Special Forces Association Wants to Shut-Up Veteran/Author.

Battle For A War Story: Soldiers association sues independent publisher over Vietnam book

By Karen McCowan
The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, December 18, 2005

WALTERVILLE - A tiny publishing house here is in the cross-hairs of a $700,000 lawsuit backed by the Special Forces Association, a fraternal organization for current and former U.S. military special operatives.

On the one side are Kris Millegan's Trine Day Press and one of its authors, retired U.S. Army Special Forces Lt. Col. Daniel Marvin, who have been targeted in the case. On the other are seven men who served with Marvin in Vietnam during 1966 and 1967.

They contend that Marvin's book "Expendable Elite: One Soldier's Journey Into Covert Warfare," provided a "false, libelous, defamatory, embarrassing and humiliating" account of their activities at An Phu near the Cambodian border. They seek $100,000 each in general, special and punitive damages.

Millegan said the case already has racked up nearly $50,000 in legal expenses, and it could bankrupt his small press, which has published just eight books and sold a total of 40,000 copies since its creation four years ago.

But he declined to agree to the men's demand that he reissue the book as a work of fiction. He stands by Marvin's account, saying that some of the defendants verified it on tape at Marvin's request after he sent them early drafts in 1988.

More at link.

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Expendable Elite

LTC Daniel Marvin’s new book, Expendable Elite – One Soldier’s Journey Into Covert Warfare, and his ongoing blog, The Unconventional Warrior, are about the good, bad and ugly of secret warfare, the first bombarding of enemy safe-havens inside Cambodia, major battles won by Hoa Hao Irregular Forces led by American and Vietnamese Green Berets, the importance of civic action and psychological warfare, involvement of US Special Forces in the plots to assassinate Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and US Navy LTCDR William B. Pitzer, retribution and revenge tactics employed by the CIA and the White House against its own, and the courage of Lieutenant General Quang Van Dang in his rescue of Marvin’s A-Team, their counterparts and 400 Hoa Hao warriors from a 1,000 man South Vietnamese regiment sent by the CIA to destroy Marvin’s SF camp. General W.C. Westmoreland's lack of courage, General H. K. Johnson's hatred of Special Forces and President L.B. Johnson's insistence on providing safe-havens to our enemy while micro-managing the war without regard to the wisdom of the field commanders led to our nation's betrayal and abandonment of the South Vietnamese People.

This true story of a Special Forces officer in Vietnam in the mid-sixties will acquaint you with the unique nature of Special Operations Forces and how covert operations are developed and masked to permit — even sponsor — assassination, outright purposeful killing of innocents, illegal use of force and bizarre methods in combat operations.

Expendable Elite reveals the fear that these elite warriors share with no other military person — not the fear of the enemy they have been trained to fight in battle, but fear of the wrath of our government should they no longer be needed and find themselves classified as… expendable.

A centerpiece of this book is the CIA mission to assassinate Cambodian Crown Prince Norodum Sihanouk, the author’s unilateral aborting of the mission, and the drama surrounding the dispatch by the CIA of an ARVN regiment to attack, destroy the camp and kill every person in it as retribution for standing up against the CIA.

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Hooboy. Sounds like Col. Dan pissed in somebody's Corn Flakes. Incidentally, Trine Day is the sole re-publisher of Anthony Sutton's CT classic, "America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones".

But I'm sure that any attempts to bankrupt this press are coincidental.