dollars the Government claimed I had laundered and maybe they believed their own unfounded claim that I had hidden this money in some overseas bank account.

I politely told Evelyn I had not seen the property since August of 1997 and I did not know what changes had been made to it. She was not interested in my current knowledge of the property but wanted to know if I knew the history of Berclair Plantation when I bought it.

I said I did and explained I had been a Civil War History buff since I was 10 years old and I knew about Robert E Lee's Signal tower on Berclair Plantation even before I first came to Virginia with my brother to tour the Fredericksburg Battlefields.

I told Evelyn I once had a copy of an overlay map showing all the troop movements around Berclair Plantation during the Battle of Fredericksburg in December of 1862 and during the Battle of Salem's Church after General Hooker's defeat at Chancellorsville in 1863.

I told her about when Carol and I first looked at Berclair to buy it and seeing the Smokehouse I had seen in a picture years ago during a Civil War Round Table meeting in Wisconsin. Based on seeing this Smokehouse I knew Berclair was General Robert E Lee's reserve Army Headquarters before the Battle of Fredericksburg and Berclair Plantation had been a Field Hospital during the Battle of Salem's Church.

I told Evelyn what Mary Williams the former owner of Berclair had told us about Berclair Plantation before we bought it for our Quarter Horse Farm and I once had a copy of the original hand scrolled deed dated 1783 when George and Charles Washington and Fielding Lewis sold it to an Amos French.

I suggested if she could find Mary Williams I was sure she would be willing to tell her more about Berclair Plantation and fill in the things I may have forgotten.

Evelyn wanted to know if I knew anything about the Temple family who owned Berclair Plantation from 1801 to the early 1890's. I told Evelyn I knew of them from the Title search on the property and I knew some of the Temples had been in the 9th Virginia Cavalry during the Civil War. She asked if I knew anything about Ben and Lucy Temple. I could only tell her I ran across their names in the Title search.

Evelyn asked if I knew anything about the Ghosts on the Plantation. She knew about the Confederate Officer who would appear in the evening in front of the main house and ask if anyone had seen his troops. Although neither Carol nor I had seen this Ghost, I did tell Evelyn about hearing children laughing in the hallway and the tricks a woman and man would play on us.

I would hear Carol calling me to come to her, but when I went to see what Carol wanted, she said she did not call me. Carol would hear me calling to her when I did not call her. It happened so many times that when the ghosts started this calling game, we would leave the house to them and go somewhere to get something to eat. Carl's Frozen Custard was one of our favorite places to get a treat and by the time, we returned the ghosts were quite again. I told Evelyn we never found any malevolent or evil spirits around Berclair Plantation just the two tricksters and the children laughing.

Then I remembered the swinging chandelier in the living room. I told Evelyn the swinging chandelier was an unmistakable signal from the ghosts. The living room's chandelier would swing when the ghosts were pleased with something we had planned to do on Berclair or warn us of a problem we needed to be prepared to deal with. It seemed once we saw the ghosts signal they would lead us to clues they wanted us to find. Evelyn was excited by my revelations and she asked for examples of what happened when the ghosts signaled us.

I told Evelyn about the chandelier swinging the day we finalized our plans with the Contractor in the living room to repaint all the buildings on Berclair Plantation and build the Carriage house.

Then there was the time I found the chandelier swinging and I was lead to the Carriage House and found all our broodmares grazing on the knoll behind it. Someone had not closed the gate on their pasture and if I had not found them, they could have gone down our long driveway to the busy Harrison Road and they could have been hit by a car, as there was nothing to stop them.

I did not tell her about the chandelier swinging during the time the Grand Jury was indicting me. The clue the Ghosts were leading me to, was always to the telephone on my desk. When the phone rang on Sunday morning with the news I was in the Raleigh North Carolina Newspaper as being indicted in the Tobacco Scheme I now understood the Ghosts were trying to warn me of this pending danger. As Willy Strickland told me about this newspaper article, I looked up and saw that my address book was open to the page with his name on it.

I also remembered the day I left Berclair Plantation in August of 1997 the chandelier would not stop swinging. If the ghosts were trying to tell me something they were not giving me a clue, until I walked out the door and met the same two Agents who had come to inspect Berclair the day after I was released from the mental hospital.

When I give them the keys to Berclair Plantation, the blank look on their faces was priceless. They had underestimated Carol's abilities to act so quickly and just leave the future of Berclair Plantation to the outcome of the immediate appeal filed by Rob Smallenberg on May 27, 1997. I now knew why that appeal was never heard by Judge Howard and maybe someday I would tell Evelyn about these two other warnings from the Ghosts.

Evelyn and I must have talked for over four hours before I asked Evelyn if something else might be going on here between us. To my surprise, Evelyn said. "It sure sounds like it to me. How do you feel about it, if there might be something else going on?"

"Interested," I replied.

She laughed saying, "Let's see where this interest leads us. Let me call you back tomorrow."

"Better make it Sunday as I will be going for my Fourth Degree in the Knights of Columbus tomorrow and I don't know what time I will be coming back after the banquet."

"Will I have to call you 'Sir Mark' on Sunday?" She asked and laughed before she said good night.

If Evelyn was a spy for the North Carolina Court, she did not learn anything about how Carol and I had bought Berclair Plantation as a Quarter Horse Farm for a VAMCO Investment with A R Dixon. However I did recognize Evelyn had the ability to asked the right questions to probe an in depth response from me without revealing anything about herself.

What better way did she have to put me at ease, than to play up to a man's fantasy of a possible romantic interest to get him to confide his inner most secrets to her. If that was her angle then whoever put her up to making the call did not know me very well. The more I thought about her call I did not know where Evelyn was calling from, what she did for a living or how she had been able to find me. If Evelyn knew I had lived at Berclair Plantation, did she also know I had been convicted in the excess tobacco scheme and I had been released from Federal Prison after serving over 12 years?

True to her word, Evelyn called me on Sunday afternoon. By this time, I had a list of questions about Berclair Plantation as Evelyn had said she had been looking at it for some time. If she was a real buyer of Berclair Plantation, she should have the current information about what had happened to Berclair Plantation after it was sold by the Government at public Auction for only 800 thousand dollars when it was worth over 3 million. She would also know how the property was developed into a housing subdivision by the new owner as it had the potential of netting him over 5 million dollars and he still would have over 20 acres in the historical core of the Plantation if he developed the property correctly.

Evelyn attempted to answer my questions by sending me the Internet link to Berclair Plantation as listed by the Realtor. When I admitted I did not know how to use the Internet link, she walked me through the process to open the link in my computer. I was surprised to see Nick Calamos who I had known for years while Carol and I lived in Fredericksburg was the listing agent on this property but I did not tell Evelyn about this yet.

Looking at the pictures of Berclair Plantation did not impress me as they reflected the lack of normal maintenance and the obvious neglect of the property. All the bushes and boxwoods were overgrown and the barn and the now in closed pool house had been painted a baby shit green.

The chimney of the Schoolhouse had fallen down and all the other out buildings needed major repairs and repainting. If the pictures of these buildings looked bad, the pictures of the condition of the interior of the Main House looked even worse.

The pain staking efforts of Mary Williams to restore the house to its correct historical past and Carol's efforts to continue to preserve Mary's efforts had been changed and painted over with a garish mixed matched array of unbelievable colors. The most glaring faults were in the two upstairs bathrooms. The hallway bathroom had a glassed in toilet throne room as if the normal privacy of a locked bathroom door was not enough. A glass block wall had been built between the toilet and the vanity of the Master Bedroom's bathroom as an attempt to hide the toilet from view without actually doing it.

I tried to tell Evelyn what the main house looked like when Carol and I lived there and what Mary Williams had done before we bought Berclair. I told her what the current owner did to the kitchen was a crime as the beautiful solid cherry wood cabinets had been painted a glossy white enamel.

As we looked at the pictures of every room, I noticed a bulge in the floor of the upstairs hallway. To me this was an indication there had been a structural fault somewhere in the building's foundation that was forcing the walls together to buckle up the hallway's floor.

When I asked Evelyn, what the owner was asking for the property and she told me 750 thousand dollars, I had to stop and recalculate its true value. By this time, I had gain an understanding of the value of things in this depressed economy. Although the cost of living had doubled, the value of Real Estate had taken a major hit after all of the foreclosures and the Government had been forced to bailout the Banks. If the core of Berclair Plantation with 20 acres was worth a million dollars when VAMCO offered it for sale than it would be worth half as much now and even less with only 8.5 acres.

I told her the owner was nuts and if she paid that much for this property, she was either filthy rich or she was also nuts. I explained from what I saw in the pictures it would take over a hundred thousand dollars just to take care of the neglected maintenance. I pointed out the horse barn was useless, as there was not enough land to keep horses on the property. The silence on the other end of the telephone line told me I must have hit a reality nerve in her pie in the sky dream world.

I did find out Evelyn worked for the Philadelphia City Government and when she retired in two years, she would be receiving a sizable drop bonus she planned to use to buy Berclair. Evelyn had graduated from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg and fell in love with the city and the historical Berclair Plantation once owned by the Washington family.

Evelyn expressed the lofty desire to restore Berclair Plantation as a significant historical property and then donate it to the State of Virginia when she died. Evelyn's goal did not make any sense to me as her family never lived here, the only thing left of Berclair was surrounded by subdivisions and nothing historically significant took place there that the State would want to protect.

Evelyn may have made her first mistake since she tried to get me to talk about Berclair. Having aroused my paranoia, Evelyn evaded answering my questions about who owned Berclair Plantation when she was at Mary Washington College or if she had any friends who had lived there.

Instead, she talked about her research on the Temple family who lived there since the early 1800's. Evelyn was fixated on the lives of Ben and Lucy Temple who had raised a family and lived there during and after the Civil War. Although I found this information interesting, it did not have any bearing on the inflated selling price the owner was asking for this property in this depressed economy. Rather than bring up the inflated asking price for Berclair Plantation based solely on my undocumented opinion I offered to do a Real Estate study and get back to her with my best estimate of what Berclair was worth now.

For the first time in years, I found myself evaluating the business potential of an investment and it felt good. I conducted an in depth study of similar historical properties and talked with several Realtors in the Fredericksburg area. There were no comparable historical properties being offered on the local real estate market. All the other historical properties, I found listed for sale in Virginia offered significantly more land, fully restored houses and were more reasonably priced.

Although Fredericksburg was a financially upscale community, there were over 300 home foreclosures in Spotsylvania County alone and close to 1,000 foreclosures within 25 miles of the city. The National Real Estate Reports indicated the average home had lost 40% of its value and more than 50% of the homes were no longer worth the remaining balance still owed on their mortgages. Some Real Estate forecasts indicated the real value of property could lose another 20% before the end of 2012.

Based on this research, I tried to tell Evelyn the asking price for what was left of Berclair Plantation was too high and it was definitely a buyer's market not only in real estate but also in just about every market where having the money to buy something set the real market price.

Rather than comment on my findings, Evelyn changed the subject and started to flirt with me as if we knew each other for years. My guard immediately went up, as I had no idea what she was really up to. It had been my experience when a woman attempts to change the subject by becoming a distraction, it is for a reason I should not ignore.

At first, I wanted to believe I was over reacting after spending the last 12 years without any social contact with women. However by now I had time to relearn to trust my inner feelings I could play along to see where she wanted to take all this.

I also realized "flirting" was easy to do when the other party is safely miles away on the phone or on the receiving end of your e-mails. You can be bold and the adventuresome person you always wanted to be. The only problem was Evelyn did most of the asking and I did most of the responding. While I talked about who I was and what I did in my life I learned very little about her and when I press for information from Evelyn she turn the conversation back to Berclair Plantation and the Temple family.

This same pattern was repeated each time we talked. The more I tried to establish why Evelyn had this urgency to buy Berclair Plantation I had the feeling Evelyn was not ready to tell me. On the other hand, maybe she did not understand the driving economic factors controlling the price of Real Estate or now to negotiate the purchase price of this property.

She would not be the first otherwise successful person who did not understand the deliberately created artificial Real Estate game and how to make that game work for her. Although there are specific laws that must be followed in the buying and selling of real property it still came down to the simple deal made between the buyer and seller and the realtors were only little more than coaches and bystanders who took their commissions on the sale.

Giving Evelyn the shadow of doubt, I told her I had been a licensed Virginia Realtor and suggested I could drive down and inspect Berclair Plantation for her. I explained, once I saw the property and knew what happened to it, I could give her my best opinion of the true value of the place. I suggested when I knew what Berclair was really worth, I could help her negotiate a contract to buy it for its true and current real value.

