history and recognize again that great privilege we have of being in this country and people that made it through difficult times in the past and how hopefully i'm confident we can make it through ay. challenging time gog forward as well. .. >> "we few" it is a pleasure

to welcome you here in the theater or joining us on the youtube station and also our friends at bn loan --dash d12. the remembering vietnam exhibit and before we bring out nick brokausen to other programs that are here later this week joined us how citizen movements and policymakers with america's history citizen activist and former members of congress with civic engagement and education and how to petition the government. on the third stage at noon robert f kennedy legacy

program kennedy one -- caroline kennedy talking about her father and to bring to like the case values and then to consult the monthly calendar of events and also you can get e-mail updates and find more information about national archives activities and events and another way to get more involved is to become a member of the national archives foundation for the education and outreach activities and now i will ask all veterans who served or the armed forces during the period

of november 1, 1955 through 1975 please stand and be recognized. [applause] as you exit the theater to the staff and volunteers each of you will get the vietnam veteran lapel pen. united states of america vietnam war commemoration and that is our memento of thanks. related to our special exhibit remembering vietnam going to archives here or across the

country to find the document told in the story they come in many forms photographs or motion pictures. and those traces leading to increase american involvement and his individual stories that live in five and died in vietnam and to bring those stories to the perspective fighting side-by-side and to be the backbone in vietnam during the war so now the stories of those men and the hardships that they face.

nick brokausen serving 17 years in the u.s. military after his time commanding vietnam with observation groups as diverse as the training team sent to countries in africa and south america and as a member of the first counterterrorist unit. and those that provide serving for enforcement in the military as well as consulting for resource development community. and the projects as well as the ballistic shield used by law enforcement ladies and gentleme gentlemen. [applause] nick brokausen.

>> thank you. i will make this as short as i can so we can get into questions and answers. i would like to say it is a catharsis. and to get my demons done away with so i sat down to write this book. and a small publisher picked it up 15 years ago or ten years ago or something like that. and just to be republished. and i'm not an archivist but i just went through this and decided to put it down on paper in the hopes that people

after me would understand the incredible courage of my peers there isn't of me as the narrator as the central figure but it is a tribute to my peers. i would like to read something to give you an idea of exactly what i'm talking about. this is the presidential unit citation awarded that i was privileged enough to be at that ceremony with 300 other survivors for major general staff sergeant so i will read this if i can.

and the extraordinary heroism with the observations grew one -- group assistance commanded vietnam. infants cited for extraordinary heroism with a unwavering fidelity with the top-secret missions behind enemy lines. to incorporate those volunteers and especially special operations groups ground and air and sea units to the american war effort in vietnam. and then to compose of special forces and indigenous

personnel in the jungle the laotian wilderness and the sanctuaries of eastern cambodia. and those small teams that are numerically superior to those facilities with those electronic sensors to capture those prisoners with the b-52 strikes to inflict casualties all letter proportion to their own losses. as a countermeasure and those operators and then to parachute. and those explosive devices

and cambodia and vietnamese allies special forces and with those dairying raids against those facilities in laos and cambodia. with the supply stockpiles with the flow of supplies to south vietnam. and with border operations and with the north vietnamese army to the area of secure duties. into south vietnam sorry supporting these missions with special operations in the south vietnamese.

air force transport with the forward controllers and helicopter units in u.s. army and u.s. marine corps. these courageous aviators through heavy fire to extract special operations from a seemingly hopeless situation by saving lives by risking their own. special operations group and instructed by the u.s. navy seals with the one pitcher against the north vietnamese. well they penetrated north vietnam.

and then special operations group and operators. with fidelity that distinguish special operations from the beginning. and with the added knowledge sacrifices to save many american lives to provide a paradigm for american forces and future special forces. that is the presidential citation given to the men. and there were only two other books out at the time. and then there was one called the dying place. and then the scholarly work.

but most of the people they tried to interview when they started to write a book they were classified and as far as we know they are still classified. so that information one or two people were willing to talk to them but the eyewitnesses and every one of them has a different view for there were things that were left out. but today more and more writing about the special projects to really find the books and a couple of the other so with those efforts to

come forward to tell people i didn't write this for myself but the most incredible people i have ever met in my life and they are still friends of mine. i hope the book gives an idea of what it was like be there. there isn't a scholarly work or profanity of somebody who was there at the time who witnessed it at the time and the impressions of that time. i think that pretty well details what it was like. there is a sequel we worked on it at the same time detailed in the last part of my tour

and i hope you learn something from it and that it doesn't offend you sweat the same time to get a feel of what we went through. so i can take questions now if that's okay. [applause] >> thank you for your talk. when someone came to and asked a question that they need to stay classified and then and

