In tribute to our friend and past HBH guest, we're re-airing the first of former CIA officer Doug Laux's two appearances during our first season:

CIA Officer Doug Laux explains how he developed a network of spies to track down the man responsible for running the Taliban's lethal IED network, which at the height of the Afghan War was responsible for over 80% of US and Coalition deaths.

RIP Doug, you'll be sorely missed.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

Henry (Dick) L. Thompson is back to share more adventures from his latest book SOG Code Name Dynamite 2 about his time in Vietnam as part of MACV-SOG.

From 1964-1972 America engaged in a Top Secret war in Southeast Asia to support our efforts in Vietnam, with an elite group of warriors who were sworn to secrecy for decades. If caught, the US government would deny any involvement.

Missioned primarily to do recon on North Vietnamese forces massing across the border in Laos and Cambodia, the small teams were comprised of US soldiers and local fighters, and were dropped near the enemy. They almost always encountered much larger forces, posted a casualty rate of over 100%, and relied on helicopter pilots like recent guest Roger Lockshire to ferry them to safety once the bullets started flying.

We're delighted to have Dick back in this two part episode.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

Courageous resistance fighter Elżbieta Zawacka, aka ‘Agent Zo’, was the only woman to parachute from Britain to Nazi-German occupied Poland during the Second World War. While being hunted by the Gestapo there, who arrested her entire family, she established a military intelligence network, couriered microfilm across wartime borders and, as the only female member of the Polish elite special forces, the ‘Silent Unseen,' played a key role in the largest organized act of defiance against Nazi German occupation – the Warsaw Uprising. Author Clare Mulley shares her amazing story described in her book Agent Zo: The Untold Story of a Fearless World War II Resistance Fighter.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

On April 2nd, 2015, after getting a degree and paying off his loans, Tom Turcich stepped out his front door to start a quest that would last for seven years, take him to six continents, and cover twenty-eight thousand miles. At the end of it he became the tenth person to walk around the world, and his dog, Savannah, became the first dog to do so. Through encounters with strangers, weeks of solitude, and a sheer resilience of spirit, Tom emerged as a beacon of inspiration for countless individuals yearning to find purpose in their lives. His tale serves as a reminder that fulfillment lies not solely in reaching a destination but in the transformative power of the journey itself. 

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

In 2009 Savannah Cannon joined up at nineteen, to escape her hardscrabble circumstances. She was quickly tapped as having an aptitude for math and computers. Once trained, she was promptly deployed to a dangerous desert outpost in Afghanistan, where female Marines were not supposed to be assigned. There Corporal Cannon worked as a "data dork" - a data networking specialist - setting up and maintaining critical communications and computer systems. She also went on patrol. The stakes were life and death, and her mostly male fellow Marines were ordered to avoid her.

Isolated, depressed, and stressed by the brutal, surrounding reality, Savannah then found herself pursued, assaulted, and then pregnant by a fellow Marine who insisted they had a real relationship. Afraid of being drummed out of the military for being pregnant, she kept silent at great cost to her mental and physical health, and ultimately miscarried.

Savannah recounts the challenges she faced as a part of a generation of female soldiers thrown together with their male counterparts, and her experiences coping with a military ill-prepared and riddled with arbitrary rules for the problems which naturally arose. Savannah ultimately rebuilt her life when she returned stateside, and wrote her raw and honest memory, "Corporal Cannon."

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

Oxford Professor in International History Steve Casey lays out the fascinating media history of the Korean War. He explains how the Truman administration promoted their case for participating in the  Korean conflict to a nation fatigued from WWII, and how Truman faced public resistance led by his own commanding general,  Douglas Macarthur, who used his powerful cult of personality and enormous public popularity to try and sway national policy, even as he was mulling his own presidential run for the other party.

In this episode, Casey gives us a behind-the-curtain view of policy-making and political power in action that sheds light on a “forgotten’ conflict and provides an early example of US policy makers deliberately using the media to build consensus and support for the the most powerful and deadly tool in their toolbox: War. His book “Selling Korea” shows how every stage of the war brought different messaging problems and media strategies.

