The Mystery of the Green Beret Murder Affair By Gordon CuCullu

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A small boat left Nha Trang harbor in June 1969 headed out into the bay and deeper water. Light breezes out of the South China Sea gave passengers respite from the boiling heat and humidity, but this was not a pleasure cruise.

In the bottom of the boat, heavily sedated with morphine, wrapped in chain, lay a Vietnamese agent, Thai Khac Chuyen, who members of B-57, also known as Project GAMMA, had identified as a double agent. He was taking his last ride.

Gamma, a Military Intelligence unit attached to the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) headquartered in Nha Trang, had for the past year been responsible for running ground intelligence-gathering teams into Cambodia. Using primarily indigenous Cambodian assets it provided a significant amount of the human intelligence from that theater.

The B-57 team worked closely with CIA and received much of their guidance from the Station Chief in Saigon and the local CIA office in Nha Trang. On the military side, the unit chain of command extended to the commander 5th Special Forces. Due in large part to compartmentalization of information and activities and the convoluted threads of responsibility and authority that characterized the war in Southeast Asia, it was common for a commander to be kept in the dark over actions of a unit he – on paper – commanded and was responsible for.

Since Cambodia and Laos were given protected status by US policy makers, only covert intelligence gathering units operating under the strictest and most illogical rules of engagement were permitted access to the country. As a result, the North Vietnamese exploited the situation by staging division-sized elements in Cambodia, striking across the border, then retreating to refit and rearm.

The leadership at GAMMA was concerned because far too many teams had inexplicably disappeared over the past few months. They were convinced that a double agent had infiltrated GAMMA’s ranks. After a week of interrogation they believed that the spy in question lay in the

bottom of the boat cruising further out into the bay.

The issue of the double agent and how to resolve it was not brought to the attention of 5th Group, rather it ran up the CIA pipeline to Saigon from which the GAMMA leadership received the usual “spook-speak” guidance. Apparently they were directed to “terminate the agent with extreme prejudice” a phrase that was later popularized largely because of events yet to unfold.

The boat reached deep water and rocked gently in the swell as the engines were throttled back. Captain Bob Marasco later claimed that at that point he fired two shots into the Chuyen’s head and with others rolled him over the side. The body disappeared into the deep.

Not least among the many consequences of these events – whether authentic or alleged – was that the career of an exemplary Special Forces officer – Colonel Robert Rheault – had just been terminated as abruptly as the life of the spy sinking into Nha Trang Harbor.

Who was Robert Rheault?Colonel Bob Rheault passed away

peacefully earlier this year. Despite his brief tenure in Vietnam he had become an iconic figure in Special Forces history and legend. His story remains shrouded in mystery. In many ways it exemplifies the latent institutional conflict inherent in the events surrounding his time in Vietnam. Most disturbing is the fact that these issues are relevant to present day. Specifically the oft-repeated conflict between Special Forces and Big Army.

Details of Colonel Robert “Bob” Rheault’s life are easy to find, and we won’t dwell on them here other than to set the stage. At first glance, Bob Rheault’s early military career appears to epitomize a fast-moving officer in the Big Army institution. He was a graduate of USMA, Class of ’47, fought and decorated with the Silver Star in Korea, and seemed almost a pre-designated general officer selectee even after several years of teaching French at West Point, an assignment that might have derailed another career.

In 1961 Rheault won his Green Beret and was assigned to 10th SFG in Europe. These were the early years of the Kennedy administration. Recognition from the president authorizing wear of the Green Beret, ramping up of the unconventional warfare mission, and, most critically, largely expanded budgets, allowed proliferation of several Groups with regional focus, including the 8th SFG in Panama, the 1st SFG in Okinawa, and ultimately the 5th SFG in Vietnam.

Add to the mix the amazing spike in popularity of Special Forces in song, film, and book form, all glamorizing the elite unit, and you have a solid basis for professional jealousy. Many senior types thought such publicity was unseemly as well as a naked grab for disproportionate influence (read: budget allocations) in a considerably larger institution.

Concomitant internecine warfare among various Big Army elements and Special Forces was exacerbated by wrong-headed decisions by then-President Lyndon Johnson and JFK holdover Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to fight an ever-expanding war in Southeast Asia. Previously restricted to advisory and covert action by CIA, Special Forces, and a limited US commitment, the war became a personal affair for LBJ. “Bring me a coonskin to nail on the wall,” he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Men and material began to pour into Southeast Asia and the US Army unceremoniously shoved the Vietnamese to the sidelines, offering to “show them how to fight a real war.” The French experience? “They lost,” staff officers said dismissively. The advisory, intelligence gathering, and force multiplier role of Special Forces was denigrated and underappreciated.

