The Truth about Wuhan. Andrew G. Huff. A Puke(TM) Audiobook

Foreword by Jason Bashura, Biodefense and Public Health.
In March 2020, my friend Andrew G. Huff texted me and wanted to talk. He was seeking a letter of recommendation (LoR) to support his readmission to the US Army to help the looming domestic “fight” on what was evolving into the COVID-19 pandemic. An excerpt to my LoR (dated March 30, 2020) states:
When Doctor Huff’s career progressed, I was amazed but not surprised by his work ethic and focus that he and his team were engaged in pertaining to Global Public Health research including, but not limited to, evaluating the impacts that worker absenteeism would have on the food supply in the midst of a pandemic.
And the letter of recommendation concluded with:
The depth and breadth of Andrew’s experience is evident in how he has applied his vast educational foundation. He has simultaneously developed expertise in supply chains, systems engineering, security, and public health, and I believe this overlap in skillset and knowledge will serve him well in this new role. I am thrilled to be able to recommend Doctor Huff for this opportunity, and I am humbled that he asked me to offer this letter of support. Knowing that Doctor Huff would be serving OUR country in this capacity to fight the COVID-19 Pandemic to me is the penultimate opportunity for him to display courage, leadership, experience, and progress in protecting the public’s health and well-being.
Passionate. Tenacious. Fiercely loyal. Patriotic to our country, in every letter of the word.
A forward, big picture thinker. A problem-solving, systems-based, public health, minded, and practically driven freethinker. Observant. Andrew Huff’s character traits and skill sets are unparalleled.
From his early work with the University of Minnesota’s National Center for Food Protection and Defense (NCFPD, recently renamed to the Food Protection and Defense Institute) to his deterministic risk-based work with Sandia National Laboratories, to his academic and public health veterinarian driven pursuits with Michigan State University, to the opportunities that appeared to be promising with EcoHealth Alliance, and now in private enterprising small business, I’ve been fortunate to have been able to learn from, appreciate, observe, and recommend Andrew’s work and spirit to improve tomorrow, based on lessons learned yesterday.
Fast forward nearly two years. Another text from Andrew, one that I’ll never forget, from Friday, November 5, 2021 at 9:27 a.m.:
Good morning Jason. Have someone at the FBI that you can refer me to right now? It’s an emergency.
Now, with good conscience, can any of you honestly say that’s how you want a conversation to begin? Unfortunately, that’s my first memory of the journey that my friend, Andrew Huff, and his family have been on for the last few months.
Donald Rumsfeld once said, and I’ve often repeated in various iterations, among other interesting lines of thinking, “There are unknown unknowns.”
Well, in my mind, now, “there are things that I cannot un-know.” I cannot “forget” the tribulations that Andrew and his family, and community where they live, had, have, and continue to endure since this “escapade” began.
One of my initial responses back to him, after confirming that I’d made a few phone calls and gotten him the contacts that he needed thanks to some trusted colleagues, was asking about his wife and young son. The goosebumps that I get, even today as I write this, thinking about how she felt, and what their little guy will never know about until he’s able to read and understand the overt violations of not only their home and their civil liberties, but also their world as they know it. And why?
Because Andrew Huff knew (and knows) too much. What ensued in the following couple of days not only gave me goosebumps, but also forced me to rethink everything that I’d read, heard, learned, and followed since December 2019 (when, as a public health guy, I was aware of what was going on and hoping it wasn’t going to be as bad as it could be). I had worked in local, county, state, and federal public health in various anti-terrorism capacities and public health preparedness, developing a myriad of “response plans” for everything from community-based smallpox mass vaccination to pandemic influenza readiness to anthrax point of distribution (PODs) to anti-viral distribution plans based on evolving guidance from the CDC’s public health emergency response teams.
How could we have “seen” this coming and not done anything about it?
Why was this research being conducted?
Who was paying for it?
Could it really be the biggest façade in the history of the world?
Put yourself in Andrew’s position, imagine being surveilled by drones, tailed everywhere he went, and then to find out that they were in his house, violating his personal space to listen to who he was talking to, what he was saying, and when. Put yourself in his position, and open your mind to all he has to say in this book.

CHAPTER One.
Both Science and the US Government Are Broken.
During the week of October 25, 2021, I decided to come forward as a material witness and whistleblower related to SARS-CoV-2.
That week my popularity on LinkedIn and Twitter seemed to be taking off, as my followings on both platforms were rapidly increasing.
Before the rapid increase, to say that I was bad at social media platforms was an understatement. Maybe it wasn’t so much that I was bad at social media, but that my personality and style often come across to others as being a jerk or being mean, even though that is not my intent.
I must warn you; I will never win a Miss Congeniality contest.
My directness is due to my desire to get to the point quickly so that we can get the work done and find answers. This is likely a left-over trait that I learned in the military, where there is no time or place for beating around the bush. When there is bad news to be delivered, or if you made a serious mistake, it is best to be honest, concise, and develop a solution rapidly. Then, equally as important as developing a solution, is quickly implementing the solution. Failing fast is the most effective way to move quickly. If you made a bad decision, then you can identify the failure and correct the issue.
I am the soldier you want in your foxhole because I understand the battlefield.
Over time, and as you age, your heuristics and schemas improve from being exposed to different situations, and you become better at predicting the most likely best solution. Consequently, over time you will become better at hypothesizing the best-case solution to a problem or finding the truth. By using this process, and having a healthy dose of skepticism, I discovered, and reveal in this book, the biggest scandal in the history of the United States. I am deeply saddened and angered by the truth, and I am terrified of the direction that our great nation is heading.
This book aims to do what our leaders have failed to do: tell the truth.
During the week of October 25, 2021, I reached out to both Alex Berenson and Doctor Bret Weinstein via email and through social media platforms, and I was able to arrange telephone calls with both. Alex and I had three or four long conversations where I really dished the dirt on EcoHealth Alliance.
Alex seemed to lose interest or had bigger fish to fry after I told him about the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) involvement with my former boss Doctor Peter Daszak, by Peter’s own admission. This was unfortunate because we did not have the opportunity to get to what I felt was the bigger story related to EcoHealth Alliance. Despite the conversation ending abruptly, I really enjoyed speaking with him, as he asked thoughtful, detailed, and astute questions.
