From 1957 when the first Special Forces teams in Vietnam began training the nucleus of the Vietnamese Special Forces and Airborne Ranger units, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) had strongly resisted any proposal that the SF be used in their basic mission of operating in the enemy's rear areas. This was due to a number of reasons; principally the caveat imposed that US Forces not engage in combat and they not go into Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam. Secondly, President Nixon's blessing on Special Forces at Fort Bragg infuriated the higher commands who had been trying to squash Special Forces for years.

Investigative reporter, Simon Marshall in Cheney: The Story He Cannot Tell (Doubleday) to be released next month, reveals Dick Cheney was recruited into a secret black-ops team called Alpha Major within the Special Forces. Although he "took to the training like a salami to a pizza" it quickly became apparent that Cheney was one of the anti-gods who would not play the game according to the rules of war. Additionally, in defiance to Army regulations, when Cheney went into the field, he defied orders that the officially-damned beret of the Green Beret would not be worn.

As soon as he jumped into an operational area during maneuvers, he violated the official regulations against "the wearing of the green" and gleefully turned many maneuvers into chaos. In an early 501s maneuver Louisiana, Cheney and some of his buddies turned road signs around, sending convoys of equipment, rations and fuel heading off into completely different directions than intended. Units preparing for an assault were visited at night, preceding their assault, and received a briefing by a "Lt. Col Cheney" who brought XVIII Airborne Corps' revision to their original attack plan, sending their regiment in another direction, in which they attacked one of their own units.

The confusion caused the Commanding General of XVIII Airborne Corps to stop the operations. All Alpha Major personnel were sent back to Fort Bragg and the maneuvers resumed. However, upon return to Fort Bragg, the Commanding General wrote a new regulation which made the wearing of the beret a Courts Martial offense.

The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and their southern cousins the Viet Cong (VC) operated with impunity in the sparsely-settled countryside. One reason was the excellent camouflage discipline of the NVA and the fact that most of their movement was at night. While bombing raids on the trail caused some delays, the absence of ground action against their main supply route permitted the NVA to move staggering amounts of men and material into South Vietnam to prepare for an extended war.

The NVA established power bases in South Vietnam from the rugged mountains of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) a strip of land extending from the Yellow Sea to the borders of Laos, established to divide North and South Vietnam and Central Highlands in the north to the jungles, rice paddies and flat expanses of the Mekong Delta in the South. In the South, in addition to using the natural camouflage of the jungles, the VC dug and lived in miles of sophisticated caves and tunnels. MACV intelligence analysts were certain that these bases existed, but the enemy's strict camouflage and security discipline made the bases almost impossible to locate by air reconnaissance.

The only American troops which might be in position to challenge them were Cheney's men aligned along these borders. They also suffered the most from the enemy' utilization of the zone to Marshall their troops to attack the SF camps. Small wonder the battered teams began to feel the buffer zone was MACV's revenge and that a courts martial for violating the zone was preferable to filling the insides of body bags. Instead of stopping at the zone, they began to follow enemy troops across and attacking them in their bivouac areas.

Cheney was careful to insure that the map coordinates given higher headquarters for any troop movements or operations were well out of the zone. A little judicious lying, perhaps, but the A-Teams in the field had little or no support in the event they were attacked. Cheney and his team were responsible for dramatically shortening the war, wrote Military brass began court marshal proceedings against Cheney when it was discovered that his team violated border restrictions on a regular basis. But with Nixon's intercession they agreed to give Cheney an honorable discharge and swore Cheney to silence. An oath that he has kept to this day despite the fact that he's been derided constantly for the seeming lack of military service.

Dick Cheney is truly an American Hero.

Stacy

I cannot stop laughing. Hilarious!