The Journey 48. Barry Bachrach and Daniel Hopsicker: Col. Dan Marvin and His Special Forces Truth

Attorney Barry Bachrach and author Daniel Hopsicker discuss with publisher Kris Millegan “Expendable Elite: One Soldier’s Journey into Covert Warfare,” by Colonel Dan Marvin, how Colonel Dan unilaterally aborted his CIA mission to assassinate Cambodian Prince Sihanouk, and how the Special Forces Association took legal action to have his book called fiction.

K: Colonel Dan’s book had been to a hundred and seven publishers before it got to me. I’m doing these books about Skull and Bones. I was thinking this was a tame little book about Vietnam. No sooner did we publish it than the Special Forces Association decided that we had to declare the book to be fiction, which we didn’t want to do and that led [them to take us to court].

B: I jumped at the opportunity.

K: Col. Dan is the only person I know who was a lieutenant colonel who didn’t graduate from high school. That’s because he was a Chicago gang kid, and he got himself in trouble and they said, “Hey, son, do you want to go to jail or join the army?” And so he was an assassin. And this was a point in time when, quote, unquote, we didn’t kill people. Now we know that there’s a piece of paper with people’s name on it in the top drawer of the president’s desk. And that was a big part of the suit. In the book, he had talked about, he had been given a job to assassinate [Cambodian Crown Prince] Sihanouk. And the CIA came back and said, “Oh, no. We never did that.” It was quite absurd.

B: One of the things that motivated Col. Dan was he was re-born. He felt the desire to get out what he knew; what was supposed to be kept inside of him and ignored by the public. And he just felt, “I gotta get the truth out.”

K: He was very proud of his service. He was very proud of his country. And he was proud that he was telling the truth.

B: [We won the case.] We started putting on their witnesses, and they had to admit what Col. Dan said in the book was true … because they were on tape saying it.

K: The Special Forces Association had shut news down before. The Yellow Rain story out of Laos. About us using chemical warfare. The head of the Special Forces Association got a hold of Kissinger. And Kissinger called the head of CNN. And he went out and said, “Oh, these reporters, they don’t know what they’re doing. It was a bad story,” and blah, da-blah. But most people don’t know that the producer and the talent sued CNN and won a judgement and still stand by the story today.

D: Col. Dan was proud of what he did. None of us – the only thing we can be proud of was protesting against what was being done. In our lifetime, it’s no longer possible for a thinking, caring human being to be one hundred percent behind his government. And that’s unfortunate.

B: It’s only through people like Col. Dan, and people who are willing to tell us what really is happening, and the courage they have to do that, that sheds light on people. The generations and multiple people around us are not thinking the same way, and they’re falling into that trap, and they’re buying into all the propaganda that’s going on.

K: The psychological warfare is flying very, very thick. Very, very thick.