Notable incidents while I was in the Philippines

The following is a slightly edited version of information I gave to the Department of Veterans Affairs for a claim for compensation due to service-connected PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).  The main difference is that I have redacted three names of agents involved in the investigation of me on suspicion of espionage and replaced those with pseudonyms.

These incidents took place during my tour of duty at Clark Air Base.  The unit to which I was assigned for all these incidents, with the exception of the first, was the Naval Security Group Activity, Republic of the Philippines (NAVSECGRUACTREPPHIL), and the dates of that assignment were 11 December 1987-16 January 1990.  For the first incident listed below, my rank was E-3 or Seaman.  For the rest, my rank was E-4 or Petty Officer Third Class.

October 1987 assassinations

These incidents took place in the outskirts of Clark Air Base in Balibago, Angeles City and in Dau, Mabalacat, both municipalities of Pampanga, Philippines.  At the time, I was at Naval Technical Training Center, Corry Station in Pensacola, Florida, but I had known since reporting to NSGD Monterey that Clark Air Base was my ultimate duty station.

On 28 October 1987, five weeks before I reported to my command in the Philippines, four men connected to Clark Air Base were separately assassinated in coordinated operations, all within a mile of the base perimeter.  As the first ever overt direct actions of the Communist New Peoples Army (NPA) against American military personnel, the murders sent out shock waves throughout the military community in-country as well as those who had some connection to it through past or future service there. 

The four victims were:  USAF Sgt. Randy A. Davis, 30; USAF Airman 1st Class Steven M. Faust, 22; USAF Tech. Sgt. (retired) Herculano Manganti, 60; and Filipino civilian businessman Joseph Porter.  Porter was killed when he and his wife drove upon the scene of Faust’s ambush and car crash.  A fifth man, USAF Capt. Raymond Pulsifer, II, 31, was fired upon while driving in his car but escaped his attackers unharmed.

At the time, I was attending Fleet Direct Support class at Naval Technical Training Center, Corry Station in Pensacola, Florida.  From the time I reported to the Naval Security Group Detachment (NSGD), Monterey at the Presidio of Monterey in California to attend the Defense Language Institute (DLI), I knew my ultimate duty station would be in the Philippines, specifically at Clark Air Base.  In fact, knowing that would be the case made me choose Vietnamese Basic over Persian-Farsi, in part because my father, Robert C. Hamilton, Jr., an AT (Aviation Electronic Technician), had also been stationed in the Philippines during his active service with the Navy, though he was at Cubi Point Naval Air Station instead.

A few days after the assassinations, a spokesman for the NPA’s Alex Boncayao Brigade claimed responsibility, but since that unit’s AO was confined to Metro Manila, the claim was dismissed.  On 23 November 1987, a spokesperson for the North West Pampanga Party Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) announced that NPA forces under its authority had carried out the assassinations.

The official atmosphere at the base and the command when I arrived in mid-December 1987 was gloomy, fearful, and often overcautious.  The mood of the personnel, though less so in all those qualities, carried an undercurrent of fear and suspicion of the local population. 

Curfews had been instituted at all the U.S. bases; these remained in place the entire time I was there.  For the first few months, American personnel were restricted to the outskirts of CAB, and even after this was loosened, we were strongly cautioned that venturing beyond those bounds was done at our own risk.  Every other week, sometimes every week, throughout my two years there, we were barraged with dire warning of suspected imminent threats, which almost always proved false. 

This siege and/or barracks mentality was a constant feature of life during my entire tour of duty at Clark Air Base.  Among other drawbacks, this fed into the prejudices and bigotry of too many Americans assigned to the base, including those in my unit.

While at Clark, I always drove without a seatbelt, particularly when doing so off-base, so that I could more quickly escape my vehicle if I needed to.  Not to mention I was hypervigilant whenever I drove, always checking my rear view mirror and watching for signs of danger.  Both these continued long after I left Clark, returning when I started driving again upon my family’s relocation Stateside.

The fear and paranoia fed by mishandling of information was suffocating and toxic.

Because I was so friendly with Filipinos in spite of the situation, I received a great deal of animosity from many of my shipmates.  Several of them bullied me over it and ridiculed me as “half-Filipino”, something which in other circumstances I would have taken pride in.  I am happy to point out, however, that these represented a minority.

The apex of this bullying was probably my frocking to Petty Officer Third Class.  “Tagging” is a traditional form of welcoming a new petty officer by tapping their new insignia with the knuckles of one’s fist, like fist-bumping.  Several persons in the unit used the occasion to hit me in the arm on my insignia as hard as they could.  By late afternoon, my entire left arm was dark purple except for a few small white patches.  When the CDO came into our snack bar and saw that, he went ballistic and ordered me not to let anyone else “tag” me.  Fortunately, there was no permanent damage.

