I was an AFROTC college graduate in 1967. That was a year when it was
pretty obvious that most of us were destined for some time in Southeast
Asia, or for Canada. I had already made my peace with the idea of wartime
military service, and was actually looking forward to it, but there was the
matter of a military skill (or lack thereof). I got commissioned in May
1967, when I graduated, and was called to active duty that July. My initial
active duty location was the Armed Forces Air Intelligence Training Center
(AFAITC), Lowry AFB, Colorado.

Intel school was harder than I expected, for the simple reason that more
people were brought there for training than they had classroom space for. I
waited six weeks to get into a class which began a new session every two
weeks. I finally performed a little amateur intelligence work, and learned
that Airman Fontenot in the Center personnel office was responsible for
assembling the roster for each class. I visited Airman Fontenot, and
politely informed him that I was ready for training, and son-of-a-gun if I
wasn't on the very next roster. Thank you Airman Fontenot, whereever you
are.

Our school was attended both by Air Force and Naval personnel, with the odd
Marine showing up now and then. Our class of 30 was about two-thirds Air
Force, one-third Navy. The school lasted 7 and one-half months and trained
us in a full range of basic military intelligence knowledge and skills at
the "straight-Secret" level. Elsewhere I would would pick up a Top Secret
clearance and some special accesses.

Someone else mentioned that their classes were conducted from 0600 to noon
each day. That was also our schedule. The Intelligence training buildings
were in use by different classes, for 18 hours per day on three different
shifts.

When our class graduated, Air Force students were awarded two entry-level
AFSC's, as 8041 (Photo Interpretation or "PI") and 8051 (Air Intelligence -
"AI" - sort of a general purpose briefer/debriefer, and analyst). We all
formed preferences for one skill or the other during school, but your first
duty assignment after school determined which of your entry-level AFSC's
would be upgraded to fully qualified (through OJT). Although I really
enjoyed the photo work, I preferred the AI track, and luckily for me, I got
it.

Naturally, all through school our practical exercises focused on Southeast
Asia as much as possible, and we were told constantly that our entire class
would be in Vietnam or Thailand within a few months. That was true for the
classes that started two weeks ahead of, and two weeks after mine, but of
our class, only one guy got orders directly to SEA. The rest of us drew
stateside assignments. (The Navy students got additional training before
their PCS, and I was fortunate to run in to a couple of our Navy classmates
over the years, but have long since lost track of them.)

I got orders to HQ Tactical Air Command, Langley AFB VA. I was assigned to
the more-or-less famous "quad-four", the 4444th Reconnaissance Technical
Group at Langley. The unit has been renamed several times, but something of
the sort still exists at Langley. My duties there were in a section that
worked on the Intelligence Data Handling System (IDHS), an early mainframe
driven punchcard filing system for recce information and targets. This was
dull work, I thought, and had nothing to do with SEA, and I kept annoying
people with questions about how to get to the real action, but seemed to be
making no headway.

The following January (1969) one of my roommates from Denver took his R&R
from Udorn as Intel Officer on Moonbeam (ABCCC) to marry the girl he had met
in Denver. I got an invite to the wedding in Hawaii, and I went. Once I
got to Oahu, I made a point to visit PACAF personnel office at Hickam and
ask how I could get orders to SEA. The Sergeant I spoke to there (name CRS)
seemed sympathetic and very understanding, jotted down my name and SSN, and
said he would look into it. I never heard from him again, but a few weeks
after I returned to Langley, I got notified of my assignment, with eight
days notice before departure to something called Dukes Mare, at Eglin AFB
Aux Field 3, in Florida. We have talked about this before, but for the new
folks, Dukes Mare was a very complete training site for people on their way
to Task Force Alpha, at NKP.

I was shipped as a C-8054, a computer qualified Intelligence Officer, and
the training at Dukes Mare focused on the computer system in use at TFA.
Long story short, I was no good at computers, and not very interested
either. I was fortunate to meet and serve with some folks who were very
good at it, but I tried to shake the computer specialty at every
opportunity. After three months or so at TFA, I was assigned to the Current
Intelligence shop at TFA, and that's how I finished that tour.