Evelyn wanted to know if I would receive part of the Realtors commission when she bought Berclair Plantation. I took this to mean she did not want to create a separate financial obligation for my assistance. This also meant Evelyn was not as naive about Real Estate matters as she wanted me to believe.

To see where this might be going I explained I was not a currently licensed Realtor and therefore I was not entitled to a share of the Commission. I added I was only trying to help her get the property she always wanted. I went on to say if she bought the property with my help, she would owe me a steak dinner at Berclair Plantation with all the trimmings.

Evelyn made the point I was too generous but I would not be disappointed in asking for dinner, as she was a good cook. We spent the rest of the evening talking about our favorite recipes and foods we enjoyed. I told her about going to New Orleans on business and having the Raspberry Gin Sauce Roast Duck after Carol bought the Great Chef's of New Orleans Cook Book. The original recipe was made with chicken at Christian's Restaurant.

I explain when Carol and I had discussed this recipe we thought it would be better if it were made with duck. When we were at Christian's we had found they were now also making it with duck. We ended up talking about Carl's Frozen Custard, which had become a landmark institution in Fredericksburg. I told Evelyn I would pick up a few quarts of Carl's Ice Cream while I was in Fredericksburg.

On my way to Fredericksburg, I bought a digital camera I would use to take pictures of Berclair Plantation when I inspected the property. As I drove through the gate of what was left of the core of Berclair Plantation I no longer had any feelings or emotional ties to the property, which surprised me. Perhaps it was because Evelyn had already sent me the pictures of what it had become and I had gotten over what it had been like when Carol and I lived there.

There was no one home in the Main House or in any of the Rental properties. I took my time walking through the property trying to withhold any judgment of what the new owner had done to the place. The pictures of Berclair Evelyn had sent to me over the Internet were bad enough but those pictures could not have prepared me for how deplorable I found the condition of the property was in. The ancient fruit orchard, the kitchen and herb garden, the Greenhouse and all the tall beautiful cedar trees that stood behind the Greenhouse and lined the west side of the orchard were gone. The Mare Care Barns and all the split rail fences that remained were falling down.

All the bushes were completely over grown and the 200-year old Boxwoods had not been pruned for years leaving gross misshapen bushes and large gaps in the hedges like the missing teeth in an old man's smile. The once prized historical Rose Garden, Carol and I had loved and sought to preserve had been choked out by the weeds and the wild grass leaving not a single Rose as evidence of what it had once been. Up to this point in my inspection of Berclair Plantation, I had been able to remain emotionally detached but what happened to the Rose Garden was unforgivable, as the owner had committed a sacrilege of the highest order.

There had been roses in that garden dating back to the American Revolution and members of the American Rose Society had come back to Berclair Plantation to take cuttings for their own gardens. This Rose Garden and it's gazebo had been my special retreat when I needed to clear my business thoughts or when I just took the time to "smell the roses" life was offering to me back then. "Did that life ever exists or had it been a dream that turned into a nightmare?" I had to wonder.

My anger welled up inside me as I thought about all the unfairness done by the criminal acts of the Officers of my Trial Court to the people, horses and things I loved. Carol, Coosa Lad and the Berclair Plantation I knew were all gone. I knew I could not allow myself to dwell on the past if I wanted to help Evelyn buy this place. It was just like in the movie _Gone with the Wind_ where Evelyn was just like Scarlet O'Hara who vows to restore her family's Plantation to its Pre-Civil War splendor.

If Evelyn was going to buy Berclair, she better be prepared to spend a lot of money just to make the Plantation presentable as all the buildings needed more than just a coat of paint and I still had serious reservations concerning the foundation and structure of the Main House. If I were more confident in my physical capabilities, I would have crawled under the Main House to see if the house had shifted or if one or more of the brick pillars supporting the house had crumbled to cause the bowing in the second floor hallway.

Although I knew it was important to find out why the second floor Hallway was buckling, I felt I was already pushing my luck by staying here as long as I did, without anyone finding me. Besides a pre-purchase house inspector could establish why that floor was bulging and he should be able to provide a cost estimate to fix it. I had just left Berclair Plantation's gate when a car turn onto George Street and I watched it in my rearview mirror as it drove into Berclair Plantation.

For some reason I felt good about pulling off this reconnaissance without being caught but I knew it had more to do with luck than with my former military skills or my superior prior planning. On my way out of Fredericksburg, I stopped at Carl's Frozen Custard and I bought a quart of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate and put them in my cooler I had packed with ice. As I drove back to Purcellville, I organized the report I would give Evelyn.

# 6. MY RENEWED ATTEMPT TO DEAL WITH THE NSSA

After I was released from FCI Petersburg, I sent a Certified Return Receipt Requested Letter to the Registered Agent of the NSSA asking that the false cheating charges that I had been convicted of during the 1993 NSSA January Board Meeting be resolved in light of the Loudoun County Circuit Court decision that established I could not have cheated. The lack of response from the current NSSA Board of Directors to have this resolved left me no choice but to reopen the 1976 Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Lawsuits.

These lawsuits would be in the Hopewell Circuit Court based upon the violation of the terms and conditions of the original Settlement Agreement with the NSSA. I went to Hopewell Virginia as part of my planned trip to inspect Berclair Plantation for Evelyn to file my petition to reopen the Harpers Ferry Arms Company's Lawsuits in the Hopewell Circuit Court.

I had the documented evidence of the NSSA's repeated violations of the Settlement Agreement and the NSSA Defendants deliberate attempts to prevent me from receiving the Distinguished Skirmish Shooter Award by shooting extra shots into my National Match Targets.

The results of the first Loundoun County Circuit Court Case had established I had been wrongly convicted of cheating by the NSSA. I also had the sworn testimony from that case which indentified John Roby and Bill Jordan of assigning individuals to shoot into my targets.

This was the clear evidence to prove the NSSA Defendants had acted to prevent me from earning the points to qualify for this award. The documented proof of NSSA's loss of their approval of my 1855 Artillery Model Barrel in the second Loundoun County Circuit Court Case clearly violated the terms and conditions of the NSSA's Settlement Agreement with me and Harpers Ferry Arms Company. The final claim was the NSSA's part in having Jim Brake falsely claim I had knowingly been his partner in this Tobacco Scheme to convicted me, in exchange for the NSSA changing its By-laws to allow him as a convicted felon to still be a member of the NSSA.

I had hoped by this time I would have overturned my illegal conviction and I could overcome the stigma of a convicted felon to make my claims against the NSSA a stronger case. However, that card had not been dealt into my hand to play yet.

On my way to see my family in Wisconsin, the wild card of Jim Brake's unexpected support against the NSSA had been dealt into my hand. I had tracked down Jim Brake and I found him living with his wife Pat in a Motor Home in Winchester, Virginia. I had the feeling I was the last person Jim expected to see on his doorstep as he looked like I had caught him with his pants down. If I did not understand, why Jim did what he did to protect his brother and if I had been someone seeking revenge after spending 12 years in prison for what he did to me, Jim would have a good reason to fear me.

"How's it going Bubba?" I warmly greeted him and raised a bottle of Seagram's 7, as a sign of friendship. "You got time for a drink?" I added.

"Sure, let me get a couple of glasses and perhaps we can talk in my shop." Jim responded.

Jim was making high quality muzzle loading 2 band Springfield rifles used in the NSSA's competition. He would not only make the guns he would develop the proper powder load, sight the rifles in and provide the correct bullet mould as a complete package for the competitor who had ordered one of his guns. Jim showed me the tight interlocking shot groups in the targets he shot with a rifle he had just built for one of his customers. I knew from my own experience in selling Harpers Ferry Arms Company's guns nothing sells better, than a proven shooting firearm.

We talked about old times when we shot together on the 5th Virginia Cavalry. After several drinks and a number of stories about our past, Jim asked what I was going to do to the NSSA now that I was out of prison.

"I am going to give them a chance to correct the situation and if they don't take it, I will brain them." I calmly told him.

"I told them you would be coming after them and you can count on me to do what I can to help you." Jim volunteered and he told me that he now understood how badly he had been used by the NSSA.

When I told Jim that I might need him to testify about the deal the NSSA made with him, he did not hesitate to say he would help me beat them.

"Thank you Jim. I can use all the help I can get. Right now, I only want to clear my name of this false cheating charge as I have already proven I did not cheat in the first Loundoun County Circuit Court Case. I will be sending the NSSA Board of Directors a letter with a copy of the Court's decision so they will know the truth in black and white. If the reasonable members of the current Board of Directors are not willing to give me that, than the NSSA's membership will again end up paying for the foolish pride of those who are guilty of orchestrating these false charges against me.

There was one question I need an answer from Jim Brake and that was what he had told AUSA Swaim or Agent Ed Dayo about my lawsuits with the NSSA. According to Jim, he was never asked about any of my problems with the NSSA and he never discussed my lawsuits against the NSSA with anyone in the Government.

When he asked why I wanted to know this, I told him how AUSA Swaim had attacked Carol when she testified about the conversation she had with you, when you told Carol you were being forces to lie about my involvement in this tobacco scheme and he knew you were lying but he did not care. AUSA Swaim brought up my Lawsuit against NSSA who had found me to be a cheater but he would not let her testify that I had been cleared of any possibility I had cheated by the Court and I was suing the NSSA in a second lawsuit for damages.

"Mark, I need to know if Willy Strickland told you what I would say if your attorney asked me why I was being forced to testify against you." Jim wanted to know.

"Yes he did but my attorney refused to ask you. I do not know if you know this but the court forced me in a hearing just two days before my trail to use an attorney I had fired and I had replaced with three prepared legal counsels who I had hired almost a month before my trial." I told Jim.

"How could they do that?" Jim asked with a confused look on his face.

"That's just the half of it. They deleted a Pretrial Hearing that challenged the courts actions from the Docket sheet and withheld the transcript of that hearing for over six years. I am still appealing this fraud on the court as you would not believe what Judge Howard has done to preserve my conviction.

Maybe one day when this is all over, we can have another pistol match like the one we had at your place in Richmond where neither of us missed even when we shot at pistol cap tins." I told Jim.

_As a frame of references of the shooting skill involved in this match, the size of a pistol cap tin is less then the size of the "X" ring on the NSSA's 25 yard Pistol Target_.

"I would like that Mark." Jim stated as he offered me his hand in friendship knowing I was not holding what he did against him. When I left Jim's place it was as if the last 12 years never happened and nothing else needed to be said.

Although we had somehow regained our former bond of being almost brothers, the circumstances of that transpired before and during my trial were beyond Jim's control and "blood is always thicker than water."

AUSA Swaim had trapped Jim into protecting his twin brother Henry, by forcing Jim to perjure himself and implicate me as being a willing conspirator in his excess tobacco marketing scheme. Jim had warned me about this when Willy Strickland told me that Jim claimed he had no choice but to testify exactly as AUSA Swaim wanted him to do or his twin brother Henry would go to jail.

Jim's solution for the problem he had created for me was to have my attorney ask him why he was lying about my involvement in the Tobacco scheme and he would tell the court that AUSA Swaim and Agent Ed Dayo were forcing him to lie to protect his brother. This might have worked if I had a competent and a well-prepared defense counsel like the three new attorneys I had hired after I fired Randolph Riley.

Prior to agreeing to take my case, my new attorneys had talked with Jim Brake and they had confirmed what Jim would say under cross-examination. Once the truth was exposed in open court, AUSA Swaim would be caught in his own trap and he could not take back Jim Brakes Plea Bargain Agreement as Jim's sworn testimony of the truth would protect him and his brother Henry.

I knew now, when I discharged Randolph Riley and hired my three new legal counsels I had threatened the Prosecutor Swaim's house of cards just as Rudy Hill's competent legal counsel had easily defended him without having to put on a defense. Rudy Hill's lawyer had destroyed the prosecution's case by embarrassing their principle witness Agent Ed Dayo who had manufactured evidence that had been denied by the government's own witnesses.

Whether AUSA Swaim knew of Jim Brake's plans to sabotage his own testimony when my attorney asked why he was lying, was not as important to AUSA Swaim as his need to prevent me from retaining competent legal counsel. Until I fired Randolph Riley, Judge Howard and the Prosecutor AUSA Swaim had assured those, in high places I would be easily convicted base on the fact, my attorney had suffered a metal breakdown and his reputation of personal and professional incompetence was well known in all the courts in the Raleigh North Carolina area.

When I had hired competent Legal Counsel Judge Howard forced me to use Randolph Riley in the Rule 44 Hearing two days before my trial. Judge Howard and the party in high places did not expect me to immediately file Motions for Reconsideration that would require an on the record hearing before my trial began. As a result, of my surprise motions Judge Howard and the Prosecutor AUSA Swaim did not have time to receive guidance from Washington on how they should deal with my challenge of being forced to use Randolph Riley as my defense counsel.

