NewsGram with Sam Youmans

Searching For The Truth


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This edition of Newsgram explores the haunting legacy of the Vietnam conflict through the eyes of Barbara Birchim, author of Searching for the Truth—a gripping fiction-based-on-fact account inspired by her relentless pursuit of justice for her husband, Captain James D. Birchim who was declared Missing In Action in 1968. The deeper she looked into the situation, the clearer it became: if she wanted answers, she would have to find them herself. Join us in the search for answers about what really happened to Captain Birchim during the Vietnam War. 

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Welcome to this edition of Newsgram!

Captain James Birchim, a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets disappeared in action while serving in Vietnam on November 15th of 1968. According to findings, he was on a Special Operations mission in Laos, a country where the U.S. was not officially active at the time. Here is his wife Barbara Birchim.

Barbara Birchim: And my husband, I knew, was Special Forces when he went over there. But I didn’t know for 30 years that my husband had been pulled into Special Operations. So that told me why in my searching that I was being blocked for information. And to be honest with you, I’m still being blocked. The CIA and DIA still have classified documents on my husband and it’s over 50 years.

Barbara has never accepted the official account of her husband’s disappearance and has since written two books detailing her investigation and what she uncovered about missing servicemen.

Barbara Birchim: The first book I wrote on this issue is called Is Anybody Listening? And that is nonfiction. And I lay out how this issue has been handled since World War Two all the way up to 2005. And I name names. I named the presidents and the department heads and all that. And then I run my journey through it as I become aware of why aren’t they telling me the truth? 

And that journey, to find the truth has now led her to publish a second book appropriately, Searching For The Truth.   According to official records, the mission took place in South Vietnam. But Barbara’s research—and multiple firsthand accounts—place it deep in Laos, where the U.S. was not officially operating. This contradiction becomes the first red flag, anyway, I am going to do my best to put together the official statement from the government regarding what happened.

According to official reports: On November 15th, 1968, during the height of the Vietnam War, Lieutenant James Douglas Birchim was leading an eight-man long-range reconnaissance patrol, he was part of a covert operations unit that carried out dangerous missions far behind enemy lines.

That day, Birchim and his team were ambushed by enemy forces. Amid the chaos, he suffered serious injuries—a broken ankle and fragmentation wounds. Despite the pain, he managed to call for extraction. Help came the next morning in the form of two helicopters, prepared to pull the team out using McGuire rigs, a rope system designed for rapid lifts in dense jungle; but something went wrong. During the extraction, Lt. Birchim fell from the helicopter—from an altitude of about 2,500 feet. His body was never recovered. 

To this day, the U.S. government maintains this account, and Captain James Birchim remains one of the thousands still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.

The conflicting location was a huge red flag for Barbara. 

Barbara Birchim: I started networking with helicopter pilots and they’re like, no, as a matter of fact, we at that time didn’t fly in on a mission with with full fuel tanks… 

That detail—fuel loads—might seem minor. But to Barbara, it pointed to something much larger: poor planning or possibly an impossible mission from the start.

Barbara Birchim: …because we had to realize that we were picking up four men and equipment so we couldn’t have that extra weight. So they have to do a weight balance kind of thing. So a lot of times they didn’t even go in with full fuel tanks. 

And then she uncovered something that added a whole new layer to the story.

Barbara Birchim: …that helicopter had already reached what they call the bingo, which means you’ve only got a couple of minutes left to get back to base. And they reached the bingo before this helicopter even turned around and saw the flash of light for where the pickup zone was for the last four men. So I and then they had him missing way into Vietnam, way out of range of the Contum or FOB2. So, I mean, it was it was stupid.

Part of this I do understand. These types of operations were and still are highly classified, and so the exact locations of missions like these are often obscured for security reasons but there were other aspects of this story that just didn’t sit right with Barbara and she found out that eventually, if you ask enough questions to the right people some of the truth comes out.