then to become classified? >> but that was 20 years ago but portions of what we did and then to be so sensitive with the location and those other aspects that we still don't talk about because they are classified. i'm sure but as far as the techniques and the way that we operated a good friend of mine gave me an idea so we were running operations directing

air support on the ground and at the same time but today one of the guys was a major general and in operation anaconda in afghanistan were you afraid of the danger you put these young men in and the seminarian is much danger i was in that i will feel comfortable. and then it paid off in the end. >> and the type of people with special projects for men to go

down that path with military? >> you heard the term shanghai? even current to special forces and into the special projects. blackmail. and to be a volunteer for the forces. so at any time you could quit and people actually could so to this day there is no stain on their manhood. this was about as high-pressure as you could get. the only thing that comes close is to be over 70 because

every day could be your last. >> and running that in a course that was a select force and we actually ran a school in vietnam and then you could run down to the instructor. i never saw that happen but they said it some -- it was possible. and then to put that in on the ground. then to run into somebody out

there. and we became masters of plan b. and then you pull out of your back pocket but without special selection there was no real selection you could be recon or support. but at the height of the war special forces only consisted of 3500 people worldwide. so we were a small compact group in essence in the

beginning so that became even smaller. some of the 7100 men that curved in the ground combat operations there is a difference. not staff but ground combat operations they actually ran on the ground. only 1800 of us survived the war. there were 18 teams that disappeared without a trace. and even more to be decimated and that was between 20 and 30 supposedly those teams that would train new people and get back in shape.

so towards the end of 71 and 72 you are running more missions because the warhead changed by then. we stopped to being a reconnaissance unit to get out there and stir them up with the b-52s so i hope i answered the question and did not ramble on too far. >> you mentioned locals in the area to rely on them to build up trust. so what is your experience with those areas you anticipated with the locals you rely on for support?

>> i wear this. it is a bracelet. and i will be until the day i die. and then the people that we work with they became a warrior in their tribe. and then they keep from being wounded. and some of the most dedicated , hard-core fighters you will ever find. essentially the iron age tribe and we adopted to that like ducks to the water. pretty much the same story.

we use that from the different tribes. and oddly enough they were good recon people. like a bank robbery or whatever and then you set that off at the same time. but i actually recruited my front runner in 79 and in the pow camp because they said he

wants to come out and work with us. and to this day we betrayed them in the end. basically they sign away the pow and all the other stuff in the agreement with the north vietnamese. and for those who don't want to do and they were the victims of genocide. a lot of the little people because most of them had a tattoo on their forearm it was

a special commanded unit if they saw that they would chop it off. so many went to reeducation camps and went back up into the hills. but a footnote at the end of the war they knew that they would sell out. that the vietnamese could not hold. and when the big units are pulling up and with the ammunition and weapons left behind. we took it in the hopes that they could survive. they have been that way for centuries.

and they actually have a memory of elephants with long hair. so they came from an area in china push south until they end up in the mountains of laos and vietnam. very interesting. i still hold them close to my heart. >> this is outside the scope of your book but by special operations could you elaborate on that? >> are you the sniper in the crowd? [laughter] thank you.

first understand about special projects people when i came back from vietnam with the six special forces i got an interview and said come back monday. and then to find new jobs. because everybody knows people from projects are alcoholics or psychos and apparently you are sober. [laughter] so i had to find a new job. but to be in vietnam and then to test those special forces with that understanding at the

time and everybody else to do no one special projects people. and then to have a separate unit. that detachment in that sensitive areas so it is the stay behind when the balloon went up then they were supposed to blend into the local population to use that hidden cachet. and then to start that resistance.

then to destroy the logistics chain. then with those areas of interest. >> and oddly enough most of the people were former special projects. . . . . of all so intelligence gathering

and performing other functions for the army. you look at the numbers today. there's 60,000 or 80,000 special operations troops. where are they at? they've included a lot of people like the rangers and the seals. there's a lot of people out there doing essentially what you would. you might go on a mobile training team to work with the rangers in the mountain does a radio operator because they couldn't transmit but they were actually hunting down what they called bandits in those days so it was you ended up doing different jobs in different places but still pretty much stayed special forces.

