Tiger Force

by Michael Sallah

  Apsey was struck by the amount of work still to be done. He had already spent ten months on the case. The irony was that the investigation was revving up at a time the war was coming to an end. On the seat next to the tired agent was a copy of the Columbus Dispatch, dated January 28, 1973, proclaiming a peace treaty had been signed the day before in Paris. The war was over. But Gus Apsey’s battle had just begun.

  When Apsey returned to Fort MacArthur, he turned over the tapes of his interview with Carpenter to the office secretary to be transcribed. He was now going to take the investigation solely into his own hands. He had learned a long time ago not to rely on other agents. You have to look your own subject in the eyes. You have to know everything.

  As Apsey briefed Colonel Weinstein over the phone that morning, the commander asked where the case was going. The truth was, Apsey didn’t know. “I need some time,” he said. But how much? It was clear the investigation needed to be expanded, and that could take several weeks, or months. Normally, Weinstein wouldn’t have minded. He always pushed his agents to be thorough, not sloppy. But with the peace accords, most of the troops would be out of the country by March. The Pentagon was trying to wrap up the war—not prolong it.

  Worse, because the war was ending, huge numbers of soldiers and officers would be leaving the Army. That meant they would no longer be under the jurisdiction of the military. Even if there were probable cause to charge them, they would escape the reach of Army prosecutors.

  Weinstein and Apsey agreed the investigation needed to move forward without interruptions. That meant Apsey had to set priorities. He had learned years ago that the person most responsible for the actions of a fighting unit is the officer in charge. The first thing Apsey needed to find out was whether James Hawkins was still in the military. That question was answered almost right away when Apsey checked the roster sent to him by the Pentagon and saw that Hawkins was listed as a lieutenant in the 1st Battalion/327th Infantry. He had been promoted to captain and was now assigned to a student detachment at the University of Tampa in Florida.

  While reading his notes, Apsey spotted the name Ervin Lee and found that the former soldier was now living in Bell Gardens, California—just twenty miles north of Fort MacArthur. Lee had been identified by Carpenter as one of the soldiers who watched as Hawkins shot the old man at the edge of the river. Since Lee was living so close, Apsey decided to call the former sergeant before traveling for any more interviews. Apsey was able to reach him and coax him into coming into Fort MacArthur several days later.

  The onetime team leader quietly made it obvious he didn’t want to be interviewed. He had been living in the streets and just recently found himself an apartment. It was a long way from his hometown of Anniston, Alabama, but Lee had hoped living in California would help clear his head. It was just the opposite. He couldn’t sleep and would often walk the streets aimlessly. Though he had served in the Tigers for more than a year, he hesitated to talk about former soldiers whom he said answered the call when no one else did.

  “What do you guys want with us now?” he asked, dropping down in a chair.

  Apsey immediately slid Carpenter’s typewritten statement across the table, with Lee’s name underlined in bright red ink on the pages as a witness. Lee glanced at the documents and then turned away. Apsey then asked him, “Did you see the old man killed?”

  Lee had two choices: he could leave or talk. If he left the office, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t be called again. He knew some of these CID guys were relentless. Maybe it was better to get it over with now.

  Lee thought for a moment and then began to speak. He was one of the soldiers who escorted the old man to Hawkins, he told Apsey. Before walking away, Lee watched as Trout whacked the man on the head, and then a few minutes later, he heard gunfire. “Later, I heard that Hawkins had shot the prisoner.”

  Lee said he didn’t know anything else about war crimes. Apsey suspected that wasn’t quite true, but rather than press Lee, he decided to wait until later. For now, he had reason to believe that Carpenter was telling the truth—at least about Hawkins killing the old man.

  Apsey would interview one more witness before going to Florida. Leo Heaney was now a second lieutenant at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He was yet another name that Carpenter had disclosed, and the next day, after interviewing Lee, Apsey contacted Heaney. Two weeks later, Apsey met the officer at the fort’s CID office.

  Armed with Carpenter’s and Lee’s statements, Apsey went into the interview loaded. Unlike previous interviews when he felt like he was fishing, he was now more confident. He said he knew about the murder of the old man and that two other soldiers identified Heaney as a witness.

  Heaney was surprised. He knew that when Apsey contacted him by phone, the purpose was Tiger Force and war crimes. But he hadn’t actually expected something like this to surface six years later.

  Apsey insisted the interview wouldn’t take long. Still, Heaney didn’t want to talk. Finally, Apsey pulled out a copy of Carpenter’s statement and handed it to Heaney. The veteran carefully began reading the pages and slowly slumped in his chair.

  When he finished reading the typewritten pages, he returned the documents before folding his arms. Yes, he said, he knew all about the shooting. He said he had tried to reason with Hawkins to leave the victim alone. “I mentioned the fact that he was a harmless old man, and Hawkins said something to the effect, ‘If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.’” He had turned his back just before Hawkins pulled the trigger. “There was no justifiable reason the old man had to be killed,” Heaney told Apsey.

  From the fifth floor of the Holiday Inn, Apsey had an excellent view of downtown Tampa. Outside his window, guests were lounging around the pool below, and spring breakers were making noise down the hall. All of it was wasted on him. Apsey had spent most of the morning writing the questions he would ask the former Tiger Force commander.

