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A Missoula Smokejumper Won
the Second, Third & Fourth Highest Medals of the CIA
By Fred Donner
This
article was first published in the July 2003 issue of
"Smokejumper" Magazine
When Jerry and I
began rookie smokejumper training in June 1958, he had been 17 years old
less than a week and was a rising senior at Missoula Sentinel High School.
Two brothers had been Missoula jumpers (Danny 53 and Jack 54). The
Youngest Smokejumper (January 2003 issue) noted that the late John Lewis
made his first fire jump at 17 years, two months, and six days of age. With
all due respect to Johns memory, Jerry had made several fire jumps by
that age. (I was one of three rookies who broke bones on practice jumps in
1958. Two of us repeated rookie training in 1959.)
Among the approximately 50 rookies in 1958, there were many colorful
characters but Jerry stood out. He was very vocal about people of any kind
who did not measure up to his own high work ethic standards. He was a
railroad brakeman while still in high school and was scathing in his
denunciation of railroad union featherbedding. He was also outspoken
with his low opinion of college fraternities. Jerry thought the entire East
Coast should be paved over. He helped his mother run a janitor business
(named Death of Dirt) where he once cleaned up the aftermath of a
shotgun suicide. A rodeo bull rider who talked about ranch bums a lot,
Jerry was altogether not your ordinary teenager or even jumper and clearly
destined for an eventful life.
I saw a lot of Jerry while I worked at Missoula on crutches in 1958. We
jumped a 16-jumper fire together in California in 1959 and were both on a
jumper-tanker crew on the Cleveland National Forest east of San Diego for
several months late in 1959. He was both a high school state wrestling
champion and chess champion. I occasionally beat him at chess in California.
(Not as dumb as I look, I knew better than to wrestle him.) He was a sore
loser but I mean that as a compliment.
Jerry Daniels was the most mission-oriented, job-committed, task-driven
individual I have ever known. His motto was lead me, follow me, or get
the hell out of the way. Jerry was not anti-authority but he was most
definitely anti-bureaucratic. Nothing stood between him and completing the
mission. Dedicated and hard-charging only begin to describe Jerry. These are
not unusual smokejumper traits but he was an outstanding example. He was
also one of the funniest and most irreverent people one could meet,
combining humor and hard work. With Jerry, you busted your butt working
while splitting your sides laughing.
While I was an Air Force lieutenant from 1960 to 1965 in Texas, Washington
state, Taiwan, and Vietnam, I ran into smokejumpers in each location,
especially Vietnam. I heard stories about Jerry and other jumpers, notably
from Intermountain Aviation, a CIA operation, in Marana, Arizona. Some of
the places mentioned were Bay of Pigs, Tibet, Arctic ice islands, Laos, and
Thailand. Never sure what to believe about second-hand jumper stories, I
thought some stories were just typical jumper equine feces, a common
commodity in Missoula.
When I got out of the Air Force, I flew as aerial observer on the St. Joe
National Forest in Idaho that summer, and was hired by Air America to be the
traffic manager at Danang, Vietnam. In November 1965, I went to Missoula to
get on Northwest Airlines for Taipei, Taiwan. To our mutual astonishment,
Jerry and I got on the same plane, Jerry headed for Laos. We flew out of
Montana seated together (the flight attendant upgraded me to sit with Jerry
in first class) celebrating old times while headed for new adventures.
Alternating periods of work and study, he had graduated from the University
of Montana in business.
Fast forward. In April 1982 I was a Foreign Service officer in the American
Embassy in Manila, Philippines. One day I picked up the embassy message file
and was dumbstruck to read that Jerry had just died of carbon monoxide
poisoning in his apartment in Bangkok, Thailand.
A number of books over the last two decades talk about Jerrys spectacular
CIA career in Laos after 1965. The circumstances of his death add an odd
finale that could not have been invented for a novel.
Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for
Laos, 1942-1992 by Jane Hamilton-Merritt (1993) has errors in it and
was not well-received in some book reviews but it probably has more Jerry
information than any other book. The frontispiece of Sky Is Falling: An
Oral History of the CIAs Evacuation of the Hmong from Laos by Gayle
L. Morrison (1999) dedicates the book - In Memory of Jerry Hog
Daniels: June 11,1941-April 28, 1982.
The Ravens: The Men Who Flew In Americas Secret War In Laos by
Christopher Robbins (1987) describes Jerrys career as the CIAs
connection to General Vang Pao, the leader of the Hmong tribal army in Laos.
Back Fire: The CIAs Secret War in Laos and Its Link to the War in
Vietnam by Roger Warner ((1995) covers much of the same story with lots
of Jerry in it. This book was reissued in a slightly different version in
1996 titled Shooting at the Moon: The Story of Americas Clandestine
War in Laos.
Another book out under two titles is Codename Mule (1995 hardback)
by James E. Parker, Jr., reissued in paperback in 1997 as Covert Ops:
The CIAs Secret War in Laos. He refers to Jerry only as Hog,
Jerrys self-chosen call-sign, on numerous pages recounting Hogs
actions but never by proper name.
That Jerry was "the most beloved of all the Americans by the Hmong"
is a statement from the inside cover flap of The CIA's Secret War in
Laos - Shadow War by Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison (1995) that sums
up the various references to Jerry in the book. Oddly enough, Jerry is not
in the book's index but is found on at least ten pages of the text.
One Day Too Long: Top Secret Site 85 and the Bombing of North Vietnam by
Timothy N. Castle (1999) is an excellent investigative work that
mentions Jerry briefly.
Harvesting Pa Chays Wheat: The Hmong and Americas Secret War in
Laos by Keith Quincy (2000) at 600 pages seems to be the most
exhaustive book to date on the war in Laos. Jerry is mentioned in some
detail. By now, the astute reader has noticed that most of the books on Laos
have Secret War in their titles, something of an oxymoron regarding
Laos.
Between all these books mentioning Jerry and more books naming other jumpers
in the CIA (see my bibliography article in the July 2002 issue), I learned
that those smokejumper stories I heard in the Air Force were basically true.
In Project Coldfeet: Secret Mission to a Soviet Ice Station by
William M. Leary and Leonard A. LeSchack (1996), I read what Jerry had done
in the Arctic. In 1962 an Intermountain Aviation B-17 with the Fulton
Skyhook apparatus and a number of jumpers in the crew parachuted a Navy
officer and an Air Force officer on to an abandoned Soviet ice station and
gave them three days to sort out important intelligence material. (The
Fulton Skyhook has two arms or horns extending from the nose of the
aircraft that engage a 500-foot rope held aloft by a helium balloon and
tethered on the ground to an object or person to be picked up.) The B-17
returned and picked up the intelligence material and officers in three
passes. Jerry was the winch operator who brought the cargo and people on
board. In 1963 the same aircraft with Jerry as winch operator picked up the
body of an American scientist who died of a heart attack on a U.S. ice
station. (See the April 1997 issue for extended details on both events.)
According to Tragic Mountains and Sky Is Falling, Jerry
had been a kicker dropping cargo over Laos before 1965. Tragic
Mountains adds that he had also flown numerous drop missions over
Tibet. A jumper told me of accompanying Jerry on the first C-130 Tibet drop
mission. (For more on Tibet, including many smokejumper names, see The
CIAs Secret War in Tibet by Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, a
2002 book too late for my bibliography article last year. How many more
CIA Secret War books are out there remains to be seen.)
