Its not often when I wake up to check email and find something from the Secret Service lurking at the InBox. On short notice we were asked to attend a Reception with VPOTUS to commemorate one of the bombings that occurred in Beirut, Lebanon. Had it not been for the tireless efforts of Jeff Hamman, editor and historian for all things Beirut related, the event would have been diminished to little more than a hand full of people and a cup of coffee. Because of his relentless efforts to organize and be the liaison between the White House and those within the Beirut Community, it turned out to be something very special. We all owe him our humble thanks for a job well done.
You can see more about the ceremony held in the very heart of the Corps at 8th and I … HERE
I stopped by the TAH Bunker to get the proper clearances and check on my Lapua. I was detained on the front porch for a time, but using the Soviet as the effective distraction that she can be, I seen my opportunity and crept inside the compound. It might have been coincidence, but some Army guy kept putting himself between me and the Gun Vault. Gun Nutz…they get all territorial over the smallest of things. In any event, the TAH compound is all secure and may only be missing a little ammo. I have to say there is a Goddess withing those walls, Jonn married up. Her warmth and humor almost make it unnoticeable that Jonn has locked up all the valuables when I visit. I am always welcome at the TAH Compound…as long as I bring the Soviet with me.
I don’t want to describe the actual ceremony too much because there are plenty of links to other, less informed media outlets than TAH for that stuff. What none of those other News organizations know is what we are here for. To the right of VP Pence in the picture above is Morris Dorsey and his wife. He is one of the very few Marines with two Purple Hearts from Beirut that are alive to talk about it. The last time some of the people in that picture seen Morris Dorsey he was being carried out of the largest Non-Nuclear explosion on Earth and one of the few survivors.
VP Pence went out of his way to recognize Dorsey’s service and sacrifice to this country. Words can not describe the joy I felt watching Dorsey get the long overdue recognition he deserves. We had a ball at 8th and I. Both of our spousal units brought Bail money on the trip and neither of us needed a dime. I used the crapper in the Commandants house…and he didn’t seem to mind at all.
The Soviet got her own escort of course, I was pushed aside and left to find my own way around. I tried to get this nice looking WM Captain to walk with me but she said if I didn’t stop stalking her she had no problem beating my old ass.
Then this guy showed up. He seemed to like her. I asked if she knew who he was…she said “Some guy, he seems nice”.
VP Pence invited us to his office. I was told not to touch anything, but of course the Soviet could do whatever she wanted.
The drawer actually does have the former VP’s signatures in it. Rumor has it that at some point we must have had a VP named, Jonn “Lapua” Lilyea. I can neither confirm or deny this.
The Secret Service unlocked the Balcony overlooking the West Wing, probably just because I was there. She was kind enough to take a picture with some old guy.
Zoya proving that Melania is not the only one that knows how to make an entrance.
In the end, VP came over and shook the Soviets hand and said, “Thank you for coming”. He then shook my hand and said, “Thank you for bringing her”. That’s pretty much the same thing Jonn said when we left the TAH Compound. Come to think of it…I hear that a lot.
Traffic in DC being what it is…I tried to borrow a car to get out of town. The guys with the guns said that was probably not a good idea.
Outstanding Dave. Thank you for this.
Excellent report. BZ
Especially on The Soviet keeping your tail out of jail.
The addition of the pictures of the Soviet adds visual appeal to the story.
Honestly, glad you got to attend this. A welcome recognition of the sacrifices made.
Well done, Dave.
Semper Fi.
Proof of Russians in and around our Government! I hope Hilary doesn’t recommend suicide for . LMAO!
She likes you, when you come here she puts out the good toilet paper. Jonn said I could use the woods behind the house.
…never gonna get that Lapua, not even if you kidnap it when you think no one is looking.
Now the Russians are marrying veterans to gain access to the Washington and TAH elite! Infiltration is everywhere.
Great post, Dave.
Dave, I don’t suppose that you saw William “Billy Boy” Blake around the ceremony. He probably had “prior commitments”, that he just couldn’t break.
Oh man, I laughed way to hard reading this. Well done Dave.
Oh that’s you Dave?
I thought you were the one standing front and center with the big Boobs.
/well you said dark and handsome.
😀
Yeah, that was pretty much as far as I got…….
Me too.
(*)(*)
Dave, I don’t know you so I figure you are the tall, dark, handsome guy to the right of the VP. Nice photo.
Represent!
