HAPPY HEART was almost always playing on my dad’s reel-to-reel in our home, when we lived in a Saigon from just before Tet 1968, until the pulling out of troops under Nixon’s “Vietnamization” of the war in 1972—My dad loved Petula Clark. When former POW/MIA Col. James “Nick” Rowe told me it was playing when he looked up to see a US Army chopper that would take him to freedom, I laughed.

What had put one of only 34 Americans to escape captivity during the Vietnam War and me together on the phone, was his reaching out to my debriefer at JCRC, POW/MIA Division at the Pentagon. I’d just been released from 11 months in Vietnam, the month earlier in May 1984.

Rowe debriefed me, not in depth, with such technical analysis as was done for a week at the Pentagon, but on a much deeper level, that only a former prisoner could. We talked about the similarities and differences of our experiences. We both made maps of our places of incarceration—For those who read my 2004 memoir, you know that I smuggled my drawings out of Vietnam inside a cassette player my captors returned to me on the day of my release.

I liked him. I thought he was a cool dude. He was a man who I would have loved to have just hung out with and shared a beer or cup of joe. We kept in touch. A call here. A call there.

He was a Texan after all, through and through. I always get along with Texans. Shoot, I was raised with expat Texans and their dependents in Vietnam and Singapore from 1968 to 1977.

It was much as had been with many of those I looked up to throughout my life, who had been in Vietnam, and recognized me as one who “gets it,” for no other reason than I had lived in Vietnam during some of the worst years of the Vietnam War. Joe Galloway, UPI correspondent and co-author of WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE…AND YOUNG and I worked on a script about his friend, and my combat photography idol, Sean Flynn. Galloway would become the foreign correspondent second father foil to the sales engineer and project manager my father been in Vietnam for PhilcoFord under a USAID contract.

It was Joe who was the first to tell me that some members of the Association of Foreign Intelligence Officers were out to get me for having written an article for Human Events about my experiences for the Central Intelligence Agency in Central America, in defense of former Green Beret turned Agency paramilitary operations officer (PMOO) Steve Stormoen, falsely charged with murder as a scapegoat and being used as an example by the Eric Holder and the Obama administration. “Gird your loins,” he said in the email. I laughed.

Through my friend Zalin “Zip” Grant, former US Army Infantry/Intel officer turned war correspondent for the TIME Magazine and NEW REPUBLIC, I learned how horrific “Little Tet” or the May Offensive was, in contrast to what my father would always tell family and friends about how it wasn’t that bad at all in effort to downplay the risks he had put his wife and two sons through—While the North Vietnamese were hoping for a rallying of the South Vietnam to unite and repel the “American Imperialists” during earlier, more reported Tet Offensive (where Walter Cronkite basically stated the Vietnam War unwinnable), there was no such benevolent camaraderie during Little Tet. This time the North was on a mission of destruction and murder, emboldened by their media success with the Tet Offensive—American, military, civilian, children and adults, it didn’t matter.

I’ve gotten along with Vietnam Vets and all others who had been touched by Vietnam. They got, that I get it. Colonel Nick Rowe got it.

In my mind, through the mid-1980s, I thought I had time to get that beer, that cup of coffee—either in California, or Fort Bragg. He never explained to me why he was going back to Asia, after having had such an impact on the next generations of America’s warriors, by creating the U.S. Army’s SERE School (Survival, Evasion, Resist, Escape). Alas, when he flew to the Philippines for what would become his last TDY, I was already deep in Central America.

Subscribe now

What would happen to me in Central America, brought up all that I remembered from our first conversation in 1984, when I asked him what he would have done had he been in my place on that island off the coast of the Vietnam/Cambodia border in June 1983. I had my own ideas, which he appreciated, and he told me his.

When I told a good buddy, a brother and former Marine and Green Beret, about my first meeting with Rowe over the phone, I shared with him that Rowe had told me that which would actually save my life later in Central America.

My buddy said he’d contact the very SERE School Col. Rowe had created, and see about my coming out to speak about what I had learned and applied from Rowe. I’d already done so for the USMC Hog’s Den Scout Sniper School MCB Hawaii Kaneohe Bay, in 2017.

And, in 2019, I wrote an article about the experience for SKILLSET MAGAZINE.