Since I can only presume that I am the first and only EcoHealth Alliance employee to come forward, Alex really was interested in the people that work there and their personalities, how I came to my conclusions and assessment of the organization (which changed and became increasingly negative over time). He is an excellent writer and journalist (difficult to find these days due to the suppression of the truth, and those that tell it, by the mainstream media). I look forward to the opportunity to hopefully meet him in person someday.
Later that week, I had two of the most stimulating scientific discussions of my life with Doctor Bret Weinstein and Doctor Jan Jekielek. Shortly after those conversations, the Epoch Times published an article and infographic which stated that EcoHealth Alliance had been working with the CIA.
During the nearly two-hour conversation, we discussed every single aspect of COVID-19. We discussed everything from the failure of the vaccines to how the leaky mRNA vaccines were selecting for increasingly virulent and potentially greater pathogenic strains of COVID. Meaning that through a process of natural selection via reproductive fitness (Darwinian Theory of Evolution) the SARS-CoV-2 virus was becoming more transmissible and less deadly.
Simply, the virus would become more transmissible because when a person is vaccinated with a leaky mRNA vaccine, the strains that match the mRNA vaccine are blocked from reproducing, and the strains in the mRNA-vaccinated person’s body continue to replicate.
Thus, the leaky mRNA vaccines cause the strains circulating within the vaccinated person’s body to spread to other people regardless of the other person’s vaccination status (either being vaccinated or unvaccinated). This is one of many reasons why the United States’ COVID-19 vaccination policy was flawed and was ultimately doomed.
The mRNA vaccine platform stands for modified ribonucleic acid. However, calling the mRNA treatment developed to treat illness due to COVID-19 a vaccine is misleading. In fact, the COVID-19 vaccine is not a vaccine at all, but rather it is a gene therapy. During the time when this book was written in the spring of 2022, it was highly contentious to call the vaccine a gene therapy. Simply stating scientific facts like the COVID “vaccine” is ineffective or stating that the “vaccine” had side effects was reason enough to be banned from social media platforms like LinkedIn (a Microsoft company), Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube (a Google company). In fact, I was banned from both LinkedIn and Facebook in 2021 for somehow violating their terms of service for posting scientific facts.
I only posted facts related to science and public health, and then placed my observations about the mRNA vaccines, associated mRNA vaccine side effects, COVID vaccine effectiveness, and the origin of COVID into the appropriate scientific context.
What happened from 2019 to 2022 was quite astonishing: An outspoken minority of scientists was proven correct related to numerous issues related to COVID. From mRNA “vaccine” effectiveness to the laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2, these scientists were proven correct.
Another glaring example of the minority scientists being proven correct occurred at the World Health Summit in 2021. In 2021, the president of Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division, Stefan Oelrich, stated:
Together with Bill and Melinda Gates we’re working very closely on family planning initiatives. We are really taking that leap [to drive innovation], us as a company, Bayer, in cell and gene therapies. Ultimately the mRNA vaccines are an example for that cell and gene therapy. I always like to say: if we had surveyed two years ago in the public, “would you be willing to take a gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body?”, we probably would have had a 95 percent refusal rate.
This was astonishing because it confirmed several theories that have been labeled as conspiracies. First, that Bill and Melinda Gates were heavily involved with mRNA vaccine strategy and influencing policy. Second, that the mRNA platform is, in fact, a gene therapy. Third, that the tragedy and fear surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic were used to bring the mRNA platform to market, and, if not for the fear related to COVID, the mRNA platform would have not been accepted by the public.
What was well-known by scientists and people watching the COVID story closely was now being stated publicly by one of the leading pharmaceutical company’s executives.
While hearing these truths was great, they conveniently came a little too late for the people that were wrongly labeled as conspiracy theorists by US government employees like Doctor Anthony Fauci.
The US government-sponsored Moderna and Pfizer “vaccine” trials acknowledged that their gene therapy technology had no impact on viral infection or transmission whatsoever, and that the mRNA gene therapy merely conveys to the recipient the ability to produce a spike protein endogenously by the introduction of a synthetic mRNA sequence into their body. The cited, scientifically dense, clinical trial documents from Moderna and Pfizer were not concise or easy for many people to comprehend, so most people did not know that the mRNA jabs were not tested for vaccine effectiveness against transmission. It became painfully clear to everyone when Pfizer executive Janine Small admitted on October 11, 2022 that the COVID vaccine was not tested for transmission.
Operational definitions like how we define a vaccine are incredibly important and are critical to measuring progress, defining success, and making objective comparisons in science. Operational definitions are necessary for honest debate and finding the truth.
Clearly, the mRNA platform is a gene therapy and is not a vaccine as promoted by the United States government and mainstream media, and the operational definition of what is a vaccine is being manipulated by US government officials and by the scientists that receive funding from these government agencies and officials. Obviously, there is a large incentive for people to engage in these types of behaviors.
Since 2020, there have been numerous US government-funded, peer-reviewed scientific publications that have slowly attempted to erode and change the definition of what a vaccine is. These scientists have stated that reducing the severity of the illness is the primary goal of a vaccine, and this redefining of “vaccine” is complete nonsense.
The most troubling of these recent publications are attempting to change how we frame the origin of COVID and the United States government’s response to the pandemic, and were authored by scientists that have significant conflicts of interest with both the origin of COVID and the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA gene therapy platform. The scientists that have received most of the attention are Doctor Ralph Baric, who is a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Doctor Peter Daszak, who is the president of the profitable non-profit organization EcoHealth Alliance, and Doctor Anthony Fauci, the director of a National Institute of Health (NIH) sub-agency, the National Institute of Allergens and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The real question is: why are these prominent scientists attempting to redefine what constitutes a vaccine? The answer is simple: corruption.
These corrupt scientists and government officials have been getting away with these types of behaviors for years.
This is how corruption and the funding model and process in science works.
First, identify and define the problem.
Then, identify which publications and which coauthors will have the most impact on the public discourse.
After the collaborators and target publication are identified, try to arrange a phone call with one of the target publication’s editors to obtain political buy-in before a manuscript is submitted.