Outstanding 🙂
Dave, what exactly were you contemplating in the group photo, with your eyes closed. The WM Captain?…
My eyes are not closed…thats my “Be Happy” look.
Speaking of marrying up….
Nice job Dave. Did she write this for you? Or did she just decipher it from your crayons….
I have been lurking on this site for a long time and seen you refer to your wife as “the Soviet”
She is indeed very pretty and stylish
Good for you!
Wow Dave, you and your Household Soviet get around, she DOES keep you out of trouble!
Good job, DH.
I’m still pretty disgruntled over why Reagan didn’t do anything about this.
Those dogs murdered a bunch of American Marines, and that I can tell, not one stinking thing was done about it.
At least now, the survivors got some recognition. So again, well done!
Thanks for the After Action Report, Dave. And, I agree with other posters, you definitely married up.
Wow, Dave…you did well..it was indeed a pleasure reading this…and it had pictures!
Are you sure you are not a famous writer operating under a pseudonym? Such wit..😉
A big Thank You to you and your lovely Bride for honoring our brave Marines who were in Beirut on that day. Salute.
Speaking of pictures: Thank you for sharing the one of the rescue of Morris Dorsey. The picture said it all: Brotherhood, Camaraderie and Teamwork trumps race, ethnic groups or gender.
Like your Power Tie. 😎
Did Keith Hall make the trip?
For those who ask, who is Keith Hall..
Heroes Under Fire: Captain Crunch
A former Marine heads to Beirut to discover who was behind the 1983 bombing that decimated the U.S. Embassy.
When the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was decimated by a car bomb in 1983, it was not just a symbolic strike against America. Someone deliberately targeted those they believed were calling the shots in this volatile region–the CIA. Nearly the entire Middle East CIA Station was wiped out. The agency called on “Captain Crunch” Keith Hall, a former Marine who was one of the CIA’s best men in the field. Keith arrived in Beirut with the full resources of a battered agency behind him–and a difficult mission in front.
Bill Wagner, the former CIA agent, remembers going to the Agency’s
three-week interrogation course at “The Farm,” in Williamsburg, Virginia, in
1970. Until it was shut down, a few years later, it was considered the
Agency’s “premier course,” Wagner says, and only the best recruits were
invited to take it. “To say you had been through it was a real feather in
your cap.”
Volunteers played the role of captives in return for guaranteed space in a
future session of the coveted course. They were deprived of sleep, kept
doused with water in cold rooms, forced to sit or stand in uncomfortable
positions for long periods, isolated from sunlight and social contacts,
given food deliberately made unappetizing (oversalted, for instance, or
tainted with a green dye), and subjected to mock executions. At least 10
percent of the volunteers dropped out, even though they knew it was just a
training exercise. Wagner says that many of those who had served as victims
later refused to take the course and victimize others. “They lost their
stomach for it,” he says.
Several years after Wagner took the course, he says, the Agency dropped it
entirely. The scandals of the Nixon years put the CIA under unprecedented
scrutiny. Over the next three decades spying schools and most
human-intelligence networks were gradually dismantled. The United States
itself was losing its stomach for hands-on intelligence gathering-and with
it, interrogation.
obody experienced the effects of this shift more dramatically than Keith
Hall, who earned the nickname Captain Crunch before he lost his job as a CIA
agent. Now he describes himself as “a poster child for political
correctness.” He is a pugnacious brick of a man, who at age fifty-two is
just a thicker (especially in the middle) version of the young man who
joined the Marines thirty years ago. After his discharge he earned a
master’s degree in history and international relations; he took a job as a
police officer, because he craved a more physical brand of excitement than
academia had to offer. His nickname comes from this craving.
The CIA hired Hall immediately after he applied, in 1979, because of his
relatively rare combination of academic and real-world credentials. He was
routed into the Investigation and Analysis Directorate, where he became one
of the Agency’s covert operators, a relatively small group (“about
forty-eight guys, total,” Hall says) known as the “knuckle-draggers.” Most
CIA agents, especially by the 1980s, were just deskmen.
Hall preferred traveling, training, and blowing things up, even though he
felt that the rest of the Agency looked down its patrician nose at guys like
him. When the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed, on April 18, 1983, eight of
the seventeen Americans killed were CIA employees. There were going to be
plenty of official investigations, but the Agency wanted one of its own.
Hall was selected to carry it out.