Once Judge Howard screwed up by forcing me to present the Motions of Reconsideration without any legal counsel in the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing, it was up to Judge Howard and AUSA Swaim to cover it up with the help of Judge Howard's Clerk of the US District Court in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

What took place after the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing was beyond Jim Brake's control as he could not just volunteer how he was being forced to lie to protect his brother, when Randolph Riley refused to ask Jim why he was lying about my involvement in the Tobacco Scheme.

# 7. ANOTHER FOUL BALL FROM THE COURTS

Patricia S. Conner the same Clerk at the 4th Circuit Court who had failed to notify me of the Appeals Court's denial of my 2008 IN RE Appeal, was returning my current IN RE Appeal claiming the Court of Appeals did not have jurisdiction to hear my case. I viewed this as another attempt to use Court Procedures to avoid dealing with the real issue of the fraud on the Court as committed by the Officers of my trial court.

Since I was invited by the Appeals Court to submit a legitimate issue in an IN RE Appeal in 2008, nothing legally had changed except the loss of the 28 months it took to establish the missing denial of this appeal. Right or wrong of how or why this was done, did not matter as 4th Circuit Court was the only game in town.

If I had any chance of overturning my conviction I had to play by the only rules, the 4th Circuit Court choose to use in ruling on my case. I would have to submit my claim back to Judge Howard's Court and once he denied it, the 4th Circuit Court would review it in my Appeal. Maybe this time the 4th Circuit Court would actually deal with the fraud committed by the Officers of my Trial Court when they falsified the Court's Docket Sheet to prevent me from making any appeal of their criminal act. Simply put, the Trial Court would not have deleted the Pretrial Hearing from the Docket Sheet if they had not violated my Constitutional Rights to have legal counsel at the Pretrial Hearing.

# 8. MY EFFORTS TO HELP EVELYN BUY BERCLAIR

When Evelyn called, I told her about my inspection of Berclair Plantation. Although my opinion about the property being over priced had not changed, I now had the first hand knowledge to support my original conclusions. I told Evelyn the current economic conditions would put the value of Berclair Plantation at 485 thousand dollars if all the delayed maintenance and necessary repairs were made on the property. My best estimate of the cost of these repairs would be over 150 thousand dollars if my concerns about the structural problems in the main house were unfounded.

I explained how she could use a Pre-purchase Housing Inspector to determine the possible structural faults in the main house and if he found any, he should be able to give her an estimate of the cost to repair it. I then suggested Evelyn should contact her Bank and have them perform a Bank Appraisal of the property and give her a value of how much money they would be willing to loan to her on the property. This would establish a third party's fair market evaluation she could use to make an offer on the property to the owner. Evelyn had trouble believing that buying the property could be that simple.

I explained as long as the Realtors remained in between her and the seller it was to their advantage to make it appear more complicated than it had to be. Once the seller accepted her contract offer, with the conditions she needed to protect herself, only she and the seller were in the position to make the deal. The only real factor she needed to find out was how motivated the owner was to sell the property. A well-motivated seller would be willing to cut his asking price to sell the property when he knew how much it could cost him to fix up the buildings to get his original asking price.

When Evelyn asked what would happen if the owner did not accept her offer and conditions, I told her the owner would be a fool if he did not make a counter offer as this property had been on the market for years and she was the only one who expressed any serious interest in buying the place. I explained as the buyer, she was in the driver's seat and just because the owner made a counter offer did not mean she had to accept it.

She could make an entirely new offer based on her new understanding of the owner's primary interests and his motivation to sell the property in this depressed Real Estate Market. I explained the art of restructuring a serious Real Estate offer forces the owner to reconsider his objections to your previous offer. Her new offer would give his Listing Realtor the opportunity to present the Real Estate market facts to him such as the owner's asking price is unrealistic based on the current conditions of the buildings.

Evelyn expressed a concern that someone else might buy Berclair and I reassured her no one would buy it at the owner's price for the same reasons I had given her. I pointed out there were a number of other more significant historical properties in far better condition with significantly more land and their asking prices were less than half of what this owner was asking for Berclair Plantation. Evelyn said she knew I was right but I also knew she loved Berclair Plantation and this was the only property she wanted to buy.

What she did not tell me was the reasons for her urgency to buy Berclair Plantation now when she had two years before she retired. I did not press her as I had given her the method to buy it if she really wanted to buy it now. Rather than discuss it further, Evelyn reverted back to asking me about what Berclair Plantation was like when Carol and I lived there. She wanted to know if I had any pictures of Berclair Plantation. I told her about the video we had made of Berclair Plantation based on all the information Mary Williams had told us about the property before we bought it.

I did not know how to tell Evelyn all my personal property had been lost after I had been convicted or how Carol put it in storage when she moved from Lexington to Alexandria and then when she moved to Texas my brother refused to take it or pay the storage fees to keep it for me.

Over the last two months I found my interaction with Evelyn had developed into a mutual interest to learn more about each other and for the first time since Carol died I had a renewed hope I may have found someone who might belong in my life.

My past life on Berclair Plantation and Evelyn's interest in restoring it to its historical glory became a mutual bond upon which we had expanded into a closer personal relationship each time we talked.

Although I did not intend to deceive Evelyn, the realization of this possible relationship had snuck up on me and now I did not know how to tell her about my past. I also knew I was only deceiving myself if I thought my conviction and the 12 years I spent in Federal Prison would not put this budding relationship into a deep freeze and kill any chance of establishing a future with her.

On the other hand, I may already be deceiving myself and I was reading more into this relationship than Evelyn had intended. Maybe she was really only interested in buying Berclair Plantation and she had contacted me to learn more about it. The fact I was also interested in the Civil War and I knew more about Berclair Plantation than anyone else she talked with, did not change her primary objective to learn more about the property by talking to me.

Before Evelyn would ask me to send her a copy of this video, I told her I did not have any of my personal property with me here in Purcellville. However, Carol and I had sent a copy to my mother but I did not know what happened to that Video after my mother died. I told Evelyn I would call my sister, Sue Ann in Wisconsin to see if she had it.

This lead to further conversations about my family, where I grew up, where I went to school and my military service in Vietnam and several books I had written about some of the activities I did in the Army. I sent her a copy of _Soft Touch_ and then a copy of the _Three Toed Tiger Tales_ by attaching them to an e-mail.

In further conversations, Evelyn became more open about her own life and a brother who also served in Vietnam she had not talked to in years. She told me about a disastrous marriage that ended in a divorce.

She told me about, her Bulldogs and one named "Irv" who was the current Mack Truck Bulldog. She told me about her American Staffordshire Terrier Show Dogs and she sent me pictures of her "children" and her favorite and most successful Show Dog "Bruno." This was the first picture I had of Evelyn and I could see how much she really loved Bruno. I also loved her smile.

As the Christmas Season approached, we discussed how we would be celebrating Christmas and the New Year Holidays. I did not plan to go anywhere as I had gone back to Wisconsin in September to see all my family that still lived there. My Brother Dick and his wife would be going to Maine to decorate her mother's place as their special gift to her so it would be like the Christmas's they had when Mary's family were growing up.

What I did not expect was Evelyn's gift of Chocolate covered Strawberries she had sent from Sherries Berries in Pennsylvania. I sent Evelyn an email. I thanked her for the Strawberries and told her this gift was not fair, as I did not have her address to send her anything.

Evelyn did not take the hint to send me her address. Her response was to send me an electronic musical Christmas Card from Jacquelyn Lawson, which simply said "The unexpected 'Gift" is the best gift of all."

It took a while for me to sign up for this electronic Card Service and I sent Evelyn one with dogs in it that said, "I always loved pleasant surprises."

New Years Eve was spent on the phone with Evelyn and if we had been together, I had the feeling sparks would have flown. The thought of making love with Evelyn had raised our relationship to a new level. The fact we were now miles from each other did not change the possibility that we would actually meet some time in the future.

Believing honesty was the foundation of any relationship and my failure to tell Evelyn about my past was an unforgivable omission, I had to correct if our relationship had any future. I realized the IN RE Appeal I was sending to the US District Court in the Eastern District of North Carolina would document what happened to me and it would be up to her decide if she wanted anything to do with me.

In the past, I had made my appeals based on the missing Pretrial Hearing's Transcript and I had over looked the real reason of why that Pretrial Hearing was missing from the Docket Sheet and why it had taken 6 years for the Trial Court to produce it. The answer was so simple I failed to realize the withholding of the knowledge of and the evidence of this Pretrial Hearing was no simple Administrative error. It was a deliberate criminal act in violation of Title 18 USC Section 1001a by the Officers of my Trial Court, when they falsified an Official Federal Record of the Trial Court's Docket Sheet. This criminal act was compounded by a Fraud on the Court, under FRCP Rule 60b3, when the Officers of my Trial Court deliberately withheld the knowledge of this Pretrial Hearing from my Direct Appeal Counsel to prevent a fair appellant review by the 4th Circuit Court. However this did not explain why the 4th Circuit Court failed to correct this "plain error" or gross miscarriage of justice when the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript was produced 6 years later and when I made my first 28 USC Section 2255 appeal in 2003.

Surely by the time I filed my IN RE Appeal to the 4th Circuit Court in July 2008 there was no doubt this missing Pretrial Hearing's transcript established Judge Howard violated my basic and fundamental Constitutional Rights guaranteed in the 6th Amendment to have legal counsel during all stages of my criminal trial.

Since only miracles happen beyond the power of men and everything else involves some act of man, there had to be someone within the 4th Circuit Court protecting Judge Howard. They had used the appearance of due process in denying my IN RE Appeal, knowing I would Appeal my case to the United States Supreme Court. However if they never sent me this denial, I would not know the 4th Circuit Court had denied my IN RE Appeal and I could not expose Judge Howard's criminal acts after he violated of my Constitutional Rights to the Supreme Court.

Although this "lost" denial had worked for over 28 months no one thought I would attempt to Supplement my IN RE Appeal after my early release under the Second Chance Act. Without my action who knows how long it would have taken before I found out my 2008 IN RE appeal was denied.

My excuse for not following up on my appeal sooner was all of my appeals seem to take years before they were denied. I had also become so mentally distracted in my efforts to deal with Mr Tucker and qualify for an early release under the Second Chance Act that I was not thinking clearly. Just because the 4th Circuit Court got away with this "lost" denial and they denied my attempts to re-file my IN RE Appeal in the 4th Circuit Court did not mean I could not file a new IN RE Appeal.

Since the 4th Circuit Court's Clerk sent back my last IN RE Appeal I tried to find an attorney who would agree to file this appeal and I found even if I had the money to pay them, the nature and scope of my appeal was an issue too "hot" to handle at any price.

Faced without an attorney's help I had two choices. I could give up and admit defeat but giving up while I still had the will and ability to fight was not part of my nature. Therefore, the only acceptable choice was to file this IN RE Appeal myself. I felt this higher obligation to expose this fraud on the Court. It was not just for me, in my case but for all the other poor bastards who were criminally denied the right to a fair trial by a dishonest judge and an unscrupulous prosecutor. They also had misuse their positions as Officers of the Court to violate the basic principles of Justice, I wanted to believe still existed in the other Courts of United States of America.

When I filed this Pro Se IN RE Appeal I knew if the US District Court of the Eastern District of North Carolina allowed Judge Howard to rule on his own criminal acts my Appeal would not receive a fair hearing on its merits. Judge Howard would deny it based on some Administrative Court Procedural Rule after months and months of delay just as Judge Howard had done on all my past Appeals. The only advantage I had in this appeal was Judge Howard could not deny it based on my appeal being "untimely" as an Appeal claiming a Fraud on the Court has no "time limits" or any statutes of limitations to filing it.

I planned to send Evelyn a copy of my In RE Appeal when the US District Clerk filed it in the Court Record and returned the date stamped copy to me. I hope this and my explanation would not end our relationship. While I waited for my copy of the filed IN RE Appeal, I worked on my letter to Evelyn. I planned to send it with a copy of my IN RE Appeal attached to an email telling her about my conviction and the appeal I was still making to overturn this illegal Conviction. No matter how many times I had rewritten this letter, it did not sound right. Just about everyone I met in Prison, claimed he was innocent and I did not want Evelyn to believe I was like all the others who claimed to be innocent without any evidence that I was innocent.

As the end of January approached, my copy of the filed IN RE Appeal had not arrived in the self addressed stamped envelope I had included in the package I sent to the Clerk of the North Carolina Court. With everything else this court had done to prevent me from overturning of my conviction, I would not put it past the Court not filing it and then claim they never received it.