Then, socialize the idea with your peers and select peer reviewers that you know for a fact are on your side, support your reasoning, and support your conclusions.
If possible, include coauthors from the project’s sponsors to help present a “diverse” yet unified front.
Submit the manuscript to the publication and wait for reviews.
Once the manuscript is accepted, have your coauthors and subordinates repeat the thesis of the article in other forms of media and other peer-reviewed journals.
This is how scientific consensus and “fact” is established. No research is required. This is exactly how the definition of vaccines is being manipulated. This example is emblematic of how science has become corrupted with the support of US taxpayer funding. This example is representative of what is happening throughout science: corrupt scientists will do or say anything to maintain their funding. In the context of COVID, Doctors Baric, Daszak, and Fauci are attempting to avoid prison for what is discussed later in this book.
In mid-December of 2019, I became aware of the infectious disease outbreak in Wuhan, China. Interestingly, I learned of it via nontraditional means. Typically, I receive emerging infectious disease notifications from a platform called ProMED, which is operated by the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID). The Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED) is:
[A]n internet-based reporting system dedicated to the rapid global dissemination of information on outbreaks of infectious diseases and acute exposures to toxins that affect human health, including those in animals and in plants grown for food or animal feed. Electronic communications enable ProMED to provide up-to-date and reliable news about threats to human, animal, and plant health around the world as quickly as possible.
This is the tool that most epidemiologists and public health officials use to receive notification that there are anomalous health events occurring. While working at EcoHealth Alliance, ISID and ProMED were subcontractors on one of my contracts. I had the great pleasure of working with the legendary Doctors Marjorie Pollack, Larry Madoff, and the late Jack Woodall. Doctor Woodall was an early pioneer, using the internet to rapidly collect and validate health surveillance information related to emerging health threats.
Much to his credit, ProMED has been one of the most impactful health surveillance tools ever created. ProMED relies on infectious disease experts like Marjorie and Jack to identify, analyze, and request information from people physically located near the source of the event. If the people near the source of the event are compromised in some way, or are being censored by the government, then the health surveillance information, also known as the intelligence, collected can be easily manipulated in a variety of ways.
When the health event occurred, where the event occurred, and the characteristics of who is affected can be presented in a manner to intentionally mislead or distort the facts. The first ProMED mail report related to COVID-19 occurred in late December of 2019. By this time, the COVID-19 pandemic had likely been ongoing for at least weeks, if not months.
Despite ProMED’s past demonstrated utility and impact, it seems that the platform may not be as effective in places where speech or communications are restricted by the government. Also, the nature of how we communicate and share information has changed.
Relying on experts to analyze cases and outbreaks is no longer required for some diseases, as machine learning has been successfully used to automate the analysis of infectious disease reporting in digital and written formats.
In the intelligence community, the analysis of digital information to identify early warnings or precursors is also known as signal intelligence (SIGINT) or sometimes communication intelligence (COMINT), depending on the specific context. These are some of the types of technologies or platforms that I designed, built, and refined for an alphabet soup of US government agencies over a period of six years.

Despite the technological advances in identifying infectious disease outbreaks, I first learned of the outbreak in Wuhan, China while cruising through a professional forum structured like Reddit.
In mid-December 2019, one of the forum members claimed that he was from the region and that there was a wide-spread infectious disease outbreak occurring in Wuhan causing thousands of deaths. The claim immediately piqued my interest, and I decided to attempt to validate the claim. First, I checked ProMED, and there were no reports or requests for information (RFI) related to an infectious disease outbreak in Wuhan, China.
Next, I thought of alternative ways to validate the outbreak information, and I recalled a method that I had learned in graduate school. During severe infectious disease outbreaks, bodies need to be rapidly disposed of for numerous health and sanitation reasons. The most common way of disposing of bodies in a dense urban area like Wuhan is cremation of the bodies. There is simply no place to bury the bodies quickly and moving the bodies out of the city creates new exposure risks and requires a new supply chain to be established. It is much easier, safer, and more efficient to burn the bodies.
When human bodies are burned at crematoriums, they release large amounts of fine particulate matter into the air, which can be easily inhaled and caught in the lungs. Particulate matter (PM) comes in all sizes but two of the most common measured by institutions concerned with air quality and pollution are PM 2.5 and PM 10. The number after PM indicates the size of particle in micrometers, and high PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentrations in the air cause numerous respiratory diseases.
For these reasons, PM 2.5 and PM 10 data are collected continuously for numerous large cities or places with air quality concerns globally. Often, these air pollutant data are loaded into and modeled by a type of software called a geographic information system (GIS) so that the dispersion and concentration of the particulate matter can be visualized with a plume dispersion model. You are probably familiar with Google Maps or Google Earth, and these are simple types of GIS platforms that are used for land navigation or simple spatial analyses, and the map layer can be overlaid with other objects or shapes to represent various phenomena like wildfire origins and smoke plumes in the western United States during fire season.
Governments internationally, from small cities to large national organizations like the US and Chinese Environmental Protection Agencies, and from small private companies to large research-focused academic institutions collect PM 2.5 and PM 10 air pollution data. Many of these organizations provide the data for analysis in a GIS or provide an online GIS and plume modeling platform for PM of various sizes.
Since Wuhan, China and eastern China in general have significant air pollution problems, obtaining PM data down to the city block level is not difficult, and many GIS and plume models already exist. So, in mid-December 2019, I analyzed the PM 2.5 data and created a map layer with pinpoints for the crematoriums in and around Wuhan, and I found that the crematoriums were operating in overdrive.
I was shocked, and I immediately started contacting friends and colleagues in my inner circle to share the information that I had learned. In the back of my mind, I knew that EcoHealth Alliance had been performing gain of function work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that fact alone was not enough to draw any conclusions as to the source or cause of the disease at the time.
The thing that was most puzzling to me was why wasn’t the US government sounding the alarm to the public and taking actions to prepare and respond to this terrifying emerging infectious disease threat?!
There have been times when governments have not been transparent about disasters with significant global health related consequences. Classic examples are when the USSR attempted to hide a biological laboratory leak in 1977 that resulted in the re-emergence of the H1N1 pandemic flu strain which killed 700,000 people globally and the explosion and meltdown of the Number 4 nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine that resulted in radioactive fallout being spread across Europe and western Asia, which caused an estimated 200,000 to 985,000 latent deaths due to various types of radiation exposures to the population and environment.