>> would you be able to describe one of your actions that is not classified? >> have you been talking to my ex wife? [laughter] >> for example it is in the beginning of the second book we did wiretaps and the first that we got was huge and they finally got it down to that big and that's why, buthatwide, but thee tapes. they were normal speeds. you have to change the tapes every four hours which meant crawling back down to where you put the wiretap to get out

without bruising any of the vegetation. then they came out with a new system as well as a setup that is much better so they get the wiretap session and it's the first one i've ever run. i go down to supply and put the tutorial on and talk to the couple other guys that have done a wiretap of a month from that and we were trying to find out two things, how they were getting fueled dow fuel down sot hauling and 55-gallon drum drond we found out they had a pipeline with the tanks. they were all down south and

another team had gotten pictures of them. the soviets used 55-gallon drums on the extra exterior. they have to have fuel somewhere so they were trying to find out where the fuel dumps wer bumps d that is our mission to try to do a wiretap in that area because they knew the truth concentrations were right. so anyway, we go in, i got the thing set up and they are behind me about 30 yards and we found a trail juncture where it came down to a and we knew that there

was probably about a division plus in that area. so we found the wire and put it up on. i've got to go down and change it every four hours now which is better, so the next morning, i called him there t down there te them and -- the north vietnamese would walk the trails where the white areas and look for the machine that detected the loss of. so i hear two clicks and the emergency radio someone was coming. so i'm trying to block as small as i can and here comes about 25 north vietnamese.

first two came up with a detection device, electromagnetic coils and they went away and came back with about 25 troops have started clapping. then i'm laying there sweating bullets and i think the nearest one is about where the camera man is and they are kind of sitting up on a slope and i just know one of them is going to see me out there so i am sweating bullets and hear this typical thing to and then a little bit more talking. i get back on top and three of them were sleeping in the back row. i can't believe they didn't see

me. we decided to move to tap. so they came back with 40 guys that were looking for us. the device was still there and we were going to put another one about the trail and come back and see this one. it was designed for whatever party is in the way. so we got a lot of good intel and there was a lot of technique. sometimes it worked and sometimes you couldn't use them

depended on who was in the area. you have to understand our tactics were constantly evolving because they would get on top in a minute. in the latter part of the war in 70, 7172, they started using these teams. the they used their troops to take casualties and figure out where you are not and ascended d people into drive you into an area where you have no more terrain because our lifeline to a. they were giants of the battlefield. i hope that answers the

question. >> i was very excited last night when i saw that you are speaking i was talking with my dad over the weekend and he served in the special forces. he was there from 59 to early 70. his name was wayne, he was a captain. the. the question that i had had to do with the beginning of the talk about being a cathartic experience. coming back home wasn't the best you didn't have the support that

you have for the other war. can you talk more about that cathartic experience and how they didn't have the gift of writing about the ordeal. they didn't talk about experiences they had and part of that is because it was classified and some key felt like it was going to be too emotional, so can you talk about that experience? >> or father was there in 71 fax >> i remember from that time toko. he's never read my book.

i know what bothers him and in that incident i've not written about it. there were too many bad memories for him. there were special operations association. we are getting older so there's less of this today. it's healing for us to get together a. if they would like to emphasize the only that understands you, somebody that has been there and has seen the elephant it leaves an ugly scar.

don't get me wrong because if you ask anybody they will not tell you i'm a liberal or a pacifist. i realize realized then and youd realized it was part of the war. there was a device that you could find under the 55-foot of rubble. i couldn't be prouder if they were my own children. they have the same experiences that we had dealing with ptsd

and other things that come with doing this kind of job. the government and the american people still haven't gotten their arms around with a tremendous debt to. i might be opinionated but the people on the country should get down on their knees and thank god they were able to go out there and do this for the country. so i would say vietnam shaped me because when i later got into the private sector, it has done me well over the years. don't get me wrong i had bankruptcies and things like that, but i never quit. we saw a lot of movies like

uncommon valor, rambo, chuck morris and they are always bringing the prisoners home. there were attempts but nobody ever escaped and it's not clear if they were able to get him out. just curious when you were involved if there were plans of trying to find folks to bring them home and things that happened in iran with regards to the hostages to bring people to recover. is there anything that you can describe from that perspective? >> there was a team from the united states army that they called salt and pepper, one black and one white, they were high on that list.

the tailwind was an example of of a mission that went really bad because it had the potential to be bad in the first place. i don't know if anybody here remembers where they accused special forces of all kinds of atrocities and trying to rescue prisoners in south vietnam and i think that stain against their honor is why we tried so hard to get the hostages out of iran. it is an exercise in futility. but they are saying out of one side is not what they mean out of the other.