Barbara Birchim: He was the leader of a team, a large team that was sent into Laos, which we weren’t supposed to be there at that time. But they became surrounded by the enemy and he called for extraction and the extraction got the first set of guys out. But it didn’t get the last ones out, namely my husband. They were on what they call strings, which are ropes hanging from the bottom of a helicopter. And they were being pulled through a triple canopy. And unfortunately, there were four men and there were only three viable strings. So it’s my understanding at this point, after all the research I’ve been doing and networking I’ve been doing, that GEMS was left behind in that pickup zone.

A pickup zone that technically didn’t exist. The government never had a pickup zone marked because this extraction was in enemy territory deep into Laos. Which makes sense now but for Barbara it just opened the door for more questions so she set out to get answers from people with first hand knowledge. 

Barbara Birchim: I’ve been networking with a lot of veterans. I joined the Special Forces Association that led me to be brought into special operations. They found a way for me to become a member of the special ops guys. And I got a whole lot of information there. 

But with new information came new risks.

Barbara Birchim: Government’s not happy with me because they like to come in and out of my house when I’m gone and go through my files and just do all kinds of things. And thank God my neighbors watched this happening because it was when I was out of town or at work. And it just continues. I mean, the last event of this kind of strangeness was after I wrote Searching for the Truth. And they came in and did some things. And, you know, they’re very, they’re just crazy. They’re just crazy. So I’ve had to make a kind of a joke out of the whole thing in order to survive.

So who was rifling through her house while she was gone? We may never know but I can say all this activity does not sit well with someone like Barbara and all it does is drive her to keep digging, to keep networking and to keep doing all she can to piece together what actually happened in the hopes of completing this puzzle and finding peace with the situation. Here’s what Barbara believes actually happened. Brace yourself.

Barbara Birchim: I know that he was left behind. I think he was taken by the enemy and imprisoned. He was moved along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He was wounded. I know that. And I believe not only a head wound, but shrapnel in his back and a broken ankle. And he was moved into Cambodia to the V211 hospital. 

And then this part of the story sounds like something out of a spy novel.

Barbara Birchim: They moved the hospital into South Vietnam. And at that time, he escaped back into U.S. held territory. They realized that he didn’t remember he was Jim Bertram any longer because of this head wound. And they gave him a new identity and they sucked him right into the government’s CIA affairs because SOG, Special Ops, was being driven by the CIA. And I tracked him to Northeast Thailand. He had a family, and was living in Northeast Thailand. And I believe he died about 12 to 15 years ago.

I told you it was a lot. How did the story change from a simple extraction gone wrong to living a new life in Northeast Thailand? Well, it’s enough to fill up two books. The first one is called Is anybody Listening? 

Barbara Birchim: I would encourage people to read that one first because you get the historical background and then the things that start happening to me.  So I now advocate for not only my husband, but the other fifteen hundred that are still missing in the Vietnam War.

The newest book is Searching for the Truth where she lays out her newest findings and encourages family members of a Missing In Action loved one to be the advocate for that serviceman. She says you have to be a cold case detective when searching for answers. You need to be relentless in researching and networking.

Barbara Birchim: I hope that those who are in the military, the families of military men will realize that they really have to dig. They have to network. They are the detectives. You have to be the advocate no matter how many times the government tells you to just be quiet and go away. And we’re working on it. That’s not the truth. And there are not any kind of cold case detectives in any of these alphabet soup groups and agencies. And so you become the virtual authority on your case. And you I mean, I go to these government briefings once a year and I have to remind each and every one of the alphabet soup guys, no, that’s not right. Here’s the document. Prove it. This is your document on your letterhead. And you don’t even know that you’ve got it.

Barbara Birchim’s fight isn’t just about one man—it’s about accountability, transparency, and the forgotten ones. Her books, Is Anybody Listening? and Searching for the Truth, are a testament to that mission. If you enjoy a real-life espionage-adjacent story with shadowy government operations, classified documents, and possible identity erasure then check out Is Anybody Listening and Searching for the Truth, both books are affordable and available now online wherever you like to buy books. If you Google her name you will them right away and her last name is spelled B-I-R-C-H-I-M

The post Searching For The Truth appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

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