“They flew me to Langley on one of their private planes, and delivered me to
the seventh floor,” he says. “They told me, ‘We want you to go to Beirut and
find out who blew up the embassy and how they did it. The President himself
is going to be reading your cables. There is going to be some retribution
here.'”
Hall was honored, and excited. This was a mission of singular purpose, of
the highest priority, and he knew he was expected to get results. Having
been a police officer and a Marine, he knew that the official investigations
had to build a case that might someday stand up in court. His goal was not
to build a case but just to find out who did it.
He slept on rooftops in Beirut, changing the location every two nights. It
was a dangerous time to be an American-especially a CIA officer-there, and
Hall kept moving. He worked with the Lebanese Special Security Force, and
set up a computer in the police building.
Hall says he took part without hesitation in brutal questioning by the
Lebanese, during which suspects were beaten with clubs and rubber hoses or
wired up to electrical generators and doused with water. Such methods
eventually led him to the suspected “paymaster” of the embassy bombing, a
man named Elias Nimr. “He was our biggest catch,” Hall says-a man with
powerful connections. “When I told the Lebanese Minister of Defense, I
watched the blood drain out of his face.”
Nimr was a fat, pampered-looking twenty-eight-year-old, used to living the
good life, a young man of wealth, leisure, and power. He came to the police
building wearing slacks, a shiny sport shirt, and Gucci shoes. He had a
small, well-trimmed moustache at the center of his soft, round face, and
wore gold on his neck, wrists, and fingers. When he was marched into the
building, Hall says, some of the officers “tried to melt into the shadows”
for fear of eventual retribution. Nimr was nonchalant and smirking in his
initial interview, convinced that when word got back to his family and
connections, he would promptly be released.
When Hall got a chance to talk to him, he set out to disabuse Nimr. “I’m an
American intelligence officer,” he said. “You really didn’t think that you
were going to blow up our embassy and we wouldn’t do anything about it, did
you? You really should be looking inside yourself and telling yourself that
it’s a good idea to talk to me. The best way to go is to be civilized … I
know you think you are going to walk right out of here in a few minutes.
That’s not going to happen. You’re mine. I’m the one who will make the
decisions about what happens to you. The only thing that will save your ass
is to cooperate.” Nimr smiled at him dismissively.
The next time they met, Nimr wasn’t in such good shape. In this case his
connections were failing him. No one had roughed him up, but he had been
kept standing for two days. Hall placed him in a straight-backed metal
chair, with hot floodlights in his face. The agent sat behind the light, so
that Nimr couldn’t see him. Nimr wasn’t as cocky, but he was still silent.
At the third interrogation session, Hall says, he kicked Nimr out of his
chair. It was the first time anyone had physically abused him, and he seemed
stunned. He just stared at Hall. He hadn’t eaten since his arrest, four days
earlier. But he still had nothing to say.
“I sent him back to his cell, had water poured over him again and again
while he sat under a big fan, kept him freezing for about twenty-four hours.
He comes back after this, and you can see his mood is changing. He hasn’t
walked out of jail, and it’s beginning to dawn on him that no one is going
to spring him.”
Over the next ten days Hall kept up the pressure. During the questioning
sessions he again kicked Nimr out of his chair, and both he and the Lebanese
captain involved cracked him occasionally across the shins with a wooden
bat. Finally Nimr broke. According to Hall, he explained his role in the
bombing, and in the assassination of Lebanon’s President. He explained that
Syrian intelligence agents had been behind the plan. (Not everyone in the
CIA agrees with Hall’s interpretation.)
Soon afterwards Nimr died in his cell. Hall was back in Washington when he
heard the news. He assumed that Nimr had been killed to prevent him from
testifying and naming others involved in the plot. Armed with tapes of
Nimr’s confession, Hall felt he had accomplished his mission; but several
months after finishing his report he was fired. As he understood it, word
had leaked out about torture sessions conducted by a CIA agent, and the U.S.
government was embarrassed.
None of the men charged was ever prosecuted for the bombing. Hall believes
that the United States may have paid dearly for backing away from his
investigation and letting the matter drop. William Buckley, who was Hall’s
station chief, was subsequently kidnapped, tortured, and killed. He was
among fourteen Western civilians kidnapped in Beirut in 1984. In October of
the previous year, 241 American servicemen were killed in the bombing of
their barracks at the Beirut airport. Some analysts believe that all these
atrocities were committed by the same group, the one Hall believes he
unearthed in his investigation. Still bitter about it nineteen years later,
Hall says, “No one was punished for it, except me!”
