Charles E. Shelton - Congressional Hearing

COMMITTEE SENSITIVE

Stenographic Transcript of
HEARINGS
Before the
SELECT COMMITTEE ON POW/MIA AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
DEPOSITION OF DAVID E. HENDRIX

Thursday, October 29, 1992
Washington, D. C.

COMMITTEE SENSITIVE

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APPEARANCES--

On behalf of the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs:

JOHN F. ERICKSON, ESQ.
Investigator

COMMITTEE SENSITIVE

DEPOSITION OF DAVID E. HENDRIX

Thursday, October 29, 1992
U.S. Senate
Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs
Washington, D.C.

Deposition of DAVID E. HENDRIX, the witness herein, called for examination by counsel for the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, pursuant to notice, in Room SH-316, Hart Senate Office Building, commencing at 10:20 a.m., on Thursday, October 29, 1992, the witness being duly sworn by RAYMOND HEER, III, CVR, a Notary Public in and for the District of Columbia, and the proceedings being taken down by Stenomask by RAYMOND HEER, III, CVR, and transcribed under his direction.

C 0 N T E N T S

THE WITNESS- DAVID E. HENDRIX
EXAMINATION BY COUNSEL FOR THE SELECT COMMITTEE
By Mr. Erickson
Afternoon Session - Page 50

E X H I B I T S

P R 0 C E E D I N G S

Whereupon,

DAVID E. HENDRIX

the witness herein, was called for examination by counsel for the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs and, having been duly sworn by the Notary Public, was examined and testified as follows:

EXAMINATION BY COUNSEL FOR THE SELECT COMMITTEE

BY MR. ERICKSON:

Q. First of all, Mr. Hendrix, on behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for coming from California and appearing before us today. Let me just go over kind of some ground rules and so that we can have a smooth deposition.

At any time if you want to take a break, it's been my practice to normally go for an hour, hour and a half, take a few minutes break, but at any time prior to that you want a break, just signal.

I'm going to be asking you lots of questions. If there's any question that you don't know the answer to or you don't understand my question, please tell me. I'll try to rephrase it so that you can understand it.

You've been sworn. You're under oath. When the committee reads your transcript, we're going to presume that you've answered truthfully.

You have the right to review your transcript if you want to. It normally takes about a week to be typed up. And you can contact me or Nancy Cuddy and we will mail-it to you or if you've already decided that you like to'review it, I will note that after the deposition and we will mail it to you.

What we ask that you do when you review it is to take a separate piece of paper and write like page 7, line 14, and that way, then that is given back to the court reporting service and the corrections are made, rather than you pen and inking on the transcript.

A. Okay. And I would like one to review please.

Q. I will note that and I would expect it in about 10 days to 2 weeks out in Riverside. I'm going to mark as Exhibit I our authority and rules. Did you receive a copy of this?

A. Yes, I did and I read it.

(The document referred to was marked Hendrix Exhibit No. I for identification.)

BY MR. ERICKSON:

Q. One of the important rules in there is that you have a right to have an attorney present. Since you are appearing without one, I trust you're willing to proceed in this deposition?

A. Yes, that's correct.

Q. Okay. The second is the deposition authorization which is signed by Chairman Bob Kerry and Vice-Chairman Bob Smith. Did you receive a copy of that?

A. Yes.

(The document referred to was marked Hendrix Exhibit No. 2 for identification.)

BY MR. ERICKSON:

Q. And Exhibit No. 3 is notice of a Senate deposition. And you received a copy of that?

A. Yes, I did.

(The document referred to was marked Hendrix Exhibit No. 3 for identification.)

BY MR. ERICKSON:

Q. Do you have any questions of any of these three items that I just gave You?

A. None on those items.

Q. Okay. We've requested that you provide the committee a resume.

A. Yes, I prepared one.

Q. Okay. Let's mark this as Exhibit 4.

(The document referred to was marked Hendrix Exhibit No. 4 for identification.)

BY MR. ERICKSON:

Q. Right now, I'm just going to do some preliminary background questions on you, some of which you've answered. But for the record, it's pretty similar.

