THE PSYCHE OF A GREEN BERET

"As I lived and breathed it" by LTC Daniel Marvin, USA Retired

Author of Victory Edition, Expendable Elite - One Soldier's Journey Into Covert Warfare

As the U.S. Military establishment continues to expand the numbers of Special

Operations personnel that would be available for covert operations should we demand certain
controls and limits on their use and abuse? Should we preclude illegal operations being secretly
foisted on them while expecting them to obey without question and maintain secrecy regarding
those illegal operations forever?
I write this based on personal experience as a Special Forces officer - a Green Beret who
commanded a TOP SECRET portable atomic weapon team in 1964 and a TOP SECRET
Independent Operation in An Phu, South Vietnam in 1966. The latter mission included leading
the first attacks into the enemy safe-havens along the border inside Cambodia and accepting and
then unilaterally aborting a TOP SECRET mission that would have ambushed and assassinated
Cambodian Crown Prince Norodom Sihanouk in June, 1966. The last two of the aforementioned
missions were written of in detail in my book Expendable Elite - One Soldier's Journey Into
Covert Warfare."
Of special interest to the reader is the fact that my publisher and I were taken to court by
the Special Forces Association (no doubt inspired by and funded by the CIA) in January 2006
when they tried in vain to prove that my book was, in their words, "100% lies." Instead we
proved it to be a truthful book that told of TOP SECRET operations "they" did not want the world
to know about!
People should know who and where I was when, like a human robot, I eagerly and
without question participated directly as an "operative" in government sponsored illegal activities
perpetrated by certain powers against any individual, government or activity who would attempt
to disrupt the absolute rule of our "hierarchy."
Documented and corroborated testimony of what I had done during 21 years of military
service that was of an evil or illegal nature now serve as the foundation of my crusades against
evil in our government. I care because the truth matters. Those of us who have the will to, must
act courageously and with integrity to communicate what we have experienced. We must include
direct first-hand knowledge of what happened in Dallas on 22 November 1963 and in succeeding
days, months and years, as those same forces within our government who conspired to kill our
president continue to do what is "necessary" to silence those who would bring forth evidence to
prove the who, what, when and where of the conspiracy and to judiciously disrupt actions taken
to cover them up.
The conspiracy must be brought to light, the perpetrators punished, and justice meted out.
I believe if another decade passes without full disclosure of the facts it will render the potential
for justice in this matter practically impossible. As time drags on it will be outright fear that
silences witnesses who are aging and who may desire to voluntarily withdraw from the fray so as
to shield loved ones from danger. Caution may very well prevail against the integrity and
courage of witnesses now willing to come forward such as Dennis David, Jerry Willsey and
myself. We may one day in the not too distant future reach an age when we desire to steer clear
of any involvement in such an awesome controversy, knowing what forces can be brought to bear
to silence us.
That fact alone continues to light the fire of promise and the need for action in my being.
The reader must know what resides within the heart, soul, and psyche of a man who is a trained
military assassin and terrorist. I now search for a way to inform the world of the truth of certain
heinous deeds and evil actions perpetrated by powerful men (even within the military hierarchy)