LUCK OF THE DRAW (as submitted to Skillset for their Fall 2019 issue)

Wrists and ankles bound, I did my best to keep the unstable longboat from tipping into the Lempa River. Drowning was the least of my worries. My biggest concern was the armed Salvadoran guerrilla at the bow and another on the stern paddling. I had to plan my escape right. Too far out from the bank, and I wouldn’t be able to snatch the Galil hanging from the young boy at the bow. Too close and they could all get footing on the bottom and shoot me right there.

I ran it all over in my mind, getting everything squared away. The guerilla paddling at the stern would drown—it was clear from what he had said and how uncomfortable he seemed in the boat that all that had to happen was for him to fall into too deep water and he’d be helpless. Feigning an inability to understand Spanish was paying in spades. Then there was the man in the middle, seemingly the group’s leader by their deference to him. Heavily loaded by an M16 and crossed ammo bandoliers, not to mention the grenades, the man would sink like a stone. Bad for him that so many don’t get drown-proofing as children. Then there was the one right in front of him who had his weapon trained on me. All of them had that look of insecurity that good training removes. Even when they tried to feign calm, the actions just screamed fidgety-mouse. I looked around, realizing I was where I wanted to be: calm, that moment in a tense situation where you’re sure you’re going to make it, and yet the other half of the mind not afraid if you don’t.

For only a second, thoughts of killing a boy barely big enough to hold the heavy Israeli-made weapon gnawed at my conscience. I took a breath to appease them—there was no way out of this situation other than killing them all. There was only way that was going to happen and that was here, in the river, brown and freshly swollen by the rainy season. If they got me to the other side, I’d be walked right back to their camp, interrogated and then end up like the other poor soul my team had encountered the month before—only recognizable by the blue eyes, and a scrawling of misspellings left by the FMLN, stating the man, who had been peeled like a banana while still alive, genitals stuffed in his mouth, had been a Mercenario Gringo.

That bloody corpse could have been anyone: an hijo del sol, a chele, a blue-eyed Salvadoran of German or British ancestry in the Salvadoran Army, of which there were many. He could have been a paramilitary officer with the Agency or Israel’s Mossad. He could have been just like me, a young American paramilitary officer leading pseudo-ops teams comprised of Latin-American operators and FMLN defectors against the communists, he could have been one of a number soldiers of fortune from the US and Britain who thought they could get easy money fighting down in this Coffee and Shrimp War. If that gringito pobrecito was with MILGROUP or the CIA, I was surprised no word came across in weekly briefings. Whichever reason, I planned not to end up like him.

Only an hour ago, I had woken up in a bomb crater, unarmed, stripped of my boots and gear, and squinting at the bright morning sun. All I remembered from the night before was the battle of battles, the most brutal hand-to-hand fighting I’d ever witnessed and experienced, the sound of a Salvadoran Air Force A-37 called in for danger close support, and then perhaps a flash—and then it was lights out. Clearly left for dead, my kit stripped from me else have it fall into to use in enemy hands, I quickly ran through the anger at being left behind—I’d later learned they barely made it out alive themselves. A bit of fogginess hung on in my mind from the concussion, and that worried me. I had to be in top form for what was about to happen. The training was there. I just had to implement it at the right moment with the right timing.

There were two big lessons I learned five years earlier, in 1983, when I was captured and imprisoned for eleven months by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. One, never let yourself be taken prisoner. Second, the more time that lapses after capture, the less likely escape will be.

I looked back over my shoulder. What was a far and distant shore covered in lush green jungle was now close. If it was going to happen, it was going to have to happen now. I moved my gaze to the guard and stared him in the eye. The guard almost immediately became uneasy, ready to explode.

“No me mires!” he gestured away with the muzzle of his M16.

In a lightning strike, the ball of my foot pegged the guard’s chin, flipping his head back and to his right. Simultaneously, I shifted my weight and leaned to the upriver gunwale. The boat couldn’t have caught water more easily. It flipped like a leaf in the wind, sending everyone into the water. Except for me, everyone was helpless and drowning.

Born for the water, I undulated my body, swimming like a dolphin for the boy. Switching ends just as I came upon him, as if getting ready to do another lap in a swimming pool, I clamped my legs around the boy, pinning the boy’s arms against his sides. There was no way the boy could work the trigger of his Galil, much less offer effective resistance. An anaconda couldn’t have done a better job of squeezing the air out of him. But the boy didn’t go easily. I gritted my teeth as I held tight, fighting not only the boy, but also the emotions ricocheting around in my mind. And then the last bubbles floated up from the boy.