A. Okay. Before we go, I would like to make one statement. Since, as a journalist, I do have people and sources who expect me to protect them, I will indeed do it if the time comes up.

Q. Mr. Hendrix, I will ask you if you care to reveal your source to the committee when we get into that and I leave the answer to you.

A. Okay, good.

Q. Would you state for the record your full name?

A. My name is David Earle, E-a-r-l-e, Hendrix.

Q. Are your current address.

A. Current address is XXXX XXXXXXXX, that's spelled XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX in XXXXXXXXXX, California.

Q. And your occupation is what?

A. I am currently an editor.and an assistant metro editor at the Press-Enterprise newspaper in Riverside, California.

Q. And how long have you held your current position?

A. My current position I've held for 4 years.

Q. Would you give us a -- where did you graduate from high school?

A. I graduated from high school at Mt. Diablo High School in Concord, California. That's in north California.

Q. And you received your college degree' from what university?

A. California State University, San Francisco. And that's in San Francisco.

Q. And did you have any military service?

A. Yes. 1 was in the U.S. Air Force from November 1958 to August 1962. And I was a personnel specialist.

Q. And, very briefly, 'where were your duty stations?

A. I had basic training in Texas and then California, Morocco and the State of Washington.

Q. And what rank or grade were you when you got out of the Air Force in 1962?

A. I was discharged as an E-4, an airmail first class.

Q. Have you ever visited the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos?

A. No, I haven't.

Q. When did you first become interested in the POW/MIA issue?

A. While I was acting city editor at the Press-Enterprise in December 1984. And as a matter of fact, I'd like to offer this series of stories that we've done from the Press-Enterprise regarding the POW/MIA situation. And in December, one of my reporters did a feature story about a Father Charles Shelton in Riverside, who said that his dad was a prisoner of war... from Laos. And I had not assigned or authorized this story and I went to work that morning quite upset because I said, there's no such thing as prisoners or war. They're all dead. The U.S. Government would not knowingly leave behind anybody nor would it stop any effort to try and retrieve any, and that this was just a person who couldn't get over the fact that their dad was dead. And he just didn't know what he was talking about.

And I assigned my reporter to do a follow-up because the Press-Enterprise has a very strict attitude about making corrections or setting the record straight if we had to. And I was wondering who we were going to make a correction without embarrassing the priest or the Press-Enterprise saying that there's no such thing as prisoners of war. She came back after 3 hours, worth of checking with various agencies here in Washington, D.C. -- she did this by phone -- and said yes, there is one active duty prisoner of war left. And that is Charles Shelton.

And from my previous experience as a military affairs reporter, I knew that that meant that something as yet was unsolved. I really had not paid any attention to the POW/MIA thing other than reading a few brief news stores about Bo Gritz' adventures in 1981 or 1982. And I put, at that time, that that was off to, you know, somebody who liked to play jungle more than anything else. So when my reporter came back and said, yes, there is this one official prisoner or war left and he's still active duty, Charles Shelton, I said, bingo, let's find out a little bit more. And obviously, since the son, Charles Shelton, Jr., lived in Riverside, he gave us a real specific local tie-in. And we went on from there and just began a series of investigations, first about the Charles Shelton case and then it branched out from there to other POW's and MIA'S.

Q. This group of stories that you gave me, with your permission, I'm just going to mark as one exhibit rather than --

A. Yes, okay. That makes sense.

(The document referred to was marked Hendrix Exhibit No. 5 for identification.)

BY MR. ERICKSON:

Q. Are you planning on referring to any of these or are you familiar enough -- are you going to need them?

A. I will not need them as far as I know. There were probably two stories. I know one specifically that I'll be referring to.

Q. You mentioned that you dispatched one of your reporters to check it out. When did you personally become a little more involved or first interview Father Shelton?

