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John Stockwell, who publicly resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1977, accusing it of deceit and illegality, after a career as a covert operative in Vietnam and Africa, died this month in Austin, Texas. He was 88. .... Mr. Stockwell’s break with the C.I.A. — during a period when several former officers published damning exposés of what was informally known as “the Company” — was public and showy. His resignation letter ran in The Washington Post. He wrote a tell-all book, “In Search of Enemies” (1978), which the C.I.A. sought to suppress. He was interviewed on the CBS news...

For decades, young midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy have walked by “Ripley at the Bridge,” a dramatic diorama within the Memorial Hall foyer in Bancroft Hall featuring Marine Capt. John Ripley dangling from a girder over the Cua Viet River.On Thursday, 54 years after his actions in Vietnam that made him an iconic military hero and 18 years after his death in 2008, Ripley was posthumously presented with the Medal of Honor at the White House. Previously awarded the Navy Cross, Ripley’s upgrade to the military’s highest honor was approved by Congress in March, but was awaiting signoff by...

A woman has been fined after fabricating a series of social media posts claiming she encountered ghosts while taking a boat tour in Trang An, one of northern Vietnam’s most popular tourist destinations. On June 9, police in Ninh Binh Province announced an administrative fine of VND7.5 million (USD289) against L.Q.A., a resident of Hanoi, for providing and sharing false and fabricated information that caused public concern and confusion. Authorities said the case stemmed from 37 social media posts that circulated widely online, recounting alleged supernatural and paranormal experiences during a boat trip in Trang An. The posts, published through...

April 30, 2025 marked the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and America’s ultimate defeat in the Vietnam War...Many conservatives supported the Vietnam War because it was a war against communism and a regime supplied and funded by the Soviet Union and Communist China. The American left opposed the war mainly because its members viewed America as the aggressor in the conflict, while praising the revolutionary regime of Ho Chi Minh... There were a few conservative realists who, to their credit, opposed the Vietnam War early on for practical, not ideological, reasons. - Harry Morgenthau - Walter Lippmann -...

According to the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command (PLA STC), the HNLMS De Ruyter (F804) and its embarked helicopter intruded Wednesday over the airspace of the Paracel Islands, an archipelago under the control of Beijing following its violent seizure from Vietnam in the 1970s.The Dutch frigate was forced away from the Paracel Islands using “necessary measures” and was “in accordance with laws and regulations,” Senior Captain Zhai Shichen, spokesperson for the Chinese PLA STC, said in a news release.China controls the Paracel Islands via a network of 20 outposts and support forces from the mainland. Through its artificial island...

SP/4 Jeffrey Haerle was a Morse Intercept Operator (as I was) for the Army Security Agency (ASA) The ASA was the Army's signal intelligence (SIGINT) component. The specific job of the the Morse Intercept Operator in Vietnam was to search for, and copy, the messages sent in morse code, via the shortwave radio band, by enemy forces in order to derive intelligence information and in some cases, to assist in the use of radio direction finding to locate the enemy. Although hardly used today, during the 60s and 70s, morse code was one of the primary means of communication used...

As I watched the daring rescue of the two airmen shot down over Iran in early April 2026, I found myself thinking of John Bagwell. His story, which he shared with me on my True Crime Reporter® podcast, unfolded nearly six decades earlier, but it remains gripping, timely, and no less dramatic. In 1968, Bagwell was a 19-year-old Armed Forces Radio disc jockey in Vietnam. The volunteer from Ardmore, Oklahoma, believed he had landed one of the safest jobs in a war zone. But the Battle of Hue left him wounded and hunted behind enemy lines in the bloodiest fight...

Oh the shame of it all. Last month, 1,300 pro-Palestinian activists from the US and Europe came to the region in the name of peace and social justice to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. Led by the self-declared feminist, antiwar group Code Pink, the demonstrators' plan was to enter Gaza from the Egyptian border at Rafah and deliver "humanitarian aid" to the Hamas terrorist organization. But it was not to be. Led by Code Pink founder and California Democratic fund-raiser Jodie Evans, the demonstrators were not welcomed by Egyptian authorities. Many were surrounded by riot police and...

A Vietnamese factory worker was killed after falling into a giant industrial shredder, with a horrific video showing the moment he was sucked into the machine. Ro Mah J, 34, was standing inside a large container feeding material into the machine just after 6 a.m. Thursday when his tool suddenly got stuck, local outlet Dan Tri reported. He frantically tried to yank his tool out of the shredder before being dragged into the machine at the Chanh Tay Gia Lai Joint Stock Company plant, disappearing out of shot. Seconds later, a spurt of water shot out of the container.

2007—Year of the Lapita? Volume 61 Number 1, January/February 2008 by Mark Rose Polynesian Breakthroughs A Polynesian chicken (Anita Gould) and a Chilean chicken bone (Courtesy Alice Storey) There was no doubt about including in our 2007 Top Ten the discovery that chicken bones from ancient Polynesian sites in Tonga and Samoa and El Arenal, a Chilean site occupied between A.D. 700 and 1390, had identical DNA. The chicken was domesticated in Southeast Asia, but how it arrived in the New World before Europeans arrived was a mystery. Now it seems that Polynesian seafarers brought them, adding to the evidence...