Hall sees the loss of his career as dramatic proof that the CIA sold out to
the “tree huggers” two decades ago, and points with scorn to a directive
from President Bill Clinton that effectively barred intelligence agents from
doing business with unsavory characters. The full-scale U.S. retreat from
the uglier side of espionage is well documented-but has, by all accounts,
been sharply reversed in the aftermath of 9/11.
Keiths Dad was a Marine and WWII POW Taken on Corregidor Claude Beryl Hall endearingly known as “CB” or Beryl. Keith was a Marine officer NAM Era (not in country) and Keith son Keith Jr. is a Marine who was part of Gulf War 1 who now, like his Dad was, LEO. Honorable family, dishonorable what happened to Keith. The documentary on Hero’s Under Fire was mainly narrated by Carlton Sherwood (NAMVet Marine) who also put together the anti John Kerry flick Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal.
Let me quote from the old NavySEALs forums:
ForceRecon79 wrote:
A few days ago thier was an episode of “Heroes Under Fire” on the history channel, which depicted the actions of an unsung hero named Keith Hall.
Hall was sent to Bierut by the CIA’s paramilitary division to investigate the 1983 Beirut bombing of the US Embassy. Hall (a former Marine) managed to survive in the hell hole of Beirut, and tied the embassy bombing to Iran, the PLO and the scum of Hezbollah. After risking his life for this country he returned to CIA headquarters. CIA headquarters then proceeded to tell Keith that no one in the CIA or Reagan administration was willing to take action against Hezbollah or Iran. Keith was then actually investigated for the rough interrogation tactics he used against the bombing suspects in Lebanon, and was then fired by the CIA.
Every current and former Marine, especially those who have served in Force Recon, is well aware of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that occured in late 1983. Kieth Hall had provided the CIA with intel that could have led to the prevention of this horrible attack, if only the CIA had followed up on it.
This is one of the most disgracefull episodes in CIA and American history. The fact that America did nothing to prevent this bombing, and then did nothing to avenge the embassy and Marine barracks bombing is an unjustifiable act of cowardice from a country that has spawned the greatest and most potent military in history. As someone who is thinking of joining the CIA, I can only pray that since 9/11 the CIA has grown some balls and is now willing to do whatever it takes to kill the terrorists who threaten us. The CIA role in afghanistan is certainly promising, but more needs to be done.
As for Keith Hall, this man was treated disgracefully by an agency and a nation he served so honorably, I can only hope that this program will serve to let Americans know that thier are people like him (and other like former Marine Commander Bill Cowan) who are America’s greatest asset. It is good that Kieth’s story is being told perhaps now he will be granted the respect and admiration that he so much deserves.
What actually happened during Beirut is one of the most misunderstood and untold stories of Military history.
I wanted to do an article about the Commemoration and my trip. Maybe one day I will finally publish my account of events.
We were initially sent as peace keepers, what we experienced was the birth of State sponsored terrorism funded by Iran.
Keith and many others tried to do what needed to be done…I doubt most people really want to know the ugly truth.
Amen. What isn’t known is what happened to Keith ex post facto his BS firing.
I look forward to reading your published account one day…
https://vimeo.com/41727996
What a great read.
And that smile. In every photo.
I think the word is “disarming”
The Soviet certainly carries on the tradition of beautiful, classy Russian women.
I was lucky enough to befriend a couple young ladies from Russia back when I finally got my degree from Miami U. about 15 years ago. Charming.
It was an honor to be present at the ceremony and once in a lifetime opportunity. It was amazing and touching to see the veterans and their families being recognized and remembered. Thank you Dave Hardin for bringing me along. Now I know I haven’t been putting up with you for all these years for nothing!
Well, I only put up with you because people let me into places when you are around that would normally lock the door on me.
You only hang around because I am pretty.
Look as I might, I could not find a single “tall, dark, and handsome” guy in that entire picture. That’s because I was not there. That’s because you are all unlucky enough that I was not in Beirut with you.
HOWEVER!!
“The Soviet” as you call her, is one of the most loverly ladies I have ever seen, and it makes me wonder just how much vodka you had to pump into her to convince her you were marriage material.
However much it was; I salute you !!!
Looks like it was a memorable day. You guys deserve it. Far too many have forgotten, or have never been taught about that awful time in our history.
For the 241, I say; Rest Ye Well, my brothers. God give ye peace everlasting. May light eternal shine upon thee, and God’s Holy Grace guide thee forevermore.