A. Oh, good question. I was acting city editor and when we hired a full-time city editor in February of 1985, my superiors asked me what I wanted as a reward for having endured that position for 5 months. And I said that I wanted to work on the POW/MIA stories that I had directed this reporter to start. So they said fine, you can do that. And it, quite honestly, several months before I interviewed Father Shelton. I interviewed Marian Shelton,, the deceased wife of the POW and most of my initial contact was with her. I think it was like about maybe June, after we had done several stories, before

Q. So this would have been June of 1985?

A. Yes, that's fair.

Q. Just very briefly, what is the circulation of your paper and is it a daily or an evening paper or --

A. It's a daily. We're the 70th largest daily in the United States. The circulation now is about 165,000 daily-

Q. Are you the only daily paper in the Riverside area?

A. In the Riverside County, yes, in the Riverside area.

Q. Okay. What specifically was your impression when you first met Father Shelton on the POW/MIA matter?

A. Do you mind if I answer something else first, so --

Please.

A. Okay. Before then, my involvement or really deepseated interest in the Shelton case began after I talked to Marian Shelton, who committed suicide, I think, in October 1990. But the thing that intrigued me the most was the story that she said that said that her husband, Colonel Shelton, had been rescued by American forces at one time and then had been deliberately returned to his captors.

I found that incredibly hard to believe, but also very intriguing, so I pursued that part of the story with some diligence. And then after 1 found two or three sources, a couple of them military, one former intelligence who said that they had either been briefed that that had happened or that they themselves had seen or knew about reports that that had happened. It gave a lot of emphasis to continue pursuing and following that story and the POW/MIA stories in general.

I first got that information and first found people who would talk about it in 19 -- that was in April of 1985. It was then like, I think, about June of 1985, that I interviewed Charles Shelton and that was for a story. We were just going a next chapter and I think he was talking about either entering the military at that time or you know, he was just another person that I hadn't interviewed and we hadn't done much. Anyway, my thoughts of Charles Shelton, which was your original question, when I first interviewed him, was that, you know, here was a person who had been tremendously effected by his father's loss, that although he tried to and did appear poised that there was a lot underlying there, that he had a deep interest.

He told me that he had tried to get an assignment with his order to be able to go to southeast Asia as a priest, so that he might talk to refugees to get more information. He, at that time, because of the family situation -- Marian Shelton, his mother -- kept track more of the ins and outs of the issue and so Father Charles was, although not on the periphery, was not as deeply as involved as his mother was.

Q. Okay. Let's go back to the story that you just revealed that Marian Shelton talked about, that her husband was rescued by U.S. forces and then turned back over. When is this supposed to have happened?

A. There were two incidents. It's my understanding that, as a matter of fact,.this happened twice. The first might have been somewhere between the 1966 and 1968 time frame and another one in 1971. The one in 1971 is the one with which I'm more familiar. But I can describe the earlier one to some extent.

Q. Let's take them one at a time. Why don't we talk about the first one. And what I'm interested in is -- I trust your source is Marian?

A. She was the initial source of the -- that something like this ever happened. Since then I tracked down other sources.

Q. Was he the only one rescued or was a group of Pow's rescued?

A. Good question. He, in both cases, was rescued with a prison mate by the name of David Hrdlicka. And the spelling of the last name is H-r-d-l-i-c-k-a. Captain Hrdlicka was shot down less than a month after Charles Shelton was, over Laos. And they were kept together, according to CIA reports and according to broadcast reports and other information for a number of years.

The information on the first one, the first rescue attempt, 1966 to 1968 -- and I can give you some names of some sources, some of whom appear in stories I've done about this. In the first case, according to General Secord of Iran Contra fame, General Secord was in Laos at the time and he said that they mounted a rescue effort on behalf of Hrdlicka and a prison mate, which could have, according to reports, only been Charles Shelton. And he was not sure of how successful that was.

According to the'report at that time, some Hmong tribesmen went in, rescued the two, got them out, but then were overtaken by Vietnamese, North Vietnamese regulars and then had to -- the Hmong were dressed up to look like Pathet Lao and rather than get into a fight, Hrdlicka and Shelton were returned.