LBJ refused meanwhile to deviate from his goal of providing the American public with extravagant domestic programs simultaneously. In order not to disturb voters, Johnson also chose to rely on a conscript military to fight the war while eschewing call up of Reserves and National Guard. While this course of action was opposed by the uniformed militar y leadership, few had the moral courage to

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take a public stand or resign in protest.Many military leaders, including

Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson, bitterly opposed expansion of UW forces arguing that it was too great a concentration of NCO talent in small units. His point was that such talent would serve the larger institution more effectively by being spread among conventional combat units.

Predictably, acolytes of Johnson’s position were many who occupied positions of increasing authority including General Creighton Abrams, successor as COMUSMACV to General William Westmoreland in June 1968.

Eleven months later, Rheault was named commander of 5th SFG Vietnam, moving from Okinawa where he had been in command of 1st SFG. In those days this was a normal pattern of succession, with commanders moving from Camp Sukiran to Nha Trang. Rheault had a previous tour in Vietnam in 1964 as operations officer on 5th Group staff.

When he assumed command of 5th Group the MACVSOG counterpar t commander was Colonel Stephen Cavanaugh. While relationships between the two commanders were informal, SOG recruited heavily from 5th Group and they shared common goals.

Rheault was barely three weeks into the job when the incident with GAMMA filtered into Abrams’ office through the CIA liaison. COMUSMACV immediately got Rheault on the line and pointedly asked him if his people had killed the alleged double agent. On an open line, Rheault was reluctant to discuss details but Abrams’ infamous temper was raging and he demanded a direct answer.

Rheault then repeated the shallow cover story fabricated by GAMMA that the agent had been dispatched on a one-way mission designed to test his loyalty and not been heard from since. Subsequently, it was unearthed by the team of CID investigators Abrams dispatched to Nha Trang that indeed the killing had taken place and the body dumped in the harbor. Further, the team speculated that Rheault

authorized the killing, knew of the body disposal plan, and by promulgating the shallow cover story, lied directly to GEN Abrams.

When Abrams learned of this he reportedly lost all control and ordered the immediate arrest of Rheault and the GAMMA officers and NCOs involved in the incident. They were to be brought to Long Binh military prison (known to GIs as LBJ, or Long Binh Jail) and charged with first degree murder. “Get up there and clean that bunch of bastards out,” Abrams directed. Initially the seven were arrested, tossed into small, solitary cells without air conditioning and held virtually incommunicado.

As one of Abrams’ staff later commented, “Abe forgot to count to ten.” Overnight a case that the Army, CIA, and administration might have preferred to handle out of the limelight received immediate media attention. Reporters close to Special Forces learned immediately of the arrest and charges and promptly filed stories. Back in the States the lid flew off the case and attention began to focus on HQ COMUSMACV and its actions.

To an American public already divided on the war, this was another crack in the façade. Some found it a travesty that US Soldiers were being prosecuted for killing the enemy; others saw it as yet another

incident of immorality in a war they opposed.

From this point on, the case became even more tortuously complex. Army appointed defense attorneys moved for dismissal on lack of evidence and refusal of CIA officials or GEN Abrams to testify although they called on both to do so. Not backing off, Abrams vowed to pursue the case.

On the evidentiary side, the defense possessed a photo taken by a GAMMA team that purported to show the agent in a meeting with high ranking NVA intelligence officers in Cambodia. The photo cut both ways since it justified the killing on the one hand, and demonstrated the motivation for it on the other.

Through their military attorneys the accused requested civilian assistance. The civilian attorney, Henry Rothblatt, was a specialist in courts martial. He took the case and immediately deposed CIA agents. He received maximum pushback and refusal to testify, all counter to the established principles of executive privilege that the agents claimed prevented their testimony.

Rothblatt confronted the military authorities with a dilemma: “The government, the prosecution, can’t have it both ways, I declared. ‘Either lay all of the evidence on the table and make it available so that we can examine and cross-examine, or forget the case.’ I then added, ‘And I suggest that you forget the case.’”

There was still no actual proof of a killing – no corpus – so fighting another move to dismiss, Abrams directed that Nha Trang harbor be dragged by the Navy and divers used to find the body. Negative results boded ill for continuance of the trial. Rothblatt left Vietnam expecting dismissal.

