Free Target by Robert K. Wilcox Page B

profiled him later in Washington, D.C. Now he wanted to try a new way of painting, one he said was harder. 10 They spent some six months in Vietnam, Bazata spending time studying with local artists and playing a lot of poker at which he was said to be very good. But he also participated in Phoenix, which might also have had something to do with his going there. Phoenix was, in essence, a terror program, designed to counter Viet Cong insurgency. Later congressional hearings revealed that between 10,000 and 40,000 Vietnamese had died under the program. Suspected Viet Cong, for instance, were thrown alive from helicopters. “I participated lightly,” Bazata told me. But he became “disgusted. It was kill, kill, kill. How could they tell who was guilty and who was innocent?” It was the beginning of a rift between Colby and him that never healed.
    By the time he and Marie-Pierre left Vietnam, Bazata knew his days as a field-operating mercenary were over. The body can only take so much. He had lost an edge, although he still looked and seemed strong. He decided to come home and collect his due—what had been promised him, he said, by Donovan and others after the war who had told him that if he performed for them, he would be rewarded—a cushy job, good pay, no sweat. But it did not happen. Not only did it not happen, he was basically shunned. Who are you, he said upstarts at the agency asked when he tried to get a job there. When he told what he could of his past, they said prove it. Show us the records, which, of course, were mostly non-existent. Agents he had worked with were largely gone, retired, not inclined nor able to help. The agency, heavily hit by congressional and
public outcry against intelligence abuses in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination, had begun purging operatives like himself and turning toward technology, such as satellites, for spying. Men like Colby, who could have helped, had lost their clout. Even if he had not, he and Colby were, by then, estranged, although they continued a tenuous relationship based on their OSS days. For all practical purposes, Bazata was out in the cold.
    After a short, failed venture in Pennsylvania, he apparently began to reestablish some contacts, because he wrote of being offered jobs in “the clandestinity,” which he refused. Probably, they demanded too much physically. However, he apparently accepted from the same people a job running a combination bird farm and hunting preserve in rural Maryland woods. It may have been a CIA-connected safe house because he wrote persons “under suspicion and surveillance” were involved. “Sportsmen” came to hunt and eat the birds. In June 1975, Esquire magazine featured him along with five other clandestines in a short piece titled “Declassified: Six Good Spies.” A picture showed him looking hardassed in front of a peacock, the caption reading, “PRESENT SITUATION: artist. Lives outside Washington, D.C. INTELLIGENCE DATA: Scored highest officer rating in the history of Fort Benning, higher than MacArthur and Eisenhower.” That may have been a reference to his historic marksmanship, but he also claimed high scores in written tests. While at the farm, he said, there were attempts on his life because of what he knew. They continued for years, but he gave few details other than to say they were “amateurish” and he handled all of them. Much later, Marie-Pierre described one. She believed it was around 1975. “The peacocks were very good guard animals,” she said. They would become noisy at the first sign of intruders. One night, late, the birds started making a ruckus. She turned on the light in their bedroom. Baz
shouted to shut it off. As soon as she did, shots crashed through the window. Bazata had a pistol in his night stand. “He ran out and fired,” returning shortly. Before she could inquire, he said “don’t ask.” She did not. She believed not knowing was for her own good.
    Bazata and Marie-Pierre