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whose drive for power and hunger for influence and monetary gain direct their ways. It will
cause them to turn on honorable people and to foster, even develop and direct, illegal, even
murderous actions, which deny the citizens of this once great nation their constitutional rights and
safeguards.
Within hours of John F. Kennedy's assassination, I volunteered for U.S. Army Special
Forces training and was drawn into circumstances and forces that easily melded in with my
warrior-like psyche, compelling me to strive to be one of those who JFK admired - The men who
wore the Green Beret!
Within five months of his death I graduated from the Special Forces Officer's Course at
Fort Bragg, North Carolina. By mid-April '64 I was fully indoctrinated in the basic fundamentals
of unconventional warfare, civic action, special demolitions, martial-law, assassination
techniques, and terror tactics. I had earned the right to wear the coveted Army Green Beret.
Unknown to my wife, family, or friends outside Special Forces, I would soon be involved in
clandestine missions which often included doing what most rational human beings believe to be
unacceptable, even despicable. My penchant for danger was not solely the product of the school
at Fort Bragg. It began much earlier in life. I was born, raised, and thrived in an arena of
adversity, doing my best when under extreme physical and psychological stress. I sought danger,
bored with the norm. Born at home in Detroit, Michigan on October 10th 1933, I had only a
welfare nurse attending. My older brother Bill and I were raised during the Great Depression by
our gritty, hard-working, loyal Mother when jobs were few and far between, particularly for a
woman. My good-for-nothing father, with a 16 year old girl in tow, left my mother the day I was
born, forced to witness my birth by my tough Aunt Magdalene. So much for him! Day old
bread, soup lines, and door-to-door begging for vegetables and canned goods were an accepted
and necessary means of survival for us. W e had love and hope amongst us three and that was
sufficient to keep us going. I was five when Mother decided Chicago would be a better place for
us to live.
The back-alleys and roof-tops of south-side Chicago helped to develop my spirit of
adventure. At the age of eleven I did not hesitate to train and lead others who shared the same
enthusiasm to engage in activities involving great danger, and who joined my private gang, going
where proverbial angels "feared to tread." But then, isn't the world full of different types of
people? I like the poem by Jean Larte' Guy, titled "TWO ARMIES" that I was given a Xerox
copy of during guerrilla warfare training at The Special Warfare Center in Fort Bragg, NC.:
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"I'D LIKE TO HAVE TWO ARMIES
"One for display with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, staffs, distinguished and
doddering Generals and dear little regimental officers who would be
deeply concerned over their General's bowel movements or their
Colonel's piles; an Army that would be shown for a modest
fee on every fairground in the country.
"The other would be the real one - composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage
uniforms, who would not be put on display, but from whom impossible efforts
would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That
is the Army in which I would like to fight."
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The U.S. Army Special Forces - the elite "Green Berets" - were that "real one" and each
and every one of us knew our place in the scheme of things. If the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) - the "Company" as we commonly referred to it - needed people for some dirty or
dangerous covert mission - it would likely look to us for volunteers. The uninformed or
uninitiated think of the typical CIA operative as being one who risks his life daily in the
clandestine pursuit of intelligence from those evil forces in the world who would want to do us
harm. Not so - In actuality the combined risk to the entire agency only resulted in a total of fifty
agency personnel being killed in the line of duty in the first half-century they'd been in business.

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Hardly characteristic of extreme danger, but it’s true. Why is the honor roll so small? I suggest
to you that it is because the people on the ground who do the really dangerous stuff - the killing,
the terrorizing, and sabotage - are people from outside the agency. Special Forces personnel
like me, even common criminals loaned to the Company by underworld bosses, would be used
and then maintained on the "rolls" or discarded in one fashion or another when the powers that be
consider them "expendable." Retired former Green Beret Major John Strait put it clear and
simple: "They [the CIA] use you like a condom. Once you've served their purpose, they shit-can
you." Unconventionally oriented men who naturally gravitate to dangerous work environments
and who bare up well under stress, whether from the military or Mafia resource pool, were sought
by the agency to do those "dastardly deeds."
These men would be the assassins, the persuaders, the terrorists for the CIA's intelligence
"community." A Green Beret, trained to function in these volunteer roles is, in my judgment,
more philosophically akin to a Mafia enforcer or a brother clandestine operative than would be
the educated CIA "handlers," conventional military personnel, or civilians.
Each of the volunteers is, in a sense, a cold-blooded killer. Does it matter who plans the
killing, whether the "hit" is for territorial control by the Mob, or a mission said to be necessary to
preserve "national security," if that killing is indeed illegal? Assassinations and other deadly
clandestine activities are not legal. They should never be used to "defend the national interests"
or for any other so-called "political necessity." Each and every man in my Special Forces
operational "A" Team in Vietnam was a kindred spirit. Each was strong, brave, resourceful, and
a loyal team player who would let nothing interfere with the conduct of the mission.
Most of my men lacked a formal education beyond high school, but to a man they were
street-wise and endowed with the ingenuity, common sense and courage essential to perform well
in an unconventional military environment. Men who engage in clandestine activities are usually
tight-lipped and not likely to discuss such matters with people of dissimilar modus operandi and
feel that such talk is taboo around the home. Even when conversing with those who walk the
same walk, actual facts relating to a successful "mission" are seldom so much as hinted at. There
is, after all, no statute of limitations on aiding the enemy, mutiny or murder (See Article 43, US
Uniform Code of Military Justice).
I was nine years old when I first experienced the sight and circumstance of a murdered
man in "Snake Alley," Southside Chicago, Illinois. He was a middle-age black man and his still-
warm body hung from a rope noose tied to a rafter in a garage that opened onto an unpaved alley
separating blacks from whites in Chicago's south side. Grotesque, yes, but it didn't frighten me.
Two years later I formed a small gang of five street-wise, tough boys my age. In the beginning
we got together to protect old ladies from thieving high-school-age gangs that roamed Southside
Chicago's mean streets in the Great Depression. I led ambushes using Indian tactics gleaned from
watching Western movies through a roof-vent atop the Ken Theater on 47th Street. We regularly
fought and always won. It got to be "the thing to do" regardless of what our adversaries had or
hadn't done to helpless old women. Al Capone, Chicago's own imprisoned and self-proclaimed
Robin Hood was then our hero. A typical day would find us skipping school, begging groceries,
stealing candy, or jumping roof-top to roof-top from one apartment building to another.
The day Mother saw me scoot out our front door carrying a cross-bow I had fashioned
from bits & pieces of factory trash; she decided it was time we move to the country. I maintained
my independent and tough nature, ran away from home, hopped freight trains, played around with
dynamite, fought with my bare fists and aggressively assumed command of any situation in
which I became involved. I enlisted in the U.S. Army when I was old enough to do so without my
mother's permission.
The war was on in Korea and I wanted to fight. That is just what I did. A decade later I'd
volunteered for and earned my green beret and I was eager to do any job, no matter how heinous,
how illegal, or how brutal, so long as it was said to be critical to our nation's best interests. No
different than others, I demanded no proof other than their telling me it was for "the flag."