Q. So there were no U.S. forces involved in-the rescue?

A. Not in the first rescue.

Q. And Secord was not personally involved in the rescue?

A. No, only in the planning, only in information about it, only in saying this would be done and the fact that they were in a cave.

In 1971, it involved U.S. forces. Allegations of that are that Charles and David Hrdlicka again were identified at a specific cave complex in which they were being held, that a Hmong team went in, one of General Vang Pao's teams. They were -- Hrdlicka and Shelton were rescued and met up with a team that also was a mixed team of Americans and special forces and CIA field types.

They then, for 8 to 10 days, tried to evade the Pathet Lao who were chasing to retain Hrdlicka and Shelton. When it was obvious that Shelton and Hrdlicka were slowing people down, there came a major conflict on what to do, rather than have the other Americans who might be even be greater prizes captured, meaning the CIA and special forces people. It was decided, according to people who say that they are familiar with the operation, that Shelton and Hrdlicka would be left on the trail and that the other -- and Shelton and Hrdlicka, Shelton specifically, having the greater say or greater weight, said that they concurred with the decision that they would be left along the trail and the others would be able to escape.

The name of one of the team members, supposedly the only remaining live special forces team member, is a fellow by the name of Jon, J-o-n, Cavaiani-, C-a-v-a-i-a-n-i. I've talked to Jon a couple of times. He denies any knowledge of it. I'm told by other sources, though, that he was directly involved. Jon Cavaiani himself is a medal of honor recipient and he himself was captured and was held prisoner or war from June 1971 until Operation Homecoming.

Q. Well, do you recall what month of 1971 this operation was suoposed to take place?

A. No. I have never been able to get a specific month. There is another person who Marian Shelton guarded very closely as having told her, another source as having told her that -- this source told somebody else that he knew about the -- this rescue operation, either one or both of them, was named Duck Soup. That was allegedly the code name of it. A person who supposedly knows about Operation Duck Soup is a retired 3 star general by the name of Clifford Rees, R-e-e-s. General Rees, in my understanding, lives in Florida at this point.

Q. Was the rescue attempt in 1971 at the same place that the rescue attempt in 1966 to 1968 took place?

A. I don't know. I would doubt it. I think the 1971 rescue was supposed to be in Xiang Kuang Province, which would have been south of where Sheldon and Hrdlicka would have been in 1966, the 1968 time frame. They were in the Sam Neua, N-e-u-a, I think area of Laos.

Q. Do you know, how did the forces get into rescue them in 1971 and what was their plan of escape route; by land, was a helicopter supposed to pick them up at a certain area, or do you know that much in detail?

A. No, no. Good questions, all. of those. I would like to know also.

A. It is my understanding in 1971 that a Hmong team went in first. identified them. Brought them out. Brought them out to a standby American team. It wasn't that the Special Forces weren't gung-ho enough to go in, it was just that the Hmong, being the same indigenous group and with facial characteristics and things like that, could get in faster and easier than the Americans could, than the Caucasians.

Q. Do you find it a little difficult to understand how two people that had been in captivity for 5 years would concur to be left behind, and to go back into the same situation they just left?

A. Well that's only supposition, I understand. But using supposition, I would say that in 1971, you know the Paris peace talks and things had been going on. The war was supposedly winding down, or Viet-namization was going on.It was supposedly only a matter of time until things would be finished.

And also the other supposition is that after being in prison 4 or 5 years, and maybe having a better time of it than earlier on, they, rather than see 10 other people being made to endure the same thing, it might be better just to let them go.

But that is just total supposition. The one thing that I do know, from talking to ex-POW's from Vietnam, is that because of the particular type of incarceration, and many times separation and also the torture, that their allegiance to each other was the greatest thing that they had.

Q. Have you ever interviewed Deiter Dingler?

A. Yes, I have. I interviewed Deiter by phone, several times.

Q. I took Deiter's deposition and read his book. And so I'm somewhat familiar with his experience, and his weakness

A. Yes.

Q. -- and the type of food, and training to escape.

A. That's true. One of the things though, and at least in the first several years, according again to declassified CIA reports and radio intercepts, is that Shelton and Hrdlicka were kept, as a matter of fact, in the Pathet Lao headquarters complex, supposedly. And there are other reports that some of the people who were captured received better rations and better treatment, than did the other prisoners' like Deiter.