Lifting my head to grab a full breath, I used my legs to work my way around so that I could use my still-bound hands to get the sling of the weapon. With another move, I used my feet to slide the boy through, gently, for some reason I even years later can’t fathom. A pushed off the dead boy’s shoulders, and I broke for the surface and air. After a moment of floating downriver, face down in the water to catch my thoughts, letting the unbridled elation at my newfound freedom course through, and to calm myself back down to relax, I readjusted the rifle so that it lay lengthwise on my back and then headed for the nearby shore.

A couple tests for the bottom shortly after and I finally set foot on sand and mud. Walking out, I cut the rope binding my wrists with the bayonet. Now all I had to do was get to the road and hopefully flag down a Salvadoran Army convoy…

The first time I would talk about this event outside of my immediate report when I arrived at Ilopango Airbase was more than ten years after the end of the Central America War (that those of us who were there called Vietnam II), during talks on escape and evasion to members of special op units of the US Army and Marine Corps, and used it as the basis for a flashback scene in my first spy thriller of the John Corbett Series, published in 2013 and titled THE PANMUNJOM PROTOCOL.

_{Have you read my 2004 international bestseller memoir? If not, you’re supporting my work by getting a copy now here at Amazon: THE BAMBOO CHEST, now in its second Edition. Makes a great gift as a “coming of age”, “Father/son” story to share, too. Thank you for your support!}

***

A couple years before my father died, I looked across the dining table at him, and said, “Dad, you know something, I really don’t like you. But…I love you. If not for how tough you had been on me all my life, I’m sure I wouldn’t have survived all the things I’ve gone through…So, I just wanted to tell you that—Thank you.”

I was choked up as I told him that. As you can tell, emotional opening up was never a common practice in our family. I attributed it to places we’d been and the things that too many times, we’d never admit for the fear that those who hadn’t seen or experienced themselves, would be repelled—Did I say, I got Vietnam Vets?

I wish I had been able to do the same with Nick, as I had done my father. I owe him my life, as you read in the SKILLSET article. I already knew a bit about E&E from having gone through indoc at Pensacola NAS in 1983, as a 4/C Naval midshipman, just before I asked my CO for an LOA to try my hand as a combat photographer and find out what had happened to our POW/MIAs, a big story in 1982-1983. But, it was my initial conversation with Rowe that confirmed what I pondered for months in solitary confinement.

My chance to put into practice what only theory to me, was in 1988: never surrender; and, the best time to escape is the earlier the better, if for no other reason than the subconscious begins excepting the present condition (capture) as the norm, and it’ll become harder to break out of that state the longer you stay in that state. That’s what got me home in Central America, and ignoring the fact, resulted in me spending 11 months in the Vietnamese communist re-education prison system.

Alas, our paths would not cross, other than a phone call, but what could a phone call offer when there are so many ears listening? The New People’s Army of the Philippines had other ideas.

***

If there’s a year that sticks in my mind as the worst year of my life, 1989 stands tall and bent over. What my parents had tried shielding me from in Saigon during late winter and spring of 1968, I saw and experienced full-bore as an adult from November 11th to mid-December 1989.

In the house to house fighting my platoon and I participated, like fishes out of water, we lost a lot of ourselves. Our specialty and expressed purpose the previous four years was pseudo-operations far in the campo—NOT fighting in the colonias of El Salvador’s capitol. We had to borrow Unit patches and BDUs from a couple Salvadoran

During the fighting, after four years, operation after operation, of only losing one of our team, I lost four of my men in two weeks—a third of my platoon. I racked it up not only to being in a totally different environment in which we trained for and fought in, but impatience that overwhelmed us because we all knew this was going to be the big fight that would determine the end of the war—We didn’t have Walter Cronkite around to fuck it up for us!

The event that would send me over the edge and ended my participation wasn’t the combat I was in; it was the assassination of the woman who was supposed to become my sister-in-law, here sister, my fiancé, and with my fiancé, the child we learned only three months earlier she was carrying.

There were many more Salvadoran civilians murdered in their homes by the FMLN, much as the North Vietnamese and Vietcong had done in Saigon in 1968, but all that was reported by the corporate media was the assassination of Liberation Theologist Jesuit nuns and aid workers who had been smuggling arms and ammunition to the ERP/FMLN.

