Chapter 9: Present-Day War
Written by Kit Jarrell and Heidi Thiess
Over thirty years have passed since the men of Team 24 fought to save themselves and each other on a grassy jungle knoll in the mountains of Vietnam. Each surviving member of that ill-fated mission has done his best to go on with his life. Some of them have families and some don’t, some have found success and some have had a hard time simply finding themselves again. All of them remember the war, even though they wish they could forget. For these men, survivor’s guilt is something that sleeps with them at night and lies dormant during the day; driving some to redemptive penance and some to self-destruction.
The question at this point is certainly “Why?” What would drive a fellow Vietnam veteran to make these accusations of murder and fake medals against his brother? We move back almost 10 years, to the core of the dispute.
In 1996, Gary Linderer was the executive editor of Behind the Lines, a magazine dedicated to Special Operations. In its pages readers could find columns like Burns’ Ointment, written by Pathfinder author and career Special Forces NCO Richie Burns on the causes and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Burns had become a therapist in the years following Vietnam, and he worked in a VA hospital counseling veterans.
Other parts of the magazine were what you’d expect to find in a publication about Special Ops. Between the reviews on books written by fellow veterans and advertisements for various types of various types of books, tapes, caps, parachute tourism, t-shirts, and military paraphernalia, one would find incredible stories written by men of the Special Ops community both past and present. Members of the Navy SEALs, Green Berets, LRPs and other Special Ops units contributed their legacies of combat to Behind the Lines and it was popular with its reader base of current and former Special Ops personnel, including a veteran of the F/51st LRP named Donald Hall.
F/51st LRP, the reader may remember, was a large Long Range Patrol unit that operated in the II Field Force area, in War Zones C and D around Saigon. Made up of mostly flatlands, swamplands, and thickly canopied hills, the area that F/51st called home was roughly 1000 kilometers (644 miles) from the highly mountainous regions near the North Vietnamese border that the F/58th lived and worked in.
Hall claims to have attended Military Assistance Command (MACV) Recondo School in late 1967, and according to his book was assigned to Detachment B-36, 5th Special Forces Group for his last 2 weeks of Recondo training. Detachment B-36 was made up of American Green Berets and a unit of Cambodians from the Khmer Serei and Khmer Kron. Hall claims that after only 8 days his officers, who were unhappy with the guerilla tactics used by the Special Forces unit, removed him and his fellow platoon members from B-36. However, we obtained a copy of Hall's military unit assignments, and MACV Recondo School is not listed there nor on his DD214.
In 1996, Hall submitted a story to BTL entitled Vulture Flight detailing his experiences while allegedly attached to B-36 for training. Co-written by his wife Annette, Vulture Flight was a chapter from the Halls’ book I Served, which they had self-published as a hardcover edition.
In this chapter, Hall felt it necessary to use what he and his wife Annette call "literary license". Hall combined several missions into one chapter, making it appear as though all the incidents happened in one mission.
"To move the story along, [a] decision I made was to combine into one mission the three or four training missions I went on during the one short week of training the second platoon's NCOs went through with Detachment B-36, 5th Special Forces Group," says Hall in the preface of his book. "I included my training with B-36 in the story in order to illustrate to readers early on why F/51st LRP was such an outstanding unit."
Even though Hall, by his own admission, combines missions, invents characters and places himself in scenes in the book where he was not actually present, the Halls claim their book is historical nonfiction. They also stand by Don Hall's version of events that occurred while he was allegedly attached to B-36.
Vulture Flight did not paint the men of B-36 in a very good light. Hall claimed that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) soldiers who fought alongside the American Green Berets were cowards. Hall says he had to physically drag them out of the helicopter on one particular mission that he led them on while in training with B-36. He related another instance in his book where a young ARVN soldier had filled his pockets with candy instead of ammunition.
Philip Downey, a member of B-36, spoke for his unit members when he wrote a letter to Behind the Lines disputing Hall’s claims.
“[Vulture Flight] is without a doubt one of the silliest fabrications I’ve ever read… [Hall] describes a unit and operation the likes of which I never encountered in my experience with Special Forces…If I had, I would have been on the first chopper out.”
Downey went on to address Hall’s claims specifically, including the accusations of cowardice on the part of the ARVN soldiers that Hall says he led into battle.