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Was it macho? Yes. Was it Intelligent? No. And, perhaps most important to me at the time, was
it patriotic? I thought so!
I have since gained wisdom and now question my former motivations since becoming a
Christian on the 29th of January, 1984 when my daughter led me to our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. Since that day I have fought hard to make the truth of our illegal acts public inasmuch as I
had become a new person, a man dedicated to the truth. It took time, but my old ways of smoking
two packs a day plus ten cigars and hard drinking, became something of the past. The new
"saved" man in me confessed what I'd done that was sin and set about cleaning up the wounds of
evil actions, subterfuge and corruption. The more I get to know the Lord and to have faith in His
strength, the more courage and wisdom I draw from Him. I do recognize it is dangerous to blow
the whistle on clandestine operations of our government that are illegal in nature. I know how
they use people within and without our government to neutralize, even terminate those who
choose to spill the beans about illegal operations. I know because I was once a part of it, one who
was asked to terminate certain parties. The most agonizing part of my struggle has been the affect
it has had and continues to have on my family as I continue to tell what I know of the evil works
of our government. I pray that the efforts of myself and others to bring to light the nefarious
actions kept secret for many years - actions that would surely, once known, impact the conscience
of the American people to the extent that they demand justice be done. I am ashamed of what we
have, by inaction or pure cowardice, allowed this once great nation to become. It is time for
action.
It is now that we must bring the truth to light as it relates to the JFK assassination
conspiracy and its continuing cover-up by those within our government who perpetrated that
execution of a sitting president. I believe that same group of power brokers was directly
responsible for the death of U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Bruce Pitzer and the silencing of many
others by whatever means necessary who would have otherwise helped to bring the truth to light.
I was asked to kill Pitzer. I thank God I refused. Someone did kill him. - He was an innocent
man who possessed what the intelligence community did not want made public: the actual photos
of the JFK autopsy which prove the Warren Commission Report to be a lie and point to a high
level conspiracy. Commander Pitzer was silenced. The people of this nation deserve to know the
truth. We must end the silence with an outcry for justice. We must move forward with
determination, stay in the battle and fight for the truth to be known and the evil ones punished. I
am ready to testify that I was asked by the CIA in August 1965 to murder LCDR William Bruce
Pitzer and Dennis David is prepared to testify to his direct knowledge of the wicked rationale
behind the CIA's request that Pitzer be silenced. Perhaps the most significant witness is the man
willing to go before Congress to tell of having fired the fatal shot from the grassy knoll in Dallas,
Texas that killed President John F. Kennedy: James E. Files. He is now serving time in Joliet
Penitentiary and has come forward since becoming a born-again Christian. Retired Green Beret
Master Sergeant Gerald Willsey is willing to testify to having been a part of a TOP SECRET
Portable Atomic Weapon delivery team in the mid 1960s with a primary contingency mission to
blow the hydroelectric plant at the ASWAN High Dam in Egypt that would have been disastrous
to the population down-river from that dam. It was the same team that I first commanded when
the mission was brought to the 6th Special Forces Group by the Intelligence Community.
I urge every American who would want their children or grandchildren to find this world
a safer and more God-fearing place to write your Congressional Representative and your Senators
and demand that they hold a hearing about illegal government activities and that they invite those
who have been a willing part of that, including but not limited to James E. Files, Dennis David,
Gerald Willsey and me to testify. We must protect our future generations and not permit any of
our armed forces to be future Expendable Elite!

©2007 LTC Daniel Marvin, US Army Special Forces (Retired)