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CRIME BEAT
by Paul Davis |
Copyright © 200
8 Paul Davis. All rights reserved.
Green Berets, Cops
and Crooks:
Robin Moore's World of Conflict and Crime
I was truly sorry to learn of Robin Moore’s death in February. Moore, best known for his books The Green Berets and The French Connection, died in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, which is home to Fort Campbell and the U.S. Army’s 5th Special Operations Group. Moore was 82.
As a student of crime and military history since I was a young aspiring writer coming of age in South Philadelphia in the 1960s, I was much taken with The Green Berets when it was published in 1965. Moore’s tale of combat, espionage, intrigue, and some very special soldiers during our early involvement in the Vietnam War further inspired me in my goal to become a writer.
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was 10-years-old. I later asked my mother to buy me a typewriter for Christmas. My father, an electrical lineman, had been severely injured at work and we were going through a tough time financially when I requested what was for our family an exorbitant gift. Despite our serious money problems, I pleaded with my mother and promised her that if I only had a typewriter, I would be a published writer within a year.
I’m not sure how, but my mother managed to purchase an Olivetti Underwood Lettera 32 for me that Christmas – God bless her. (Of course, it took me somewhat longer than a year to become a published writer).
I was 16 when all of the guys from our corner in South Philadelphia went to the Broadway movie theater to see John Wayne in the film version of The Green Berets. Moore’s book had been a best seller in 1965 when most Americans supported the war in Vietnam, but Wayne’s equally pro-American, pro-military and pro-Vietnam War film was released at the height of the American involvement in 1968.
By then violent anti-war protests raged on college campuses and city streets across the country, while pro-military counter-demonstrations sprang up on near-by construction sites. The hawks wanted complete victory in Vietnam, while the doves wanted us to cut and run. Neither side was happy with President Johnson’s limited war of containment and unrealistic rules of engagement. (For the record, the U.S. military never lost a battle in Vietnam over company strength, and when the North Vietnamese invaded the south in 1975 there were no American combat troops there, only support personnel. The communists defeated the South Vietnamese army, not the American army.)
In 1968 the country was divided on the war, and on Wayne’s film. Although most of the reviewers savaged the movie, it was popular with movie fans, including the South Philadelphia crowd that I ran with at the time. Wayne was also a hit with the real Green Berets (in contrast with their displeasure with the silly antics of a later cinematic Green Beret, Rambo). Wayne visited the Green Berets and other servicemen in Vietnam and he publicly supported them. Wayne showed true grit - to use a future John Wayne film title - in making this film in the face of vilification and scorn from liberal Hollywood and the media.
As we sat in the movie theater and watched The Green Berets, my friends and other movie viewers focused primarily on Wayne’s character, Colonel Mike Kirby. Although I was and am a big fan of The Duke, in this film I was much more interested in David Janssen’s character. Janssen character, based in part on Robin Moore, was an anti-war journalist whose view of the war changed when he witnessed communist atrocities first hand alongside the Green Berets. (Moore briefly portrayed a Green Beret in the film).
I slugged my friend sitting next to me when Janssen appeared on the screen at the airport to join up with Wayne and the Green Berets as they shipped out for South Vietnam. I pointed out the pale blue typewriter case with a dark blue wide stripe in the middle that Janssen was carrying. It was my Olivetti Underwood typewriter! My friend thought I was insane, as he did not share, or frankly understand, my enthusiasm for a mere typewriter. But I saw this as a portent of the future.
Although some Americans were willing to go to prison or flee to Canada rather than serve in Vietnam, in 1968 my great fear was that the war would end before I had a chance to get there. My teenage goal was to join the Navy and serve in Vietnam on a river patrol boat, a PBR.
As an unabashed patriot and fierce anti-communist, I was eager to serve my country in Vietnam. As an aspiring writer, I was also eager to gather material. Like Moore and some the other writers I admired, I planned to cover crime and the military as a journalist and a novelist.
I dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Navy on my 17th birthday. I requested duty on a PBR in South Vietnam after completing Boot Camp, and – naturally - instead of being assigned to one of the Navy’s smallest crafts, I was issued orders to report to the USS Kitty Hawk, one of the largest warships in the world.