“Since ARVN’s had no part in B-36 operations, process of elimination dictates that the individuals whose courage is being called into question by Mr. Hall are none other than the Khmer Serei [Cambodians] themselves," said Downey.
Hall does mention Cambodians in his tale, and describes them as primitive mercenaries who were also collectors of enemy ears. Hall tells of seeing one "mercenary" with a jar full of ears taken from the corpses of enemy soldiers. Downey stated in his letter that he did see quite a few ears during his time in Vietnam, but that they were all attached to the heads of their owners.
Hall mentions seeing the body of an NVA soldier chained to a tree with a machine gun. According to Hall, the enemy soldier was put there as punishment by his unit where he would be raked with fire by American forces passing through and eventually killed.
"His attempt to ‘lead’ them, according to his own account, is stirring to say the least," responds Downey. "If it had been witnessed by SF personnel, it is Mr. Hall who would have found himself chained to a tree.”
After the story was submitted it was printed in the January/February issue of Behind the Lines. “I should have fact-checked the story before I published it,” said Linderer.
Almost immediately Linderer was besieged with emails and phone calls from the men who had served in B-36. They were incensed at the portrayal of the Cambodians they had served with and said “to label Mr. Hall’s story ‘inaccurate’ is an act of extraordinary kindness.”
Perhaps most offensive to the members of B-36 was what they perceived as a racial slur against the men of the Khmer Serei and Khmer Kron, who are remembered by Downey as being professional soldiers. According to Downey, the Cambodians were extremely well-trained and courageous soldiers who had known war all their lives and were as at home in the jungle as the NVA themselves. In fact, in another issue of BTL Downey wrote a story entitled Mop: A Remembrance, a tribute to one of the Cambodians who served with him. In the forward to Jim Donahue's book Blackjack 33, Downey writes:
Downey took particular aim at the mention of the candy-filled pockets on one of the troops.
“Certainly a very creative writer, [Hall’s] use of imagery to slur Orientals is excellent. Candy, the universal motivational enticement to children, giving us the image intended; people of small physical stature, child-like, undisciplined, in need of authority. This is a superb use of metaphor – the immediate evocation of strong pervasive image without conscious awareness of it’s [sic] delivery. How many of your readers picked up on it? The lack of courage inherent in Orientals, the yellow-skinned people, hmmm…”
The rest of Downey’s letter was equally strong; ending in part with the statement, “the Americans and Cambodians of Detachment B-36 fought, bled, and died as one. As one. One, then, now, always.”
Linderer sent a copy of Downey’s letter to the Halls as a courtesy before publishing it in the June/July issue of BTL, asking the Halls to respond. The Halls chose not to respond themselves but enlisted the help of Clark Etterman, who had served with Don Hall and was assigned to B-36 for the same two-week period. They asked Etterman to write a letter supporting Hall’s claims, which Etterman sent back to the Halls in early June.
Etterman says that the Halls added to his letter after he sent it to them, and claims that Don Hall spoke to him about it on the phone. “[Hall] just said, ‘I hope it’s alright,’” said Etterman. The copy of the letter that Etterman sent to the Halls simply confirmed Hall's claim that he had served in B-36 with Etterman, and that Etterman himself had seen ears on a string at some point. When these authors read the text of the letter that appeared in BTL Etterman verified that it sounded "pretty close" to what he wrote.
The Halls sent the letter to BTL for publication. Linderer says that the letter was not received in time to appear alongside Downey’s letter. He says he discussed this with the Halls, who were upset that Linderer would not pull the magazine back from the printers to insert the letter.
The Halls claim that Linderer had the letter in time and simply refused to print it, saying that the controversy would be profitable both for the magazine and for the Halls’ book. It is impossible to know which of these scenarios is the truth; however, it is important to note that the letter was not sent by Etterman to the Halls until June 7, 1996, for publication in the June/July issue. Also of note is that in a taped conversation between Hall and Downey, Hall boasts that the controversy generated by the situation resulted in sales for his book; so much so that “Random House had to shut down the website.” This is significant because Hall's book was actually self-published, and Random House had no part in its release. The Halls have never explained what website Don was referring to.