It turns out that SARS-CoV-2, the agent that causes COVID-19, will be added to that list, as will China and my home country the United States of America.

CHAPTER Two.
The Long Path to Enlightenment.
I am making some rather bold claims in this book, and numerous people, including Doctor Peter Daszak, president at EcoHealth Alliance, have claimed that I am “lying about everything.”
I am not lying about anything.
Doctor Daszak is a liar, and I will prove it in this book. I feel that communicating my past is important because I prefer to be up-front and transparent about who and what I am, and I am not a person who glosses over my failures. Those failures are important in shaping the person that I have become, and there is no better way to learn than via failures.
In 1995, my father and I took a trip to Colorado where we made it a point to visit the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. At the time, I was 5’8” and had my eyes set on becoming a fighter pilot. In 1999, I grew six inches in a year to just over 6’4”, and my dreams of being a fighter pilot were dashed. I didn’t complete high school for a myriad of reasons. I had made the decision to complete all my core courses by the end of tenth grade, I had passed all the necessary high school graduation tests and had performed well on the ACT exams.
At the end of tenth grade, all my core competency courses in history, science, math, and English had been completed. The only courses that I had left to complete were elective courses, and I was completely bored with high school. I enrolled and participated in just enough high school coursework to stay active in athletic programs and the social life at school. At the age of sixteen, I had my sights set on college and wanted to leave the K-12 public education system as it spent most of its resources directed at the lowest common denominator of students. Later in life, I learned that a non-trivial number of people that obtain PhDs had similar feelings and conflicts with the public education system.
I wanted to be enrolled in a program called the Post-Secondary Education Option, but my administrator did not believe that I would make it through college and would not approve of me attending college, even though I’d already been accepted to several programs. So, I spent most of my time skipping classes, reading in the library, and focusing on part-time work and athletics.
In the year 2000, I decided to attend Saint Cloud State University (SCSU) in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. The decision was driven by the fact that some of my best friends at the time were attending SCSU and the tuition and cost of living were quite reasonable. Tuition my freshman year was only $2,784 per year, and my half of the rent was only $200 per month. At the time, Saint Cloud State had a reputation as a party school.
Back then, I wasn’t seeking the party atmosphere, but I was not attempting to avoid it either. It seemed at this party school that every night, except Tuesdays and Wednesdays, there was an excuse to drink heavily. Most freshmen drank and flunked their way out of college, never to be seen again on campus. I later learned in life that this is true at most universities regardless of their perceived status as a party school.
I had decided to major in finance and economics, and like most freshmen at SCSU, I developed what I eventually determined was a drinking problem during my freshmen year. I drank essentially every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I also smoked two packs of cigarettes per week on average, which were quite affordable at only three dollars per pack in the early 2000s in Minnesota.
As I observed my friends at school begin to flunk out my freshmen year, I decided to take things more seriously. I was spending way too much time and effort on chasing the opposite sex and drinking.

In early September 2001, my roommates and I were walking on a beautiful sunny fall day to class across campus. We were joking around and making small talk, when a hysterical woman our age ran up behind us and exclaimed that an airplane had just hit the World Trade Center around 8 a.m. Central time. My roommates and I didn’t think much of it and, in my mind, I instantly thought of the building that was struck with a Cessna flown by a deranged man that was upset with the Internal Revenue Service over his taxes.
As the young woman ran past us, we snickered about how crazy she was. As we approached the center of campus, it was eerily quiet, and people were jogging into buildings and were huddling around the latest 1990s bulky and heavy flat screen television technology. As my roommates and I split up to go to different buildings, I had about forty minutes to burn before my first class of the day and decided to walk into the Atwood Memorial Center.
I approached one of the televisions and the building was packed full of people huddled around the brand-new HD televisions. The student hall was so quiet that you could hear the light static from a person walking across the carpet forty feet away. As I walked up to the television and began to watch the smoldering World Trade Center tower, a second passenger jet came into the frame and struck the other tower, bursting into flames.
As the tower was struck, two young women took off crying and ran out of the student center. I began to call and text friends, and the cell phone providers’ networks were overloaded and many of the attempted calls and text messages failed to connect.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing and decided to go home as classes were beginning to be canceled.
I eventually connected with my roommates over the next thirty minutes, and we walked backed to our car. During the brief walk, we discussed what was now obvious: the United States was under attack, and we were entering a new period of war.
The previous year, I had met a close friend at one of the designated party houses near campus jokingly named The Ritz. The Ritz reeked of booze and cleaning solvents and was the kind of place where shoes were required to protect yourself from the filth. This new friend was wild, daring, obnoxious, boisterous, and brilliant. For this book, I will call him “Harry.”
Harry was an infantryman in the Minnesota Army National Guard, which had a rich military history. The Minnesota National Guard participated in several battles throughout the Civil War. In 1861, they were heavily engaged at the First Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. In May 1862, the Minnesota National Guard became part of the First Brigade, Second Division, Second Corps of the Army of the Potomac.
As a part of this Corps, the Minnesota National Guard participated in the Peninsula Campaign, the Seven Days Battle, and Antietam in Maryland where they sustained heavy losses. These battles paled in comparison to the fighting which occurred at Gettysburg, where the First Minnesota was crucial to the future success of the Union Army. During this second day of fighting at Gettysburg, troops of the Minnesota Army National Guard charged the Confederates, securing the Federals’ position on Cemetery Ridge, which was essential to winning the battle.
During the Battle of Gettysburg, the Minnesota Infantry secured Virginia’s Confederate battle flag, and the flag is on display at the Minnesota State Capital Building. The Minnesota National Guard was called to action for both World War I and World War II, where units served globally in most theaters and campaigns, but would not see action again until activated to serve in Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Operation Joint Guardian in Kosovo.
Immediately after September 11, Harry and I spent increasingly more time together, and I often asked him questions about serving in the military. I also enrolled in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) program at SCSU and began physical training and coursework to become an officer. Many of my new friends in Army ROTC were also serving in the Army Reserves or the Army National Guard, which was highly recommended by the ROTC cadre.