Q. When you were talking to Marian Shelton, did you ever ask her, did she ever volunteer, that she was reimbursing or paying people money for this information?

A. No. There was never any indication that I got. I know that Marian, from time to time, would go on trips. And as a matter of fact, she used her husband's salary primarily to pursue this issue. And as a matter of fact, the time that she got most an at me was when, in a 1990 story that I had a reporter do, we disclosed how much a month she was receiving as a wife, from her husband's pay. No, I never --

Q. I believe, and correct me if I misspeak, but when the decision was made, and I mean this not sarcastically, to hold one POW out as a symbol --

A. Yes, that's correct.

Q. She was fortunate in that the law and regulations allowed her to continue to receive a colonels salary, when the others were not.

A. Well, that's true. And the ones, until as far as I know, until they were all declared dead, or whatever in the 1977, 1978, 1979 time frame, when so many people, so many MIA's were, pay and allotment and things were still going into accounts. But Marian Shelton never asked, nor did any member of her family, to be put in this.

And as a matter of fact, the Goverment, my Government as far as I'm concerned, did a travesty to the family when in September 1984, Secretary of the Air Force Vern Orr disclosed at an Air Force Association dinner here in Washington, D.C. that Charles Shelton had been selected as the representative or token POW. And the family had not been notified before that. And Marian Shelton read about it in the November issue of Air Force Magazine. She was never notified beforehand that her U.S. Government had decided to take this gesture.

Q. Did you ever do a story, or did you or any of your reporters that report to you, do a story on why the Government selected Shelton for this?

A. Well, there, yes. we did. And it's in several of the stories, in the batch that I gave you, it mentions that specifically. And from the Air Force's point of view, or the Goverment's point of view, that through the process of elimination of status review hearings, Shelton, it just turned out, happened to be the last case to be reviewed.

But at the time-in 1980, when Marian went to Texas to have her husband's case reviewed and to speak there, there were -- Charles Shelton was the last status review hearing. However, there were seven other, very active, good cases that were still open, that no decision had been made about life or death. And any one of those seven, including Shelton, could have been used as the representative POW.

My personal opinion, and opinion only, is that it was done to, in part because of the knowledge of the Duck Soup thing.

Q. Okay. When did you first meet a Mr. George Leard?

A. Oh, George Russell Leard. I met him first in, it would have been April of 1989. About the 28th or 29th, it was the last part of April.

Q. Well, one of the reasons, Mr. Hendrix, we wanted to take your deposition was your newspaper article in June of -- just a minute -- June 19th, 1992.

A. Yes.

Q. Where you talk about Mr. Leard and his, the program of bringing U.S. POW's back under a new identity program. And why don't we focus, if you will, on how you met him, what he told you, and how you came to read or to write this article. And I trust this article is one that you have enclosed in there?

A. Yes, that's correct, yes. Again, before I do that, I want to introduce, and give to the Senate Committee a copy of a videotape that I've had since 1986. A videotape interview of a fellow by the name of William Adkins, A-d-k-i-n-s. He also is mentioned in that same June 19th, 1992 story. And this was my introduction to the possibility of a new identity program.

Q. Okay, thank you. What I'm going to do with this video, since it's very difficult to attach it to the deposition, I'm going to turn this over to our press secretary, Deborah DeYoung, for review. But if vou want to refer to it in vour testimony here today, we, that's fine.

A. Okay. I came to meet Mr. Leard because of his ex-wife, Mary Jo Pullen-Hughes. The last name is P-u-l-l-e-n, dash, H-u-g-h-e-s, I think. And she now is living in the State of Washington.