Linderer published Etterman’s letter in the following August/September issue and thought the matter closed. However, the battle was already raging behind the scenes between the Halls and the men of B-36. Don Hall claims that the B-36 veterans, led by Phil Downey and Bernard Newman, threatened the lives of his wife and daughter in emails and by phone. Hall sent us a list of case numbers and the names of detectives working the cases. Through phone calls to the police departments involved neither Heidi or I was able to verify any such cases were ever opened. Hall also said he could send the documentation of the police reports, however no such documentation was provided to us.
People we interviewed at the behest of the Halls with the understanding that they had witnessed or were privy to these threats were unable to confirm anything firsthand; their information on the subject was secondhand from the Halls. Downey denies that any threats were made and states that he only spoke with Hall once by telephone. The conversation was taped by the Halls and Downey provided us with a copy. In it, Downey stated emphatically that the men of B-36 oppose the Halls’ book and its portrayal of their unit, and that they would work to hurt the sales of I Served. There were no threats of physical violence by Downey.
Soon the Halls’ attention expanded from the men of B-36 to Gary Linderer, the executive editor of BTL. The Halls felt that Linderer had purposefully sought to discredit their book, as well as the documentary about F/51st that they were working on. In an email to this author dated July 19, 2005, Annette stated:
“Linderer set out to destroy Don's reputation and I Served in 1996, for reasons we cannot truly fathom, when he used his position as a publisher of a magazine to help B-36 members defame Don in the most egregious way.”
Over the next few years the situation escalated; exacerbated by the closeness of the men in the units involved. Emails were exchanged and passed between many people within the Special Forces Association and the 75th Ranger Regiment Association. Many smaller situations erupted under the umbrella of the Halls’ belief that Linderer, with the help of B-36, had set out to destroy them and their projects.
It all came to a head in 2000, when the Halls threatened to sue Random House and Gary Linderer for copyright infringement.
Les Ervin, a veteran from Hall’s unit (although the two men did not serve at the same time) had submitted a story to Linderer for publication in Linderer’s next book, Phantom Warriors: Book 1, which was a collection of stories from LRP units in Vietnam. Hall told Ervin that he was writing a book on the history of F/51st LRP, and that Ervin should allow his story to be published in Hall’s upcoming book instead of Phantom Warriors. Linderer, on the other hand, encouraged Ervin to submit the story to both authors, as it was his belief that Ervin's story could be told in different books without losing its value. To date, the book that Hall claimed to be writing has not been published. Phantom Warriors: Book 1 was published at the end of 2000 and included Les Ervin's story as previously agreed.
The Halls claim that Ervin rescinded his permission for Linderer to use the story long before the book went to print, and provided us with several handwritten statements by Ervin used in the copyright infringement case. However, Linderer says he contacted Ervin in November after receiving the letter Ervin wrote rescinding permission. Linderer says that he explained to Ervin that his story could be used in both books. According to Linderer, Ervin told him to go ahead and use it then. Linderer gave Ervin the address to Random House in case he wished to submit a photograph to accompany the story. Ervin contacted Random House with a photograph and handwritten note asking that the photograph be included in the Phantom Warriors book. Unfortunately, Ervin submitted the photo too late and the book had already gone to print.
As soon as the book appeared on the shelves, the Halls immediately threatened to file suit against Gary Linderer and Random House for including Les Ervin's story in his book, which the Halls had since copyrighted.
Random House has a standard internal policy of settling any court cases under $50,000, considering them "nuisance lawsuits".
“Random House didn’t want go to court over it because it would have cost them more money than the settlement,” says Linderer, who ended up signing a settlement and agreeing to pull the books off the shelves. "[T]hey would bring them back out again with that story out of them if I settled. It upset me to do it, because I told them I didn’t do anything wrong. But they said it’s cheaper to settle...”
The settlement occurred amidst a flurry of accusations by the Halls that “Linderer and his thugs” were physically threatening both Ervin and the Halls themselves.
With the case concluded, Linderer once again thought that matters with the Halls were closed and once again he thought wrong.
A few months after the fiasco with Random House, the Halls sued both the publisher and Linderer again for breach of contract. The Halls claimed that Linderer had violated the security agreement binding the parties to confidentiality about the amount of the settlement. Linderer countersued and claims that he did not break the terms of the settlement.