  When Apsey heard a knock on the door, he covered the papers on a table, thinking it was Hawkins. But it turned out to be another agent, Donald Weaver, who had driven from the CID office at McCoy Air Force Base near Orlando to join Apsey in the interview.

  Before the men could discuss the case, there was another knock. This time, it was Hawkins. Almost right away, the agents noticed he was fidgety. After sitting down at the table in the cramped room, Apsey immediately informed Hawkins he was suspected in a war-crimes case of murder, dereliction of duty, and conduct unbecoming an officer, and had the right to a military lawyer.

  Hawkins pushed away from the table and looked at the two men in disbelief. He told them he didn’t know what to say. He agreed to come to the motel because he thought he was assisting the CID in a case. He had no idea he was a suspect.

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t like this.”

  “Do you want a lawyer?” Apsey asked.

  Hawkins looked at Apsey and shook his head. “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said.

  Apsey quietly reviewed his list of questions and then looked up at Hawkins. “Did you shoot an old man in the Song Ve Valley in 1967 after you had been drinking?”

  “No,” Hawkins responded matter-of-factly. “No, I did not.”

  Apsey then slowly read aloud the statements of Carpenter, Lee, and Heaney. They said it was Hawkins who shook the old man mercilessly, and Hawkins who rebuffed attempts by soldiers to stop, and Hawkins who ultimately pulled the trigger. When Apsey finished reading the witness statements, he placed the papers down on the table and stared at Hawkins.

  It was apparent that Hawkins was uncomfortable, shifting in his chair, looking confused, almost dazed. He began babbling that to the best of his knowledge, he never killed anyone needlessly and certainly didn’t remember killing an old man.

  Hawkins asked about a lawyer.

  Apsey responded, “You have a right to one. That’s your decision.”

  Hawkins stood up and took a few steps toward the window, but then stopped. “I’m going to need time to decide,” he sai
d. “At this point, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  After Hawkins left the room, Weaver turned to Apsey. “How much do you bet he doesn’t come back?” he asked. Apsey thought about the question for a moment and then responded. “How much do you bet he comes back,” he said, “but with a lawyer.”

  The next morning, Hawkins knocked on the door of Room 501. He wasn’t alone. At his side was Captain Guyton Terry Jr., a judge advocate general (JAG). The two came inside.

  Immediately, Apsey followed protocol by informing Hawkins he was a war-crimes suspect.

  Before sitting down, Hawkins made it clear his lawyer wasn’t going to allow him to answer incriminating questions. He wasn’t going to be blindsided this time, he said.

  Apsey asked Hawkins if he was going to cooperate by answering any questions.

  “You can ask,” he responded.

  Apsey looked at his list again and asked the question, “Did you shoot an unarmed older Vietnamese man in the Song Ve Valley in 1967?”

  Terry whispered something to Hawkins, who then shook his head. “On the advice of my lawyer,” he said, “I’m not going to talk about that.”

  Apsey then went on to ask him if he ordered the shooting of unarmed farmers in a rice paddy in the same valley in 1967.

  Again, Terry whispered something to Hawkins, who said he was not going to answer.

  Apsey then asked Hawkins a litany of questions about the routine torturing and killing of prisoners, the practice of cutting off ears and threatening to kill soldiers if they complained. After each question, Hawkins refused to say anything.

  Apsey could see the interview wasn’t going anywhere. Finally, he asked if Hawkins’s superiors knew about war crimes carried out by the platoon. This time, Hawkins abruptly stood up and moved away from the table. He had enough, he said. He motioned to his lawyer. They were ending the interview, and without saying anything more, they walked out of the room. There was nothing Apsey could do to stop them.

  Apsey filed his weekly report after returning to Fort MacArthur, and for the first time, the Coy Allegation, No. 221, was formally fleshed out. The report now included the names of Sam Ybarra, James Hawkins, and Harold Trout, and the phrase “other unidentified members of Tiger Force” who were under investigation for crimes ranging from murder to body mutilation. In short, the investigation was expanding to the entire unit.

  In keeping with the routing system, the report was typed at Fort MacArthur and then sent to five places: Weinstein at the Presidio, CID headquarters, the offices of the defense secretary and Army secretary, and, finally, the White House.

  The first call to Weinstein’s office after the report was filed was from CID headquarters. Tufts was going to keep a separate file on the case. He did not want any surprises, nor did he want details of the case to reach the media. In most CID investigations, the agents were often the last to know what was happening at the top. Under Tufts, that was certainly the procedure. He didn’t want his agents fettered by the politics that sometimes seeped into these cases, especially now. Tufts was painfully aware that the Nixon White House was paranoid about war-crimes cases breaking in the news. Nixon had been forced to perform damage control in the wake of the My Lai revelations by calling the atrocity an “isolated incident” on December 8, 1969. Tufts had been told time and again to keep the president’s office abreast of all potentially embarrassing cases. His two key contacts in the administration were John Dean, legal counsel to the president, and Charles Colson, special assistant to the president.