During one of our conversations on Berclair Plantation when Evelyn still could not understand my concerns about the current conditions of the property and the costs to correct them, she suggested we should visit Berclair and I could show her what I was telling her. When I agreed, Evelyn asked if I could meet her at the February Dog Show in Fredericksburg and she could make an appointment with the Listing Realtor Nick Calamos to see Berclair Plantation Saturday afternoon if I were willing to come. When I agreed, she told me she would be taking her Motor Home and I could meet some of her dogs she was taking with her.

Since my copy of the filed IN RE Appeal had still not arrived, I took its delay and Evelyn's invitation as a sign I should tell her about my conviction in person and let her read my IN RE Appeal. This would allow me to answer any questions she had and I could provide more details of what I did in the tobacco Market and what took place during my trial when the court saddled me with Randolph Riley.

The day after this conversation, I received the copy of my filed IN RE Appeal. However it was not sent in the envelope I had provided but it was sent in a Court envelope dated January 22, 2012 nine days after the IN RE Appeal was stamped as "filed" in the court on January 13, 2012. This date seemed to be ironic as it was fourteen years since my Sentencing Hearing on January 13, 1998.

I had guessed right about my fears that the US District Court would lose this appeal and then claim months later I never sent it. Fortunately, a Deputy Clerk had already stamped and entered my IN RE Appeal in the Court's Official Record before someone realized what my appeal was about. Rather than change the Official Court Record someone in the Court decided it was not worth denying the Court had received it and the Deputy Clerk was told to mail it to me. The Deputy Clerk did what he had been told but he failed to use the envelope I had provided and sent it in the Court's Official envelope.

As I traveled to Fredericksburg, I felt confident I could favorably present my case to Evelyn before we visited Berclair Plantation as Evelyn had already told me the Listing Realtor Nick Calamos would meet us at 2 pm and he would know who I was and what happened to me.

It was after dark when I approached the Fredericksburg Expo & Conference Center where the Dog Show was being held. As I turned the corner where the Motor Homes were parked I saw a woman walking her dog in the grassy area used by the exhibitors to let their dogs do their business. I just knew this woman had to be Evelyn.

After introducing myself, petted her dog and receiving a warm hug, I volunteered to help Evelyn walk the other dogs she had brought with her to the Dog Show. We then settled in her Motor Home with pull out sections, which created a very large living space and Evelyn produced a bottle of wine, plates of cheese and crackers and steamed shrimp. After discussing how Evelyn's dogs did at the Dog Show and my trip down to Fredericksburg, I told Evelyn I had to tell her something serious about my past.

"If you are going to tell me about your conviction and the time you spent in Federal Prison, I already know." Evelyn stated. "I have not been completely open with you either after you were so kind to tell me everything you knew about Berclair Plantation during my first phone call. When I told you I worked for the Philadelphia City Government I was not sure I should tell you I am a Chief Inspector in the Philadelphia Police Department as I was afraid you would just hang up on me."

"So you used the Philadelphia Police Department to find me?" I asked.

"Not exactly, I used your name and Berclair Plantation's address to search the Internet and I found your 'I Mark Publishing' Website that listed your phone number." Evelyn told me.

I was not sure I should press Evelyn on what she meant by "Not exactly" as it did not matter how she knew about my conviction and my time in prison, only the fact she already knew and it did not make any difference.

"Let me show you something you might not know." I said as I brought out the date stamped copy of my filed IN RE Appeal and let her read it.

"How could they force you to use an attorney you fired and then force you to defend yourself when you challenged the court's ruling? Isn't that a violation of your Constitutional Rights?" Evelyn asked.

"It is but that is not the only issue I am appealing as I am also appealing what they did to hide their criminal activities." I told Evelyn. "You can see in my appeal how the Officers of my Trial Court criminally altered the Docket Sheet and withheld the knowledge of this Pretrial Hearing from my Direct Appeal Counsel. The criminal actions of Officers of the Trial Court were designed to prevent the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals from reviewing the Trial's Record of what took place during the Pretrial Hearing." I went on to explain how it took me over 6 years to obtain a copy of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript and then Judge Howards denied my appeals as being "untimely" to further conceal his fraud on the court. When I told her how difficult it had been for me to use the Courts Appeal process to expose the truth, she told me something like this happened to her in the Philadelphia Police Department.

She had been fired by the Philadelphia Police Department after Internal Affairs had used false testimony to convict her of stalking a former boy friend and his current wife. It had taken almost two years to win her Union Arbitration Hearing that established Chief Inspector Patricia Fox had abused her authority as the Director of Internal Affairs to personally and maliciously prosecute her.

This was done when Pat Fox knew the charges against her were untrue and unfounded. Evelyn told me she had been reinstated at her former rank of Chief Inspector and she received all her back pay and allowances. What surprised me about the outcome of the Arbitration Hearing was nothing had been done by the Philadelphia Police Department to Chief Inspector Patricia Fox for bringing the false charges or to any of the other members of the Police Department who had falsely testified against Evelyn at the Internal Affairs Hearing. I had to ask Evelyn what she had done to make herself a target of these people if she even knew.

"It is pure Jealousy. I am the first woman who came through the ranks to become a Chief Inspector based on my merits. Pat Fox could not even make Sergeant on the Police Force. Pat Fox was jumped passed 435 other Police Officers on the Sergeant's Promotion list when the Federal Court ordered the Philadelphia Police Department to promote more women. There were other women on the Police Force, who were more deserving of that promotion than Pat Fox was. However Pat Fox's father had political connects in Philadelphia and he put pressure on the Mayor and the Police Chief to promote his daughter not only to Sergeant but eventually all the way up the ranks to a Chief Inspector.

Pat Fox hates my guts because I am everything she wanted to be. She is determined to get me fired so she can claim she is the first woman Chief Inspector in the Philadelphia Police Department. When Pat Fox made that claim during a public speaking engagement a Philadelphia Newspaper Reporter challenged her and when she argued with him, the Reporter told her audience that I was the first woman Chief Inspector in the Philadelphia Police Department.

The embarrassed Pat Fox tried to get the Reporter fired and when that did not work, she came after me and she still is trying to get me fired especially after I was reinstated by my Arbitration Hearing. The worst part is the Police Department has done nothing to Pat for bringing the false charges against me."

"Of all the people I could have told about what happened to me, you are perhaps the only person who actually understands what it means to be falsely convicted of something you did not do." I told her.

"Unfortunately, you are right Pat Fox is not going to stop trying to get you. Even though you were exonerated the fact she was not punished means you may not have any friends you can count on when Pat Fox does it again as she has no reason not to do it. She may not be the only one jealous of you, as jealousy is one of the oldest sins in this world. As you know, Cane killed Able when God accepted Able's offering and not his.

Only you know how dangerous Pat Fox really is and I would recommend you hire a good lawyer and sue the hell out of Pat Fox and all those who falsely testified against you. A law suit could not only recover financial damages for personal suffering and professional embarrassment but it also is your shield against any new unfounded charges Pat Fox might try to bring against you." I told Evelyn.

"But that is the problem as I cannot sue Pat Fox or the others without suing the City." Evelyn stated.

"Sue them too as they let Pat Fox do what she did to you and they failed to take any disciplinary action against her when they knew the truth. Unless you have another way of dealing with this, you have no other choice but to eliminate your enemy's ability to get you. When I was in Vietnam I knew I could not stop fighting until I knew my enemy was really dead, as even a dying man can kill you before he takes his last breath." I told her.

I was not sure Evelyn really understood the danger she was in or she would take my advice on taking the offensive as her best defense. I could only base my recommendations on what Evelyn had told me but I knew an enemy like Pat Fox would not change her tactics of using false information and perjured testimony to get Evelyn, just as AUSA Swaim did in my trial.

I had a feeling that Pat Fox had more than enough time to learn from her past mistakes and she was already making her next attack on Evelyn. The worst part of my premonition was I did not know how right I had been about Pat Fox's evil intensions and her unscrupulous activities to get Evelyn fired. It is not my place to tell you what happened to Evelyn during the next year and a half, as it is her story to tell.

Having cleared the air about our past difficulties with unprincipled government officials, we settled back into sharing happier times in our lives as Evelyn and I made dinner together in her Motor Home. As the evening progressed, it was time to walk her dogs again and put them in for the night. Once the dogs were taken care of and to eliminate an awkward moment I told Evelyn, I had better leave as I had a Motel room in town and I would come back tomorrow in time to watched her show her dogs. I must have played this right as Evelyn put her arms around me and we kissed long enough to remind me what a pleasure it was to have a passionate woman in my arms again. I had the feeling Evelyn wanted me to stay but we both knew it was best if we took more time to get to know each other better.

The next day after Evelyn showed her dogs, we went to Shoney's Restaurant for lunch before we went to see Berclair Plantation. Nick Calamos must have thought he was seeing things when Evelyn and I drove up to the back door of the Main House of Berclair Plantation in my El Camino.

"It's nice to see you again, Nick." I said as I walked up to him to shake his hand and then I introduced Evelyn to him.

"Mark has told me so much about you and what he knows about Berclair Plantation." Evelyn told Nick and deliberately did not tell him or her Realtor why I was with her or what our relationship was in the possible purchase of the property.

"It is good to see you Mark." Nick managed to say."If anyone knows the history of Berclair Plantation, Mark surely does." Nick added.

Nick and Evelyn's Realtor walked us through the main house but I did not say anything and when we ended up in the living room, I asked if I could talk to Evelyn alone for a few minutes. When Nick and Evelyn's Realtor left us, I took Evelyn's hands in mine and I walked her under the chandelier.

"Look at the chandelier. It's starting to swing just like it did when Carol and I lived here and when the ghosts were pleased or they wanted us to do something." I told Evelyn

"It has to be Ben and Lucy Temple and I can only take it as a sign they want me to buy Berclair." Evelyn stated with deep conviction.

"Well if it is Ben and Lucy Temple they better get to work on the owner and convince him to become more reasonable in his asking price." I commented and then pointed to the chandelier as it was swung in an even greater arc as if Ben and Lucy were confirming that I told Evelyn was right and they understood what they had to do to help her buy Berclair Plantation.

When we rejoined Nick and Evelyn's Realtor, we walked through the main house again and I told Evelyn what each room looked like when I lived there. As we inspected the rest of the property, I told them what Mary Williams had told me about the buildings on Berclair Plantation and what I had done to improved the property when I lived there. I politely corrected a number of historical errors and misrepresentations made, by Evelyn's Realtor. It was clear Evelyn's Realtor did not professionally know enough about the property to present it to a prospective buyer.

Before we left, I took Nick aside and told him how disappointed I was in the owner's maintenance and up keep of the property. I pointed out the water was turned off in the main house and there was evidence of water damage in the kitchen which could mean the pipes had frozen and the owner had not fixed them yet.

I told Nick, Evelyn was serious about buying the place but not in its current condition. I knew I did not need to say anything else as Nick was reading me loud and clear. This property was in no condition to be offered for sale at the asking price and he would talk with the owner to fix the problems or reduce the asking price.

We would learn Nick pulled the listing of Berclair until the owner agreed to correct the problems. What the owner did was to raise the asking price to cover his costs of these necessary improvements but he did not make the improvements and Nick had to pull the listing again. The owner's actions told me he was not motivated to sell yet as he had made the cost of the property completely outrageous that no one else would look at the property at that price.

Evelyn and I went to dinner at a Mexican Restaurant with two other couples who were showing their dogs at the Dog Show. We had a great time and the conversation focused on funny events that happened at other Dog Shows. When Evelyn and I returned to her Motor Home, we took her dogs out for their walks and once they were tucked in for the night, I kissed Evelyn good night and I went back to my Motel room.

Sunday morning I went to Mass at Saint Mary's church. I did not recognize anyone I knew and the priest I had known when I lived in Fredericksburg was no longer there. When I went back to the Dog Show, I watched Evelyn show her dogs and I helped her pack her Motor Home for her trip back to Philadelphia. After I kissed Evelyn good-bye, she thanked me for coming and showing her all the problems I had found at Berclair Plantation.

I told Evelyn how much I enjoyed meeting her and her dogs. I also stated it was my pleasure to show and tell her about what Berclair looked like when I lived there. When I left her smiling, I knew we both had a good time. Again, it is Evelyn's story to tell you about Berclair Plantation and I need to get back to how I arrived at this point in my story after I was release from Federal Prison under the Second Chance Act.

# 9. THE "WILL" TO TAKE BACK MY LIFE

I feel it is important for you to understand what it was like for me to return to the real world after spending 12 years in prison. My time in prison established there are some people who should never be allowed to run it. Those who would protect these people will prevent any real improvement in our Prison system. I can only hope by sharing my experiences in this book that it will provide you with an insight into those areas that could help other inmates prepare to successfully reenter society.

