Below is the content the e-mail (or
letter, if e-mail addresses couldn’t be obtained) sent in February 2005 to
Operation Homecoming USA board members, entertainers and celebrities appearing
at the event, the media, Internet sites, and to various veterans. Each e-mail
or letter was customized for the recipient in the appropriate areas. [June 17, 2008, note: The Operation Homecoming USA organization founded
and operated by Gary Linderer is now defunct].
-----Original
Message-----
From: Annette@i-served.com
[mailto:annette@i-served.com]
Sent:
Monday, February 14, 2005 8:03 AM
To: xxxx
Cc: Don C.
Hall (F/51st)
Subject:
Disturbing information about Gary Linderer, president of Operation Homecoming
Dear [board
member],
It is my
understanding that you are on the board of directors for the Operation
Homecoming USA organization, which is planning a welcome-home celebration
honoring Vietnam veterans in Branson, MO, this coming June.
We believe
that you and the other board members, and all participants, should know as much
as possible about Gary Linderer, the president of your organization, and a
primary organizer of the event, especially if there is something disturbing
about his background.
A
welcome-home event for Vietnam veterans is a wonderful idea (my husband Don was
a combat soldier in Vietnam from 1967-68), but if one of the main organizers
has a background that if brought to the public eye would bring extremely
negative attention on the event as a whole, and by association, on the Operation
Homecoming organization, on its board of directors, on its entertainers and
celebrities, and on the Branson community as a whole, I think they are entitled
to that information.
We are in
the process of exposing Gary Linderer's true background to a national audience,
so we wanted to give you and the other board members a heads-up. We are also
contacting the booking agents of the celebrities and performers who are
planning to appear at Operation Homecoming.
What do
you think would be the public’s reaction to a soldier who participated in the
cover-up of the attempted murder of his C.O. in Vietnam, and who claims that he
would refuse to answer any questions about who did it, or his part in the
event, even under oath? That is just one of the facts about Gary Linderer, the
President of Operation Homecoming, that the public will be shocked to learn.
There is much more. Because of what we have learned about what Mr. Linderer did
in
Please
visit the link to our web site (below) to read the documentation my husband Don
and I have compiled and posted about Mr. Linderer. If you take the time to read
the documents and other information posted there, you will be better able to
discuss this issue with the other board members:
http://www.i-served.com/GaryLinderer/GaryLinderer_Main.htm [June
17, 2008 note: the original link in the
email was to GaryLinderer_JohnKerry.htm, but since the 2004 election is long
over, that page has been modified to remove all John Kerry references and has
been renamed. The current link is shown so that the reader may have access to
it since it still contains the relevant Gary Linderer information.]
Who we
are:
My husband
Don Hall served honorably in
We have
the support of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, whom we interviewed for our
documentary, and General Fred C. Weyand, who was the former commander of II
Field Force in
We
researched and acquired thousands of pages of documents and hours of motion
picture footage from the National Archives during the course of producing our
two projects. Some of the written records we obtained concern the unit in which
Gary Linderer served. They completely refute much of what he wrote in his books
about his combat patrols. Just as John Kerry did, Gary Linderer has been trying
to profit by rewriting history to manufacture a background for himself that is
at odds with reality.
One of the
most serious refutations concerns what actually occurred on 20 November 1968
when Gary Linderer and his team ambushed and killed what he and his fellow
authors described in their books as an armed group of NVA staff officers and
nurses. What actually happened is that they ambushed and killed a group of
unarmed female rice porters who had been ordered by the VC to carry rice to
them. Village elders from several villages had come to the 101st Airborne
Division to ask for help because a group of about 30 VC had been terrorizing
their three villages, forcing them to provide rice. Just as the terrorists in
The 101st
Airborne Division sent out two 12-man Long Range Patrol "heavy teams"
to locate and ambush the 30 VC. Linderer was on one of those teams. Linderer writes that on 20 November 1968, his
team ambushed and killed the small group (about 8 or 9) of NVA staff officers
and nurses. He writes that later that day, he and his team had to fight off
hundreds of NVA and VC, killing over 200 of them until the ground ran red with
blood and the bodies were stacked high, losing several of their own team
members in the process. Other team members were severely wounded, supposedly as
a result of this battle, including Linderer himself. He claims to have won 2
Purple Hearts for the wounds he suffered that day—one Purple Heart for a wound
to one leg and another Purple Heart for a wound to his other leg. He explains
winning two Silver Stars using the same type of reasoning, i.e., one as a
result of the ambush by his team of the small group of "NVA and VC"
and another for the battle they supposedly fought later that day with the 200+
NVA and VC. The records do not back up any of this. He has no Purple Hearts,
for that day's combat, or for any other combat wounds.
The ambush
of the small group of "armed" "NVA staff officers and
nurses" on the morning of 20 November 1968 was actually an ambush in broad
daylight on a group of unarmed female rice porters from a nearby village, all
of whom were killed, though according to their books, one of the women took
awhile to die. The night before, according to their books, Linderer and the
rest of the 12-main "heavy team" of Lurps (LRPs) of which he was a
part, had let the 30 VC who had been their primary objective go by unmolested.
Instead, the next day, Linderer's 12-man team ambushed the rice-carrying women.
The so-called
battle with hundreds of NVA and VC that Linderer and his fellow authors
describe as having occurred later that day
is supported by nothing in the records kept by the 101st Airborne
division for the entire month of November. If a battle of that size had
actually occurred, and a 12-man Long Range Patrol team had actually fought off
such an onslaught, it would have been big news back in the
Scanned
copies of some of the most pertinent of these records, and other records
concerning Mr. Linderer specifically, are available at the link given on the
previous page. Because of Mr. Linderer's actual record in
Perhaps
the simple truth is that in their fear, Linderer and his team blew their ambush
without first having made sure they were targeting the right people, and then
were horrified when they realized they had ambushed a group of unarmed women.