I was initially disappointed, but I retained fond memories of when my father, who served in the Navy in WWII as a UDT frogman, took me to the Kitty Hawk’s commissioning ceremony at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1961. I recall being overwhelmed by the size and sheer majesty of the new carrier. Nine years later I reported aboard the Kitty Hawk.
My tour of duty on the Kitty Hawk was interesting as the aircraft carrier performed combat operations on "Yankee Station," off the coast of Vietnam in 1970 and 1971. Air combat operations were fast-paced and precarious, and the carrier’s 5,500 men worked long and arduous hours during the two and three month-long line periods off the coast of Vietnam. Thankfully, in between the line periods we sailed to ports-of-call in Hong Kong, Japan and the Philippine Islands. (You can read my short story about Hong Kong, Cat Street, online at www.orchardpressmysteries.com/cat_street.html).
Despite my long hours on watch, I managed to remain a voracious reader. While serving on the carrier I read scores of books, including three of Robin Moore’s books. One book was The Country Team, a novel depicting the group of government officials at a U.S. embassy in Southeast Asia. The team, which included the ambassador, the military advisor and the CIA station chief, assisted the host country fight a communist insurgency. Like The Green Berets, the realistic novel was based on Moore’s reporting in the area. In both books Moore advocated American resistance to communist expansion.
The second Moore book I read on the carrier was The Devil to Pay, Moore’s true tale of an American mercenary involved in the Cuban Revolution. The book, published before The Green Berets, told of the adventures of Jack Youngblood, a Clint Eastwood-type pilot and gunrunner, who helped Castro and his barbudos (bearded ones) overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Youngblood, who unabashedly claimed he would do anything for money - except help a communist - was unaware that Castro would eventually become a communist dictator and an enemy to America.
The third Moore book I read on the carrier was The French Connection: The World’s Most Crucial Narcotics Investigation. The book was a true account of the largest seizure of drugs at the time, which was the early 1960s. Two dedicated New York City detectives, Edward Egan and Salvatore Grosso, initially stumbled upon, investigated and then busted a criminal ring that brought into the country 112 pounds of almost pure heroin. The heroin had a 1960s street value of almost $32,500,000. The criminal ring was headed by Jean Jehan, the director of the world’s largest heroin network at the time, and members and associates of American organized crime.
Having grown up in South Philly – the hub of the Philadelphia-New Jersey organized crime family - I was cognizant of cops, crime and the mob at an early age, so I found The French Connection to be right my alley. Like The Devil to Pay, and all of Moore’s nonfiction books, this book read like a good thriller.
I saw the award-winning film The French Connection in San Diego after the carrier returned home after our Vietnam cruise in late 1971. The film was based on Moore’s book, but the film-makers fictionalized the characters and some events, like the famous car chase under the elevated train. I loved the film as much as the book, and thought - then and now – that it was one of the finest crime films ever made. The film further fueled my desire to become a crime writer.
After I left the Navy, I read several more of Moore’s books, including; The Khaki Mafia (a novel based on the true story of a group of U.S. Army sergeants who ran criminal rackets via the military service clubs during the Vietnam War), Court Martial (a nonfiction book about the trial of the Green Berets charged with murdering a Vietnamese double-agent), The Fifth Estate (a novel about American organized crime), The Moscow Connection (a novel about the Russian Mafia), and many more of his tales of special forces, adventurers, gunrunners, mercenaries, cops and crooks.
Robin Moore was born Robert L. Moore, Jr. in Massachusetts on October 31 – Halloween - in 1925. His father co-founded and built the Sheraton hotel empire and Moore initially worked for the chain, but according to The Boston Globe, Moore always knew he wanted to be a writer.
Moore served in the Army Air Corps as a nose-gunner on a B-17 bomber based in England during WWII when he was 19. He retuned home after the war and attended Harvard University, graduating in 1949. While still a student at Harvard Moore began his writing career by writing a series of articles on post-war Europe for The Globe.