Meanwhile, I decided I liked Thailand and wanted to stay a while longer, so
I began working to arrange a consecutive long-tour to the Intelligence shop
at MACThai, Bangkok. My tour was nearing its end, and I had no orders,
which worried me, so one evening, at midnight local, I phoned through to
AFMPC in Texas (Noon there) to talk to my "career monitor." I asked him
about my orders to MACThai, but the poor slug simply didn't have the story
right. He kept talking this great job he had for me at Awful Air Force
Base, in Omigod, Nebraska, and he seemed to think I'd be happy to know I was
gonna be able to stay in the Computer business.

I thought about his kind offer for oh, maybe 1.8 seconds, and said "I'll
take the next Intel job you've got in Southeast Asia, period. No Offutt, no
computers." He said for me to call back in 24 hours. I did. That's how I
got to Udorn.

At 7/13th Air Force I worked on the Intelligence Watch, in the room next to
the TACC for about four months before I worked my way into the Current
Intell shop. The Watch was interesting, but we had a wierd rotating shift
schedule, that seemed calculated to keep you sleepy. That was a
disadvantage on mids, when we had to break out the frag and post tomorrows
targets and recce routes on briefing slides, collect major BDA reports for
the previous day from Barrel Roll and Steel Tiger, and be ready to brief the
2-star and his staff at 0800. Once I moved to the Current Intel shop, I was
the primary writer/editor of the 7/13AF Daily Laotian SITREP, a classified
summary of the ground situation and sometimes political or other reporting,
from both military and CIA sources. We also sent out messages to notify the
flying units in Thailand and Vietnam of changes to the Laotian E&E Safe
Areas (a misnomer if ever there was one), and notices when Lima and Lima
STOL (L- and LS-) sites changed hands. I stayed at Udorn for 22 months, and
actually got married there to the woman who is still my wife. Our first son
was born there.

Both at NKP and at 7/13th AF I had friends who went "across the river" to
work air Intell support for the Ravens and the American Embassy. Early in
my second year at Udorn I got serious about finding a way to get assigned
there. Late in 1971, the Air Attache, Col Curry, came through and
interviewed me briefly. I found later that I got the job, and in March
1972, right after a short leave in CONUS, I went across the river, under the
auspices of Project 404.

As other guys have mentioned, I took no uniforms, and I surrendered my Air
Force ID card and Geneva Convention card, and was issued a sort of official
looking card saying I was a civilian employee of the Air Attache (AIRA). In
Vientiane I worked in the USAID compound, at the AIRA offices. I performed
an almost daily briefing for the AIRA, sometimes for Ambassador Godley, and
often also for the Minister of Defense (General Sananikone) of the Royal Lao
Government. I also developed RLAF and USAF tactical and B-52 targets, and
even did a bit of photo interpretation when required, although we had better
PIs than me on the team. My primary duty was target validation. US attack
missions in Laos were required to follow a fairly strict set of rules of
engagement (ROE) for non-preplanned targets, and the guy in charge of the
ROE was Ambassador Godley. Godley's immediate assistant in this matter was
a young (meaning close to my age at the time) Yale-educated State Department
officer who would still not want his name used, but whom I came to admire
greatly. He gave me the written ROE and some general guidance, and
occasionally, a kick in the ass for some error or other, but generally, he
backed me up.

If a Nail or Covey FAC (for instance) found a worthwhile target, he would
call ABCCC for armed sorties to hit it with, and he or ABCCC (depending on
radio performance) would call Smokey Control (Savannakhet) or Painter
Control (Vientiane), and occasionally Bulldog Control (Pakse) for
"validation" of the target. Validation meant the target met the embassy
criteria for attack. I experienced a few target requests I could not
validate because of the rules, but most were OK.