Initially expecting the conflict to be only a quick joint effort with UN forces against a fledgling North Korean army, Truman, MacArthur, and their allies failed to anticipate the brutal fighting conditions, nor did they expect China to deploy massive military forces in active support of North Korea’s Kim Il Sung. The divide between North and South Korea still plays out in today’s headlines with Kim Il Sung's grandson, Kim Jong Un.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

Part two of this terrific interview:

One of HBH’s favorite guests is back, sharing more stories from his time on a Huey gunship helicopter as a Crew Chief and Door Gunner. As part of the 101st Airborne and a Black Angel, Roger Lockshier and his crew were routinely tasked with extracting MACV-SOG Green Berets during hairy combat in the jungles of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

In this episode and his latest book, “Saving Infantry and SOG Souls,” Distinguished Flying Cross recipient, (and many other awards) Roger shares his adventures stateside in training; supporting Airborne infantry, LRRPs, MACV-SOG; and his combat experiences – including when the six-week Tet offensive caught US forces unawares. He describes how they sat on an armor backplate to protect them from gunfire coming from below, and how they carried their guns freehand, riding on the skids to get the best view possible of the battlefield below. Roger also details his equipment, (including the wider-blade C model helo, his ‘chicken vest,’ etc.) his teammates, and taking on wounded even though their Huey wasn’t designed or intended for that.

(This is part one of two episodes airing back-to-back.)

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

One of HBH’s favorite guests is back, sharing more stories from his time on a Huey gunship helicopter as a Crew Chief and Door Gunner. As part of the 101st Airborne and a Black Angel, Roger Lockshier and his crew were routinely tasked with extracting MACV-SOG Green Berets during hairy combat in the jungles of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

In this episode and his latest book, “Saving Infantry and SOG Souls,” Distinguished Flying Cross recipient, (and many other awards) Roger shares his adventures stateside in training; supporting Airborne infantry, LRRPs, MACV-SOG; and his combat experiences – including when the six-week Tet offensive caught US forces unawares. He describes how they sat on an armor backplate to protect them from gunfire coming from below, and how they carried their guns freehand, riding on the skids to get the best view possible of the battlefield below. Roger also details his equipment, (including the wider-blade C model helo, his ‘chicken vest,’ etc.) his teammates, and taking on wounded even though their Huey wasn’t designed or intended for that.

(This is part one of two episodes airing back-to-back.)

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

A living national treasure, Col. Paris Davis was one of the first sixteen U.S. Marine officers–and the only African-American–recruited to help form the Special Forces division–the inspired brainchild of JFK, who himself had seen the limits of military bureaucracy during WWII and wanted to add smaller, nimbler highly trained fighting squads to the US military’s toolkit. 

A native of Cleveland, Paris describes what it took to create the SF cadre; meeting JFK; his combat experiences in VIetnam–and his role in the specific operation in 1968 that ultimately earned him a Medal of Honor, which he did not receive until over fifty years later during the Biden administration.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

Judyth Vary Baker was a teenage science prodigy who caught the attention of the top cancer researchers in the country, including Dr. Alton Ochsner – past president of the American Cancer Society and head of the prestigious Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. 

In the summer of 1963 Judy accepted a summer job at the Oschner Clinic in return for a promise to enter Tulane Medical School in the Fall. Arriving in New Orleans – a city she had never been to before – she learned that instead of working on a cure for cancer, she was actually there to help create a bioweapon  – a fast-acting cancer virus for the purpose of killing Cuban leader Fidel Castro. This top-secret project put her in the company of prominent medical researcher Dr. Mary Sherman, the brilliant but bizarre David Ferrie, mobster Carlos Marcello, nightclub owner Jack Ruby, and a charming young man named Lee Harvey Oswald with whom she fell in love.

Two days before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Lee confided to Judyth that he suspected he was being set-up to take the blame for the death of the president – a crime that she claims he was trying to prevent. He also named some of the powerful figures involved in the conspiracy.

Emotionally shattered by Lee’s death at the hands of his old friend Jack Ruby four days later, Judyth was warned to keep silent and abandon her dreams if she wanted to live.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com