Filing the case in their home state of Washington, the Halls forced Linderer to appear in Washington to be deposed by their lawyer. In the deposition, which was 7 hours long, the Halls' attorney asked Linderer about everything from the events of 20 November 1968 to the incident with his commanding officer being injured to Linderer's medals. The lawyer actually spent very little time asking questions relevant to the breach of contract case. Immediately after the deposition the Halls offered to settle with Linderer. The terms of their offer were simply that everyone just go home.
The Halls claim publicly that they were financially unable to continue the lawsuit after Linderer's deposition. Annette Hall explained in an email 3 July 2005:
However, in an email dated 7 February 2005, Hall contradicts his wife's statement and offers what he claims is the real reason to Linderer:
In the four years since the lawsuit concluded, the Halls have continued their campaign to draw attention to their accusations against Linderer.
"Everyday I send out twenty packages about your records," writes Hall. The Halls have also created two websites outlining their accusations, linking to selected pages of Linderer's deposition and other documents they find relevant.
They have also threatened to file several more lawsuits against various other veterans including members of the 75th Ranger Regiment Association, the Special Forces Association and Don Hall's own unit, F/51st LRP. On 21 July, these authors were also threatened by phone and email with a lawsuit and public humiliation should we publish the findings of our research. Annette Hall states:
Next: The Final Chapter
Over thirty years have passed since the men of Team 24 fought to save themselves and each other on a grassy jungle knoll in the mountains of Vietnam. Each surviving member of that ill-fated mission has done his best to go on with his life. Some of them have families and some don’t, some have found success and some have had a hard time simply finding themselves again. All of them remember the war, even though they wish they could forget. For these men, survivor’s guilt is something that sleeps with them at night and lies dormant during the day; driving some to redemptive penance and some to self-destruction.
The question at this point is certainly “Why?” What would drive a fellow Vietnam veteran to make these accusations of murder and fake medals against his brother? We move back almost 10 years, to the core of the dispute.
In 1996, Gary Linderer was the executive editor of Behind the Lines, a magazine dedicated to Special Operations. In its pages readers could find columns like Burns’ Ointment, written by Pathfinder author and career Special Forces NCO Richie Burns on the causes and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Burns had become a therapist in the years following Vietnam, and he worked in a VA hospital counseling veterans.
Other parts of the magazine were what you’d expect to find in a publication about Special Ops. Between the reviews on books written by fellow veterans and advertisements for various types of various types of books, tapes, caps, parachute tourism, t-shirts, and military paraphernalia, one would find incredible stories written by men of the Special Ops community both past and present. Members of the Navy SEALs, Green Berets, LRPs and other Special Ops units contributed their legacies of combat to Behind the Lines and it was popular with its reader base of current and former Special Ops personnel, including a veteran of the F/51st LRP named Donald Hall.
F/51st LRP, the reader may remember, was a large Long Range Patrol unit that operated in the II Field Force area, in War Zones C and D around Saigon. Made up of mostly flatlands, swamplands, and thickly canopied hills, the area that F/51st called home was roughly 1000 kilometers (644 miles) from the highly mountainous regions near the North Vietnamese border that the F/58th lived and worked in.
Hall claims to have attended Military Assistance Command (MACV) Recondo School in late 1967, and according to his book was assigned to Detachment B-36, 5th Special Forces Group for his last 2 weeks of Recondo training. Detachment B-36 was made up of American Green Berets and a unit of Cambodians from the Khmer Serei and Khmer Kron. Hall claims that after only 8 days his officers, who were unhappy with the guerilla tactics used by the Special Forces unit, removed him and his fellow platoon members from B-36. However, we obtained a copy of Hall's military unit assignments, and MACV Recondo School is not listed there nor on his DD214.
In 1996, Hall submitted a story to BTL entitled Vulture Flight detailing his experiences while allegedly attached to B-36 for training. Co-written by his wife Annette, Vulture Flight was a chapter from the Halls’ book I Served, which they had self-published as a hardcover edition.
In this chapter, Hall felt it necessary to use what he and his wife Annette call "literary license". Hall combined several missions into one chapter, making it appear as though all the incidents happened in one mission.
"To move the story along, [a] decision I made was to combine into one mission the three or four training missions I went on during the one short week of training the second platoon's NCOs went through with Detachment B-36, 5th Special Forces Group," says Hall in the preface of his book. "I included my training with B-36 in the story in order to illustrate to readers early on why F/51st LRP was such an outstanding unit."