One of them, Jennifer Jean Casolo, was arrested for a load of arms and ammunition buried in her backyard. The only reason she isn’t still rotting in a cell, is that Senator Ted Kennedy made a stink to get her back to the States. I wish my fiancé and unborn child had the same opportunity, not to mention my fiancé’s sister. Years later, I’m still not at ease watching a 1980s movie with a younger Jennifer Connelly in it, as the resemblance is so striking—at least I don’t feel compelled to vomit from the emotional impact, anymore.

All dreams and plans my fiancé and I had of her leaving the airline for which she worked as a flight attendant and heading to medical school after our child was born was shot to hell by those like very people Casolo armed and aided. That was El Salvador, like I often said, “Vietnam on steroids,” where you had those fighting communism, and at the same time those with communist sympathies in the US government doing the opposite.

There was a lot of death in 1989, and most of it only earned a blip in the corporate media, as it always has been based on the agenda of the decade—the very reason I stopped considering myself a journalist and finally accepted recruitment by the CIA, “to finally do something about it.” One of those deaths that hit me hard and would be a precursor to what would appear in the coming year was the assassination of Colonel James “Nick” Rowe in April of 1989, only a few months after I had survived and escaped my capture in 1988.

On his ride to the JUSMAG (Joint US Military Advisory Group) office in his armored vehicle, it was ambushed, hit by a hail of .45 ACP and 5.56mm slugs. One found its way through the un-armored section and hit him in the head. He died instantly.

When I heard the news, I was shocked and looking for answers in my mind as to why a man who had gone through so much in Vietnam, would end up this way. More importantly, as it hangs in my mind after all the events I’ve suffered through, and more importantly survived, I’m alive because of a good conversation with a good man.

A former CAG (Delta Force) friend told me years ago that Col. Rowe’s killers were hunted down and sorted out. Small recompense for the loss of a man who had achieved and done so much and tried to live his life honorably. Far and few these days.

It’s my memories of Colonel Nick Rowe that remind me every day that I breath, to thank those around me for anything I feel they should be thanked for. Don’t wait for a good time…the right time—you might not get it, and it’ll haunt you.

Cork’s Substack: https://substack.com/@corkgraham

THE NAKED CAPITALIST by W. Cleon Skousen: https://a.co/d/0ayjp2fF

PAWNS IN THE GAME by William Guy Carr: https://amzn.to/49h4hJr

THE EMPIRE OF THE CITY by E.C. Knuth: https://a.co/d/0aGmcoG

All Cork’s books are available here: https://amzn.to/3zb2Qgi

He has two other Youtube channels: TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND -- THE REAL STORY!, and 5 ACRES AND A MOOSE with Cork Graham.

Film and TV credits include: ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA (1984), THE KILLING FIELDS (1984), MYTH HUNTERS (2012), Discovery Channel’s TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND (2015-2016).

Connect with Cork Graham: http://www.corkgraham.com Instagram: @corkgraham or Substack.

If you find the subscription model at Substack too restrictive, and would like to better show a more personal customized appreciation amount for my research, analysis and reporting, feel free to use my Venmo @corkgraham — Thank you for your appreciation and support!

Direct link to the Youtube podcast

Best-selling memoirist, historian, behavioral specialist, political analyst, former combat photojournalist, POW/MIA and paramilitary officer (PMO) Cork Graham has covered wars, psychology, politics, world events, environment and conservation issues beginning with his start as an 18-year-old combat photojournalist in Southeast Asia in 1983, which led to his being held as a US Naval midshipman POW/MIA, eight years after the fall of Saigon, and his resulting first international bestselling memoir, The Bamboo Chest (2004).

Cork’s Substack: https://substack.com/@corkgraham

THE NAKED CAPITALIST by W. Cleon Skousen: https://a.co/d/0ayjp2fF

PAWNS IN THE GAME by William Guy Carr: https://amzn.to/49h4hJr

THE EMPIRE OF THE CITY by E.C. Knuth: https://a.co/d/0aGmcoG

All Cork's books are available here: https://amzn.to/3zb2Qgi

He has two other Youtube channels: TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND -- THE REAL STORY!, and 5 ACRES AND A MOOSE with Cork Graham.

Film and TV credits include: ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA (1984), THE KILLING FIELDS (1984), MYTH HUNTERS (2012), Discovery Channel’s TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND (2015-2016).

Connect with Cork Graham: http://www.corkgraham.com Instagram: @corkgraham or Substack.

