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once and so had no fear of death. His injuries meant he might never again function in normal special operations, but Billy wasn’t about to let injury end his lifelong dream of being a soldier. Most soldiers would accept that they had used up their luck, but Billy wanted back in, demonstrating a tenacious pit-bull approach that would be the hallmark of his combat career and scare off others whenever Billy asked for volunteers on missions. It is no surprise that in the future, Billy would take great pride in working alone.
    Despite being barely able to walk, he talked his way into being assigned to a CIA-funded group called Military Assistance Command Vietnam–Special Observation Group (MACV-SOG), and by doing so took the journey from the overt “white” side of military operations to the “black” side of warfare—deniable TOP SECRET–level covert and clandestine operations that were never intended to be revealed to the American public. His knowledge of Special Forces and his eagerness to go into combat got him accepted with friends who put him up in an aircraft to do forward air controlling, observation, and rescue. When the pus stopped oozing out of his legs and they began to mend, he started working on the ground.
    The MACV-SOG was created in 1964 as a clandestine, unconventional warfare joint-operations group working in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Although essentially a military project, the joint military and intelligence program reunited two halves of what used to be combined under the World War II–era OSS. The MACV-SOG combined CIA, Special Forces, mercenaries, counterinsurgents, independent contractors, and private front and legitimate corporations in the war against the North Vietnamese. The joint operations made use of both CIA officers and active military that both funded and directed the actions of hired indigenous paramilitaries. The use of mercenaries provided an element of deniability not allowed uniformed U.S. troops, particularly in countries not considered part of the hostilities, like Cambodia and Laos. MACV-SOG operated until April 30, 1972, and the successor agency, the Strategic Technical Directorate Assistance Team 158, ended all U.S. covert and paramilitary activities in Vietnam on March 12, 1973. At the end, MACV-SOG had comprised approximately two thousand Americans and over eight thousand indigenous troops.
    Private contractors involved in MACV-SOG were typically ex-military retirees hired by the old-boy network, men who had military skills; who knew how to keep quiet; and who could carry out the necessary tasks of hiring and managing mercenary armies. The mercs typically came from indigenous groups and would be hired with CIA money and trained by “sheep dipped” Special Forces teams, meaning active military with security clearance working directly for the CIA. In the 1961 to 1975 secret war in Laos, for example, forty to fifty CIA employees worked with several hundred hired “civilian” (mostly former or serving military) contractors who flew spotter aircraft, ran ground bases, and operated radar stations in civilian clothing. The idea was to wage war using private contractors with logistics and supplies provided by CIA proprietaries—Agency-owned and funded commercial companies. It was warfare conducted by a convoluted web of intelligence officers, paramilitaries, civilian contractors, and the military, all with deniable links and calculated absence of accountability to the American taxpayer. Covert action has always been a dirty business done in faraway places that furthered the aims of American interests.
    Although the CIA’s major focus was against the expansion of postwar Communism, they could not turn the tide in Vietnam. The Agency also began to be attacked on the home front, beginning with Seymour Hersh’s accusation in his December 22, 1975, article that the CIA had been spying on Americans inside the country. President Ford