Free Deadly Deceits by Ralph W. McGehee Page B

various flying trips around North Thailand. I said that I would tell her after I retired—a promise, until now, that I never kept, for by the time I retired I was disillusioned and angry and did not want to lay this negative burden on my children.
    I told our elder son, Scott, several years afterwards. Later he admitted that he had been humiliated in a classroom exercise where each child was asked to talk about his father’s job. Scott had to say he did not know. After I told him, he said he had more respect for my lifestyle. But that did not alter the fact that he still could not admit he knew what his father did, or confide in his friends.
    Norma told our younger son, Dan, in Bangkok when he was 11 years old. He said later that he had not been too surprised since we so carefully avoided the subject of my work. His reaction at the time, though, was to ask, “Oh, does he carry a gun?”
    The Border Patrol Police [BPP] … were responsible for security along Thailand’s international frontiers.… They were well-armed, mobile, counter-insurgency fighters specializing in intelligence-gathering along Thailand’s borders and in conducting cross-border combat and reconnaissance operations.… The United States, through its … CIA advisors, continued to exercise almost complete control, both in training and operations – the PARU [Police Aerial Reconnaissance Unit] and BPP were “their” units.… 1
    â€“ Thomas Lobe
    Beginning in the early sixties, the BPP developed special programs among the hill tribes in the north and quickly became the only [Thai government] service to enjoy any kind of rapport with the tribal communities. It established and manned two hundred schools as well as dispensaries and development centers with garden plots and the like. This Remote Area Security Program, as it was called,…[was supplemented by] the recruitment of tribal volunteers into a police auxiliary service called Border Security Volunteer Teams. There is evidence in the Pentagon Papers … that U.S. support for the BPP was conducted by CIA. 2
    â€“ Douglas S. Blaufarb
    While in North Thailand I converted a small servant’s quarters in my home into an office. I lined the wooden walls with a large-scale map of North Thailand, and on the wall closest to where I sat I hung a large poster. The poster depicted a ravenous, fanged Mao Tse-tung and Ho Chi Minh with burning eyes, outstretched arms, and clawed fingers, leaning over a map of Southeast Asia. Blood from a swirl of massed humanity flowed from the North down over the countries of Southeast Asia. The poster illustrated in graphic, startling form the domino theory, so much a part of what I believed. It was evocative, disturbing, and for me and other Agency officers represented the raison d’être for the work of the CIA in Thailand. We were there to protect the Thai people from the Communist monsters of the North. We believed if the Communists won, there would be a bloodbath, liberty and religion would be destroyed, and nation after nation would fall before the swelling red tidal wave.
    My small part in fighting the menace was to gather intelligence concerning Communist subversion and at the same time to teach the Thai counterinsurgency force how to develop its own intelligence capability. I held several courses for the officers, using as my interpreter Captain Song (not his real name), who had associated with Americans for a long time and spoke a form of idiomatic English. He was a good friend and constant associate, frequently visiting us at home and bringing some of his fellow officers with him.
    Since Captain Song headed the operations of the counter-insurgency unit, we worked together daily. A maverick who got along beautifully with his co-equals and his subordinates, he took an immediate dislike to anyone with direct authority over him. He had a trace of royal blood in his veins, which undoubtedly had helped him attain