While the news cycle was dominated by Al Qaeda terrorists and the counterattack of the terrorists’ home base in Afghanistan authorized by President George W. Bush’s signing of the use of force, I was debating whether I should join the fight. In ROTC, I was exposed to people working in almost every branch of the military, and I decided that if I enlisted in the army, that I wanted to be with my friend Harry and do what I thought was the most brave and difficult job possible, to be an infantryman.
In early 2002, I was introduced to Harry’s Army National Guard recruiter, and I decided to enlist as an infantryman.
In summer 2002, I had filled out all the paperwork and signed the contracts to enlist in the Minnesota Army National Guard as an 11C (pronounced “eleven Charlie”), an indirect fire infantryman. These recruits go through the same infantry basic training school in Fort Benning, Georgia but are split apart from the rest of the company a few weeks from the end of infantry training to receive advanced training in the mortar weapons platforms.
In August 2002, I completed my medical evaluation and the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), where I tested very well and had very high general technical (GT) scores. GT scores are used by the military to determine if an individual has the aptitude for various occupations in the military.
Based on my high scores, the army officer in charge at the military entrance and processing station at Fort Snelling pulled me aside into his office and tried his best to encourage me to switch occupations into aviation or medical, which I politely declined. I wanted the tough job and wanted to serve with my friends. Later that day I was sworn into the military as an infantryman.
Upon being sworn in I was ordered to report to my readiness NCO (non-commissioned officer) at the Headquarters Company Detachment of the I-I94th Armor Battalion as soon as reasonably possible. What makes the Amy National Guard different is that you can begin training with your unit before you complete basic training. This can be a huge advantage to National Guard soldiers entering the military.
After reporting to the readiness NCO, I was provided with the annual drill schedule, selected basic training dates for May 2003, and was issued all my equipment and uniforms at my armory located in Saint Cloud, Minnesota.
At ROTC, I had already learned the basics of being a soldier: Army traditions, values, land navigation, movement, marching, small unit tactics, basic rifle skills and marksmanship, command structure, and operational planning. In my guard unit, I was being taught practical skills and was assigned mostly low-level tasks as a private. Guarding ammunition and weapons systems, preparing ammunition, radio communications, and a healthy amount of cleaning and maintenance of vehicles, weapons, and facilities.
During my first full drill in September 2002, I spent the day with both the scout platoon and the mortar platoon preparing ammunition for crew-served weapons training and testing. The first two days were quite boring, but on the last day both platoons had completed training and testing on several machine gun platforms: the M60 (7.62 mm), 240B (7.62mm), M2 (.50 caliber), and the SAW (5.56mm). The NCO in charge at the firing range communicated that we had two extra pallets of ammunition that had to be expended and that the M60s were to be destroyed; decommissioned and replaced by the 240B.
At the end of National Guard drill weekend, everyone is typically exhausted as the soldiers must complete a month’s worth of active-duty training in a period of only two to four days. Typically, the command gets little sleep discussing the operation and completing administrative duties, and the soldiers have duties non-stop from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m., if everything goes according to plan. This meant that the higher-ranking soldiers were not in any mood for more training.
Since I was the only green soldier who had not been to basic training, I was “asked” if I wanted to shoot and receive training on these weapons systems from the most well-seasoned and disciplined NCOs in my unit. This became one of the most valuable and exciting training days of my life. I had the opportunity to receive one-on-one training, and fire through tens of thousands of rounds on a pop-up range.
I was quickly taught how to clear jams and double feeds on the crew-served weapons. Especially on the M60s as the frequency with which these machine guns jammed was part of the reason that they were being phased out of the military. I learned to fire a six to eight rough burst of fire precisely and reliably into the target, learned how to walk rounds below and into the target, and perform volley fires with a team of machine gunners to maintain a constant rate of suppressing fire during reloads, jams, or tactical movements.
At the end of our training, we fired so many rounds through the M60s in succession that the barrels became so hot that they glowed, became translucent, and began to sag, effectively damaging the M60s beyond repair.
Between August and May 2003, I continued with my course work at SCSU, and my grades were improving across the board.
By the time I attended basic training in the summer of 2003, I had completed most of the training that I would later be taught and had received advanced training in numerous areas like radio communications, night vision and vehicle operations, crew-served weapons like the Mark-19 grenade launcher, and mounted land navigation.
I began collecting every army field or technical manual that I could get my hands on and began reading them all. I was reading instruction manuals on demolition, leadership, tactics, and even field sanitation. In May 2003, I moved all my personal items into temporary storage and shipped off to basic training.
The National Guard is different than active duty in one substantial way: I trained on all the individual and crew-served weapons before attending basic training. This is a huge advantage and makes basic training very boring.
Basic training was exactly what I expected. The only personal problem that I had with infantry school was that I was bored. The classes were being taught at a very basic level, and I understood why the drill instructors needed to spend so much time instructing the recruits on basic tasks. The tasks were dangerous, and small mistakes by anyone in the unit could get everyone killed, even in training.
There were a few other National Guardsmen in my company that were also in ROTC, and we all commiserated together. Numerous people washed out from infantry school, and by my estimation, 20 percent of the recruits were eliminated due to behavior problems, mental health issues, physical injuries, or performance issues. I sustained stress fractures in my feet, a common problem at infantry basic training, which luckily healed a few weeks before graduation. By the end of training, it was impressive to see how much we all improved as individuals and as a team.
By the end of infantry school, you realize that the entire process is a mental game through which you must persevere and excel. The thing that I learned is how unprepared mentally I was before my enlistment. Near the end of training, I realized that the drill instructors had one of the most difficult missions in the military. They had to take hundreds of young boys who were not raised properly by their parents or by society and teach them how to be men.
I was no exception to this and had great admiration for my instructors for what they had to endure from the recruits, and for the wisdom they instilled in each one of us.

CHAPTER Tree.
The Hon.
Near the end of infantry school, our drill instructors changed their behavior and attitude toward the recruits as they now saw us as infantryman.
This included more discussions in which we engaged in dialogue with our instructors, most of whom had been combat deployed as far back as many of the 1980s US military skirmishes in Central America. The instructors directly communicated that we would likely be deployed to the Middle East, as the military engagement in Iraq, of all places, seemed to be escalating by the day. Rivaling militias were fighting for power and control of resources along sectarian and cultural lines.