Local civil conflict, spring 1988

This series of events took place mostly in Angeles City, Pampanga.

As well as being highly interested in national Philippines politics (the February 1986 Revolution occurred during my time in boot camp at Naval Training Center San Diego and the largest coup attempt to date against the Aquino administration had taken place 28 August 1987), I was also interested in news local to the immediate vicinity of C.A.B. 

This is how I learned of the organization in February 1988 of right-wing vigilante squads in San Fernando and Mabalacat, both in Pampanga, known respectively as the Angelito Simbulan Brigade and the Faustino Sabile Brigade.  These were organized to counter the NPA’s local Mariano Garcia Brigade, which was then based in Angeles City. 

Angeles City bordered Clark Air Base on the south while Mabalacat bordered the base on the east.  From the beginning of May through the tenth of June, open warfare between the groups listed above broke out.  The fighting led to at least fifty reported deaths (and possibly as many as a hundred), mostly in Angeles City.  It ended after wives of combatants from both sides marched barefoot through the center of downtown Angeles demanding a ceasefire on or just after 10 June, meaning that the conflict lasted around six weeks. 

Most personnel on base were oblivious, but since I kept myself well-informed, I was aware at the time.  It was not until the first week of July that our command received a heads-up about the upsurge at morning muster, when the information was relayed as if the situation was still going on.  This did little to give me confidence in the accuracy of the security warnings we were frequently given; in fact, I found it rather disturbing.

NIS Investigation, 1989

This took place at Clark Air Base, Phillipines, Subic Bay Naval Station, Philippines, and U.S. Embassy, Manila, Philippines.  I was a Petty Officer Third Class (E-4) assigned to Naval Security Group Activity, Republic of the Philippines, 11 December 1987-16 Janaury 1990.

At the beginning of the first or second week of July 1989, the week before I was to leave for duty aboard the aircraft carrier of a task force sailing out of Subic Bay, I had my clearances pulled and was reassigned to duty at the BEQ.  Wednesday or Thursday that week, my security clearances were restored and I was readmitted to regular duty at our command’s secure facility, though I was told I would be undergoing a JAGMAN investigation. 

At the end of the work day that Friday, however, I was ordered to report to our command’s security officer, who told me that my clearance was being pulled again because I had just come under an entirely separate security investigation by the Naval Investigative Service (NIS).  I was not informed at the time what the nature of the investigation was.

It turned out that I was being investigated on suspicion of espionage.  NIS received an accusation from a Navy associate of mine during my stateside training who had come to Clark on leave from another overseas duty station.  Several weeks into the investigation after a search of my room in the barracks, suspicion of homosexual activity was added.

The intensive field work of the investigation lasted nearly four months.  Every single Filipino I was friends with was interviewed, and there were quite a lot as I knew not only workers on base, but was a member of the local Jaycees, Rotary Club, and Toastmasters, as locals I had met working with the charitable outreach committee of the base’s Holy Family Parish.  That was in addition to nearly every single member of our command, including several who had been at Clark when I arrived but had transferred elsewhere, plus even more friends and acquaintances stateside than had been interviewed for my security clearance.

I also volunteered for extensive psychological testing which took two or three days, that showed, among other things, that I was likely not gay.

Besides having my room searched twice, I travelled to Subic Bay Naval Station for my initial interrogation that lasted four days.  This was followed by two separate one-day interrogations by NIS at Clark, then in the first week of October 1989, there was another trip to Subic in which I was polygraphed four times over two days.  At the end of the final polygraph, the expert was satisfied that I had been truthful in my professions of innocence.  For these tests, incidentally, only the accusations of espionage for the USSR and collaboration with the NPA were covered.

I cooperated fully with the investigation, even to the extent of telling all of my Filipino friends and associates to likewise cooperate and answer all the questions investigators asked about me truthfully.  I did not inform them what I was being investigated about; I just told them that answering questions truthfully would only help me.

The chief investigating agent was John Smith (a pseudonym; I do remember his actual name).  The polygraph expert was Alejandro Jones (another pseudonym for a name I also remember). 

After the polygraph sessions in the first week in October, Special Agent Smith and Special Agent Standon reported their findings to NIS headquarters stateside, Tanton’s that the suspicions were unfounded and Bedoya’s that the polygraph results backed that up.