The realization I was actually been released from Federal Prison came in stages. Each stage was like a separate wound with its own required healing time, before there was any chance of healing the next wound. I found life in Prison was like being suspended in a learning vacuum or locked in a time warp without the opportunity to understand what took place while you were gone.

Coming back into the real world was like being a 66-year old child who needs to relearn how to think for myself and relearn how to deal with things as they are now and not as they had been in 1996 before I was indicted. When I was released under the Second Chance Act, I wanted to be the perfect example of an inmate selected for this program. If I could establish this early release for elderly inmates worked then other inmates would receive the opportunity I had been given.

Of the close to 400 elderly inmates who might have been eligible for an early release under the Second Chance Act, I was only one of four inmates who were actually released from Federal Prison. Looking back at it now, my release had to have been a miracle through the intercession of Pope John Paul. I seriously doubt that I would have been released if it had not been for my prayers and my brother's relentless efforts. However, none of Dick's efforts would have succeeded without Senator Jim Webb's continual intervention to overcome the obstacles created by Mr Tucker and the North Carolina US District Court Judge, Malcolm Howard.

Although our lawmakers wanted to help control the rising costs to keep elderly inmates in prison, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Prison Employees' Union did everything they could to keep these elderly prisoners in jail just as Mr Tucker tried to do to me.

The Bureau of Prisons is like every other government bureaucracy. The BOP saw the holding of as many inmates for as long as they could as a means of increasing their annual budget and the Union saw the holding of more inmates in prison as their job security. Our Courts supported the BOP and the Union by siding against any inmate who legitimately challenges their illegal actions.

When the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Federal Bureau of Prisons denied my Tort Claim against Mr Tucker and Warden Stansberry, I filed a Civil Action in the Federal US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia Norfolk Division as FCI Petersburg was in their jurisdiction. This US District Court sat on my Civil Action for more than a year before my complaint was finally served on the Defendants Mr Tucker and Warden Stansberry and then the US District Court denied it. My Appeal to the 4th Circuit Court was denied based on their claim, although I was otherwise qualified, I was not legally "entitled" to be released under the Second Chance Act even though Congress had past this law for that purpose.

None of the documented Federal Criminal Acts committed by Mr Tucker and Warden Stansberry was addressed by either the US District Court or the 4th Circuit Court. Was this justice or is it another example of how our courts use their selected local rules to eliminate an embarrassing situation brought by an Inmate.

Once I had completed my "Home Confinement" under the Second Chance Act, I was no longer restricted to being out of my apartment for just one hour a day. The transition from home confinement to normal Probation became the next stage in my healing process as I had more time to interact with the people in my community of Purcellville, Virginia. By this time, I had lost the 90 pounds of excess weight but I still walked with my cane to brace myself when I started to fall. My ability to deal with my chronic pain had improved dramatically now that I could get a reasonable night's sleep. With sleep and dreaming, I was thinking more clearly and looking beyond my physical limitation to become productive again.

I had convinced myself if I was going to hurt no matter what I did and if my pain was not my body's signal I was injuring myself than I was only limiting myself by not doing what I physically wanted to do. Using the power of positive suggestion or "mind over matter" was like hypnotizing myself and "willing" myself to work through the pain to regain as much of my physical capabilities of a normal life as I could. I had extended my walks to more than a mile by the time I met Evelyn in Fredericksburg.

I did not want Evelyn seeing me as a cripple walking with a cane. I had gambled and prayed that I would not fall down in front of her as I still would fall when I leased expected it. If Evelyn noticed my subtle movements to reach for stable objects close to me, she did not say anything and I made it through the weekend without using my cane while I was with her.

This success gave me more confidence I was making progress towards becoming less physically dependent on my need to use a cane. Now when I went on my daily walks I still carried my cane and I only needed to use it once in the next month to break my fall. After several months of not falling down, I had reached another stage in my physical progress towards reentering the real world.

It was early June when I learned the Apartment Manager was looking for a part time person to cut the grass. I convinced her to let me try to do the job. It would be 4 hours a day five days a week at minimum wage. Although steering a self-propelled lawnmower is not hard work, the first day nearly killed me but I did it. I was completely exhausted and I fell asleep on the couch moments after I returned to my apartment. I woke up after several hours and I had a late supper.

Knowing I had to go to work tomorrow, I had to come up with a way of making sure I woke up and actually knew it was time to get up. One of my worst dreams was dreaming I was awake and going through my normal mourning routine when I was still in bed sleeping.

I could not hear the alarm clock without my hearing aids and I could not sleep with my hearing aids as the slightest noise woke me up just as it did when I was with the snipers in Vietnam. Waking up during the night after I took my neuropathic pain medications would require my body to become exhausted to overcome the pain before I could go back to sleep. Since this process of becoming exhausted could take hours, I would have problems waking up on time.

I never have been a morning person and one of the ways I knew it was time to get up while I was in College was to have my mother turn on my bedroom light when she woke me up. If that light worked years ago then it would also work now. I bought a plug in timer and hooked it up to my bedroom's lights. I set it for when I had to wake up and get out of bed.

It took over three weeks before my body adjusted to the physical demands of just mowing grass for 4 hours a day. I could now work the 4 hours a day and I no longer was exhausted or needed to rest when I returned to my apartment. Earning my first paycheck was the next stage to my reentry into the real world. This job would end when the grass stopped growing and with the delay of the promised economic recovery, any job even for those who were healthy and under 65-years old did not exist in Purcellville.

In the last two years, 9-small businesses within walking distance of my apartment had closed in Purcellville. I needed a car if I were going to find another job. I bought a vintage 1986 El Camino with 71,000 original miles on it with the money released from my mother's Trust. When my mother died my sister Sue Ann became my mother's Trustee and based on legal advice she was told my inheritance could be held in the Trust for me as legally it was not my money yet and the Court could not take it.

Although I knew the Court could not take any money after my conviction unless it could be traced back to my alleged criminal activities, I did not need the money while I was in prison and there was no point in upsetting my sister by asking for the money before now. When my brother Dick reassured my sister the Court could not take this money, she issued the final disbursement check from our mother's Trust Fund and closed out the estate.

With my car I looked for a job outside of Purcellville and I volunteered to teach Sunday School classes for the children of Saint Francis de Sales Parish held at the Woodgrove High School three miles north of Purcellville. The challenge of teaching 4th Graders about the Bible and what the birth of Christ means to Catholics became the next stage in my reentering the community and the real world.

Once I started to receive my Social Security and my Veteran's Service Connected Disability checks, I felt I had to see if I could live on what I was making. Although my brother, Dick offered to continue his financial support he understood my need to become self-sufficient as another stage to taking back my life.

I am not saying it was easy as the rent on the Purcellville apartment had been raised $375 dollars since I moved here in 2010 and my Social Security check was not enough money to cover it. The balance of my rent was covered by my Veteran's Disability check and I still had my apartment's utilities and cable service to pay leaving less than 175 dollars a month for my food and a modest donation to Saint Francis de Sales Catholic Church every Sunday.

One day when I went to Nichols Hardware store in Purcellville to buy something I needed there was a Part-Time Help Wanted sign on the front door. This was the first job opening I had found to exist in Purcellville since I moved into my apartment on May 10, 2010. I talked to Ken Nichols who was the 84-year-old owner and after learning what the part-time job entailed I put in my application.

When I was called back for a job interview and before I accepted the position, I told Mr. Nichols about my conviction. He appreciated my honesty and gave me the job telling me what I told him would remain just between us.

Since I had accepted the fact that I would hurt no matter what I did and I was not injuring myself I knew I could do this job. However my biggest fear was I would fall down and hurt myself when I worked this job as I still could not tell when I would fall again and I could not use my cane when I did this job. Not falling down was another thing I added to my daily prayers and when I did fall no one saw me.

Although the job was part-time, I still had to work an 8-hour day four days a week. After my first two days when my cash drawer came up within a penny of being correct, Mr Nichols told me I knew what I was doing and he wanted me to work a few extra days next week. I would be filling in on the days when the regular employees took their vacations.

The Nichols Hardware store did not use any computers and the merchandise was located throughout the store just as it had been for the last 97 years. Those who worked at Nichols Hardware would take the customers to where the item they wanted was located in the store. Learning where everything was located in the store took time.

One of the best ways to learn where everything belongs was to restock the inventory when it came in on Thursdays. I found working at Nichols Hardware Store was fun, as I could use all my previous experiences to help solve the problems of the customers.

I had done well enough in learning my job that Ken Nichols offered me a position in the management of part of the store when a long-term employee wanted to retire. I thanked Mr Nichols for considering me for this promotion. I expressed my biggest concern that I may not be able to do this job if my physical condition took a turn for the worse and then I could not even do the job I already had. Ken understood what I was telling him as he too had trouble walking and he was not getting any better.

Ken Nichols hired Landon Warner who was a well-respected black man and the son of the first Black Deputy Sheriff in Loudoun County. Landon was a retired Loudoun County Employee and his family had lived here for several generations. I would learn that Landon was the first black employee to work at Nichols Hardware Store and no woman had ever worked as a store clerk since the store opened in December 1914.

# 10. WHEN THE COURT'S RULES TRUMPS THE EVIDENCE

When the Department of Veterans Affairs denied my medical conditions resulting from being shoved down in the Van by Deputy US Marshal Dove as not being Service Connected, I finally had the documented evidence of the serious nature of these injuries. The Veterans Affairs had established I was permanently disabled at 100% but only 40% of my disability was the result of my 1971 Airplane crash.

With 60% of my disability directly related to injuries I received one January 13, 1998, I filed to reopen my case against the defendants involved at the Pitt and Wilson County Jails claiming they had violated the Court's February 23, 1998 Order to be seen and treated by my own doctor. I presented the document evidence from the Department of Veterans Affairs that the Bureau of Prisons had prevented me from establishing the serious nature of these injuries while I was in their custody.

Judge Boyle of the US District Court of the Eastern District of North Carolina denied my motion, claiming that I had only one year after my case had been closed by the court, to reopen it. My documented claim that I had been denied access to this medical evidence of the serious nature of my injuries until now was not considered by Judge Boyle and he dismissed the February 23, 1998 Court Order to see my own doctor as if it had never been issued.

In any other Injury Lawsuit against defendants who had deliberately used an agency of the government, such as the BOP to protect themselves and prevent the discovery of incriminating evidence, would have been more than enough to reopen the case and allow a jury to hear my claims.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals also ignored the "new" medical evidence of the serious nature of my injuries and denied my appeal to reopen my case. I could only view this as just another example of the Federal Court misusing their Administrative Procedures to circumvent the merits of a Pro Se Appellant's legitimate claim.

I am skipping forward to the point where I started my story after meeting with the young attorney who could not help me break lose my January 13, 2012 IN RE Appeal in the US District Court of the Eastern District of North Carolina.

My frustration to get Judge Howard to rule on the merits of my Pro se IN RE Appeal had increased with my additional disappointments to find an attorney who would help me. I continued to run into the practicing attorney's unwritten Rule "Thou shall not embarrass a Federal Judge." If an attorney violated this rule, they could be facing the same judge in one of their other cases and their clients would suffer an unfavorable ruling from this judge for their attorney's actions.

I wrote a letter to the Inspector General of the United States about my case and my efforts to have it reviewed by the Courts since the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing transcript was produced 6 years after my trial. I complained that my current IN RE Appeal to overturn my conviction had been in the US District Court since January 13, 2012 and even after I had filed my motion for Summary Judgment in August of 2011, Judge Howard had refused to take any action on my appeal. My letter containing all the documented evidence of my claims was sent to another Division in the Justice Department who sat on it and they never responded to my complaint.

One day in August 2013 after I said my Rosary, I had the thought of filing for a Hearing in the US District of the Eastern District of North Carolina on my Motion for Summary Judgment in this case. Such procedural motions had to be put on the Court's calendar and heard before the end of the Court's next Quarter.

# 11. THE MOVE TO WEST VIRGINIA WAS NO ACCIDENT

I did not realize that the Good Lord had setup the circumstances and reasons for my move to West Virginia as part of his plan to help me appeal my conviction. I did not know my first step to making this move came after I started to receive my Social Security and my Veteran's Service Connected Disability checks and I felt I had to see if I could live on what I was making.

I had improved my physical capacities and my ability to deal with my continual chronic pain, enough to try to do a part-time job cutting grass at the apartment complex where I lived. Than as if the Good Lord was looking out for me in this depressed economy where millions of Americans could not find a job, I found another part-time job at Nichols Hardware Store. Just as my parents taught me when I was growing up, I saved every dollar I made at Nichols Hardware store that I did not need to support myself for when I might need it.