From late 1965, Jerry was a paramilitary officer (Hog or Mr. Hog) at Long
Tieng , the headquarters of Vang Paos Hmong soldiers. (Long Tieng,
sometimes written as Long Cheng, was commonly known as Sky to the
Hmong.) He committed to stay with Vang Pao and the Hmong, come hell or high
water, and spent nearly ten years in combat with the Pathet Lao and North
Vietnamese. Once he refused to get on an airplane he thought was overloaded,
then watched it crash killing all on board. In the wreckage, he found an
extra leg beyond the number of people known to have been on board,
confirming his suspicions as he told his brother Jack.
One story stands out among many extraordinary Jerry tales. The U.S.
government had an electronic installation on a mountain top at Phou Pha Thi,
also known as Lima Site 85. Jerry was there when four Soviet-style AN-2 Colt
biplanes attacked the site with crude weapons. According to several books,
Jerry opened fire with his M-16 and claimed to have shot down a Colt that
crashed. (He did admit other people were also firing.) There is more. An Air
America helicopter actually overtook a Colt. A crewman firing a hand-held
weapon downed that Colt, likely the only time in history a helicopter has
shot down a fixed-wing aircraft as well as creating probably the most
oft-told story in Air America history. With two Colts down and two escaped,
that was the first and last enemy air attack against friendly ground forces
in the Indochina War. Unfortunately Lima Site 85 was later overrun in a
disaster well-told in the Castle book cited earlier.
Another famous story occurred when Jerry and another jumper staged a rodeo
at Sky featuring bull riding, to the bewilderment of the Hmong. According to
one book, Jerry lasted about a second on his bull while the other jumper
made a respectable ride. Jerry was upset to lose to another jumper, a
reminder to me of past chess games.
Sky was heavily attacked in 1971 and, with the United States withdrawing
forces from Vietnam, the handwriting was on the wall for the demise of Sky.
The Hmong fortress lasted four more tough years under constant enemy
pressure. According to one book, Jerry lived underground the last year at
Long Tieng with Vang Pao after putting three sons of Vang Pao in school in
Missoula.
Sky Is Falling contains personal recollections from nearly 50 Hmong
and Americans who were witnesses to the fall of Sky on May 14, 1975. The
enemy was at the gates and thousands of Hmong expected to leave, a repeat of
Vietnam the month before. By every account, Jerry was the glue that held
things together until the final bitter moments when he and Vang Pao had to
pull the plug. His Hmong radio operator said of Hog on the last day that,
For Jerry it is duty, duty, duty first. Real deep duty. Two Air
America pilots spoke on tape in the last hours, But old Hog, Ive never
seen that guy get excited yet. Have you? No, not really. Later,
Hog, hell, hed have stayed there all day, I believe, if I hadnt
pushed him. Because, like I said, he isnt afraid of no mob scene or
nothin . On the last airplane out of Sky, Hog broke out a case of
Olympia - a true blue smokejumper.
After Laos, Jerry went on a two-month hunting adventure with another Laos
jumper in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area and also worked his gold mine
north of Butte, Montana with some Laos jumper help. He became a resettlement
officer with the State Department refugee program in Thailand. A fluent
Hmong speaker, no one knew better than Jerry who was telling the truth among
Hmong fleeing Laos seeking refugee status. He earned a State Department
Superior Honor Award. A retired senior CIA officer who knew him well told me
that Jerry had thrown his career away by staying with the Hmong rather
than the Agency. If he had been willing to be an intelligence bureaucrat
(not a chance, as the reader knows by now), there is no telling to what high
rank he might have risen. Instead Jerry chose the Hmong, bringing the first
Hmong refugees to the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula.
Jerry was 40 years old at his untimely death. Unfortunately he has not been
allowed to rest in peace. The official story is that he died of carbon
monoxide poisoning from a faulty gas hot water heater and was not found for
several days. It was probably inevitable, given his storybook life, that
rumors would abound after his unusual death. Some jumpers who knew Jerry
believe the official story. Some do not. There is little dispute that Jerry
died of carbon monoxide poisoning but how that came about is not agreed
upon. Some think it was an accident, some suicide, some murder. The
instant-on, instant-off, on-demand propane hot water heaters that are all
over East Asia are notorious for malfunctioning and causing occasional
deaths. Nevertheless, rumors continue when old Southeast Asia hands get
together.
