Hatchet Job

U.S. Army Capt. Eugene McCarley’s actions with his Hatchet Force team in Laos during Operation Tailwind, Sept. 11-14, 1970, remained all but forgotten for nearly three decades. But, on June 7, 1998, television viewers were shocked when the premiere episode of “NewsStand: CNN & Time” featured an investigative report titled, “Valley of Death,” presented by Vietnam War correspondent and CNN reporter Peter Arnett, in concert with a June 15 Time magazine article.

The program portrayed Tailwind as a top secret, CIA-planned mission to target “American defectors” hiding in Laos and murder them using sarin nerve gas. Developed by German scientists in 1938 as a pesticide, sarin (sometimes referred to as GB gas in the military) is a deadly