Only the dead, p.28
Only the Dead, page 28
“Why didn’t the CIA and Pentagon keep investigating?”
“Your father asked the same question. He also figured out why, and took his investigation underground.”
“What do you mean?”
“The CIA and Pentagon, with a few exceptions, circled the wagons.”
“No different than today with the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Raife noted.
“The official policy was that all living American POWs had been returned,” Danreb said. “Congress looked into the matter under pressure from constituents and veterans’ organizations, but their committees were set up to discredit rather than investigate. Most of the country was ready to put Vietnam in the rearview mirror.”
“But not Tom Reece.”
“Not Tom Reece,” Danreb confirmed. “Operation Homecoming did have an unintended consequence, though.”
“What was that?”
“Congress was unaware of Kissinger’s and Nixon’s four-billion-dollar promise of aid. They were also horrified by the condition of the POWs who did make it home—something which stalled out reparations and aid from the legislative branch. North Vietnam didn’t distinguish between the branches of government. To them, four billion was promised but never delivered.”
“Which meant U.S. POWs stayed in captivity.”
“That’s right. Nixon resigns. Ford steps in, followed by Carter. Deals are forgotten. The country moved on.”
“So, what does Vietnam do with its American POWs in Laos and Cambodia?” Reece asked, already suspecting the answer.
“They send them to someone who will pay for them.”
“The Soviet Union.”
“These are photos of the target package your father helped put together back in ’81 for a rescue mission into Laos. His asset in Moscow had passed him intelligence that the Soviets were going to buy the final batch of U.S. POWs. He knew that once they were in the Soviet Union there was no way to get them back. The Soviets would never admit to it, and the U.S. would not start a war with the Soviets over the failed conflict in Vietnam.”
“That’s single-source intel,” Reece said. “He needed more.”
“And he got it. A signals intercept corroborated that intel. The intercept specifically stated that twenty U.S. POWs were being moved into a prison camp in Gnommorath, Laos. The NSA tasked a satellite to photograph the village and the surrounding area. The imagery came back as inconclusive, so an SR-71 out of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa conducted an overflight. Those photos confirmed a prison with walls, guard towers, and irrigation ditches dug into the surrounding crops in the shape of a ‘52K’—escape-and-evasion code for fifty-two U.S. POWs.”
“Fifty-two,” Reece repeated, his voice low.
“The CIA and Delta wanted on-the-ground confirmation. This is only a year after Desert One, so Delta wants to make sure they succeed. After some bureaucratic infighting as to who should lead a reconnaissance mission into Laos, the CIA, against your dad’s recommendation, was given the mission. And who did they send?”
“Tom Reece.”
“He reestablished comms with Montagnards from his SOG days who had fled to Thailand. He recruited them and led them into Laos. They established an OP in a cave near the camp.”
“What did they find?” Reece asked.
“According to these documents, they confirmed at least one American.”
“Your father was the CIA liaison between the Agency and Delta. In April 1981, Delta was put on alert and began planning. By July they were ready to go.”
“Poe told us that right before the operation was green-lit, a story broke in the Post about U.S. POWs in Vietnam and a mercenary force making preparations to rescue them,” Reece said.
“Interesting timing, don’t you think?” said Danreb. “They even pulled a retired Green Beret lieutenant colonel into the spotlight to help sink the mission. There was no way that mission was getting approved with the enemy on alert only a year after the disaster at Desert One.”
“Who is ‘they’?” asked Reece.
“There were certainly powerful political and intelligence entities in the U.S. that wanted only to prove that there were no U.S. servicemen still alive in Southeast Asia. The careers and reputations of extremely powerful and influential people would have been tarnished, possibly ruined, if the American public became aware that their own government knew that Americans were left behind in Vietnam and did nothing to get them out. They took this as an opportunity to both prove that no one was still imprisoned in Southeast Asia and to discredit anyone who might think otherwise.”
“What happened to the POWs?”
Danreb and Vic exchanged a look.
“We don’t know, Reece,” Vic interjected. “These papers are inconclusive, but in one of Tom’s last communications with his asset in Moscow, his source said that they had been executed. Moscow already had POWs that were transported to the Soviet Union during the Ford and Carter administrations. Now Reagan was in office. Instead of transporting more prisoners to the USSR or China, they were executed and their remains incinerated. You father’s asset was found weeks later with his throat cut in his vehicle at his dacha outside of Moscow.”
“What happened then?”
“Your father’s notes end. Nothing on POWs from 1981 until 1992.”
“What was he doing during that time?” Reece asked.
“He continued to rotate through case officer postings but shifted focus to the Middle East and the growing threat of terrorism,” Vic said.
“The POW issue would surface from time to time over the years. The government took the official position that no POWs were left behind,” Danreb explained. “Two servicemen involved in putting the target packages together for the scrubbed Delta mission went so far as to sue the government for the release of documents that would prove to the American people that the opposite was true. Of course, the judge sided with the government, which means he sided with the CIA citing ‘sources and methods’ and the high classification of the material.”