Political heat on the administration was growing in Washington and distracting from President Nixon’s upcoming announcement of a gradual troop withdrawal from Vietnam. Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor visited Saigon to discuss the withdrawal plans with GEN

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Abrams and at a reception quietly asked the general to back off of his prosecution of Rheault and the others.

Flying into another rage, Abrams told the Secretary, in effect, to stay out of his business. Abrams knew full well that the administration was completely dependent on his ability to downsize the war efficiently and considered him the only person who could pull it off. He played this dependence by insisting that the trial was under his command jurisdiction and Washington must keep its distance.

At this point, the civilian attorney returned to Vietnam, convinced that he would be coming back a third time to conduct the trial. By then media support for Rheault was intense and even those who opposed the war sensed that Abrams was exercising undue command influence in denying the defendants a reasonable chance at a fair trial.

Denied even the use of an office at Camp Long Binh (“Am I supposed to do my pre-trial work sitting outside in the sun sitting in the dust?” he asked), the attorney, Rothblatt, sought assistance from the press and received it, further bringing criticism on the command and embarrassment to the Pentagon and White House.

When unable to provide a dead body, the command offered immunity to Chief Warrant Officer Edward Boyle, and was going to use his testimony to pursue the trial. Rothblatt met with Boyle, who was one of his clients, and convinced him that if he gave testimony he would be disloyal to himself and his fellows. Boyle then refused the offer of immunity and declined to testify.

Without a body or a witness, chances of

a conviction for murder were increasingly slim. Any case against Rheault and the ot her defendants appeared weak but the com ma nd was unbending a nd pushed ahead.

Then under circumstances that would be unbelievable in fiction, something happened behind the scenes that changed the entire complexion of the case.

A MACVSOG team operating out of Command and Control Central in Kontum was dispatched into northern Cambodia on a recon mission. Recon Team Florida, led by SSG Ken Worthley, the One-Zero, inserted on 25 August 1969 with an area recon mission. Code named Daniel Boone (later changed to Salem House), Cambodia was a strange area of operations for recon teams accustomed to the denser, mountainous terrain of the Laotian or Prairie Fire region.

Sparse vegetation and large open fields afforded poor concealment. Teams noted, “The whole damn place is one big LZ.” Predictably, RT Florida made contact soon after insert. The team One-Two, Sergeant Dale Hanson, who was new to recon, had a finger shot off. Worthley broke contact and continued the mission.

Meanwhile, the NVA, alerted to the presence of a recon team in their backyard, began to marshal forces to run them down. Trackers, dog teams, and enemy trail watchers closed in on the team. At last light Worthley pulled RT Florida into a RON position with probable intent to try to exfiltrate the following day.

On the second day the team again was pressed by NVA. The Special Forces and indigenous fighters began a series of running gunfights and evasive actions. While moving through a sparsely wooded

area the point man abruptly halted. SSG Worthley came forward and saw two NVA nearby. He and the point man killed both. While searching the bodies, Worthley noted that the officer appeared to be Chinese, was in an elegantly-maintained uniform, and carried a large leather dispatch case.

The interpreter quickly leafed through the papers and told his One Zero that this was all quality intelligence material. Worthley knew he had hit a gold mine but unknown at the time he had just killed the highest ranking enemy intelligence officer credited to SOG operations and had discovered an amazing treasure trove of actionable information.

As pursuing NVA again initiated contact, Worthley snatched up the case and began to direct his team to an extraction point. They found a bamboo grove that offered concealment and called for a STABO rig extraction – four ropes would drop from the hovering Huey and team members would snap in and be pulled from the ground.

Then they got to do it again to extract the remainder of the team. All under fire. Meanwhile the NVA became ominously quiet. They knew what was getting ready to happen and were preparing to shoot down the helicopters.

The NVA waited for the helicopters to arrive then opened up in an attempt to kill the helicopters and the team. As the assistant team leader, or One-One, Sergeant Bob Garcia, snapped indigenous soldiers into the rig he looked for Worthley, expecting the team leader to bring the wounded American, Hanson, to the rig. At that instant, Hanson shouted to Garcia that Worthley had been killed by a bullet through the neck. Worthley’s body was extracted on the first lift.

When the second bird arrived and dropped strings, the team was caught in the bamboo as one of the ropes became tangled. Garcia later said that he thought the bird would either cut the ropes or be pulled out of the air. Members of the team, under intense ground fire, managed to free the rope from the tangle and were lifted to safety.

