Operation Phoenix Warrior

Here is the extraordinary story of a veteran of 26 years of combat with the Navy's most elite special force--the legendary SEALs--including five tours of Vietnam (one in the top-secret PHOENIX program). Walsh's exploits stand alone as the pinnacle of daring and sacrifice in the history of the SEALs.

In 1945, US intelligence officers in Manila discovered that the Japanese had hidden large quantities of gold bullion and other looted treasure in the Philippines. President Truman decided to recover the gold but to keep its riches secret. These, combined with Japanese treasure recovered during the US occupation, and with recovered Nazi loot, would create a worldwide American political action fund to fight communism. This 'Black Gold' gave Washington virtually limitless, unaccountable funds, providing an asset base to reinforce the treasuries of America's allies, to bribe political and military leaders, and to manipulate elections in foreign countries for more than fifty years.

In a gripping memoir that reads like a spy novel, one man recounts his personal experience with Operation Phoenix, the program created to destroy the Vietcong’s shadow government, which thrived in the rural communities of South Vietnam. Stuart A. Herrington was an American intelligence advisor assigned to root out the enemy in the Hau Nghia province. His two-year mission to capture or kill Communist agents operating there was made all the more difficult by local officials who were reluctant to cooperate, villagers who were too scared to talk, and VC who would not go down without a fight. Herrington developed an unexpected but intense identification with the villagers in his jurisdiction–and learned the hard way that experiencing war was profoundly different from philosophizing about it in a seminar room.

Two more people important to the Rourkes face death. The family declares it is time to go on the offense…and so, the hunt for those hunting them begins with a vengeance. Click…click…click. Natalia’s Bali-Song sings as it opens and closes and she and Michael don battle gear once more to fight side by side…to the death if need be. It feels like the old days… when the John Thomas Rourke legend first began. Once again the family is in danger…once again the world is in danger and about to die. Again, the question must be asked…with all of the danger and all of the death…can John Thomas Rourke survive? Like a Phoenix rising from its own ashes, the Rourke story begins again.