He moved to New York after Harvard and while struggling as a writer, worked first in television and later in advertising for the Sheraton chain. When President Lyndon B. Johnson stayed at the Sheraton Jamaica, Moore replaced the Bible in the room with his book The Devil to Pay.
"Soon after that, his father said you either write books or sell hotel rooms," Moore’s widow Helen told J.M. Lawrence of The Globe.
Married five times, Helen Moore met her husband in Jamaica in 1958 and she married him in June 2005 at a Special Forces convention. His fourth wife, Mary, died in April 2005, after 32 years of marriage with Moore.
"Ernest Hemingway was his hero," his brother John told The Globe. "Hemingway used to write standing up so Robin would write standing up."
Moore’s big break came when he decided to write a book about a little known group of Special Forces soldiers, who would of course become much better known after the publication of Moore’s book, the hit song Moore co-wrote with Barry Sadler, "The Ballad of the Green Berets," and John Wayne’s film.
In the book The Green Berets Moore explained that he originally planned the book to be, through a series of actual incidents, an inside informed view of the almost unknown marvelous undercover work of the Special Forces in Vietnam and countries around the world.
Moore went on to state that it was to be a factual book based on personal experience, firsthand knowledge and observation, naming persons and places. But Moore soon discovered there were major obstacles and disadvantages to the straight reportorial approach. So Moore felt he could present the truth better and more accurately in the form of fiction.
Moore said it would have been impossible to write the book if he had not had Special Forces training, as well as the letters of accreditation from the Defense Department. In the book he recounts how in 1963 he met in the Pentagon with a lean, rugged-looking Major.
"I understand you want to write a book about us,"
"I’d like to, Major," Moore replied.
The Major said good, and then outlined how Moore had to first attend the airborne school at Fort Bragg, and then once he was jump-qualified, he would attend the three-month guerrilla warfare course, making night jumps, swamp exercises, run a couple of miles a day, and get in some hand-to-hand training.
"But I’m thirty seven, almost thirty-eight," Moore blurted. "If I could just get in with the guys, I’m a very good listener," he suggested hopefully.
"We don’t have any short cuts in this business," the major said. "If you really want to understand us, you should be able to go through our training. Then you’ll begin to see what this green beanie means."
And so Moore went to airborne school, and he graduated from the Special Warfare Center. With his letters of accreditation, he landed in Vietnam on January 6, 1964 to begin his six month tour with the Green Berets.
Moore wrote that he was allowed to go into combat all over South Vietnam and although correspondents are traditionally not armed, he never made a move without an automatic rifle, which he claims accounts for the fact that he made it home to write the book.
Moore’s book shines a light on the battles fought by the Special Forces in Vietnam and how their special skills, training and insight into counterinsurgency won them many friends and the respect of their enemies. I’ve reread the book several times over the years and I recommend it not only as an adventure story, but as a history lesson as well.
Moore went on to write other books, including the awful, but best-selling The Happy Hooker, but it was not until 1969 did he write a book that, in my view, matched the excitement and power of The Green Berets.
"The account that follows is a case history of what must qualify as one of the finest police investigations in the annals of United States law enforcement," Robin Moore wrote in his introduction to The French Connection in 1969. "Almost certainly it represents the most crucial single victory to date in the ceaseless, frustrating war against the import of vicious narcotics into our country. Indeed, this investigation, and the information gleaned from it, eventually has led to the progressive breakdown of Mafia investment and proprietorship in the U.S. narcotics market."
Robin Moore and his associate Ed Keys interviewed the principal New York City detectives, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso and the other New York and federal law enforcement officers involved in the major drug case and listened to wiretap recordings. They also went out with Egan, Grosso and other narcotics detectives several nights a week for several months to get a feel for the streets and to understand what it was like for detectives to pursue criminals on the mean streets of New York. The result was a first class true-crime thriller.
The 1971 film based on Moore’s book won five Academy Awards; including Best Picture of the Year, Best Actor for Gene Hackman, Best Director for William Friedkin, Best Screenplay Adaptation for Ernest Tidyman, and Best Editor for Jerry Greenberg.