I got a call from an MIA wife by the name of Catherine Fanning, from Oklahoma. And she told.me that a woman had called her. The woman was Mary Jo Pullen-Hughes. With a story that her ex-husband had somehow been involved in a program that was reintroducing MIA'S, POW's into the United States under new identities. Normally, I really would have thrown the caller of a note like that, into a large barrel to look at later, at some other time. Except that I had been pursuing at, and looking, and fairly quietly, about this supposed program since 1986. That's why I introduced the tape. So the allegation of such a thing was not brand new. And I had found other cases that supposedly involved such things.

So also Catherine Fanning, knowing her to be a person of sound mind, I called this woman and she was talking about Mary Jo Pullen-Hughes. Mary Jo talks quite fast, and she kind of talks like a scatter-gun effect. So after a long conversation with her, in the fall of 1988, I thought this was worth pursuing. At the time, though, it took some time to get together because I was involved with other projects on the newspaper. And the newspaper didn't want to release me for a long time.

So I got back to Mary Jo in early 1989, I think about February, and said, all of this is well and good about your ex-husband, but this is only this story, or I mean your story, and I need to talk to him, I need to talk to him firsthand. She also, and I had found out, had been trying to give this story, had been calling national media people, congressmen, and attorneys who had been involved in POW-MIA issues for some time.

Q. Excuse me. Had she recently divorced him?

A. No. Their divorce, I think, was in 1982 or 1983. So it had been like a number of years, 5 or 6 years.

Q. Was she in any way vindictive towards him?

A. No, quite the contrary Mary Jo professes to have had many relationships, and has been married more than once. But as a matter of fact, she has, from everything that she has ever talked to me, still has a high regard for George Russell Leard, and thinks of him in romantic terms, as a matter of fact.

Q. Is it, again, we're just talking. Do you find it a little unusual that maybe 5 to 7 years after a perhaps somewhat friendly divorce, that you would be talking about your former husband's past career?

A. well, not if he was involved and did supposedly what he was involved in. And of course I now believe that such a program does exist, or else we would have never done that story.

According to Mary Jo, and I've never confirmed this from Russell Leard, but according to Mary Jo in 1985, or it was sometime in the past that would have been more recent than that, but he said, fine, you go out and find somebody who will listen to the story. You talk about it, and the story being that prisoners of war were returned, and that as a matter of fact more than one person involved with this program was deliberately killed because of their intention to disclose information about it. He supposedly asked her to go out and sound the gong, to be the town crier. And she has done that with faithfulness.

Q. Then this was about 3 years after their divorce?

A. When she was told to go out and find more - -

Q. And I'm not trying to make a big deal about it. It's just --

A. Well let me back up, and let me tell you the time sequence and, as I remember, without going to detailed notes, is that in the 1984-1985 time frame, I think it might have been 1984, is that she -- this is after the divorce -- she saw Russell for a little while. And she asked Russell, what about these guys you were talking about, the prisoners, some who were being brought, some maybe who would never see their families again, or their families would not know about it. And she said, well, arrangements, things are going on. They are being brought out. They are being taken care of. It's not something that their families have to know about. It's not something the Nation needs to know about. They knew what they were getting into when they went overseas, and a lot of other things.

So according to Mary's story now, Mary Jo's story, that left her unsettled and she was upset. She didn't think that that was correct. And so then when she got back together, or met him again -- back together has connotations greater than what we're meaning -- when she saw him again, sometime after that, and it would have to be the 1988 time frame, maybe, I can't tell you exactly, is when he then supposedly said, well, she said something like, well, I'll get H. Ross Perot or I'll-get somebody else.

And he said, well fine, go out and get whoever you want to, and we'll talk to him, to whoever that person is. And I know that she contacted Bill Moyers. I know that she contacted Mr. Waple, an attorney I believe in North Carolina, and other people. And so finally -- well, as a matter of fact, she got to Catherine Fanning by having calling called Dr. Charney in Colorado, after seeing him on TV and saying, I've got information about POW'S. And it went on down the line and finally got to me. And then, again, like I said, it's only because I'd been kind of digging very quietly about this, that it struck a responsive chord.

Q. Did she ever give you a reason why the other people that she contacted over a period of 3 or 4 years never picked it up?