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Back in Saigon intelligence analysts discovered, among other nuggets, a list of the names of many Hanoi agents working within the Vietnamese and US military. Prominent on the list was the name of the agent reportedly killed by GAMMA.

In late September Secretary Resor announced that charges against Colonel Rheault and the others had been “dropped.” Not acquittal, but simply not to be brought to trial. By October they were back in the US. On 31 October Rheault, who had requested assignment back to his 5th SFG command and been denied, determine that his career had ended and took retirement. The others involved resigned from the Army. In November a close up portrait graced the cover of Life magazine. Rheault had become something of a cult hero at the time.

Analysis and SpeculationWhat went on behind the scenes

that prompted Resor and the Army to override the intransigent Abrams and drop the case? In all probability it was a combination of events that shredded any legal case the prosecution might have presented.

Most obvious, of course, is that no dead body could be produced verifying homicide. Without a body or sworn testimony to a killing a first-degree murder conviction was impossible.

Lacking testimony from the CIA indicating that the Station Chief had authorized killing the double agent or testimony at least providing detailed background on events – none of which the Agency would agree to – the defense had an excellent opportunity of winning any appeal because of failure to provide adequate discovery process to enable a proper defense.

Add to that possible appeal the factor of undue and inappropriate command influence – something that would have been easy to prove – and yet another reason to drop the case had surfaced.

Obviously COMUSMACV would have been entirely justified in taking appropriate action. For example, he could have promptly relieved Rheault of

command after he caught him in a lie. Some may have grumbled but Abrams had ample cause. But to initiate court martial for first degree murder? Even some members of Abrams’ loyal staff recoiled from that course of action.

Media latched on to the incident to promote respective agenda. For some it was “the worse incident since My Lai,” for others it represented “a travesty of military justice.”

Politically the Green Beret Murder Case, as the media described it, had become a hot potato. Members of Congress were enraged, the White House was trying to avoid yet another controversial event in Vietnam, and it was up to Resor to deflate the issue as quickly as possible.

Once the case was dropped and the news cycle exhausted itself, events moved on and, except for the people involved, it became just another piece of the Vietnam War story.

BackStorYDespite depiction of the event as the

“Green Beret Murder Case,” of the seven defendants only one was a legitimate Special Forces member. That was Rheault. The other six were four Military Intelligence branch officers, one MI warrant officer, and one non-com, none Special Forces qualified.

Special Forces colleagues of mine, who were familiar with GAMMA, were contemptuous of its personnel, descr ibing them as “a bunch of wannabe REMFs who ran around Nha Trang sporting CAR-15s and Swedish Ks trying to act tough.” Whether a correct observation or not, I cannot verify, other than to note that such behavior would not have made them unique in Vietnam.

Without doubt the convoluted chain of command, with 5th SFG commander ostensibly in charge of B-57 yet the CIA calling the shots, added to the confusion. While responsible on paper, Rheault in reality was stuck supervising an organization that considered itself semi-independent. Its close contact with CIA and the typical “fast and loose” attitude that the Company displayed in Vietnam

certainly rubbed off on GAMMA and its personnel.

How deep the conflict between Special Forces and Big Army was at the time is not a matter of speculation but is rarely, if ever, mentioned. Previously Special Forces had felt that it was ignored and despised by COMUSMACV and that its work and sacrifice were not recognized or appreciated. Abrams’ actions in this case exacerbated the divide and brought simmering mutual hostility to near boiling point.

In Okinawa and throughout Vietnam, in SF clubs, team houses, and barracks, active plots were formulated to break Colonel Rheault out of LBJ. To what end seems not to have been considered, nor even if Rheault himself wanted such action. By his behavior during and subsequent to the arrest and incarceration Rheault never gave the slightest indication that he leaned in that direction. To the contrary, he seemed confident that the military justice system would exonerate him. In short, he had a belief and faith in the system.

Nevertheless, several of these plots had progressed beyond mere barroom talk to operational planning and accumulation of resources. Given the fact that if one adds the Special Forces personnel to the extremely large number of subordinate indigenous personnel they commanded, 5th SFG actually had more soldiers in the field fighting than any other unit in Vietnam. Talent, personnel, resources – all were ready and available for action.