The film’s gritty and dark documentary-style gave the film a sense of authenticity that matched the book. The film’s soundtrack by Don Ellis was also perfect for setting the film’s suspense, excitement and tension. The film even made surveillance look exciting; especially when the detectives initially follow a suspect driving across the city after a nightclub closes, and when Hackman follows "Frog One" on the subway.
I love the scene when Hackman is standing outside in the cold watching "Frog One" eat in a fine, and warm, restaurant. Scheider brings Hackman a slice of pizza, and holding two cups of coffee, sarcastically asked Hackman "you want the white or the red?" I also love the scene where the two detectives barge into a bar and Hackman announces that "Popeye’s here!" I later learned that all of the black hoodlums in the bar scene were in fact New York cops.
Gene Hackman, as Detective "Popeye" Doyle, a character based on Eddie Egan, and Roy Scheider, as Detective "Buddy" Russo, a character based on Sonny Grosso, gave us a true, brutal portrayal of street cops. My only complaint - which Hackman shared, I’ve read - is that Doyle was portrayed a bit over the top, and he was certifiable at the end of the film. Egan, by all accounts, was an aggressive, blunt cop, but he never killed a federal agent and I don’t think he was quite that racist, vulgar or slovenly.
Egan himself is in the film, playing Doyle and Russo’s boss. I suppose he got a kick out of chewing himself out when he lashes into Hackman’s character. Grosso also has a small part in the film and both Egan and Grosso were hired as technical advisors.
Along with the success of his books and the movie versions, Moore also saw some controversy in his life. In 1986 he pleaded guilty to selling fraudulent literary tax shelters. He was charged with selling his royalty rights to his books to investors at inflated prices based upon unrealistic values.
He was also caught up in a tale of deceit and fraud involving his beloved Green Berets.
In December of 2001, at the age of 76 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he was escorted by Green Berets as he traveled to Afghanistan to research his book The Hunt for bin Laden. Unfortunately, one of his sources and a "lead character" in the book was Jonathan Keith Idema.
According to a long piece in a 2005 issue of The Columbia Journalism Review, Mariah Blake wrote how Idema hood-winked many journalists and news organizations, including Moore, into believing he was an active-duty Green Beret, an undercover spy, and a key player in the hunt for bin Laden.
Blake wrote that Moore had Idema assist him with the book in 2002, not realizing he was expanding his role – known in the book simply as "Jack." Moore began getting e-mails from Green Beret friends, who warned him that Idema was a fraud. Idema was later imprisoned in Afghanistan for running a private prison, and his true story then became public knowledge.
Despite the controversy, and the exaggerations of Idema, The Hunt For bin Laden is still an interesting book, as was Moore’s next book, Hunting Down Saddam. You have to give credit to Moore - who celebrated his 78th birthday in Iraq, interviewing members of the 5th Special Forces Group – he never lost his adventurous spirit or his patriotism.
I read that Moore was working on a memoir when he died and I hope his family will be able to publish it soon. I’d like to read it. I’d also like to read a good biography of Moore, if and when someone writes one.
I like to think of Robin Moore as he was in a photograph I have of him in Vietnam. In the photo he is a slim young man in army jungle fatigues and bush hat, his hands resting on his hips above a sidearm and holster. He appears to be suppressing a smile.
Major General Gary L. Harrell, the deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Command, issued the command statement on Moore’s death on February 22, 2008. He said that all Special Forces Soldiers, past and present, mourn the passing of Robin Moore.
"He was a valued and trusted member of the Special Operations family," Harrell said. "Robin was a devoted advocate and a true ambassador for the ‘Green Beret’ and all they stand for."
"His writings on Special Forces are textbooks for our modern unconventional warriors; they were both educational and inspirational and introduced the world to the "Green Berets," Harrell said. "He will be missed."
Robin Moore led a full and interesting life. Alone and with a variety of co-authors, Moore wrote books about Green Berets, cops and crooks. I highly recommend any and all of them if you have a sense of adventure and a curiosity about world conflict and the world of crime.
His books inspired and entertained millions of readers, and the films based on his books inspired and entertained millions more. Moore inspired several generations of readers who went on to become Green Berets, or chose another form of military service or a career in law enforcement. He also inspired at least one young man to become a writer.
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