I felt that the instructors almost viewed us as their children, trying to provide us with the best information and any knowledge that they could that would increase our chances of survival. My company, Bravo 2 of the nineteenth Infantry Regiment, completed infantry basic training in August 2003. Upon graduating, I returned home to Minnesota and promptly re-enrolled in classes at SCSU.
I quickly found an apartment to rent near campus and moved my belongings out of storage and into the apartment with my friend and brother-in-arms Harry. Harry was proud of my graduation from infantry school, and we often discussed military life, tactics, and soldiering. We were both highly competitive and often practiced hand-to-hand combat with each other.
My fighting skills had drastically improved as our bouts often ended in stalemates without the use of makeshift weapons. I attempted to convince Harry to join ROTC, but he did not want to become a political manager and only wanted to be a soldier. There are many people who hold this belief and I understand why.
Being an officer involves much mental planning, writing, and sitting in briefings. As an enlisted soldier, most of the work is focused on training, execution, and the health and welfare of the unit. Officers are also held to a higher behavioral standard, and once you become one, there is less tolerance for wild escapades and hijinks, behavior that is commonplace and is almost a rite of passage among young infantrymen.
Shortly after our September drill weekend, which was typically a live fire drill weekend for the scouts and mortar platoons, I received a phone call from our readiness NCO. He initiated the code conversation indicating that I was being activated for a deployment. I received the call at about 8 p.m. on a weekday night, and Harry was standing in front of me when I answered the phone.
Embarrassingly, I couldn’t remember the challenge password response to say on the telephone, since my heart was pounding, and I had butterflies in my stomach. Despite not recalling the correct challenge phrase, the readiness NCO stated, “According to US Code Title 10 you are hereby being activated for active duty as part of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF),” and I was ordered to immediately report for duty with Harry a few days later.
The readiness NCO paused and asked me, “Do you have any questions?”
I paused, and then I asked, “Where are we going?”
In my mind, there were only two options, Iraq or Afghanistan, and since he said OEF that likely meant Afghanistan.
The readiness NCO began to laugh and stated, “Honduras.”
I replied in shock and confusion, “Honduras? What the hell is in Honduras?”
Harry looked at me, shocked and puzzled.
The readiness NCO chuckled and said, “See you guys in a couple days. It’s a good deployment.”
After I hung up the phone, Harry’s phone rang, and it was the readiness NCO. He still had to contact Harry directly as a formality. It was a quick call and no further information about our activation and deployment was provided.
That weekend we were re-assigned from the Headquarters Company Detachment (HHC-Det) to C-Co 1-194 Armor Battalion. A platoon-sized element was formed for the deployment consisting of about forty men with various training and skillsets.
We were mainly assigned communications, supply, armor (MI Abrams tank crewmen), cavalry scouts, and infantrymen. Our newly assigned first sergeant (E8) came from outside the command and was a military police officer and criminal investigator. That weekend we began our pre-deployment checklist to ensure that we were eligible to deploy.
Unfortunately, Harry had recently had a minor behavioral infraction as a civilian, and he was deemed undeployable. I was told in the same conversation that the reason I was being sent was that I was the highest-achieving, lowest-ranking man in the battalion.
Thanks, I guess?
Both Harry and I were upset that we would not be deploying together. That weekend we were issued official US government passports, which granted us diplomatic immunity, and were also briefed on the lack of a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in the country that we were deploying to, Honduras.
A SOFA is an agreement between the host country and the foreign nation stationing military force in that country. SOFAs are often included, along with other types of military agreements, as part of a comprehensive security arrangement. A SOFA does not constitute a security arrangement; it establishes the rights and privileges of foreign personnel present in a host country in support of the larger security arrangement.
Under international law, a status of forces agreement differs from military occupation. A SOFA is intended to clarify the terms under which the foreign military is allowed to operate. Typically, purely military operational issues such as the locations of bases and access to facilities are covered by separate agreements. A SOFA is more concerned with the legal issues associated with military individuals and property. This may include issues such as entry and exit into the country, tax liabilities, postal services, or employment terms for host-country nationals, but the most contentious issues are civil and criminal jurisdiction over bases and personnel.
For civil matters, SOFAs provide for how civil damages caused by the forces will be determined and paid. Criminal issues vary, but the typical provision in US SOFAs is that US courts will have jurisdiction over crimes committed either by a service member against another service member or by a service member as part of his or her military duty, but the host nation retains jurisdiction over other crimes. In context, this meant that if we were detained by the authorities in Honduras, we would be subject to their legal process and that the US government had no right to intervene.
More simply, if there was an altercation or any legal issue involving US service members, the US government would attempt to extradite us out of the country as fast as possible. I found this to be strange, but I was young, new, and learning, so I kept an open mind.
Despite learning about our precarious position while deployed to Honduras, the command was tight lipped about what we would be doing in Honduras. We received our written orders, and I began the laborious process of withdrawing from courses at SCSU, made plans with my landlord to store my property, and set up automatic payment methods for my bills.
We were first sent to Fort McCoy, which is in the central part of Wisconsin. Fort McCoy was a dump of an army facility. Not that many of the other army facilities that I visited before were much better. We were assigned to living quarters that looked like they were built during World War II, which had very little insulation and winter was rapidly setting in. If there is one thing enlisted soldiers do, it is bitch and complain about whatever the current failings of the army are. We were provided with a two-month training schedule for unknown activities in Central America.
Of note, I was assigned to Combat Lifesaver Training where I was taught numerous advanced medical skills, including administering IVs, inserting breathing tubes, and treating other complex wounds or injuries, like sucking chest wounds. I really enjoyed the additional medical training and took the added responsibility seriously.
Every day someone asked about our mission, and the command would not provide us any information until everyone in the unit received their interim secret security clearances.
Most of the other units at Fort McCoy were deploying to either Iraq or Afghanistan, and the training cadre didn’t really know what to do with a unit deploying to Central America that couldn’t discuss what they would be doing. We went through a mix of the training lanes related to counter insurgency tactics, urban warfare, improvised explosive device response, and suicide bomber interdiction and response among the standard hand-to-hand combat training with knives, rifles, and pistols.