Landon Warner one of the employees at the Hardware store lived in Charles Town West Virginia and he convinced me how economical it was to live in West Virginia. When I went to Charles Town I found what Landon was telling was true. Purcellville was in Loudoun County and one of the most expensive places to live in Northern Virginia. My 2 bedroom apartment was costing me over 1,100 dollars a month and the cost of food was 20% higher than Charles Town. The cost of food in West Virginia was also 6% less as the State did not have a sales tax on food as the State of Virginia did.

In September 2013 I not only found a nice well-built two-bedroom house in West Virginia with twice the living space as my apartment in Purcellville, it also had an attached one-car garage and a 12 x 22 foot workshop. However best of all with a 30-year mortgage I could cut my basic living expenses in half.

When I became an Officer in the US Army, I joined the United States Automobile Association and over the years, the USAA expanded their business to become a Federal Bank. Once you are a member of USAA you remain a member for life. The USAA Federal Service Bank was willing to give me a low interest loan and the money I had saved from working at Nichols Hardware Store and the balance of my inheritance from my mother, was used for the down payment. I bought my house on October 23 and moved in the next day.

Although I thought I was making this move for purely economic reasons, I found moving to Harpers Ferry West Virginia opened the door to the restoration of my Voting Rights. I would vote for the first time since my conviction in the West Virginia Republican Primary Election on November 13, 2013 for US Senator Capito and the US Congressmen Moony and they both won their bid to represent the Republican Party in the West Virginia 2014 General Election.

I joined Saint James the Greater Catholic Parish in Charles Town, West Virginia. I transferred my Knights of Columbus membership from the Saint Francis de Sales Council and my 4th Degree in the Pope John Paul Assembly in Sterling Virginia to this Parish. I was pleased to learn the 4th Degree Assembly at Saint James was also called the Pope John Paul Assembly. At the time, I believed the likelihood of both 4th Degree of the Knights of Columbus Assemblies' being call Pope John Paul was a sign I had made the right move to come to West Virginia and Pope John Paul had influenced my decision to come here.

# 12. FURTHER ABUSES OF ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES

On October 12, 2013 Judge Howard dismissed my IN RE Appeal claiming I was no longer in his court's jurisdiction as I had been release from my Court ordered three-year probation after one year based on my Probation Officers recommendations of my exemplary behavior. It is somewhat ironic that being recognized as a law-abiding citizen would work against me in a court of law.

Judge Howard had again used Administrative Court Procedures to protect himself and the Officers of his Trial Court to avoid the consequences of their criminal acts. The merits of my IN RE Appeal was lost in the haze of unfairness created since the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing was criminally deleted from my Trial Court's docket sheet.

When I appealed Judge Howard's decision to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, it did not seem to matter that I had filed this Pro se IN RE Appeal when I was still under the US District Court's jurisdiction. The fact Judge Howard deliberately delayed ruling on my IN RE Appeal for 22 months to create the false jurisdictional issue to deny my appeal did not matter either.

The 4th Circuit Court denied my Appeal by stating, "A Fraud on the Court under FRCP 60b simply does not provide relief from judgment in a criminal case" citing US v. Mosavi 138 F. 3d 289 (11th Cir. 1998). How could the 4th Circuit Court claim the only appropriate Federal Rule of Civil Procedure to appeal a "fraud on the court" is not available in criminal cases? This would deny the possibility that a fraud on the court could ever occur in a criminal case and therefore there was no need for a criminal defendant to appeal a fraud on the court.

There is something fundamentally wrong with our justice system if the Court of Appeals condones the actions of a trial court that criminally conceal and withhold evidence to preserve an illegal conviction and then use their own court rules to prevent a fair hearing of the documented facts of the Trial Court's fraud on the court. Inmates are entitled to have access to the courts and our courts are supposed to take Pro se Appeals in the most favorable light, as a pro se appellant is not a lawyer. Yet this requirement of the courts to favorably examine the merits of a Pro se Appeal seldom happens. Our Appeal Courts are willing to use "selective" Administrative Procedures to deny a Pro Se Appellant's Petition while ignoring the merits and the documented evidence of the issues and claims made in his appeal.

Regardless of what we have been taught to believe about the fairness of our country's legal system, there is an inherent prejudice in the Court of Appeals against defendants who represent themselves and attempt to overturn their conviction. This 4th Circuit Court of Appeal's continual denial of the document evidence of this fraud on the court is the clearest example of the court's priority of preserving a conviction at any cost and protecting the reputation of one of their fellow Judges who had legally screwed-up.

In my case my attorneys had not faired any better as Judge Howard had denied them the evidence to support their appeals of the fundamental miscarriage of justice that occurred during the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing. Judge Howard had denied this evidence to Rob Smallenberg who filed the immediate appeal on May 27, 1997, Locke Clifford who filed the Rule 29 appeal on July 15, 1997 and my Court Appointed Direct Appeal Counsel Richard Glazier who could not file my Direct Appeal for over 3 years since my trial. Even then the knowledge of the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing was illegally denied to Richard Glazier by the Officers of my Trial Court who criminally deleted the Pretrial Hearing from the Trial Court's Official Docket sheet.

By the time the May 14,1997 Pretrial Hearing's transcript was finally produced 6 years after my trial, the Court had taken all my assets preventing me from hiring an attorney who would have properly structured the merits of my appeal based on a Fraud on the Court and the Constitutional violations that occurred during the May 14, 1998 Pretrial Hearing.

Although as a Pro se Petitioner, I did not have the legal training to file my first 2255 Appeal in 2003, the bases for my appeal had not changed as the proof, of this fundamental miscarriage of justice was taken from the Trial Court's own records. Their clearly documented fraud on the court was established when the Pretrial Hearing was criminally deleted from the Docket Sheet by the Officers of my Trial Court. This fact alone should have been enough evidence to overturn my conviction in any reasonable person's mind.

If reasonable men could see the injustice of this act than why did the judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal's deny my appeals. May be if I won my appeal it would become a major legal precedent to overturn other illegal convictions. If Justice is only done when Justice is finally done then all of the other inmates, who were wrongly convicted and criminally prevented from appealing their illegal convictions, had the right to use this precedent.

If the idea of being "Right in front of God and everyone" would embarrass too many other Circuit Court judges who had missed use their authority to preserve my illegal conviction then it was only true justice that these Judges should be embarrassed and held accountable for perpetuating this Fraud on the Court. The goal of obtaining true justice is my objective by writing this book. This goal of obtaining true justice also meant I maybe the only one in the position to correct this injustice in the Courts and I had to continue to appeal my conviction until Justice is finally done.

As I did my legal research to appeal, the 4th Circuit Court's ruling I found the Appeals Court had completely ignored the exceptions to using FRCP Rule 60b in criminal cases as cited by both the 11th Circuit Court and the Supreme Court when a fraud on the court is involved. My En Banc Appeal for a Rehearing of my Petition to the 4th Circuit Court outlined these exceptions but it was also denied with the claim it was not filed on time.

The chances of the US Supreme Court overturning the 4th Circuit Court's ruling depended upon the US Supreme Court first accepting my Petition of a Writ of Certiorari to hear my appeal. My Writ of Certiorari would be one of thousands sent to the Supreme Court for consideration every year and there was no requirement the Supreme Court had to hear my Appeal.

The 4th Circuit Court had not cited the Jurisdiction issue raised by Judge Howard when they denied my appeal. I had to wonder if the Jurisdictional question was the real issue in the 4th Circuit Court's denial of my appeal. Surely, the 4th Circuit Court knew I could overcome their position of denying relief under FRCP Rule 60b with appropriate case law.

However, I could not find anything Case Law on the Jurisdiction Issue of my filed IN RE Appeal remaining in the US District of the Eastern District of North Carolina once I was release from Probation. This could be another one of the court's Administrative Procedural traps to waste my time and money filing a Writ of Certiorari to the US Supreme Court, when the 4th Circuit Court knew it would not be granted.

I stopped underestimating what the 4th Circuit Court would do to protect Judge Howard and AUSA Swaim's criminal acts and preserve my illegal conviction since I found out the Pretrial Hearing was criminally deleted from the Docket Sheet. I would not have known about it then, if the Pretrial transcript had not been denied to my Direct Appeal Counsel to support my Direct Appeal he filed to the 4th Circuit Court three years after my trial. The deliberate withholding of my trial's transcript, from counsel who not my trial attorney violates the Court's Rules and this serious violation is more than enough to overturn my conviction.

Judge Howard had avoided dealing with the merits of my past appeals by using Administrative Court Procedures to claim my 2255 Appeals were "untimely." The only reason these 2255 Appeals were "untimely" was Judge Howard, had created the legal impediment to timely filing my Appeal by denying me a copy of the Pretrial's Transcript to support any earlier appeal. No matter what else exists in our legal system the Rule of Law must prevail over the Court's Administrative Procedures if justice is to be done.

Judge Howard may have had some extra legal help from Patricia Conner the Clerk of the 4th Circuit Court on my 2008 IN RE Appeal when she failed to send me a copy of the court's denial. This 28-month delay prevented me from timely appealing the 4th Circuit Court's denial to the US Supreme Court, when there would not be a jurisdictional question in my appeal.

Although I had filed this new IN RE Appeal when I was still on Probation, I had to assume if I was released from Probation than I was also free of the Jurisdiction of the US District Court in the Eastern District of North Carolina unless the jurisdiction to hear my appeal remained in the court where the appeal had been filed. Although everything I could find in the law indicated it should remain in Judge Howards Court, the 4th Circuit Court did not recognized the timing of when this Appeal was filed in the Trial Court. This meant the likelihood of the Supreme Court considering when this appeal was filed, was not very good either.

If the Jurisdiction was not the real issue, with a less than .001% chance that the Supreme Court would even hear my Appeal, I needed to evaluate my chances to overturn the 4th Circuit Court's opinion that a Fraud on the Court under FRCP Rule 60b was not available in criminal cases.

When I was doing my legal research to file my Writ of Certiorari I came across the US Supreme Court case of US v Morgan 346 US 502, 505 (1954). The Defendant successfully used a Writ of Error Coram Nobis to overturn his conviction based on the lack of proof he waved his right to legal counsel. If Morgan's conviction was overturned base upon his right to legal counsel, than Judge Howard's forcing me to present the Motions for Reconsideration during the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing without any legal counsel, made my claim to overturn my conviction even better then Morgan's.

I found conflicting references on the internet that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures on making an appeal under the Writ of Coram Nobis still existed. Under the All Writs Act a Writ of Error Coram Nobis was still available as a remedy of last resort for Petitioners who are no longer in custody. Once a defendant completed his sentence to include the court ordered probation, he was no longer under the jurisdiction of his trial court.

If my Trial Court did not have jurisdiction in my case than I should be able to appeal my criminal conviction in the Federal Court that currently has jurisdiction base upon where I lived now. I could not find any court cases on the Internet that would support my position of using my current Court's Jurisdiction to make a Coram Nobis appeal. Just because I was not skilled in using the internet to find them, did not mean they did not exist as I had only fund the Morgan case by accident.

If the Writ of Error Coram Nobis was truly, "a remedy of last resort" than my Trial Court who had numerous opportunities to correct its Plain Errors had already demonstrated it was not capable of objectively ruling in my case should make the US District Court in West Virginia the only alternative.

The more I thought about using a Coram Nobis Appeal I realized my move to West Virginia was no accident a year ago. This move would give me the legal jurisdiction of a US District Court of West Virginia as an alternative to filing the Writ of Certiorari on the 4th Circuit Court's denial of my IN RE Appeal to the US Supreme Court.

My legal research had produced a number of court cases in the Supreme Court to overcome the 4th Circuit Courts denial based on the claim that a Fraud on the Court under FRCP Rule 60b did not apply to criminal cases. I had already arranged to have 40 copies of my Writ of Certiorari printed and sent to the Supreme Court.

Now after rereading my final draft of Writ of Certiorari I agonized over my decision to send it to the Supreme Court as something was telling me to look at the Writ of Error Coram Nobis Appeal again. This would not be the first time I had the feeling Pope John Paul was trying to guide me and influence the direction I was about to take in my efforts to overturn my conviction.

I remembered what my Uncle Louie had told me about making a difficult decision."Use a pencil. Write the problem down, then list the advantages and disadvantages to make sure you have not over looked a critical point or something you cannot live with."

I listed the problem as the likelihood of the Supreme Court granting my Petition of the Writ of Certiorari and then Ruling in my favor over the 4th Circuit Court's denial of my IN RE Appeal.

The most outstanding disadvantage was the odds against the US Supreme Court even considering my Petition for a Writ of Certiorari. The next major disadvantage was as a Pro se Appellant. Unless my Appeal was bullet proof and it did not give the Supreme Court any legal wiggle room, they could sustain the 4th Circuit Court's denial and end up protecting Judge Howard's criminal acts.

