…a story of how he had ferried a CIA man secretly into Cambodia …
Apocalypse Now wasn’t released in until 1979, so it couldn’t be the basis of Hanoi John’s tale. Could he have been influenced by some of the “veteran’s” tall tales from the Winter Soldier meetings? The phony vets had more - not better, just more - hair raising stories than the real ones.
I encountered such a “vet” in a support group once. He claimed to have been an ex-SEAL (SEAL was just making the grade as heroes for movies at the time) with the year long mission of assassinating AMERICAN Generals in Viet Nam on orders from Washington. According to him he killed literally dozens. His problem was - other than we would have run out of Generals - that he kept confusing the names of providences and villages. The names would change with the telling. What ever name was in the news or the latest Hollywood release he used.
He wasn't with us long.
Yeah, but the story about ferrying a CIA guy into Cambodia was a nuance that was introduced in the '90s, before that it was just searing memories of being shot at. Remember the story seems to have evolved over the years.