CHAPTER 5
CIA PARAMILITARY TRAINING
D
rifting in and out of consciousness in a dank solitary confinement cell,
I was grateful for the brief escape from this living nightmare provided
by some very convincing hallucinations. I reached out to touch the damp
leaves on the cool forest ground, even though I was alert enough to know
they weren’t really there. My tiny, pitch-black cell was transformed through
the voodoo of food and sleep deprivation into daytime in the forest. I
could see each perfect twig, leaf, and tree, the mossy browns and greens
vivid and alive. For a moment I felt as though I were free again, back in
the rain-soaked woods where I’d managed to survive the previous week
by scrounging for food while training anti-government guerrillas. When I
noticed the woodland ground beneath me crawling with thousands of tiny
lone star ticks, I snapped out of it.
My American colleagues and I were hunted down and arrested in the
woods a day or two earlier by heavily armed Communist government secu-
rity forces. They disarmed us, covered our heads in suffocating hoods, and
tossed us in the back of a military truck for the bumpy ride to the makeshift
POW camp. There we were searched, stripped naked, and given Vietcong-
style pajamas, several sizes too big. There were no drawstrings. If you let
go, your pants fell down. The hoods remained in place, although I’d dis-
creetly tip mine up a bit to facilitate breathing and to ensure I didn’t trip
over anything. This also allowed me to scout for intel on the layout of the
camp and the number of guards, for escape-planning purposes.
Once we’d been processed into the small, remote camp, the guards
gathered us all into a dirty room with bare walls and a single light bulb
in the ceiling. There we were forced to face the walls and stand for hours
on end without moving. When one of us succumbed to exhaustion and
moved or collapsed, they’d punish the rest of us. I once tested their vigi-73