The last issue dealt with the unresolved jurisdictional question. I might have only one chance to appeal my case to the US Supreme Court and if I wasted that appeal on a case that could be easily dismissed for the wrong jurisdiction, then the merits of any other appeal might be lost forever.

I did not work this long and hard to overturn my conviction to let my desire for a quick end to this nightmare to overrule good judgment and take a high risk of not winning my appeal to overturn my conviction. When I started writing this book, I reminded myself that I was not writing it just for myself but for all the others who could be wrongly convicted by unscrupulous means and then denied a fair appeal when the Officers of his trial court committed a fraud on the court. Having made this commitment I had also created my obligation to fight with the best weapons available in this critical battle in my final campaign for justice.

I used my pencil again to evaluate changing directions and filing the Writ of Error Coram Nobis. The overriding advantages of a Coram Nobis Appeal eliminated the jurisdictional question Judge Howard had used in his denial and it removed the possible hidden agenda of the 4th Circuit Court.

As a resident of West Virginia, I believed I could make a Coram Nobis Appeal in the jurisdiction of the US District Court of the Northern District of West Virginia, Martinsburg Division. Filing this case in West Virginia should remove Judge Howard from the equation of my appeal. This new Court Judge should not have a vested interest in protecting himself from being exposed in a fraud on the court or have any reason to delay his ruling on my appeal as Judge Howard had done in all my appeals after I had obtained a copy of the Pretrial Hearings transcript.

A new judge should objectively rule on the merits of my appeal claims unless he felt obligated as a Federal Court Judge to protect the decisions of another Federal Court and Judge Howard's reputation at all cost. The only disadvantage would be a delay in the resolution of my case as I would be starting my appeal process over. Maybe starting over was a good thing as everything I had found on appealing a Coram Nobis claim was simple and straight forward. I did not need to blatantly challenge the integrity of Judge Howard, as my documented evidence clearly established the fundamental miscarriage of justice and his "plain errors" in my conviction.

By not challenging Judge Howard directly may not be enough for this new Judge to overlook my real claim and come up with some obscure Rule or a little known law case to deny my Coram Nobis Appeal. However, appealing this court's denial would not be as hard as overturning the 4th Circuit Court's current denial even if the US Supreme Court agreed to hear my appeal. If I ever needed some sound legal advice, I needed it now.

My renewed efforts to find an attorney produced the same reluctance other attorneys had, to becoming involved in the nature of my appeal. When I could not find an attorney, I prayed for guidance from Pope John Paul to help me find a knowledgeable alternative for the lack of legal counsel. One of the services the Writ of Certiorari printer offered was to review the legal issues as stated in my Petition.

When I called them, they referred me to Mr J. B Stafford of Pro Se Paralegal Services LLC. When I contacted him, Mr Stafford asked me to send him a draft copy of my Petition to the US Supreme Court for the Writ of Certiorari. The next day he called back with his comments. He was blunt, frank and to the point.

"I have pulled up your past appeals from the court's records. You are not the only defendant who has had a problem in Judge Malcolm Howard's Court so I understand the nature of your case very well. I have worked with a number of Inmates to appeal their convictions in Judge Howard's Court over the years.

Having said that, the Supreme Court seldom overturns a 4th Circuit Court decision and the way they stated their denial of your appeal, I do not think the Supreme Court with make an exception in your case." Mr Stafford stated and went on to ask why I had not considered a Writ of Error Coram Nobis Appeal now that I lived in the jurisdiction of the US District Court of the Northern District of West Virginia.

When I told him, I had considered it but did not think a Coram Nobis appeal was still available in the courts Mr Stafford corrected me. "That is what the court wants you to believe. The Writ of Error Coram Nobis still exists in the All Writs Act. It is an appeal of last resort when a defendant is no longer in custody after completing his sentence.

In a recent 4th Circuit Court case of US v. Akinsade 686 F.3d. 248, 252 (4th Cir. 1212) supports your Writ of Error Coram Nobis appeal as it is also based on a Fundamental Miscarriage of Justice claim. Your case has the three legal points required in this case to make a successful Writ of Error Coram Nobis petition. Since your Sentencing Court has lost its jurisdiction to hear your Appeal, a Coram Nobis appeal fits your situation very well, as it could be filed in the jurisdiction where you currently live and Judge Howard cannot delay hearing your appeals as he has done for years in all your past appeals."

I continued to listen to his legal points as if he were reading them off my Decision Making notes on the advantage of making a Coram Nobis Appeal in-lieu-of filing a petition of a Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court. If this was his sales pitch, he could not have done a better job.

My mind quickly shifted to its business mode. Since I was unable to find an attorney to represent me perhaps an experienced paralegal would give me a better chance of the Court taking my well-written appeal seriously. The greatest disadvantage a Pro Se appellant had was his limited experience to do legal research and find Case Law that supported his claims, and the current legal precedents controlling the decisions and rulings of courts on the issues made in his appeal.

Mr Stafford had already established his ability to use the Internet, and pull up not only my past appeals he knew how to do an in depth legal research to support the claims made in my appeal. His analysis of my Petition of the Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court had been objective and his conclusion to overturning the 4th Circuit Court's decision had reinforced my own concerns.

I wanted to know what he knew about the Judges in the US District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, Martinsburg Division and what it would cost to use his paralegal services. Mr Stafford suggested he could have those answers tomorrow night when I called him after I got home from work. He reminded me if I decided not to use his services that I still had a week to file my Writ of Certiorari Petition to the US Supreme Court.

When I called Mr Stafford, he had only a limited knowledge of the judges who might hear my Coram Nobis Appeal. However, his fee would be less than the cost of printing the 40 copies of my Petition for a Writ of Certiorari as required by the US Supreme Court. He made sure I understood this Coram Nobis Appeal could still face an unfavorable opinion in the new US District Court. However if we had to appeal, the US District Court's ruling to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals we should prevail base on his further legal research that found several recent 4th Circuit Court cases to support my appeal.

If I wanted Mr Stafford to proceed with this Coram Nobis Appeal I would need to send him half of his fee and he would give me a month to pay the balance of his fee.

If I had unlimited financial resources I could still send in my Petition of the Writ of Certiorari to the US Supreme Court and make a Writ of Error Coram Nobis in the US District Court in West Virginia.

I believe because I was working at Nichols Hardware Store and I was receiving my Social Security and Disability checks I would not qualify to precede in either court under the provisions of in forma prosperous. This meant I would have to pay both courts their filing fees and between the printing costs of the Writ of Certiorari and Mr Stafford's fees, I did not have enough money to do that. The price of Justice required me to choose the best alternative.

I decided to send Mr Stafford half of his fee and I prayed for Pope John Paul to send me a sign I was making the right decision. That Sunday during Mass at the Parish of Saint James the Greater in Charles Town, I learned Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII would be Canonized as Saints.

At first I thought, Pope John Paul no longer needed my miracle of overturning my conviction to become a Saint. However, I then realized if Pope John Paul was going to become a Saint, he was in a better position to intercede to God and help me. I still had the feeling Pope John Paul was helping me and it would take a miracle to overturn my conviction in the courts that were protecting Judge Howard and the other Officers of my trial court. This miracle could establish Pope John Paul was a more significant Saint worthy of other people seeking his intercession to help them overcome a seemingly impossible problem, such as mine.

I took Pope John Paul's pending Canonization as the sign to confirm I had taken the correct direction in my case. With this sign, I never looked back on filing my Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the US Supreme Court and I continued to pray for Pope Saint John Paul's intercession to help me overturn my conviction, restore my life and finally reestablish the integrity of the Courts.

Mr Stafford emailed a copy of his proposed petition to the West Virginia US District Court. I was surprised that he was also asking the Court to return the over 5 million dollars worth of real property and financial assets the government had confiscated from me, Carol and VAMCO. Up until this point, I had only focused on overturning my conviction and not the return of this property. I had thought once this conviction was overturned I would need to file another lawsuit to recovered the loss of this property and the damages for my false imprisonment.

However, what Mr Stafford was doing was not only logical, it made the government's restitution of my losses simple. If the West Virginia US District Court overturned my illegal conviction, they also had the power and jurisdiction to force the government to return the financial value of what they illegally took from me, Carol and Virginia American Management Corporation.

I filed my Writ of Error Coram Nobis in the US District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia Martinsburg Division by hand carrying it to the Clerk of Court on July 1, 2014 and I paid the Courts filing fees. I also hand delivered a filed copy to the US Attorney's Office for the US District Court. I was advised by the Clerk of Court that since I was not filing this Appeal Electronically, all notices from the US District Court would be mailed to me by certified letter return receipt requested as proof of delivery.

This was welcomed news, as the 4th Circuit Court had not allowed any additional time to receive their rulings by mail. The 4th Circuit Court's denial of my IN RE Appeal was send 10 days after the Order had been entered as filed in their court and the notice of the denial had been mailed by the Clerk of the 4th Circuit Court took 5 days more days to reach me.

As a result, the normal 45 days given to the Electronic Petitioners to file an En Banc Petition for a Rehearing was already cut short by 15 days and when I timely mailed my Petition, no allowances were made for a Mail Delivery of my En Banc Petition before it was denied as being "late" which meant my En Banc Petition for a Rehearing was not reviewed by any Judge on the 4th Circuit Court. By the 4th Circuit Court's own special Local Rules, there are no procedures available to appeal this denial. Yet according to the records of United States Postal Office, my Petition was delivered five days before it was posted as being received by the Clerk of the 4th Circuit Court.

It was more than a coincidence that Patricia S. Connor was the same Clerk of the 4th Circuit Court who failed to send me a copy of the 4th Circuit Court's denial of my IN RE Appeal filed in 2008. I stopped believing in coincidences in the United States Court system, since Judge Howard saddled me with my discharged attorney Randolph Riley two days before my trial and then deleted the Pretrial hearing. This latest coincidence of claiming my En Banc Petition was "untimely" filed, had side step the 4th Circuit Court's requirement to review and rule on the merits my En Banc Appeal.

Someday after I overturned my conviction, I would find out the connection between Ms Patricia S. Connor and someone involved in my illegal conviction in the North Carolina US District Court. However now I was glad Mr Stafford was involved in my appeal, as it would not be as easy for someone like Ms Connor to play games of when the posting of my appeal was filed.

Right now, I felt I had the advantage of filing this Coram Nobis Appeal in West Virginia, as no one from my North Carolina trial court would be expecting it. How long it would remain my advantage could be the time it took for someone in the US District Court of West Virginia to call the North Carolina US District Court and obtain the background and history of my case from Judge Howard who was the Trial Court Judge.

I could hear Judge Howard misleading the West Virginia District Court into believing I had received a fair trial and the evidence presented during my trial was so overwhelming that there was no doubt I was guilty. Just how Judge Howard would attempt to explain why the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing is missing from the trial court's Docket Sheet and the transcript of that hearing was not available for over 6 years after my trial maybe the only saving grace to keep my West Virginia Coram Nobis Appeal alive.

However, Judge Howard had successfully denied my numerous appeals and he had over 16 years since my trial to prepare his explanation to the West Virginia US District Court. Even if the West Virginia US District Court did not accept Judge Howard's story there was no guarantee they would overturn my conviction as that would violate the unwritten rule to protect a fellow sitting Federal Court Judge even if he was guilty of committing a fraud on the court.

For this reason, Mr Stafford had explained even though my best chance to overturning my conviction was based on a Coram Nobis Appeal it may not happen at the US District Court level as they would come up with some obscure, unpublished and nonbinding legal president to denied it and force me to appeal it to the 4th Circuit Court.

This was a way the Federal Court Judge in the West Virginia US District Court could meet his obligation to protect a fellow Federal Court Judge. If I won my Coram Nobis Appeal in the 4th Circuit Court, it would not be the West Virginia Judge's decision to overturn my North Carolina conviction and he was not the one who embarrassed Judge Howard.

If the US District Court in West Virginia was following the Rules and did not try to delay my Appeal, I should have the District Court's Ruling during the Court's Calendar's Quarter ending on September 30, 2014. Mr Stafford had the Magistrate Judge's recommendations issued on September 23, 2014 before I receive an email from the Clerk of the US District Court stating it was being mailed to me. After reading the Magistrate's Recommendations, we went over the objections to the Magistrate Judge's Recommendations.

The way I was reading the Magistrate's Recommendations, Judge Howard could have written it as the final recommendation was to dismiss my Appeal with prejudice. This meant I could not appeal the US District Court Judge's ruling to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr Stafford told me he understood my concerns and he would send me a copy of his proposed Motion of my objections to the West Virginia US District Court before I could pick up the Certified Letter from the US District Court at the Post Office.