  To keep track of the case, Apsey made a copy of the report about the farmers being killed and taped it to his office wall. Then he made a copy of a report on the killing of the old man crossing the river. He taped it next to the first report. One by one, he taped more reports to the wall, along with the names of the suspects.

  Based on a blueprint of what he now knew, starting with Carpenter’s allegations and subsequent interviews supporting those accusations, Apsey would need to interview every Tiger Force member who served in the period of May through November 1967. That included going back and reinterviewing former and active soldiers who had already been interrogated.

  Apsey went over the list. At least sixty-one had to be reinterviewed, and at least another thirty had yet to be located. Apsey would be assigned help, but not full-time. He was on his own.

  The key would be getting soldiers to talk. Without a dead body, a war crime is tough to substantiate, especially when the events took place six years earlier. It takes credible witnesses to corroborate a crime. In My Lai, there at least had been graphic photographs of the victims. But even with the horrifying images, only one soldier was ever convicted, Lieutenant Calley.

  What was frustrating to Apsey and his superiors was that this case, in many ways, had the potential to get much bigger. How big they didn’t yet know.

  As he stared at the names on his office wall, Apsey’s eyes kept returning to the same one: James Robert Barnett. Why had he abruptly resigned after being interviewed about the case in 1971? What did he know? Apsey went into Earl Perdue’s office and closed the door.

  “Look,” he said, “I got a funny feeling about this one.”

  Puzzled, Perdue looked at his agent.

  Apsey explained that Barnett’s sudden resignation was one of the first clues that the case involved more than just one soldier killing a baby. “I need to fly out there.”

  Perdue waved his hand and agreed. He was already under orders to make this case a priority, and if his lead agent believed he suddenly needed to fly somewhere for a key interview, Perdue wasn’t going to stand in the way.

  The next day, Apsey boarded a flight to Tennessee and, for most of the trip, pored over Barnett’s personnel file and other records. After serving in the Tigers, Barnett went on to put in three more tours, including a stint in Special Forces. He brought back a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and a bad attitude.

  Apsey arrived and called Barnett’s home. To his surprise, the former officer answered. Apsey said he had some important things to talk about.

  There was silence on the other line. “I thought I dealt with you people already,” he said in a deep drawl. The CID had already come to his base at Fort Campbell and asked him questions.

  “I’ll make this quick,” said Apsey.

  Barnett wasn’t happy.

  “I don’t have much to say,” he told Apsey when the investigator appeared at the door. Back in his hometown, like so many other veterans, Barnett couldn’t get a good job—at least not right away. He had been driving a bulldozer and a truck to make ends meet. He was married, with a month-old son and more bills than ever.

  Apsey had come to understand Vietnam vets and had learned not to push too hard (the surest way of ending an interview). “This won’t take long,” he said.

  The two moved from the front steps to the living room. Apsey broke the ice by first saying that other Tiger Force members had spoken candidly about war crimes. Did those events, if true, have anything to do with Barnett resigning as a second lieutenant while stationed at Fort Campbell?

  Barnett tensed up. He didn’t know what to say. More importantly, what were others saying? He slumped down in his chair.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, his hands slightly trembling.

  Again, in a reassuring voice, Apsey said he was trying to get to the truth. Barnett was no longer in the service and probably couldn’t be prosecuted anyway, though that wasn’t Apsey’s decision. Apsey went on to describe the attack on the rice farmers and the shooting death of the old man in the Song Ve Valley.

  Barnett responded that he didn’t know anything about the farmers, and yes, he recalled the shooting of the old man but didn’t see it.

  Apsey asked him about Ybarra and the baby. Barnett again said he didn’t see it but heard about it. Barnett turned away, his face red, and looked down. Apsey could tell Barnett wanted to say something, so he let the man take his time while he watched the strapping, six-foot, four-inch former
soldier for any clues in body language. He could hear the big man breathing harder now.

  “Okay,” said Barnett. “Okay. I want to say something, just for now, but I’m not going to repeat it under any circumstances. When we were out there, on patrol, it was generally understood that we would—well—kill anything that moved.”

  Apsey immediately stopped writing. He wanted to hear this again.

  “Anything?” he asked incredulously.

  “Yes, as far as we knew, the civilians had been moved out, and what was left in our areas of operations were strictly enemy or enemy sympathizers.” On nearly every mission, he explained, the platoon’s orders were to kill anything that moves. Men, women, anything.

  Apsey asked Barnett if the platoon soldiers knew for sure the people they were killing were truly enemy soldiers. Barnett shook his head no.

  Apsey returned to California with more information than he ever expected. Before he had a chance to type his report, he received a call: agents had located Barry Bowman, a former Tiger Force medic who was mentioned by Carpenter as a witness. Though he was no longer in the Army, the CID had traced Bowman to the small college town of Macomb, Illinois, where he was operating a bar.

  When Apsey called, Bowman said he didn’t want to be bothered, especially by the CID. Nothing good could come out of talking to agents, he said. But Apsey insisted.

  In less than two days, Apsey was knocking on Bowman’s door. At first, Bowman didn’t answer; he knew it was the CID and began having second thoughts about an interview. After several knocks, however, he walked to the door and let Apsey in.