“They knew we had live POWs in Southeast Asia and they left them to rot,” Raife said. “Bloody cowards.”
“These documents paint that picture. One of the last items was inserted in 1992. Your father had a conversation with Le Quang Khai, a member of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry working on his graduate degree at Columbia. In his notes he writes that Khai stated that it was common knowledge in Vietnamese government circles that the U.S. had abandoned POWs after the war. Not long after that, Khai was deported.”
“You said ‘one’ of the last documents. There was another?” Reece asked.
“Yes. A satellite photo from 1992. Dug into the earth outside the Dong Mang prison in northern Vietnam, so that it was visible only from the air, was ‘GX 2527.’ ”
Danreb handed Reece a photo. The resolution was much sharper than the photo from twelve years earlier.
“Authenticator code?”
“Yes, for Peter Richard Matthes. His C-130 was shot down in November 1969.”
Reece set the photo on the table.
“Bastards.”
Danreb pulled a document from the magnetic board and handed it to Reece.
“What’s this?”
“Reece, your dad thought there was more to this than just Pentagon, intelligence officials, and politicians wanting to cover their asses and move past Vietnam in the name of political expediency. He thought that the evidence of U.S. servicemen being transported to the USSR was quelled by this small group of elites in our country…”
“And in the Soviet Union,” Reece said, finishing the thought.
“It appears there are those in both countries who have allegiances to something other than their people.” Vic held up a paper. “Tom Reece writes, ‘In the wake of World War II at Tehran, Bretton Woods, and Yalta, certain intelligence officials met and formed a pact. They didn’t trust their leaders, nor did they trust the people in any society, free or totalitarian. They vowed to avoid state-on-state conflict that could lead to a nuclear confrontation. To do so, they would trade secrets and manipulate markets to acquire the wealth necessary to wield the kind of power that can dictate the world order.’ ”
“An alliance?” asked Reece.
“Yes,” Danreb said. “Tom references something called ‘the Collective’ in his notes.”
“The Collective,” Reece repeated.
“In our discussions in my basement office at Langley we once discussed the Soviet illegals program and their goal of having one of their own ascend to the office of the president. That was a distinct worry during the Cold War. Now, I believe Tom was thinking further ahead, past the end of the Cold War. His sights were already on the next ridgeline. He was focused on the Collective.”
“Why is this group so interested in these documents now?” Reece asked.
“That’s exactly what Vic and I have been discussing. We think it’s because they are about to move a significant piece on the board.”
“What piece?”
“That we don’t know.”
“In the letter he left me, my dad said there was one last bit of evidence he couldn’t find.”
“Whatever it was, I think he was close to finding it when he was killed,” Vic said.
“Most of the people he lists in these files are dead,” Danreb said. “But this was generational. Money still needs to be accounted for, moved, and hidden, whether it’s cash, cryptocurrency, or tangible assets like gold, silver, platinum, jewels, art, or cars. Tom found the firm that handled their money, a small boutique firm called Morgan Holdings. I’ve studied them for years. They manage the money for many of the former KGB and current SVR officials and Bratva. There is one in particular who we made a deal with almost twenty years ago. We sold our soul on that one. The CIA, in conjunction with the FBI, agreed to a deal in which a former KGB man by the name of Luka Yevgenievich would be given U.S. citizenship and immunity in exchange for information on an asset, a Russian spy, working his way up the ranks at the CIA. He gave us the asset, and it was exactly what I feared. The SVR wanted him to burn their asset. He was a throwaway. In exchange they got immunity and citizenship for one of their own.”
“Why didn’t we scrap the agreement?”
“Couldn’t prove it. And if it turned out that it was a lemon, senior-level officials at the Agency and the FBI would look ridiculous. They played it off as a success.”
“What happened to Yevgenievich?”
“He runs the New York Bratva syndicate, protected by the power of the U.S. government. He’s involved in prostitution, human trafficking, organ trafficking, drugs, money laundering, you name it. It’s one of the worst deals we ever negotiated.”
“How does he fit in?”
“His financial holdings increase at a rate disproportionate to those of other Bratva leaders across the United States and Europe.”
“Maybe he’s just better at his job,” Raife said.
“Perhaps, but I think there is more to it,” Danreb said. “I’ve been studying these guys since the early eighties. A few have stood out as—how do I put this?—different, connected in both America and Russia. It’s not as easy as ‘follow the money,’ but that’s not far off. I got more and more interested as time went on and took my suspicions up the chain at Langley. Of course, I was told to stand down. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I kept investigating. I used the Agency’s resources. It was easier to cover things back then. I mapped out his network to include the man at the firm who handles Yevgenievich’s money. A man who also happens to handle money for those I suspect to be part of this group of elites both in the United States and Russia.”
“How do we find him?”
“I just so happen to know a lot about him. But first, let’s talk about something else.”
“What’s that?” Reece asked.
“Money.”
CHAPTER 53
“MONEY?”