A. A lot of people just kind of thought it was kind of like saying, flying saucers had landed on top of the hill. Quite honestly, I still get that reaction myself when I talk to people, and sometimes my editors who are above me, react that way.

Mr. Waple, I believe it was, went to the expense of either pointing her to Colorado, or Mary Jo went to the East Coast and was interrogated, I think even given a polygraph. But that was because Mr. Waple had also been kind of looking into this issue, because of the allegations made by some other people who were associated with Smith and McIntyre, who had, who he represented.

Q. Okay. Did you ever contact George Russell Leard yourself?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. Do you recall when that was?

A. Yes, I do. And that's, it's partly the product of that, the story is the product of those meetings. When I met Mary Jo,-- in February or so of 1989, I said, we've got to get together, I've got to talk to Mr. Leard myself, otherwise it's no more than hearsay testimony.

And so we made an arrangement, and I went out in April of 1989. I met her. She flew at her own expense from Denver. We met in Las Vegas, which is where George Russell Leard was working at the time, as a newspaper delivery person for the Las Vegas Sun, I believe. Mary Jo and I spent most of the day taking a tour of places where she had lived in Las Vegas, because she lived there in Las Vegas with Russell at the time that they were married. He also had been stationed at Nellis, I believe, which in Leard's last year or two in the Air Force, he was also out of Nellis, in a couple of detachments.

We did that because, for time until he showed up at his job. We tried to find him at his apartment, and called him several times, but he did not, he wasn't home. So about midnight, and again this is late April, he showed up at his work place. And she walked up to him and said, hi, I bet you thought you'd never see me again, or words to that effect. And he said, no, I figured you'd be here. She was open and bright. And he was very, kind of reserved, but certainly not angry or hostile or anything. And she said something like, well, I couldn't bring you Ross Perot, but I brought you, this is Dave Hendrix, he's an editor, or a reporter at the Press Enterprise. And that, she said that I was there because I wanted to talk to him about the program that he was involved in.

I shook his hand. My face-to-face with him at that time was about 30 seconds. He said, well, I've got to go and do work. And then they went off and, she arranged to do the paper route with him. But he would not consent for me to go along. So that kind of left me high and dry. I went back to the hotel room, and stayed until in the morning, when she finished with that. Quite honestly, my speculation at that time was that I was being had, I was being set up, that here was a woman who had a story, who was going to be meeting with this guy, and they were going to get their story straight, and set it together, and then I was going to be talked to the next day. I'm not new to this whole kind of thing. As a matter of fact, 90 percent of my time on this whole issue has been chasing down blind alleys and tossing out information. And so I was kind of upset, but there was really not much I could do about it.

She came back. He supposedly was going to call us like at 10:00 a.m. in the morning, and we were supposed to get together, And he never called. And so I said, so much for that. And so I got in my car and drove back to California. As a matter of fact, I made that trip at my own expense. The paper didn't pay for me.

Q. Was he a retired Air Force?

A. Yes, he's retired Air Force, retired tech sergeant. If you want to stop for a minute?

MR. ERICKSON: Let's go off the record. (Discussion off the record.)

MR. ERICKSON: Let's go back on the record.

THE WITNESS: His service number is 214440305.

MR. ERICKSON: Okay.

THE WITNESS: And he retired, I think it was late 1982, it might have been 1981.

BY MR. ERICKSON:

Q. Do you know how many years they were married, approximately?

A. I think maybe about 18 months. It wasn't, it was a very short marriage, it wasn't terribly long.

Q. Did you ever contact this lady again, or did she contact you?

A. Oh, Mary Jo? Yes. As a matter of fact, I've talked to her as recently as last week. That was not my only time with George Russell Leard, though. If you want to-go back to

Q. Please.

A. Okay. After having, after that trip in April of 1989, April of 1989, 1 was left unsettled. I still hadn't talked to the person I needed to talk to. I, as a matter of fact, then got upset with Mary Jo because she had thought that I should be pursuing things faster than I was pursuing them, at my own pace. She contacted Marian Shelton, and told Marian Shelton that she should go talk to George Russell Leard. Marian Shelton did, one dark night, go to Las Vegas and fly and met George Leard. And Leard had denied having any knowledge at all about POW/MIA's.

