80 AMERICAN SPYcargo, medevac, and skydiving plane. Although it had little to do with our
training, taking high-speed, deafening, roller-coaster nap-of-the-earth rides
while half hanging out of a Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey helicopter was also
a memorable experience. Like most of our SOTC instructors, the dare-
devil Huey pilots honed their skills years earlier in and above the jungles
of Vietnam.
SOTC’s final exercise culminated in the brutal but valuable SERE
course. SERE is a rigorous program for high-risk military and the CIA.
The experience is brutal and exhausting, but it is extremely valuable prep-
aration for young CIA officers about to be deployed into a hostile world.
SERE took place at the end of SOTC and at that time was based on the
actual Vietnam experience of American POWs.
Our course was modeled after the original course, developed by the
late US Army colonel Nick Rowe, who, according to multiple news reports,
developed the SERE program for the army after his escape from a barbaric
Vietnamese POW camp.^1 Rowe, who wrote the gripping book Five Years
to Freedom, spent five years as a POW before escaping while being taken
out for execution. Sadly, this inspirational American hero was murdered
in the Philippines a few years after we took our course. The official version
held that Rowe was murdered by Communist insurgents belonging to the
New People’s Army. However, a mutual friend and civilian colleague who
worked with Rowe at the US embassy in Manila told me he and others are
convinced Rowe was actually murdered by elements of the Philippines mil-
itary, probably because Rowe was going to expose their illegal profiteering
from stolen US military assistance.
Regardless of the actual circumstances surrounding Colonel Rowe’s
assassination, my fellow CTs and I were extremely fortunate to have
received the benefit of his years of experience, suffering, and sacrifice.
By the time we were “rescued” by American Special Forces from our
POW imprisonment, I’d decided I’d had enough fun and games in the
woods. I was all SOTC’d out. Paramilitary training was great, it definitely
exceeded my expectations, but I was burned out. I think it ceased to be fun
right around the first time I dropped my Vietcong drawers and perched