Tragic Mountains relates that Jerry made a pact with a friend to
jump off the Missoula Higgins Avenue bridge into the Clarks Fork River
when they were 40, presumably because they would have done everything with
no new worlds to conquer. Later he wrote to the same friend to make it
50. However joking these remarks may have been, in retrospect they
were ill-chosen words.
Jerry told friends of death threats received in Thailand from Hmong,
presumably some who had been refused refugee status and then blamed him.
More ominous, a Laos jumper was in Jerrys house in Missoula when Jerry
answered the telephone. When asked what that strange conversation was about,
he said it was the mystery man who said he was going to kill me.
The Ravens repeats some conspiracy speculation about Jerrys
death but states that no evidence supports that speculation and further that
journalist investigations confirm he died as reported. However the same
author goes on to say, For a more sinister interpretation of events, see
Mystery in Bangkok: Yellow Rain Skeptic Found Dead, Covert Action
Information Bulletin, No. 17, Summer 1982. (CAIB is an anti-CIA and
anti-establishment publication.) Jerry was a well-known disbeliever of
yellow rain and was outspoken about it, according to several jumpers.
Today Jerrys brother, Jack, a former smokejumper, feels the family has
never gotten the complete story about his death. Jack, a Ph.D. in
physiology, a winner of Olympic silver and bronze medals in the modern
penthathlon competition, and a professor at the State University of New York
at Cortland, is puzzled by two aspects. One is why Jerry died and a Thai
found unconscious in Jerrys apartment lived. Jack, who certainly knows,
says carbon monoxide attaches itself to hemoglobin at 35 times the rate of
oxygen. According to Jack, the Thai fellow, reportedly a university student,
was taken to a hospital and later fled, never to be seen again. (One 1982
press account says the student talked to a U.S. journalist and does not
remember what happened. Admittedly a local national found near the death
of a prominent American would not hang around to see what happened.)
The sealed coffin also puzzles Jack. As the executor and next-of-kin, Jack
was initially pressured to have the body cremated with possibly some
cremains to remain in Thailand and/or Laos and some to Missoula. Jack
consulted Hmong in Montana who vetoed cremation, especially since division
of the cremains was offensive to Hmong culture. So a tightly-sealed coffin
with guards to keep it that way arrived in Missoula.
Whatever the circumstances of his death, his family is extremely proud of
his CIA service. A prized possession is their photo of the CIA director
presenting three posthumous awards, the second, third, and fourth highest
medals of the Agency, to his mother and three surviving brothers and
families. (As reported in the January 2003 issue, the family of John Lewis
(McCall 53) received his posthumous CIA award 41 years after his death.
The Daniels family didnt have to wait that long.)
I make no claim to having been one of Jerrys closer friends but I knew
him well in the early years and I know the literature. There are better
qualified jumpers from the Laos and Thailand years to memorialize him and I
hope mine is only the first chapter. I felt someone had to get him in the
official archive of smokejumper history since it had not been done to date.
Jerry tops anything in a Tom Clancy novel. He was an unforgettable
larger-than-life character of whom it can truly be said that the mold was
thrown away after he was born. There will never be another Jerrold Barker
Daniels. Ask the Hmong.
(This article has
been reviewed by the CIA. That
review neither constitutes CIA authentication of information nor implies CIA
endorsement of the authors views.)
Fred Donner is an
AAM Association member. He was
the traffic manager at Danang, 1965-67.
Previously an Air Force Lieutenant and a Foreign Service Officer, he
is now a retired Defense Intelligence Agency Officer with nearly 40 years of
experience and education related to Southeast Asia and China.
This article is
reprinted from the July 2003 Smokejumper
magazine.