“Yes,” Danreb said. “Oftentimes it comes back to money, or really to wealth, because that is where true power lies.”
“All right, let’s hear it,” Reece said.
“There are three main ways to amass the type of wealth that one needs in order to wield true power. These are not people interested in a nice house with a white picket fence. They are interested in control—total control.”
“Sounds familiar,” Reece said.
“Option one is monopoly; controlling a sector or a commodity like shipping, groceries, alcohol, seafood, oil, gas, gold, silver, rare earth minerals, microchips, pharmaceuticals, sunglasses—you name it. Many of those sectors are controlled by a few closely held private corporations. Take the De Beers family, as an example. They have long controlled the world’s flow of diamonds. They set the price and maintain scarcity to control the market. In actuality, diamonds are not that scarce or hard to find. De Beers holds millions of carats of diamonds in safes, purely to keep the price high. They control the supply side, and therefore establish and support the value of the global diamond market, artificially through their power in much the same way that OPEC has huge influence over oil prices through controlling the global supply. It is similar across the board.”
“Give me an example in the U.S.,” Reece said.
“When a small but growing company like Santa Monica Seafood begins to dominate a segment of the fresh fish market, putting pressure on big companies like Sysco or U.S. Foods, they simply step in and buy them out.” Danreb snapped his fingers. “Poof! No more competition. If the smaller company won’t sell, then the larger corporation, with more resources, squeezes them; usually by cutting off distribution and shipping. It’s more coordinated and integrated than the Mafia, and most of it is even legal. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo do the same thing. They watch and monitor their sector, and when another drink company starts to get traction, they buy it or cut off its distribution. When was the last time you were in a restaurant or stadium or arena that served both Coke and Pepsi? Never happens. They split up the market. And chances are, any other available beverage that isn’t owned by Coke or Pepsi is at least distributed by them, which is another means of control. The point is, if you start to be successful, you get crushed, unless you are in the club.”
“You said there were multiple ways.”
“The second way is through Private Capital, such as Hedge Funds, Private Equity, and Venture Capital, but most people can’t afford to invest the amount of capital necessary to create monumental gains. These dark pools of private capital employ teams of analysts and forecasters, people on the spectrum, whose minds work through numbers in a way that even AI hasn’t figured out. They put a million dollars into ten companies—eight of them fail, but the other two are the future Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Tesla, or any of the dozens of others that go up a thousandfold from the initial investment. It’s an eight-million-dollar loss on the losers, but a billion-dollar gain on the couple winners. They can afford to invest in a way that the average citizen can’t, and they continue to amass wealth and compound those billion-dollar gains. That allows them to continue to bet on ten and lose on eight. But again, it helps to be part of the club. That’s how you get the best information and, more important, access to those two ultimate winners in the first place.”
“I’d rather be doing almost anything else,” Reece said.
“Numbers aren’t really his thing,” Raife commented with a smile.
“The third way is through Managed Speculation using market manipulation,” Danreb continued.
“Explain that to me like I avoided all math and finance classes in college,” Reece said.
“You speculate about the future by investing in futures, options or swaps, which are financial contracts, i.e., derivatives, whose value depends upon an underlying asset, which can be traded like a stock or bond. But here’s the catch: the derivative’s value is set to a predetermined amount on a future date—thus the ‘speculation.’ These financial securities are commonly used by legitimate companies to mitigate risk. A hedge, much like insurance. However, they can also be used to ‘assume risk,’ that is, to speculate with the expectation of significant reward if you predict the future properly, and here’s where it gets interesting. By specifying the price of the trade and a future date, these derivatives safeguard the owners of the underlying assets against future fluctuations in the market. But, if you know what is going to happen in the future, you don’t need the underlying asset and you can maximize your earnings and wipe out your enemies.”
Reece shrugged and looked at Raife, who spent a few months on Wall Street after the military and before packing up and moving back to Montana.
“I think we need to go back to the part where I told you I didn’t major in finance,” Reece said.
“Let’s try this,” Danreb said. “You invest in futures, or options, which are derivatives of other asset types, like stocks or commodities—but you have influence, or control, over outcomes. Futures and options allow you to buy or sell a significant amount of stock or commodities at a specified price, at some specified future date—sometimes months or even a year into the future. Most investors use these instruments to hedge market fluctuations and volatility, essentially as insurance policies. But some investors use them to speculate, essentially making big bets on an outcome. And if you’re willing to make bets that are ‘way out of the money,’ you can generate enormous profits, having put up relatively little money up front. Think of it this way: it’s like going to the racetrack and putting $1,000 on the shitty horse with 200:1 odds. Nobody expects that horse to win, but if it does there’s a huge payoff. Information and knowledge can be enormously valuable and even more valuable if you can actually control outcomes.”
“We can’t predict the weather,” Reece said. “How do you essentially predict the future?”
“The idea isn’t to predict the future, but to control the future,” Danreb said. “Take Russian gas and oil exports.”
“Didn’t Russia lose out through sanctions when they invaded Ukraine?” Reece asked.