Even though Hall, by his own admission, combines missions, invents characters and places himself in scenes in the book where he was not actually present, the Halls claim their book is historical nonfiction. They also stand by Don Hall's version of events that occurred while he was allegedly attached to B-36.
Vulture Flight did not paint the men of B-36 in a very good light. Hall claimed that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) soldiers who fought alongside the American Green Berets were cowards. Hall says he had to physically drag them out of the helicopter on one particular mission that he led them on while in training with B-36. He related another instance in his book where a young ARVN soldier had filled his pockets with candy instead of ammunition.
“Take point,” I repeated to the youngest Vietnamese soldier. Grabbing his LBE by the shoulder strap, I forced him in the direction we had to go. When I pulled on his web gear, I noticed that it was extremely light, and that he had no grenade with him. “Your ammo pouches are full of goddamned candy!” I screamed, astonished, as I checked each ammo pouch. “Where’s your ammo, Asshole [sic].”
Philip Downey, a member of B-36, spoke for his unit members when he wrote a letter to Behind the Lines disputing Hall’s claims.
“[Vulture Flight] is without a doubt one of the silliest fabrications I’ve ever read… [Hall] describes a unit and operation the likes of which I never encountered in my experience with Special Forces…If I had, I would have been on the first chopper out.”
Downey went on to address Hall’s claims specifically, including the accusations of cowardice on the part of the ARVN soldiers that Hall says he led into battle.
“Since ARVN’s had no part in B-36 operations, process of elimination dictates that the individuals whose courage is being called into question by Mr. Hall are none other than the Khmer Serei [Cambodians] themselves," said Downey.
Hall does mention Cambodians in his tale, and describes them as primitive mercenaries who were also collectors of enemy ears. Hall tells of seeing one "mercenary" with a jar full of ears taken from the corpses of enemy soldiers. Downey stated in his letter that he did see quite a few ears during his time in Vietnam, but that they were all attached to the heads of their owners.
Hall mentions seeing the body of an NVA soldier chained to a tree with a machine gun. According to Hall, the enemy soldier was put there as punishment by his unit where he would be raked with fire by American forces passing through and eventually killed.
"His attempt to ‘lead’ them, according to his own account, is stirring to say the least," responds Downey. "If it had been witnessed by SF personnel, it is Mr. Hall who would have found himself chained to a tree.”
After the story was submitted it was printed in the January/February issue of Behind the Lines. “I should have fact-checked the story before I published it,” said Linderer.
Almost immediately Linderer was besieged with emails and phone calls from the men who had served in B-36. They were incensed at the portrayal of the Cambodians they had served with and said “to label Mr. Hall’s story ‘inaccurate’ is an act of extraordinary kindness.”
Perhaps most offensive to the members of B-36 was what they perceived as a racial slur against the men of the Khmer Serei and Khmer Kron, who are remembered by Downey as being professional soldiers. According to Downey, the Cambodians were extremely well-trained and courageous soldiers who had known war all their lives and were as at home in the jungle as the NVA themselves. In fact, in another issue of BTL Downey wrote a story entitled Mop: A Remembrance, a tribute to one of the Cambodians who served with him. In the forward to Jim Donahue's book Blackjack 33, Downey writes:
To those who served with [the Cambodians], it is always irritating to read accounts of Khmer Kampuchea Krom and Khmer Serei and describe them as bandits and mercenaries. This is simply not true. While itinerant opportunist bands of Khmer Kampuchea Krom did exist, they were no more representative of their people than those individuals that participated in the My Lai atrocities were representative of the average American soldier. Ethnic Cambodians in South Vietnam were soldiers in service to that country of which they were citizens and residents, South Vietnam.
Downey took particular aim at the mention of the candy-filled pockets on one of the troops.
“Certainly a very creative writer, [Hall’s] use of imagery to slur Orientals is excellent. Candy, the universal motivational enticement to children, giving us the image intended; people of small physical stature, child-like, undisciplined, in need of authority. This is a superb use of metaphor – the immediate evocation of strong pervasive image without conscious awareness of it’s [sic] delivery. How many of your readers picked up on it? The lack of courage inherent in Orientals, the yellow-skinned people, hmmm…”
The rest of Downey’s letter was equally strong; ending in part with the statement, “the Americans and Cambodians of Detachment B-36 fought, bled, and died as one. As one. One, then, now, always.”