Perhaps Linderer's unit wanted nothing more than to keep the whole incident
quiet. Only the commanders at that time can tell us what actually went on after
the heavy team was extracted from the field and brought back to the rear. The
act of accidentally ambushing the wrong people could be forgiven if it were
truly an accident, considering that split-second decision-making can mean life
or death to a soldier. Sometimes the decision is the wrong one, but it's
difficult for people who've never been in war to judge such actions if it is
not completely obvious that the soldier was in no danger. Where Linderer and
his fellow authors descended into complete wrongdoing, in our opinion, is when
they began to try to rewrite history and profit from it after they returned
home. This is unforgivable.
My husband
contacted Gary Linderer by email recently and requested that he resign his
position with Operation Homecoming and withdraw quietly from participating in
the events. He also asked him to cease attempting to profit from
Mr.
Linderer also refuses to provide a copy of his DD-214 form, which is telling in
itself. My husband readily provides copies of his.
Following
is a quote from Gary Linderer that appeared in a January 25, 2005, article
titled, "Tribute or Tourism Ploy?", written by Brett Blume, a
reporter for KMOX in St. Louis, MO. The article was about Operation Homecoming
and was posted on the KMOX website.
(http://www.kmox.com/news/article.php?id=15369):
***
"Nobody's
trying to make a profit. Naturally, there's costs incurred for a celebration
like this," says Linderer. "I don't think any city in this country
would give something totally free to that many vets, and pick up the tab for
room and board and everything else. It's just not done."
***
Each
veteran who registers for the event is being charged $100 to participate. $100
x 150,000 = $15,000,000. That's quite a tidy sum. Entertainers and other
celebrities appearing at the event and businesses in Branson will be the
recipients of much of that money. But, we wonder how much of that money Mr.
Linderer will be paid because of his position as president of the Operation
Homecoming organization, which is a 501c3 nonprofit corporation. From what we
know about him from our extensive research into his background, we do not
believe that selfless altruism is a motivating factor for anything he does. He
is a very good self-promoter who has successfully mis-portrayed his record in
Author
Henry Holzer recently wrote a book, Fake Warriors: Identifying, Exposing, and
Punishing Those Who Falsify Their Military Service, which gives excellent
analysis of and insight into the activities and motivations of people like
Linderer. These types of people often manage to make their way up the chain to
become officers of veteran-related organizations. This gives them great
visibility and prestige, something they crave, but which their actual
backgrounds don't justify. Just as John Kerry almost managed to be elected
President of the
My husband
has been trying for years in relative private (i.e., not in the eye of the
general public, only in the Ranger/Special Forces veteran community) to
pressure Mr. Linderer to cease and desist his attempts to profit from his
mis-portrayal of his military record in
Unfortunately,
Mr. Linderer has been building a reputation within the veteran community for
about 15 years, so the officers and many members of organizations such as the
75th Ranger Regiment Association and the Special Forces Association have
refused to investigate the matter thoroughly, and have instead subjected my
husband to scorn and ridicule. They all accuse him of making
Just as
the Swift Boat Vets were viciously attacked by the Left when they brought out
the truth about John Kerry, my husband has been viciously attacked by many of
Linderer's supporters for bringing out the truth about Gary Linderer. They have
done everything in their power to suppress the sales of our documentary and
book, hoping that by doing so, we would be discredited as nonentities and would
be financially unable to fight against Linderer. Linderer's position as a
Random House author has so far given him an umbrella of prestige that insulates
him from the kind of scrutiny his actual history warrants. We believe he was
able to purchase the collusion of a number of veterans from his former unit in
Before we
knew the truth about Mr. Linderer, he had also recommended us to Random House.
We signed a contract with Random House in 1992 for them to publish our book, I
Served, and had received our first advance payment. Within a few months, we
began to have serious doubts about being part of the stable of authors that
Gary Linderer had brought to Owen Lock, the editor who was acquiring
manuscripts of this genre for publication by Random House at that time. The
more my husband got to know Linderer, the more concerned he became. When my
husband realized that Gary Linderer and other authors
It is common
practice for whistle-blowers like my husband to be attacked and vilified by the
person being exposed and by his or her supporters. The whistle-blowers are
often dismissed outright, without a chance to present their evidence. That is
why we have posted the documentation on the web. The public can decide for
themselves what the truth is.
We are
contacting the national media about this and will be posting our message on
blogs and other internet sites. We have been fighting this battle within the
veteran community for over a decade because we did not want this ugly story to
cast a cloud over all Vietnam veterans, but Gary Linderer has prevailed in
fooling people so successfully that he has now become the head of a nationally
recognized Vietnam-veteran-related organization that will be handling
$15,000,000 worth of funds, and which gives him even more national exposure
than he has enjoyed heretofore. He has finally reached a point where his
influence among
If you
have any questions and would like to speak with my husband Don Hall about this,
please feel free to call him at 425-869-7153. [June 17, 2008 note: we have moved, so this number is no longer correct].
Sincerely,
Annette R.
Hall
Executive
Producer of SILENT VICTORY
Co-Author
of I SERVED
www.i-served.com
Back to main Gary Linderer page
Don C.
Hall and Annette R. Hall
Website
created by Annette Hall
September
3, 2004