If you find the subscription model at Substack too restrictive, and would like to better show a more personal customized appreciation amount for my research, analysis and reporting, feel free to use my Venmo @corkgraham — Thank you for your appreciation and support!

Jack Maxey is a Yale trained historian who served as an officer in the US Navy. Jack worked for many years on Wall Street and since 2018 has been a deep research journalist.

He was the first Western journalist to uncover the Sars / Covid outbreak in China in late 2019 and was the first Co-host of War Room Pandemic. He also is responsible for putting the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop before the world and through it uncovered the biolabs in Ukraine and the CIA funding, including the research in Wuhan. He is a fighter and will never betray his oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Best-selling memoirist, historian, behavioral specialist, political analyst, former combat photojournalist, POW/MIA and paramilitary officer (PMO) Cork Graham has covered wars, psychology, politics, world events, environment and conservation issues beginning with his start as an 18-year-old combat photojournalist in Southeast Asia in 1983, which led to his being held as a US Naval midshipman POW/MIA, eight years after the fall of Saigon, and his resulting first international bestselling memoir, The Bamboo Chest (2004).

Cork’s Substack: https://substack.com/@corkgraham

THE NAKED CAPITALIST by W. Cleon Skousen: https://a.co/d/0ayjp2fF

PAWNS IN THE GAME by William Guy Carr: https://amzn.to/49h4hJr

THE EMPIRE OF THE CITY by E.C. Knuth: https://a.co/d/0aGmcoG

All Cork's books are available here: https://amzn.to/3zb2Qgi

He has two other Youtube channels: TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND -- THE REAL STORY!, and 5 ACRES AND A MOOSE with Cork Graham.

Film and TV credits include: ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA (1984), THE KILLING FIELDS (1984), MYTH HUNTERS (2012), Discovery Channel’s TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND (2015-2016).

Connect with Cork Graham: http://www.corkgraham.com Instagram: @corkgraham or Substack.

If you find the subscription model at Substack too restrictive, and would like to better show a more personal customized appreciation amount for my research, analysis and reporting, feel free to use my Venmo @corkgraham — Thank you for your appreciation and support!

Michael Yon is an American author, photographer, and independent war correspondent known for his extensive embeds with U.S. and allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. A former Green Beret, Yon has reported from over 80 countries, often self-funding his work and challenging mainstream narratives. His gritty, pro-military yet candid dispatches—such as during the 2007 Iraq surge—have drawn praise, controversy, and disputes with military authorities.

Best-selling memoirist, historian, behavioral specialist, political analyst, former combat photojournalist, POW/MIA and paramilitary officer (PMO) Cork Graham has covered wars, psychology, politics, world events, environment and conservation issues beginning with his start as an 18-year-old combat photojournalist in Southeast Asia in 1983, which led to his being held as a US Naval midshipman POW/MIA, eight years after the fall of Saigon, and his resulting first international bestselling memoir, The Bamboo Chest (2004).

Cork’s Substack: https://substack.com/@corkgraham

THE NAKED CAPITALIST by W. Cleon Skousen: https://a.co/d/0ayjp2fF

PAWNS IN THE GAME by William Guy Carr: https://amzn.to/49h4hJr

THE EMPIRE OF THE CITY by E.C. Knuth: https://a.co/d/0aGmcoG

All Cork's books are available here: https://amzn.to/3zb2Qgi

He has two other Youtube channels: TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND -- THE REAL STORY!, and 5 ACRES AND A MOOSE with Cork Graham.

Film and TV credits include: ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA (1984), THE KILLING FIELDS (1984), MYTH HUNTERS (2012), Discovery Channel’s TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND (2015-2016).

Connect with Cork Graham: http://www.corkgraham.com Instagram: @corkgraham or Substack.

If you find the subscription model at Substack too restrictive, and would like to better show a more personal customized appreciation amount for my research, analysis and reporting, feel free to use my Venmo @corkgraham — Thank you for your appreciation and support!

Best-selling memoirist, historian, behavioral specialist, former combat photojournalist, POW/MIA and paramilitary officer (PMO) Cork Graham has covered wars, psychology, politics, world events, environment and conservation issues beginning with his start as an 18-year-old combat photojournalist in Southeast Asia in 1983, which led to his being held as a US Naval midshipman POW/MIA, eight years after the fall of Saigon, and his resulting first international bestselling memoir, The Bamboo Chest (2004).

