Heroes Behind Headlines

When the Vice-President of Iran invited Nizar Zakka to speak at a September 2015 conference – as CEO of a global tech NGO working closely with the U.S. government – he never  hesitated, and promptly booked a flight from D.C. to Tehran. He never dreamed he’d end up in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison as a political prisoner, experiencing solitary confinement and repeated torture. 

Following his speech  at the conference, Nizar entered a taxi to take him to Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport. En route his vehicle was pulled over by the infamous Iranian Revolutionary National Guard, and he was promptly seized and imprisoned.

Initially expecting the matter to be resolved in a matter of days, Nizar, a Lebanese citizen and legal U.S. resident, spent four years in prison. The U.S., led by the Obama administration, was wooing Iran at that time, and so didn’t go to bat for the release of a non-citizen resident of the U.S.-- even one that worked closely with government agencies focused on the Middle East. There was little progress or hope until Nizar began organizing his campaign for release from behind bars. With a big assist from his sister and the first Trump administration, he finally won his release. 

Nizar now runs an organization called Hostage Aid Worldwide, dedicated to the release and support afterward for victims of unfair political imprisonment around the world.

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

Author Tom Sileo tells the inspiring story of the late Michael Ollis, one of thousands of young men who followed their fathers into the military. On August 28, 2013, Ollis, Staten Island native and 10th mountain soldier, was serving at Forward Operating Base Ghazni, a joint force partner mission with the Polish military. During a sneak attack, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest and Sgt. Ollis threw himself in front of Polish comrade, Karol Cierpica, whom he’d only met and fought side-by-side with minutes earlier. His selfless action saved the life of Cierpica and many others.

Celebrated to this day in the U.S. and especially his hometown of Staten Island, Ollis was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (the highest honor in the U.S. Army) and–perhaps even more remarkably–was honored by the Polish military as well, and is considered a hero in that country as well. Ollis’s family later met and embraced Cierpica (the man he saved) as family, and Cierpica named his son after Michael. 

In his book, “I Have Your Back,” military author and expert on the Global War on Terror, Sileo honors one of America’s more recent heroes.

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

Born in Hawaii shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Wade Ishimoto grew up to help found the storied Delta Force special operations group. Wade shares the story of his amazing career in U.S. Army intelligence starting in Vietnam, to the planning of the failed 1980 mission to rescue the U.S. hostages from Iran. He describes what it was like to be on the ground in the desert of Iran when Operation Eagle Claw was compromised and ended in tragedy.

Author of “The Intoku Code,” Wade has lived his life following the precept, “Do good in secret.”

We’re honored to have Wade Ishimoto join us.

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

When New Orleans native Ed Haslam began his research into the curious life and shocking murder of brilliant Tulane medical professor Dr. Mary Sherman, he didn’t imagine that his inquiry would reveal a secret lab connected to some of the city’s most unusual and historically significant citizens—Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, Guy Bannister, mob boss Carlos Marcello, medical titan Dr. Alton Oschner—and forces high up in the government. Nor did he expect his discoveries to change our understanding of the polio vaccine and AIDS, or the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

His book, “Dr. Mary’s Monkey,” lays out the weird nexus of medical research, the CIA, Castro, and Oswald that all came together in the summer of ‘63 in the Big Easy. The plot he discovered is especially relevant today for its notable absence in the recently declassified JFK documents.

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

Historian and author Brian Bruce vividly describes an often neglected but important aspect of the Pacific Theater in WWII: The campaign to liberate New Guinea from the Japanese and thwart their planned invasion of Australia. 

In his book MacArthur’s Bloody Butchers: Company G, 163rd Regiment, Bruce follows the path of four men from the 41st Infantry Division – including Bruce’s great uncle Doyle – as they fought their way from New Guinea, to the Philippines and prepared to invade Japan. 

Along the way they experienced brutal jungle warfare, hand-to-hand combat with Japanese commandos dug into caves, romance with Australian women, and even the devastation of Hiroshima. Assisting the US war effort in New Guinea were the indigenous peoples, known to the Americans as angels, who helped carry supplies and wounded soldiers from the field. 

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

When the United States retreated from the chaos of Kabul in August of 2021, General Sami Sadat was still fighting until the end. He  recounts how his troops were starved for ammunition for two years before the final pullout, while the U.S. was negotiating with the Taliban. He also talks about how earlier in his career he fought alongside the CIA to track down al-Qaeda in the mountains on Hindu Kush. General Sadat provides a uniquely different view of the war in Afghanistan, how it was fought and how changing U.S. military goals and tactics made it increasingly difficult to succeed. He currently leads opposition efforts against the Taliban from outside of Afghanistan.

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

Commissioned a Marine second lieutenant on November 8, 1967, G.M. Davis arrived in Vietnam less than a year later to lead a rifle platoon against the North Vietnamese Army in the northernmost province of what was then the Republic of Vietnam. In his deeply personal book, My War in the Jungle: The Long-Delayed Memoire of A Marine Lieutenant in Vietnam, 1968-69, Davis brings to life the relentless heat, the worry, the responsibility he carried and the daily grind of firefights, battles, victory, and death. Contact with the enemy was frequent, and the chaos of even a small fight was daunting. Davis also examines the political reality of the time, arguing that the war was lost before it began, but that the nation kept fighting and losing soldiers so politicians could look strong and keep their jobs.

With his tour of duty completed following two serious injuries, Davis went on to earn a law degree at the University of Florida and was appointed to the federal bench as a US Magistrate Judge.

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

Robert F McLean was just 19 years old when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy to do his part in WWII. Invited to join the Navy Seals, he declined and enrolled in the U.S.N. Patrol Torpedo Boat School in Melville, R.I. 

Upon graduation Bob was assigned to Squadron 30, destined for the European Theatre of Operations. Shortly after midnight on June 6, 1944, his squadron became the outermost fighter convoy of the Normandy Invasion. The largest force ever assembled included his Patrol Torpedo Boat 461, a fighter escort. Bob valiantly participated in the fall of Le Havre, France and received a Bronze Star. He also was awarded a Presidential Citation for his squadron's heroic rescue work in the English Channel during the Battle of the Bulge. He also took part in the liberation of the Channel Islands off the coast of France.

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

The success of the submarine-borne Polaris missile was a critical nuclear deterrent that helped President Kennedy stare down Khruschev during the 1961 Berlin Crisis. Ever since, this weapon has been a key strategic tool of the U.S. Tom Ramos's book "From Berkeley to Berlin," chronicles the scientific journey leading to the development of this and other nuclear weapons and the singular man whose "buoyant optimism spread to everyone around him and accounted for the attainment of many an 'impossible' objective."

Founded in 1931 on the U.C. Berkeley campus by famed physicist Ernest Lawrence, (Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the cyclotron in 1938) "The Rad Lab" attracted some of the finest talent in America, including J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1941, Lawrence challenged his team to deter Joseph Stalin's nuclear program in the USSR. Oppenheimer and Lawrence collaborated for more than a decade, their work together culminating on the Manhattan Project. Lawrence then founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose team further developed nuclear technology, including the Polaris missile.

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

Former U.S. Air Force Combat Controller Dan Schilling relates the heroic story of John Chapman captured in his book "Alone at Dawn"  – a fellow combat controller who fought and perished on an Afghan mountainside, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Chapman was the first airman to be so awarded in nearly fifty years. Dan gives a behind-the-scenes look at the Air Force Combat Controllers – the worlds deadliest and most versatile special operations force.

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