FACs often complained there was a time lag in getting validations, and they
were right. The guys manning SMOKEY or PAINTER were radio operators only.
They took the voice validation request from the FAC or ABCCC, then turned to
a local FM net in Vientiane and Savannakhet to track down me or my opposite
number. They then repeated all the information about type target,
coordinates, and other info. If we were not familiar with the territory we
had to pull a 1:50,000 chart from the bag we carried all day, every day, and
check the coordinates. I doubt that I was any smarter than the other guys
who did my job at other times, but after three years in theater, one
advantage I had was that I knew the territory and could recite coordinates
from memory. I also understood the radios we were all using at the time
were plain, unencrypted VHF tactical radios. I thought if I could monitor
ABCCC on VHF, I could keep better track of what was happening each day. In
Vientiane, I figured I could speed up the validation process. On a visit to
the Udorn BX, I did some special-order shopping and for $66 of my money, I
ordered a Panasonic AM/FM, Short-Wave, VHF radio receiver. From the day it
arrived and I first plugged it in, I was able to hear both the Steel Tiger
and Barrel Roll ABCCC orbits from Udorn. In Vientiane, I could not hear the
Steel Tiger orbits, but the Barrel roll orbits came in like gangbusters.

I was sent south to Savannakhet to cover Painter while the regular guy took
some leave, and took my Panasonic wonder radio with me. Without thinking to
tell the radio operators what I was up to, I set the radio up next to my
bunk a couple of miles from the radio site. I turned down the squelch to
the point that the VHF hiss was quiet, but whenever anybody transmitted on
the ABCCC freq I could hear it, and I went to sleep. About 0200, I was
awakened by the radio. A FAC was calling target coordinates to Moonbeam, so
I jotted them down and broke out the maps. In a couple of minutes my
Motorola FM "brick" squawked, and the radio op said he had a target for me.
I promptly said it was valid for attack. The radio op protested that he
hadn't given me the coordinates yet, and I tried to explain that I knew what
they were already, but he was not buying it. Finally, I gave HIM the
coordinates. He wrote the incident up in his log, and I had some explaining
to do the next day, but once everybody knew what I was doing, they approved.
Anyhow, I lay claim to the fastest target validation of the war. Of my year
in Laos, I spent nine months in Vientiane, two months in Savannakhet working
target validation and aircrew briefing/debriefing, and one month a Pakse
(same thing). When the RLAF FAC program began I had the privilege of
briefing the US ROE to the first three Lao FACs who were approved to control
US sorties.

A couple of other current topics.

Passports - I had two. I had a green civilian passport for entry and exit
from Thailand, and a red or maroon Official passport for use in Laos. And
yes, I did get them mixed up, and actually got challenged by Thai
immigration once because I had entered on the green one and was leaving on
the red one, which had no entry stamp. Anyway, he let me go.

Nicknames associated with MOS/AFSC military skill. I never heard a bonafide
nickname for Air Intel people, either officer or enlisted. They called us a
lot of names, some of which were fairly respectful. My favorite was Intel
Weenie, but Intel Puke was popular, and there were other terms like The
Oracle (said with sarcasm). The Navy used a great term for Photo
Interpreters and later I heard the same term used both for Army and AF PIs.
PIs were called "squints". It was appropriate. Several of the former AF
Security Service SIGINT guys have mentioned manual morse intercept, voice
intercept, etc. and I never heard regular nicknames for most of those
skills, but morse operators were regularly referred to as ditty-boppers, and
the guys who figured out enemy codes were called "crippies" (cryppies? -
rhymed with hippies). All Intell folks at one time or another were referred
toby 'outsiders" as "spooks", but from the inside, we reserved that term for
HUMINT - Human Source Intelligence folks. Both the Army and the Air Force
had "spooks" at Udorn and Vientiane.

I left Vientiane for the last time on a CASI C-46 on 11 March 1973, a couple
of weeks after the official Laotian cease fire (which actually lasted about
15 minutes for everybody but us). I PCS'd to Hickam, to the PACAF Air
Defense Analysis Center (ADAC), and monitored and reported on the North
Vietnamese Air and Air Defense forces for another three years, several
months past the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon, the Mayaguez, and the
relatively peaceful "change of management" in Vientiane. All told, I worked
the war in Southeast Asia, both in theater and from Hawaii, for over a third
of my 20 years active duty.

Sorry to be so long winded. That's it.

Gerry Frazier
NKP TFA Intel 1969-70
Udorn HQ 7/13AF Intel 1970-72
Project 404 Intel 1972-73