My Substack: https://substack.com/@corkgraham

THE NAKED CAPITALIST by W. Cleon Skousen: https://a.co/d/0ayjp2fF

PAWNS IN THE GAME by William Guy Carr: https://amzn.to/49h4hJr

THE EMPIRE OF THE CITY by E.C. Knuth: https://a.co/d/0aGmcoG

All Cork's books are available here: https://amzn.to/3zb2Qgi

He has two other Youtube channels: TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND -- THE REAL STORY!, and 5 ACRES AND A MOOSE with Cork Graham.

Film and TV credits include: ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA (1984), THE KILLING FIELDS (1984), MYTH HUNTERS (2012), Discovery Channel’s TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND (2015-2016).

Connect with Cork Graham: http://www.corkgraham.com Instagram: @corkgraham or Substack.

If you find the subscription model at Substack too restrictive, and would like to better show a more personal customized appreciation amount for my research, analysis and reporting, feel free to use my Venmo @corkgraham — Thank you for your appreciation and support!

https://youtu.be/UdrWMftUkCI?si=pu4cB-J1ucVFOZmu

Here’s the direct link: https://youtu.be/apk-nWiQzdE?si=OY35JTkbLY_g9-0Q

Remember to check the first pinned comment on the video for follow-up intel.

https://youtu.be/fMIua3_Meg8?si=O_aF6T6ZtVRQWrbG

Their importance as we see the effects of the contrived war in Iran to create the illusion of petroleum scarcity will hit fever pitch within the next two weeks.

I left San Francisco for Alaska in 2012 for a well-educated reason. I started my plan to get the hell outta dodge in 2008, after I returned to California after a teaching contract at the military intelligence school in Seoul—remember what happened in 2008?

It was the warning order to those who were paying attention to what was coming…

Be sure to subscribe there if you haven’t—much more coming, and you don’t want to be behind the ball: https://youtube.com/@thecorkgrahampodcast?si=_7xUNFu-UzVIUOHR

Links for further investigation related to today’s chat:
Dr Horvath’s address to Congress --

Dr. Jared Horvath’s substack --

The Digital Delusion

I Told the Senate Gen-Z is Less Cognitively Capable – Here’s What the IQ Data Actually Shows

Several weeks ago, I was asked to testify before the U.S. Senate about the impact of educational technology on learning. The very first sentence of my testimony was deliberately candid…

Read more

7 months ago · 212 likes · 31 comments · Jared Cooney Horvath

Henry George’s pre-1910 book on economics and see what they’ve stolen -- https://amzn.to/4sIESzG
Read Cork’s 2004 bestselling memoir on surviving a communist Vietnam prison at the age of 18: https://amzn.to/4szr6ip

Connect with Cork Graham:

http://www.corkgraham.com

Instagram: @corkgraham or Substack.

If you find the subscription model at Substack too restrictive, and would like to better show a more personal customized appreciation amount for my research, analysis and reporting, feel free to use my Venmo @corkgraham — Thank you for your appreciation and support!

Best-selling memoirist, historian, former combat photojournalist, POW/MIA and paramilitary officer (PMO) Cork Graham has covered wars, psychology, politics, world events, environment and conservation issues beginning with his start as an 18-year-old combat photojournalist in Southeast Asia in 1983, which led to his being held as a US Naval midshipman POW/MIA, eight years after the fall of Saigon, and his resulting first international bestselling memoir, The Bamboo Chest (2004).

My Substack: https://substack.com/@corkgraham

THE NAKED CAPITALIST by W. Cleon Skousen: https://a.co/d/0ayjp2fF

PAWNS IN THE GAME by William Guy Carr: https://amzn.to/49h4hJr

THE EMPIRE OF THE CITY by E.C. Knuth: https://a.co/d/0aGmcoG

All Cork’s books are available here: https://amzn.to/3zb2Qgi

He has two other Youtube channels: TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND -- THE REAL STORY!, and 5 ACRES AND A MOOSE with Cork Graham.

Film and TV credits include: ABC’s GOOD MORNING AMERICA (1984), THE KILLING FIELDS (1984), MYTH HUNTERS (2012), Discovery Channel’s TREASURE QUEST: SNAKE ISLAND (2015-2016).

Connect with Cork Graham: http://www.corkgraham.com Instagram: @corkgraham or Substack.

If you find the subscription model at Substack too restrictive, and would like to better show a more personal customized appreciation amount for my research, analysis and reporting, feel free to use my Venmo @corkgraham — Thank you for your appreciation and support!