Fifty-one years ago today, April 30, 1975, the last American helicopter lifted off the Saigon embassy roof. We had won. Nixon and Kissinger’s Paris Peace Accords forced the North to recognize South Vietnam’s sovereignty. America promised air power and supplies if they violated it. The ARVN was finally ready to defend itself. Then Watergate. Democrats won huge majorities in 1974. They slashed aid by over 75%, banned any U.S. response to Soviet rearmament of the North, and watched as the Communists violated every agreement. No bullets. No gas. No tires for their Jeeps. South Vietnam collapsed—not from lack of courage,...

Navy Under Secretary Hung Cao has been named acting secretary following the departure of John Phelan. Cao and Phelan are both 2026 Wash100 awardees. Who Is Hung Cao? Cao is a retired U.S. Navy captain who took on the role of under secretary of the Navy in October. The Navy diver previously worked as a vice president and client executive at CACI International, where he supported efforts in areas such as electronic warfare, counter-drone technology and enterprise IT. Cao served in the Navy for 25 years, holding a wide range of leadership positions, including division chief of the Defense Threat...

Goodfellow’s BedfellowsWho’s in Bed with the Washington PostBy Fedora Introduction I. A Radical Education: Boston University and Cambridge-Goddard II. Vietnam Roots: Indochina Resource Center A. Luce at International Voluntary Services B. Luce and Cornell’s Hanoi for Lunch Bunch C. Luce’s Tiger Cages and the Indochina Mobile Education Project D. Luce and Branfman: The COLIFAM Connection E. Luce, Branfman, Winter Soldier, and Project Air War F. The Indochina Resource Center: Branfman, Luce, and Goodfellow G. The IRC and the Indochina Peace Campaign: The Hayden-Fonda Link III. Post-Vietnam Transition: Campaign for a Democratic Foreign Policy and Coalition for a New Foreign and...

Do politicians internalize the consequences of their war-related votes? A new paper published in the Journal of Political Economy finds that they do -- when their family is involved. In “No Kin in the Game: Moral Hazard and War in the U.S. Congress,” authors Eoin F. McGuirk, Nathaniel Hilger, and Nicholas Miller compare conscription-related voting records of members of Congress with and without draft-age sons. They find that legislators with sons eligible for the draft are 7-11 percentage points less likely to vote for conscription than their counterparts with daughters of the same age. The authors compiled a dataset of...

“Country Joe” McDonald, who fronted the band Country Joe and the Fish and became an emblem of the 1960s antiwar counterculture through a prominent appearance at the Woodstock festival, died Saturday at age 84. The singer, born Joseph Allen McDonald, died of Parkinson’s in Berkeley, according to a statement on the group’s social media and reported sources close to his wife. McDonald’s best known song was “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag,” a Vietnam protest song he performed at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. The performance included the infamous call-and-response “Fish Cheer,” which had the audience spelling out the F-word at McDonald’s behest. Born on...

An exploration of Rome's travels in the far east. Get "The Book: The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilization" https://mdsh.io/invictahistory and use code "Invicta" for 10% off.In this history documentary we seek to answer how far to the east did the Romans go? In previous episodes we covered the preceding links between the east and west which had been formed. Now we follow Roman traders into India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, China, and beyond! How Far East Did the Romans Go? (India, Vietnam, China?) DOCUMENTARY | 29:11 Invicta | 1.66M subscribers | 131,135 views | February 1, 2026

American soldiers fighting in Vietnam armed with WWII German MP40s? Sounds ridiculous, but it's absolutely true. One special forces unit used a few old MP40s on operations obtained via the CIA - the famous MACV-SOG. Well, as those of you who have followed this channel for many years will know that I have made a video about this very subject though in the case of German World War II weapons from the perspective of their use by North Vietnam and the VietCong rather than by the Americans. Then I came upon this photograph taken in the mid 1960s in Vietnam,...

China is about to send humanoid robots to work at a busy border with Vietnam. UBTECH Robotics has won a $37 million contract, to deploy its Walker S2 machines there starting this month. The assignment is led by UBTECH Robotics Corp., a Shenzhen-based company that builds full-size humanoid robots for industry and public services. EarthSnap Its engineers focus on embodied intelligence, which is artificial intelligence that controls a physical robot body, so these machines can handle messy, real-world environments. Fangchenggang is a coastal city in Guangxi near the border with Vietnam, where cargo trucks, coaches, and day travelers constantly cycle...

“I approached this bastard and in my hands I had my old Remington Model 11 autoloader crammed with 00 buckshot. Frank Pachmayr had put an extension on the magazine which ran right out to the muzzle and this gave me a reserve of fire which sometimes proved quite advantageous.

According to unconfirmed reports, General Zhang Youxia, China’s vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), sent a company of troops (over a hundred or more) to the government’s Yingxi Hotel in western Beijing on 18 January. Their mission was to arrest Xi Jinping. A few hours before, the Chinese president – alerted by an informant – set in motion countermeasures. Troops under the command of Cao Qi, head of Xi’s Central Guards Bureau, ambushed Zhang’s soldiers. In the ensuing gunfight at Yangxi Hotel, nine guards were reportedly killed along with dozens of Zhang Youxia’s soldiers. Throughout China, military movements have...