Additionally, our first sergeant taught us about law enforcement skills, military law enforcement and process, and criminal investigation, all of which would come in handy later in my life. We learned how to preserve, document, and collect evidence for criminal investigations and interview suspects to obtain information and intelligence which could be used for a wide variety of purposes.
After two months of training on a wide variety of skills, many of which were not specific to combat and were more akin to working with law enforcement officials, we finally started to receive tidbits of information related to our mission in Honduras. We jokingly referred to Honduras as “the Hon,” mimicking the veterans that served in Vietnam. Although, serving in the Hon was a vacation in comparison to Vietnam.
From Fort McCoy we traveled on an Air Force C-17 Globemaster, a large, four-engine jet aircraft, to Charleston Air Force base where we were to await further orders and to arrange transportation to Soto Cano Airbase, which was also known as Joint Task Force-Bravo (JTF-B). Soto Cano Airbase was the largest runway used by the United States to launch missions deep into South America, as well as throughout Central America and the Caribbean Sea and significant strategic importance for this reason.
To add to the confusion, JTF-B was also known by another name, Palmerola Air Base. Whether it’s called JTF-B, Soto Cano Airbase, or Palmerola Air Base (one of the few military installations where the US flag does not fly and is controlled technically by the Honduran Air Force), it has been a launching point for numerous clandestine missions throughout its history.
The installation has played a critical role for Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations and US military operations throughout the region since 1981. Palmerola Air Base was used to deliver medical and military aid to the Contras as part of the Iran-Contra Scandal facilitated by the exonerated Colonel Oliver North.
Unsurprisingly, during my time at JTF-B, the base was still being used for overt and clandestine operations.
After three or four days of waiting to catch an air force bird directly to JTF-B, the army changed its mind and decided to send us on commercial civilian aircraft to Tegucigalpa, Honduras where we would be transported by bus to JTF-B.
As I recall, we flew from the Charleston Airport to San Salvador, El Salvador and then caught a connecting flight to Tegucigalpa. The landing at the Tegucigalpa International Airport is a real nail biter. The airport is surrounded by mountains on all sides, and the airport is located on the only flat piece of earth in the valley. The aircraft must fly fifty feet over protruding rocks and shanties to land on what is a very short runway.
Upon landing, all the civilians clapped and cheered, and we gathered our belongings to clear customs, where we pulled out our new diplomatic passports and were waved through. For anyone that has traveled internationally and had to clear customs, it was an amazing experience in comparison.
In Tegucigalpa, we were picked up by school buses with armed escorts and began our drive to JTF-B. As we left the wealthier, central part of the city, I was shocked by the poverty that I saw.
The smell of hot and burning garbage and strange noxious chemicals, as well as the sight of a man defecating out in the open on a city street littered in garbage, was no laughing matter. The poorest of the poor found ripped plastic sheets and dropped them over logs to make makeshift tents in the dirt. As the sun set on the drive, you could see the sides of the mountains burning, presumably being cleared for agricultural use.
Finally, upon arrival we were assigned sleeping quarters in something called a hooch, a wood, kerosene-soaked building on stilts with a metal roof. They were soaked with kerosene to prevent termites and other insects from destroying them and were on stilts due to the dangerous flash flooding that could occur during the rainy season.
The next day we were finally fully briefed on our mission at JTF-B. Our primary mission was to provide security for the base and to serve as the base’s law enforcement. The physical perimeter of the base was frequently breached by the locals who would do things like steal the lights off the perimeter fence or bicycles from US service members.
The more daring thieves would often attempt to enter buildings and ignore the warning signs to not enter something called a VORTAC, which is a radio frequency device system to help pilots navigate their aircraft. This, of course, came at great risk to the health of the criminals that entered the VORTAC while it was in operation, due to the immense amount of radiation that it emits. The security shifts were mostly boring, and most of the action occurred at the base’s entry control point (ECP) post’s deputy commander for failure to abide by the post commander’s off post policy.
Often, the Hondurans working on the base would attempt to smuggle goods like consumer electronics off the base since the goods purchased at the post exchange were much more affordable than the local markets’ prices due to tariffs and shipping costs in the local economy. Occasionally, we would find a weapon being smuggled onto the base, or merely forgotten in their vehicle during searches. When guarding the flight line, you would really begin to understand the true purpose of the base.
My first shift guarding the flight line, a strangely marked, heavily modified C-130 landed and taxied to its final stopping point. Twelve or so burly men and a few that looked like normal US government employees stepped out of the aircraft. Inside the aircraft were sophisticated weapon systems and electronic equipment, and I was told that there were explosives aboard. This indicated that we had to establish an extra perimeter of security for the aircraft.
I wondered who these people were and what they were doing at our airbase. The next few days, more of the potential missions were discussed. We learned that we would be periodically attached to other missions in the region and that we were the quick reaction force for the area of operation.
Quick reaction forces (QRFs) are the response teams that are called when the US government needs emergency help. They are like a 911 emergency response for the military or other US government assets. The only time that a QRF was activated during my time at JTF-B was to protect US interests in Haiti during the 2004 coup d’état to remove President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
In addition to our QRF role, we were attached to a unit commanded by an Army Special Forces captain, where it seemed that he had carte blanche to assemble teams from any of the assets available at JTF-B. Some of these missions were providing humanitarian assistance and medical treatment to remote and poor communities. Sometimes these missions were in coordination with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). According to USAID:
USAID is the world’s premier international development agency and a catalytic actor driving development results. USAID’s work advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience.
Sometimes, it was our mission to provide training to local law enforcement or to foreign militaries. Often, they were conducting narcotics interdiction missions throughout Central America and many people from my platoon wanted to be assigned to these missions.
Rarely, we would fly in Blackhawks or Chinooks and drop off plain-clothed US government employees at strange places. I strongly suspected that these people were CIA operatives, although I never asked. It was obvious in my opinion.
We came to realize that we were the muscle for whenever our country required it, and we had no problem with that. We provided personal security details to American ambassadors, high ranking military members and their families, or other personnel that required it when asked by the command.
