Ever watch a spy/action/thriller movie and somebody says "Terminate. With extreme prejudice."

Here's where that comes from.

It's the summer of 1967 and the U.S. is getting more and more involved in the civil war in Vietnam. Vietnam is mostly jungle. It does not have a controlled border, and people move freely across the borders between Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Since the U.S. was officially involved in Vietnam and not those other countries, the rebels simply moved their supply lines and bases across the borders, kind of like when you are a kid playing tag and you go to a safe zone and yell "Safe! Can't touch me now!"

Of course, it ain't going to work that way in war, at least any sane war, so the U.S. started bringing special operations forces into the area to track down the enemies and their bases which were in other countries. This, as you can imagine, was Top Secret.

There were three main Green Beret units, Project Delta, Project Sigma, and Project Gamma. Each of these units also had a detachment name. Project Gamma, for instance, was also known as "Detachment B-57"

It sounds very James Bond. But in reality Detachment B-57 was really working more like a city narcotics unit: collecting informants, observing activity, tracking communications, and finding out who was really playing on which team -- which is always especially tough in a civil war.

And they were good. By 1969, one historian says they "had developed into the finest and most productive intelligence-collection operation the United States had in Southeast Asia"

This was because they didn't tell the South Vietnamese anything. There was no chance for leaks. And these guys were professionals. The vast majority of all intelligence on enemy bases and strength in Cambodia came from Detachment B-57.

Until their informants started going dark.

They couldn't figure out what was happening, but they had a pretty good guess: somebody, somewhere was leaking information. So they doubled down on security and started playing counter-intel games. These guys were professionals.

Soon enough, by the Spring of 69 a recon team had pictures of one of their informants talking to a NVA officer. He was the mole.

So they picked him up.

At this point they were in a hell of a mess. They weren't supposed to be in Cambodia in the first place. In the second place they really didn't want anybody else to know anything about their operations. They couldn't turn the guy loose. He knew too much. They couldn't court-martial him. There was no structure for that. They were just out there on their own. Remember: hundreds or perhaps thousands of lives were on the lines. Intelligence is a force-multiplier. That's why it's so critical.

So they whacked him.

They took him out in a boat, shot him twice through the back of the head, weighed him down, and dumped him overboard. They decided to "Terminate with extreme prejudice"

This did not work out so well. For a while, it was fine -- then one of their own guys started worrying about the process they used. Did they really know the guy was guilty? Who were they to make such a decision? He was the guy running that agent. Who's to say that they don't come and whack him too?

So he went to the closest CIA base and asked them to protect him.

Technically the CIA was in charge of these guys, even though they were U.S. Army.

A Green Beret Sargent deciding he's not safe anymore tends to attract attention, and soon enough General Abrams heard about this and ordered anybody that had anything to do with anything arrested.

Now the U.S. Army was committed to prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law these murders/soldiers/killers/patriots -- take your pick. Perhaps all of them apply. This became known as the "Green Beret Affair"

But this was not to be.

The army tried having a trial, but the CIA, citing national security, refused to show up. General Abrams himself, who started the whole thing, was subpoenaed to explain why charges were brought.

He also refused to show up.

So on this day, September 29th, 1969, 47 years ago, the Secretary of the Army announced that all charges had to be dropped.

It's been many decades, and much of the Vietnam War has now been declassified. We know we had teams in surrouding countries. We know we bombed those countries. We know a lot of things that are extremely embarrassing. But even though historians regularly ask, to this day the United States government refuses to declassify anything concerning Detachment B-57, the Green Beret affair, or what exactly happened the night that a crack team of special operators terminated a dangerous and wily double agent with extreme prejudice.