All that was necessary was a flash point. Perhaps it came closest when Colonel Charles M. “Bill” Simpson III, commander of 1st SFG and Rheault’s successor and West Point classmate, hopped a flight into Vietnam to see if he could assist in some way. Abrams’ staff learned that Simpson was in Vietnam and told their boss. Reportedly Abrams said, “Tell that son-of-a-bitch to get out of country ASAP or his ass will be in a cell next to his buddy.” Whether fact or fiction, the story spread like wildfire throughout the SF community and for many was perilously close to a call to arms.

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Simpson’s visit – regardless of his intention – effectively killed his career also. Abrams refused to accept him as successor to Rheault to command 5th Group and Simpson ended up as on the faculty at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA where he retired.

AftermathRheault’s conduct after returning to the

US was instructive. He would not discuss details of the affair with the press and refused to be baited into condemning either the Army or the war. At most he would say that “certain individuals” within the Army were at fault, not the institution itself. He said the charges were “a travesty of justice” and accused the Army of prosecuting “dedicated soldiers for doing their job, carrying out their mission and protecting the lives of the men entrusted to them in a wartime situation.”

Rheault immediately tested the system by demanding reinstatement to his command at 5th SFG. When refused, he accepted the writing on the wall and took voluntary retirement in October 1969, shortly after return.

Not long thereafter he accepted a position with the Outward Bound program in Maine, and over the years expanded it to include special activities for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Vietnam vets. Rheault remained with Outbound until his death on October 1, 2013, two weeks short of his 89th birthday. He is said to have passed away quietly in his sleep.

During these years he strictly avoided interviews about what happened in Vietnam. He began to compile notes on the histor y and development of Special Forces itself with the intention of publishing them in a book. Whenever he approached a prospective publisher he was pressed to focus on the Green Beret Murder Affair and declined. After several rejections, a frustrated Rheault tossed the notes into a file and ignored them.

Aware that Rheault had been working on a book, West Point classmate George Patton III, approached his friend Bill Simpson at a reunion and suggested that

he encourage Rheault to continue. At that point Rheault washed his hands of the book but turned his notes over to Simpson to complete. Simpson finished the project and yet another classmate, Bob Kane of Presidio Press, agreed enthusiastically to publish it.

The book, Inside the Green Berets: The First Thirty Years, was published in 1983. In the forward, Simpson comments: “This book has my name as the author, but owes a huge debt to Bob Rheault.”

In very many ways the

life of Colonel Robert

Rheault reflects and

personifies what we

in Special Forces call

ourselves: the quiet

professionals.

In the turbulent times of the late 1960s it would have been easy for him to stake out a political position and use the affair to draw attention to himself for political or even financial aggrandizement. Others, and we all know of a few, were eager to use their war exper ience to feather their nests.

Rheault, on the other hand, preferred to devote the rest of his long life to assisting others, including recent veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Relevance to present day conflictWhile the Rheault affair is an interesting

historical footnote, does it pertain to present day Special Forces? For everyone who has been subject to changing, rest r ic t ive, and confusing rules of engagement, the answer would have to be “yes.” Anyone who may have hesitated in combat wondering whether the shot he was

about to take would bring criminal charges against him by a remote, judgmental JAG officer is feeling the aftermath of 40 year-old unresolved issues.

There have been cases in the GWOT that Special Forces teams were charged with cr imes, including murder, while carrying out missions. An infamous incident involving an ODA in October 2006 near the village of Ster Kalay, Afghanistan saw murder charges brought against an ODA team leader and operations sergeant from 3rd SFG. Just as in the Rheault case, charges were later dropped, but one must speculate on how much damage such false-start, misguided prosecutions do to the Special Forces units and members, much less to the war effort.

Despite numerous reforms over the years and establishment of organizational units giving Special Forces and the special operations community higher visibilit y within the larger institution, it would be foolish to assume that the int r insic r ivalr y between them has diminished.

Fighting over budgets in a time of increasingly scarce resources is guaranteed to exacerbate the mutual hostility and forced restructuring as a result will impose additional pressure to win the bureaucratic fights. A zero-sum game attitude persists with in the DOD and that will only get worse.

There are no easy solutions and the reader will not find one here. As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.” It would be unrealistic to assume away institution frictions or expect that an Army increasingly driven by arcane legalisms and political correctness would suddenly reform itself.

To make these necessary reforms, culture from the national command author ity down the chain must be proposed and implemented. Until such quality leadership rises to the top – and I remain pessimistic about this eventuality – all we can do in Special Forces is soldier on and protect our image as quiet professionals.

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