Q. This is what Mrs. Shelton told you?

A. Yes, right.

Q. Was this is 1989?

A. Yes, this was in 1989, between April and July. I think it was late June of 1989 that that happened, because I was on vacation. She, after Marian was enticed to make that trip, I decided that I had to go talk to Leard myself, and I had to do it without Mary Jo. I had to do it without attachment. So I talked to my editors. They agreed to send me on that as an assignment, and to pay. And so I took, I went myself. And it was in mid-July of 1989, and I took along with me my military affairs reporter, so that I would have someone as a backup to see that, as-a matter of fact, that I was meeting this person. Also someone of my own to compare notes with, and if I needed some physical support because of a fight or anything else like that, then my military affairs reporter would be a good person.

Q. Prior to taking this trip, did you contact Mr. Leard telling him that you were coming?

A. I wrote him a note, to his address, and telling him that'I wanted to meet with him. That I understood that, if this were true about this program, and all, that he would be under extreme pressure, that I could meet with him confidentially, but at this point that I had enough information that I could use his name in a story if I wanted to, under journalistic code. But that I wanted the information from him. And I got no response from that.

So I just went and met him cold. It was -- by cold I mean without warning him specifically that I was going to be there at that time. And that was a Friday night. And it was late that night. The physical description of this place is, the newspaper loading dock where the newspapers come off of, although there are some spotlights there, it's a rather dark place, and it's in an industrial part of Las Vegas. And it's not a wonderful place. So we got there, my military affairs reporter and 1, and we sat for about 2 hours, 3 hours. We wanted to make sure, I wanted to make sure that I didn't miss 'Russ. He goes, as I understand, by the middle name Russell.

Q. Do you recall what month, and what year this was?

A. In July of 1989.

Q. July 1989.

A. Yes. And I made sure that he was still working. And talked to his supervisors, and people. And since I work around newspapers, I knew who to go to and talk to. And sure enough he showed up, but he was, like I say, about a half an hour late. And I have to say that when I walked up to him, I said, hello, Mr. Leard, my name is Dave Hendrix, do you remember me? And he says, yes I remember you. And it was not, he was not pleased that I was there, from his physical expression, also from his voice inflection, and just his general countenance.

And so I wanted him to talk. And so I started talking very fast, told him specifically why I was there. And I was there to talk to him about this program, supposedly of reintroducing -- I use the word supposedly -- of reintroducing prisoners of war into the United States secretly, so that he and I would know exactly what I was talking about, that we were not talking about two different things. I did not want anyone to come back later, wherever it was, whether it were just he and I together, or in a bar or anyplace else, saying, well I misunderstood. We knew exactly what we were talking about.

The best description that I can give of this conversation is, there was a thrust and parry. Basically, he was saying, why should I tell you this or why should I talk to you. And I was giving every best answer that I could think of why he should disclose certain information. He said, I am not un-American. I am not unpatriotic. I am not going to do anything that will bring about, or try to bring about the downfall of the American Government. in other words, he was not trying to bash a particular political -- he was not anti-Reagan, he was not anti-Bush, he was not anti any particular administration.

He said -- we kept going. I kept saying, well people who are the families, who are still waiting, or the men who may be under this program, have a right to be known. The families have a right to know whether their people are alive or dead. He said, they are dead. And I said, they are dead only on paper. And he says, whether you're dead on paper or you're dead, he says, you're still dead, he says, you know to the rest of the country. Basically, I got very little out of him, except that indeed we were talking about this. We were talking about a program, And he supposedly had information, but he was not going to expose it, at least not at that point. I told him that I was going to be in Las Vegas for days, and I gave him the motel and phone number where Marlowe and I were going to be. I pointed out -- Marlowe is my military affairs reporter. I pointed out Marlowe to him, to let him know that I was there with somebody else,

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