On one occasion, an armed robber with a fully automatic assault rifle stopped a US-owned bus and robbed everyone on the bus at gun point. We worked with the corrupt local law enforcement in Comayagua to identify the guilty party, to no avail, and then started riding the bus, armed and in plain clothes, to capture or kill the assailants, but unfortunately the opportunity never presented itself.
This was one of many incredible learning experiences about how other parts of the world functioned with government corruption daily.
Only a month into our tour of duty in Honduras, I had my first eye-opening experience about the reality of geopolitics in Central and South America. One night, after my security patrol shift ended, I decided to go off post to a bar in the nearest town Comayagua. Comayagua was representative of many tier-two cities in Honduras.
There were several large multi-national corporations that were manufacturing things like chemicals for soap or were in the fertilizer manufacturing and agricultural businesses in the Comayagua Valley.
The valley itself was at a high elevation for Honduras and had a very distinct hot and dry season followed by a tropical wet season beginning in late May. Many of the residents of the valley worked in fruit and vegetable production with three highly productive growing seasons that spanned the entire year, worked in manufacturing jobs at the factories, or, if lucky enough, worked on our military installation.
Honduras was a very dangerous place and so was Comayagua.
People were shot or killed on a frequent basis, and it had one of the highest murder, and violent assault rates in the world. The gringos (US Army and other foreign military uniforms were green camouflage and they wanted us to go home, hence the term’s origin), as they referred to us, were typically viewed as off limits by the criminals, cartel members, gang members, and the police as they did not want the US government getting involved in the potential fallout from an assault or other harmful act against a US service member.
Also, we stuck out like sore thumbs. Nothing screams gringo more than a bunch of very tall, blue-eyed, blonde men with crew cuts and Midwestern accents going for a stroll in the worst parts of Central America. There was no blending in.
Once a month, our team went with other leaders from the base, including the J2 (military intelligence of a joint operation), and would visit, inspect, and analyze the neighborhoods and establishments in Comayagua and other cities, sometimes in partnership with the State Department to create risk assessments for US government personnel operating in the country.
Often, the high risk or safe areas on the map were arbitrary due to the highly variable security conditions and the requirements to make the risk maps easy to understand by personnel only glancing at them for a few seconds. That night, I decided to go to a bar that was deemed to be “safe” alone. I received my off-post pass from the security desk sergeant and proceeded to hop in one of the cabs that were always waiting at the front gate.

The twenty-five-minute drive was always terrifying and exciting on the lawless Honduran highways. The cars were in such disrepair that dangerous mechanical failures at speed were common.
Halfway through my second ponche, a fruit-and-rum-based cocktail, a scruffy, overweight white man in his late forties wearing a baseball cap walked into the bar, sat down next to me, ordered a beer, and began to make small talk in perfect English, so I presumed that he was an American.
After fifteen to twenty minutes, the man started to try to recruit me for a private security operation in Africa, which I politely entertained while privately thinking the man was crazy.
He was offering me $150,000 to guard diamond mines in the Congo. Next, as we continued to drink and chat, he started asking questions that, if answered, could have been used to ascertain my base’s force strength, capabilities, and missions.
This sudden change in conversation set off all the red flags from the counterintelligence training I had received. I quickly made up an excuse as to why I had to leave, hopped in a cab, and returned to base.
Upon returning to base at roughly 11 p.m., I immediately reported the incident to my squad leader and was told to report the incident to the base J2. The security desk sergeant called the J2 in his hooch, roused him out of bed, and then we briefly met and spoke with each other, where I gave him a full report of what had just happened.
He thanked me, told my squad leader that I had done the right thing, and told me to report to the Secured Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF) to be debriefed at 9 a.m. I went back to my hooch, went to sleep, woke up early for physical training, and then put a uniform on, even though it was my day off, to report to the SCIF.
Upon reporting to the SCIF, I was escorted into a conference room next to the J2’s office where the army lieutenant (J2) debriefed me on what had happened. He told me that the man was a well-known Chinese spy.
I was shocked.
Apparently, this Chinese spy had been operating in the area for over a year. The lieutenant then explained to me that Central America and Honduras is a hot bed for foreign spy activity because of all the foreign governments fighting for influence and resources throughout Central America.
After his briefing, I then answered specific questions about what had occurred while the J2 and a man dressed in civilian attire, that I did not recognize, took notes. After the briefing and back-briefing concluded, I was released for the day.
After these events, I never looked at Central America or global foreign powers the same way.
Every time I noticed a bridge or school being built in Honduras, I wondered who was paying for it and what their true objective was. This is the reality in third world countries with vast natural and human resources.
These real-world experiences, combined with the continuous military training, would significantly aid my survival in the future.

During that same period, we were introduced to Special Forces Captain “Wally.” Captain Wally would be our leader on numerous missions and was excited that we wanted to learn his advanced unconventional methods. He immediately seemed to be fond of my squad, and we began training with him daily in advanced hand-to-hand combat techniques.
We were like sponges and eagerly awaited his personal training on our days off from security related duties. The man was a machine and seemed to know every tactic or trick you could imagine. During one of these training sessions, one of my squad members snapped his tibia in grappling training during a flip and leg bar maneuver, and I had to run frantically two miles to obtain emergency medical assistance.
The medics raced to treat the man, and he was almost instantly medically evacuated by helicopter back to the United States. We didn’t stop training but received a stern talking to from our actual infantry company commander about training too hard, which I later determined was representative of the typical and constant irony a person would experience while serving in the US military.
A few days later, Captain Wally stopped by my hooch with my squad leader to inform me that I had been selected to go on the next counter narcotics mission. I received a crash course in narcotics smuggling and a classified briefing about the mission (the mission has since been declassified).
The process is rather simple: cocaine or other contraband travels north predominantly from Colombia and cash and weapons flowed south. At the time, the FARC (also known as Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and northern cartels of Colombia were prominent players in drug trafficking. Drugs are transported three ways, by trucks, by air, or by sea. At the time, narco-submarines did not exist so go-fasts were typically high-powered racing boats or were civilian aircraft that would take off from Colombia and fly north while zigzagging (thinking that they could avoid the United States’ sophisticated radar systems). In fact, these flight maneuvers often confirmed our drug smuggling suspicions.
There is only one road that easily connects Central America to the United States and that is CA-5. CA-5 is the road that JTF-B is located on, so hun