I had one disadvantage in moving to West Virginia as my mail was delivered to a Post Office Substation. By the time I could picked up my mail after work the mail carrier had already left for the day leaving a notice that my Certified Letter could be picked up at the Harpers Ferry Post Office the next day.

True to his word the next day, Mr Stafford sent me a copy of the response he wanted me to file in the court. After Mr. Stafford reminded me of what he had told me about what the West Virginia Federal Court Judge might do to protect a fellow Federal Court Judge I could find no fault in his prepared response. I understood the legal issues Mr Stafford was presenting to the Judge of the US District Court were designed to preserve my right to make this Coram Nobis Appeal of last resort when a documented fundamental injustice was involved. I mailed my objections to the Magistrate's Recommendations on September 28, 2014 and it was filed in the West Virginia US District Court on October 1, 2014.

On October 27, 2014, the Federal Court Judge Gina M. Groh denied my Coram Nobis Appeal based upon Mr Stafford's predictions of the US District Court Judge would use an obscure and unpublished court case. Such Court cases are not a legal president to be used in deciding other Federal Court cases. Yet these court cases were used to support the West Virginia US District Court' ruling that it lacked the jurisdiction to hear my Writ of Error Coram Nobis Appeal.

However, we had won the two most important legal issues in the case. The West Virginia US District Court recognized my right to use a Writ of Error Coram Nobis as an Appeal of last resort when I was no longer in Federal custody and the US District Court judge had preserved my legal right to Appeal her decision to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

When the Clerk of the 4th Circuit Court had already started my time to Appeal even before I filed my Notice of Appeal to the West Virginia US District Court, Mr Stafford had me file a Motion for additional time to file my Pro Se Appeal and the 4th Circuit Court granted it. My Pro Se Appeal was sent to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on December 19, 2014, 10 days before it was due, eliminating any chance of the Clerk of the 4th Circuit Court claiming my Pro Se Appeal was not filed on time.

On March 2, 2015, the 4th Circuit Court denied my appeal by rubber stamping the US District Court's opinion that it lacked the jurisdiction to hear my Writ of Error Coram Nobis petition. The idea I could only make a Coram Nobis appeal in my Trail Court fit Albert Einstein's definition of insanity as "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different result."

The 4th Circuit Court's denial of my Writ of Error Coram Nobis Appeal had completely ignored all the documented evidence of Judge Howard's Fraud on the Court and that all of Judge Howard's past denials were based the issues he had illegally created as justification for using selective Court Administrative Procedures to protect himself and his coconspirators. Since the 4th Circuit Court had not reviewed my appeal "De Novo" to establish justice, anyone other than the Judges on the 4th Circuit Court could see that making another appeal to Judge Howard's Court was insanity.

Mr Stafford emailed a copy of the 4th Circuit Courts denial. We discussed filing the Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court and after he outlined the issues in making this appeal, I sent him 50% of his fee.

The mailed copy from the 4th Circuit Court Clerk's Office took over ten additional days after it was filed in the Circuit Court and I filed a notice of my request for En Banc Rehearing on March 13, 2015 the day I received it.

I explained my reason to doing this to Mr Stafford and I filed this En Banc Petition on March 30, 2015. Yet the Clerk Patricia S Connor did not stamp my copy of this petition as "filed" in the 4th Circuit Court until April 14, 2015 when my petition was docketed for a Rehearing. Just what she hoped to gain by failing to file my Petition for an En Banc hearing when it was received by the court, was not evident to Mr Stafford or me.

My petition was based on the claim the US District Court had established why it could not hear a Coram Nobis Appeal from a State Court but the US District had failed to provide any Court Precedent or any Case Law that this US District Court could not hear a Writ of Error Coram Nobis appeal, from another Federal Court. The 4th Circuit Court did not consider this lack of Court Precedent or Case Law as being a valid reason to allow the US District Court to hear my Coram Nobis Appeal. The 4th Circuit Court had again evaded the merits of the documented constitutional violations in my Pro se Appeal as being a lesser need to correct the injustice than maintaining the Court's own Administrative Procedures.

My Writ of Certiorari to the United Sates Supreme Court was filed on August 10, 2015 and it placed on their docket on September 24, 2015. No matter how well this petition was written or how well documented my claims were made it would still take four Justices to agree to hear my case.

I was reminded what Carol told me just before I went to my Sentencing Hearing on January 13, 1998. "Mark I want you to know you are a good and honest man that I have loved all my life. Ever since we came back to Virginia you have built an International Empire as if it was your destiny and now we are about to lose everything. I can only believe when you beat that Devil back at Fort Bless he has sought to destroy you and all this trouble has been the Devil's doing, otherwise nothing none of this makes any sense. Didn't God let the Devil test someone in the Bible by taking everything he had to prove he would blame God for his problems?"

If all this has been God's test of my faith, I know God will give me the strength to win against this Devil as long as I do not give up. Since I still believe when you are right, you are "Right in front of God and everyone" and "Justice is only done when Justice is finally done in the courts," I cannot falter in my efforts to restore the integrity of our Federal Courts.

I want to thank you for listening to or reading a copy of my book. I need your prayers and your support, as it still might take a miracle through the intercession of Saint Pope John Paul before God will restore my life by helping me correct this injustice. _Author's note, after I told my readers how they could show their support the First Edition of What Price Justice ended._

I started to write the Second Edition of What Price Justice when on November 2 the United States Supreme Court chose not to correct this fraud on the court by hearing my Appeal. This was another victory for the use of the Court's Administrative Procedures over the documented criminal actions of my trail court judge, Malcolm Howard. Although the final chapters of the Second Edition of this book have not been written, I felt it was important to include what actions I have taken since publishing the First Edition. The final version of this book will be published 90 days after I have exhausted all my efforts to finally have my Writ of Error Coram Nobis petition heard. By then the Government and the Courts, will have been given more than enough time to restore the integrity of our Federal Courts. Without restoring the integrity in the Federal Courts, what was done to engineer my conviction me and eliminate the documented evidence to support my Direct Appeal of this illegal conviction will establish our court system is still broken and my fight to restore justice is not over.

# 13. THE INSANITY OF WORKING IN OUR LEGAL SYSTEM

In spite of giving the appearance of insanity according to Albert Einstein's definition, I had no choice but filed a Pro se petition under the Writ of Error Coram Nobis back to Judge Howard's Court on December 28, 2015. The real insanity may be expecting Judge Howard to objectively rule on his own criminal activities as all sense of judicial fairness is lost when the Federal Court's procedures forced me to seek justice from Judge Howard's court.

To dispel my appearance of insanity I have also made a direct appeal to the court of public opinion by writing the Second Edition of this book. Just how long Judge Howard will sit on this appeal before he realizes his criminal acts are no longer hidden in his past appeal denials may depend upon your help to focus public interest on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina Western Division to correct this gross fraud on the courts.

When I started to write this book, I know I could not succeed without your help. Having presented my evidence in What Price Justice I am asking you as the jury of public opinion to decide if I have established the legal reasons to justify your active support to fix our broken court system. For these of you who are still not sure ask yourself, "What would I do if this happened to me or a member of my family?" I wish I could say by helping me it will not happened to you but we both know that is not true. However, by overturning my conviction your judge will think of what happened to Judge Howard once his illegal acts became public knowledge before he abuses his judicial authority in your case.

You can show your support for a further US Inspector General's investigation of the fraud on the court in my case "on Line" to the Office of the Inspector General US Department of Justice or called 800-869-4409. Please reference Case Number 5:96-cr-128-3-H and Mark Corrigan's original complaint filed to the US Inspector General on May 29, 2012, my follow up complaints of July 16, 2012 and May 7, 2014.

You can address your support to have a US District Court Judge other than Judge Howard rule on my Writ of Error Coram Nobis petition by E-Mail to Judge James C Dever III, the Chief Justice of the US District Court for Eastern District of North Carolina at NCED-ECF@nced.uscourts.gov. To mail in your support please address your letter to Judge James C Dever III the Chief Justice US District Court Eastern District of North Carolina Western Division, Federal Building 310 New Bern Ave Raleigh, North Carolina 27601.

Since filing my Writ of Error Coram Nobis, I sent a letter dated February 19, 2016, to John Stuart Bruce the new US Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina requesting his review of the continuing criminal activities of the Officers of my Trial Court. I believe it is highly unlikely that the new US Attorney will actually bring criminal charges against Judge Howard and the other Officers of my Trial Court unless the US Inspector General of Department of Justice requests a review of my complaints. However, by my letter I have served him fair notice that Judge Howard's 18-year continuing conspiracy and his fraud on the court will not remain hidden and US Attorney Bruce will need to explain his own actions when the final chapters of this book are written. I also sent a letter to Chief Justice James C Dever III, to give him the opportunity to take any actions he feels are necessary to correct the injustice in his court and eliminate any question that he was not aware of what happened in his court.

After more than 100 days, since I filed my Writ of Error Coram Nobis petition on December 28, 2015 I filed a Rule 56 (c) Motion for a Summary Judgment on April 18, 2016. I am entitled to judgment as a matter of Law, when the US Attorney did not filed any response to challenge any of the Material Facts in my Writ of Error Coram Nobis petition. The last time I filed a Motion for a Summary Judgment Judge Howard took 11 months to deny it. To force Judge Howard to act in a timely manner on June 20, 2016, I filed a Motion for a Formal Court Hearing after the US Attorney failed to respond to my Motion for Summary Judgment.

After I deposited this motion in the mail, I believe I was inspired by Saint Pope John Paul to maintain the offensive in my efforts to overcome my conviction. On June 22, 2016, I fired a legal shot across Judge Howard's bow by filing a motion to disqualify him from ruling on my Writ of Error Coram Nobis Petition under FRCP 28 USC Sections 455 and 144.

The Code of Conduct for United States Judges in CANON 3C(1)(d)(I) provides that a Judge shall recuse himself when, "The Judge (i) is a party to the proceedings" or is "(iii) known to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding."

Judge Howard is guilty of both conditions. He is an active party to the proceedings of my Writ of Error Coram Nobis petition. As he is a coconspirator to defraud the United States of its rightful function to review my post conviction appeals by committing a fraud on the court when he allowed the May 14, 1997 Pretrial Hearing to be criminally deleted from his trial court's Docket Sheet. Judge Howard knows that he would be substantially affected by the revelation of the documented fraud he committed on the courts and his entire professional life as a Federal Court Judge would now be under the scrutiny of the public's microscope.

Whether the US District Court in the Eastern District of North Carolina will see it that way remains to be seen. Since nothing this District Court does is done according to the law in my case, I am not betting that Judge Howard will be recused from my case. However, by having this claim on the Court's Record, it will set the stage for establishing Judge Howard's prejudice in my appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

I am now confident that I have done everything I know how to do to overturn my illegal conviction and there is no reason why I should not publish the "Free" Smashwords edition of _What Price Justice_. I have already served notice of the pending publication on the US Attorney and on the Chief Justice of the US District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina giving them a chance to restore the tarnished integrity of their court in the final chapters of this book.

I realize by telling them that I have already published the first edition of _What_ _Price Justice_ could be a double-edged sword. I do not know what desperate measures will be taken to protect Judge Howard's reputation and the damaged integrity of our Federal Judicial System, as the first edition of this book may not have reached enough people in time to protect me. If something unusual happens to me or if I should meet with a strange accident, I have given a copy to a trusted friend who will publish, it and you will know by reading my book _What Price Justice_ who is responsible.

Barring this possible threat to me in the next 60 days, the advanced E-Book copy of the second edition of _What Price Justice_ will be "Free" to anyone who wants it on the SMASHWORDS Website

Since I do not know how long the wheels of justice will take to finally end to my nightmare I will need your active support before I can write a successful conclusion in the final chapters of this book. Once the final version of _What Price Justice_ is written, I will publish it on SMASHWORDS and in Audio format on the REMARKABLE PUBLICATIONS Website along with all the other Audio Books I have published in my former company, I MARK PUBLISHING INC.

As I am writing this now I am reminded, "That the darkest moment of the night is always just before dawn." I believe the price of Justice is too high when the forces of darkness are allowed to conceal the truth. However when you are "right" you are "right" in front of God and everyone. I also believe that with your help we can bring in the new light of dawn on making Justice real again for all of us in our Federal Courts.

May God bless you, for all your support.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

My book best describes who I am, and what I have done. As stated in my book I wrote 40 manuscripts while I was the guest of the Government. I have already published 17 Books on my own website and I am planning to republish all of them with Smashwords. If you enjoyed reading What Price Justice than you might be interested in reading the other books identified in What Price Justice. Based upon your preference it will help me decide which book I need to publish next. You can reach me at mark.corrigan1@comcast.net Thank you.