Linderer sent a copy of Downey’s letter to the Halls as a courtesy before publishing it in the June/July issue of BTL, asking the Halls to respond. The Halls chose not to respond themselves but enlisted the help of Clark Etterman, who had served with Don Hall and was assigned to B-36 for the same two-week period. They asked Etterman to write a letter supporting Hall’s claims, which Etterman sent back to the Halls in early June.
Etterman says that the Halls added to his letter after he sent it to them, and claims that Don Hall spoke to him about it on the phone. “[Hall] just said, ‘I hope it’s alright,’” said Etterman. The copy of the letter that Etterman sent to the Halls simply confirmed Hall's claim that he had served in B-36 with Etterman, and that Etterman himself had seen ears on a string at some point. When these authors read the text of the letter that appeared in BTL Etterman verified that it sounded "pretty close" to what he wrote.
The Halls sent the letter to BTL for publication. Linderer says that the letter was not received in time to appear alongside Downey’s letter. He says he discussed this with the Halls, who were upset that Linderer would not pull the magazine back from the printers to insert the letter.
The Halls claim that Linderer had the letter in time and simply refused to print it, saying that the controversy would be profitable both for the magazine and for the Halls’ book. It is impossible to know which of these scenarios is the truth; however, it is important to note that the letter was not sent by Etterman to the Halls until June 7, 1996, for publication in the June/July issue. Also of note is that in a taped conversation between Hall and Downey, Hall boasts that the controversy generated by the situation resulted in sales for his book; so much so that “Random House had to shut down the website.” This is significant because Hall's book was actually self-published, and Random House had no part in its release. The Halls have never explained what website Don was referring to.
Linderer published Etterman’s letter in the following August/September issue and thought the matter closed. However, the battle was already raging behind the scenes between the Halls and the men of B-36. Don Hall claims that the B-36 veterans, led by Phil Downey and Bernard Newman, threatened the lives of his wife and daughter in emails and by phone. Hall sent us a list of case numbers and the names of detectives working the cases. Through phone calls to the police departments involved neither Heidi or I was able to verify any such cases were ever opened. Hall also said he could send the documentation of the police reports, however no such documentation was provided to us.
People we interviewed at the behest of the Halls with the understanding that they had witnessed or were privy to these threats were unable to confirm anything firsthand; their information on the subject was secondhand from the Halls. Downey denies that any threats were made and states that he only spoke with Hall once by telephone. The conversation was taped by the Halls and Downey provided us with a copy. In it, Downey stated emphatically that the men of B-36 oppose the Halls’ book and its portrayal of their unit, and that they would work to hurt the sales of I Served. There were no threats of physical violence by Downey.
Soon the Halls’ attention expanded from the men of B-36 to Gary Linderer, the executive editor of BTL. The Halls felt that Linderer had purposefully sought to discredit their book, as well as the documentary about F/51st that they were working on. In an email to this author dated July 19, 2005, Annette stated:
“Linderer set out to destroy Don's reputation and I Served in 1996, for reasons we cannot truly fathom, when he used his position as a publisher of a magazine to help B-36 members defame Don in the most egregious way.”
Over the next few years the situation escalated; exacerbated by the closeness of the men in the units involved. Emails were exchanged and passed between many people within the Special Forces Association and the 75th Ranger Regiment Association. Many smaller situations erupted under the umbrella of the Halls’ belief that Linderer, with the help of B-36, had set out to destroy them and their projects.
It all came to a head in 2000, when the Halls threatened to sue Random House and Gary Linderer for copyright infringement.
Les Ervin, a veteran from Hall’s unit (although the two men did not serve at the same time) had submitted a story to Linderer for publication in Linderer’s next book, Phantom Warriors: Book 1, which was a collection of stories from LRP units in Vietnam. Hall told Ervin that he was writing a book on the history of F/51st LRP, and that Ervin should allow his story to be published in Hall’s upcoming book instead of Phantom Warriors. Linderer, on the other hand, encouraged Ervin to submit the story to both authors, as it was his belief that Ervin's story could be told in different books without losing its value. To date, the book that Hall claimed to be writing has not been published. Phantom Warriors: Book 1 was published at the end of 2000 and included Les Ervin's story as previously agreed.