all of the assets for their. all of the proper tools were there. to be successful on the battlefield you have to have skill and luck. there were a lot of failed attempts privately after the war there was a number of groups that went back into special forces that went back to recover people that they thought had an interesting intel network that they were feeding information to us. one page in particular, the former sergeant first class she was the most decorated veteran of the vietnam and medal of

honor he'd been put in for the medal of honor twice and a bunch of silver star hard-core west virginia. he was in vietnam in 78 when some official function journalist came up and handed him a note that has been handed to him by somebody in the crowd and it was signed don't forget me. the other guy that was no one in special projects by that name was danny who disappeared when they were overrun. we have a thing we call bright light which is essentially you are so shot up you can't get

your wounded to the helicopter they call for help and a bright light team comes in, shoot their way into my gather in, gathers s her way back to the helicopter and hopefully everybody gets up. so we had gone in on a bright light on this and we have been listening on the radio at the top at the time. a guy named hollingsworth had been shot up pretty bad and the other american on the team was already dead and hollingsworth was very badly wounded had been we heard shots and nothing after that. we found hollingsworth had been

executed. but the notthe note said pleaset forget me. and there's only one person that could have written that note and we were pretty sure after the war there were still pows that were there for months and from y they didn't capture them. the word was they have instructions to execute you in a nasty way as a way of improving the morale of the troops so that meant being hung up on whatever they could come up with that one none of them really survived and they came out of the captivity and had been captured by a totally different group, not dealing with the militia or things like that. i have a tendency to rattle on

at times. >> a couple of questions. what inspired you to join? i assume you were in vietnam for three or four years. did you have to have a three or four year commitment? what was it like for your first year special ops? >> you have to be enlisted to get into the special forces. you went and did your time and then went on to another project. it was the special forces was the greatest job in the world and being a special forces team sergeant is the best job in the world.

anywhere the things you do are so challenging i can't see how anybody would want to be in the special forces. you mentioned that the american public doesn't embrace veterans the way they ought to. i have one friend that served in afghanistan and some of the times i feel like the american public doesn't know how we stand up at ballgames or whatever and clap. what is a way that the average citizen can do a better job of embracing or thanking veterans?

>> we are getting better at it, let's put it that way. people come up and thank you all the time for your service to. being in the shield wall is what it's all about. the best way to have the american public gets more involved in god is a positive story about that. i agree with the president that the press is their own worst enemy in our own worst enemy. it's really slanted, let's put it that way but we are becoming a lot more open since people

don't like the donald being in the office but he's done a lot to change the country so far. i just can't believe the country has gotten where it is because when i grew up he went off to the war if you were called in if you were drafted, you went. if you your daddy and your uncle both served, you were going into the military. it was an obligation. your sworn duty as a citizen if your country calls, you went. that's why they had the draft and what we won the war with. they actually went out and destroyed germany and the access to power and vietnam.

we thought it was the 100,000 which is a program so that even if the mentally disabled could die for their country. they drafted people in the 100,000 as a way of filling up the trip lines which i thought was an insult to two peopl peopt thethe people butthey honored tr performance. >> any other questions? >> one more?

i got out in 68 but things have changed since i was in special forces as well. the bed is one of the things because they hated with a passion. there was a part of a volunteer thathat had to go to school and then they give you a test and i remember taking the test they gave a physical and after we got him it was like having, no place else like it. one of the things they did is they sent us down to south america and the levers of us to get people on our side for the first thing we did is dressed

like bandits robbed a bank and turned in all the bad guys, that is some of the things the special forces did. i actually wrote a book one time financial obligations and the unconventional warfare. we met some guys that were professional bank robbers we went to prison and talked with them. how do you finance the guerrilla organization? as soon as we got on with it, they classified it through the ceiling. they physically searched us for any information we might have had the time. it was a wonderful group. [applause]

there is a book signing one level up. the the things in which i want to deal with, i am a history teacher so obviously history and government is important to me. so the first one is a short book that my kid recommended to me that deals with the hall of fame and it's the one that he did his

head with. it's a cute book and a quick read. it's going to be fun, fun and entertaining. i passed by a bookstore so i picked it up about dwight eisenhower who has always been a great hero and his time has gone on and people realize what a good job he did not only in leading the military but also leading thleaving the country. there were hairless times, so three days in january is about his last days when he gets his federal addres address and turne power over to john kennedy but he also goes back and does a short biography of eisenhower and at least in the first part for some stories i haven't heard beforhadn't heardbefore so thatn testing it fascinating. the third one that we ran across is this nation shall not endure.

not only was he the second to serve in the cabinet, he was the secretary of agriculture under eisenhower and was also the president of my church and also my former chief of staff, so there is a personal reason i want to go through this one. i enjoyed the philosophy as he talks about this nation in the future of politics in the united states. i'm looking forward to that one. the final one that was recommended by my staff is entitled where nobody knows your name by john feinstein. the cool part about this is that it is going to be about minor league baseball players and those who made a name for themselves some may have gotten up to the majors but this is about those who labored where the pay isn't great and the love of the game is magnificent. in utah and my district we have

two minor league teams one is in turkey and one i have tickets to sway love minor league baseball and those kind of stories go along with it and i look forward to going through in this book. .. >> 317. [applause]