The Halls claim that Ervin rescinded his permission for Linderer to use the story long before the book went to print, and provided us with several handwritten statements by Ervin used in the copyright infringement case. However, Linderer says he contacted Ervin in November after receiving the letter Ervin wrote rescinding permission. Linderer says that he explained to Ervin that his story could be used in both books. According to Linderer, Ervin told him to go ahead and use it then. Linderer gave Ervin the address to Random House in case he wished to submit a photograph to accompany the story. Ervin contacted Random House with a photograph and handwritten note asking that the photograph be included in the Phantom Warriors book. Unfortunately, Ervin submitted the photo too late and the book had already gone to print.
As soon as the book appeared on the shelves, the Halls immediately threatened to file suit against Gary Linderer and Random House for including Les Ervin's story in his book, which the Halls had since copyrighted.
Random House has a standard internal policy of settling any court cases under $50,000, considering them "nuisance lawsuits".
“Random House didn’t want go to court over it because it would have cost them more money than the settlement,” says Linderer, who ended up signing a settlement and agreeing to pull the books off the shelves. "[T]hey would bring them back out again with that story out of them if I settled. It upset me to do it, because I told them I didn’t do anything wrong. But they said it’s cheaper to settle...”
The settlement occurred amidst a flurry of accusations by the Halls that “Linderer and his thugs” were physically threatening both Ervin and the Halls themselves.
With the case concluded, Linderer once again thought that matters with the Halls were closed and once again he thought wrong.
A few months after the fiasco with Random House, the Halls sued both the publisher and Linderer again for breach of contract. The Halls claimed that Linderer had violated the security agreement binding the parties to confidentiality about the amount of the settlement. Linderer countersued and claims that he did not break the terms of the settlement.
Filing the case in their home state of Washington, the Halls forced Linderer to appear in Washington to be deposed by their lawyer. In the deposition, which was 7 hours long, the Halls' attorney asked Linderer about everything from the events of 20 November 1968 to the incident with his commanding officer being injured to Linderer's medals. The lawyer actually spent very little time asking questions relevant to the breach of contract case. Immediately after the deposition the Halls offered to settle with Linderer. The terms of their offer were simply that everyone just go home.
The Halls claim publicly that they were financially unable to continue the lawsuit after Linderer's deposition. Annette Hall explained in an email 3 July 2005:
We did go through interrogatories and depositions (stopping after we got Gary Linderer's deposition because we ran out of money, and because our attorneys were literally committing malpractice and draining us dry with their incompetence and delays in getting paperwork filed in a timely manner.
However, in an email dated 7 February 2005, Hall contradicts his wife's statement and offers what he claims is the real reason to Linderer:
Did you ever really wonder why I decided to drop the case? You know how much I paid in attorney fees for all of that? $2,000.00 it cost me and how about you? Those jerk-off attorneys I had owed me so it cost me very little. I wanted your sworn, under oath statement and [Linderer's attorney] Wishcamper on the record and that's what I got.
In the four years since the lawsuit concluded, the Halls have continued their campaign to draw attention to their accusations against Linderer.
"Everyday I send out twenty packages about your records," writes Hall. The Halls have also created two websites outlining their accusations, linking to selected pages of Linderer's deposition and other documents they find relevant.
They have also threatened to file several more lawsuits against various other veterans including members of the 75th Ranger Regiment Association, the Special Forces Association and Don Hall's own unit, F/51st LRP. On 21 July, these authors were also threatened by phone and email with a lawsuit and public humiliation should we publish the findings of our research. Annette Hall states:
If you both run the story the way it seems you're going to, you will have to face the consequences of your actions. There is much, much more behind the scenes that you are completely unaware of, and which we have no intention of divulging to you. In the long run, if you run the story the way it seems you plan to do, at some point in the future, you will find that your reputation as bloggers has been irreputably[sic] harmed.
[...]
Remember, we have a website, too, and we'll post the information we sent to you over this situation if you do post your story and frame what we've done in any defamatory or even petty way, and color us as merely engaging in a vendetta to destroy Gary Linderer.
Next: The Final Chapter
posted by Kit Jarrell at 15:13
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