While waiting to hear back from NIS headquarters in Quantico, my commanding officer told me that he was recommending that I be barred from reenlistment because he suspected I was either gay or bisexual.  Since at the time my EAOS date was close, he had chosen not to process me for administrative separation.

Two days before I shipped back stateside to process out out of the Navy, Special Agent Smith called to inform me that NIS HQ wanted he and Special Agent Jones to polygraph me again and ask about homosexual activity.  Since I was about to DEROS and already knew I was RE-4 (though I continued on active then inactive reserve), I declined.

As a result of my leaving the service while the investigation was still open, Special Agent Smith turned the file over to the FBI at the U.S. Embassy in Manila.  This was because three weeks after my EAOS, I had returned to the Philippines to work for an American NGO under the U.S. Refugee Program.  The FBI didn’t care about homosexual activity, so that was no longer an issue, and after reviewing Special Agent Smith’s reports and Special Agent Jones’ findings ruled the suspicions unfounded.

I believe the FBI agent I met with was Special Agent Michel Kowalski, another pseudonym (Special Agent Smith was there), in the Manila embassy in March or April 1990.  Janowitz told me that my case was the biggest thing he had worked on since the Walker family investigation of 1985.

I did not get back the items seized during the two searches of my barracks room until the first week of October 1990.  I know this because I travelled from Manila to Subic for that purpose in the midst of the nationwide labor strike of the six American bases by the Federation of Filipino Civilian Employees Associations taking place at that time.

From the beginning of the investigation in July through the polygraph tests in October, my emotional life was dominated by intense anxiety punctuated with acute panic attacks, and the only relief I had was when I was either drunk or asleep, the latter of which was generally only achieved by the former.  Even after the polygraphs, I felt an constant undercurrent of anxiety knowing that NIS HQ still had to rule on the disposition of my case.  I was also suicidal, but I couldn’t even take that escape route because it would have been the same thing as an admission of guilt (and a false one).

The rage didn’t start until about a year after I’d left the Navy.  There was plenty in the Philippines upon which to focus that rage, but none of them were the source, even though I told myself they were.  I know this because the reasons I gave myself for the rage kept changing.  Once I returned to the States for good with my new family, the rage found other targets, other reasons for existence.  Fortunately, most of this rage focused on political, social, and human and civil rights activism.  I figured if I couldn’t escape it, I might as well use it for something good.

I made very few friendships after our return.  I felt unable to connect anything or anyone like I had before.  I felt dissociated from others, particularly civilians.  Even with other vets, there was the investigation.  After my divorce, I made some attempts to restart a personal life but eventually gave it up and became a virtual hermit. 

For seven years, from 2000 to 2007, I almost never went anywhere outside of my home and work.  In the fall of 2007, I began attending Dalton State College.  On the one hand, I felt my rage lessen quite a bit; on the other hand, while being around so many relatively positive people greatly enhanced my overall mood, it was so overwhelming that I was at times suicidal.

None of this even begins to cover the shame and humiliation I felt from having my sexuality outed against my will.  I’m not gay, but I’ve known I’m bisexual since I was fifteen.  However, at the time I had never even come close to having sex with another man and still thought of myself as completely straight.  So, even though the command handled the issue with extreme discretion, I still had to face and deal with my true sexuality against my will.

September 1989 assassinations

This took place in Tambo, Santo Domingo II, Capas, Tarlac, Philippines.

On 26 September 1989, retired Air Force officers Donald Buchner, 44, and William Thompson, 45, both working for Ford Aerospace under contract to the Defense Department at a USAF communications facility in Capas, Tarlac, were ambushed at a road block five miles outside Camp O’Donnell and shot 69 times.  The NPA was identified almost immediately as the culprit, with later information indicating it was the Mariano Garcia Brigade.

Later investigation by Filipino authorities uncovered information that the two victims had been specifically targeted.  At the time, however, many of us suspected the real target was the bus from Clark Air base ferrying personnel from the U.S. Naval Radio Transmitter Facility, also at Camp O’Donnell, back to the Navy BEQ at Clark Air Base.  The passengers were our barracks-mates.  The driver of the bus saw the road block and became suspicious, turning the bus around to return to Camp O’Donnell and passing the car driven by Buchner and Thompson traveling in the opposite direction as he did so.

December 1989 attempted coup d’etat

The events themselves took place primarily in Makati, Metro Manila, but they affected  all American military facilities in the Philippines.

On 1 December, the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) and the Soldiers of the Filipino People (SFP) launched the largest uprising by military rebels during the Aquino administration.  RAM, originally organized in 1980, was the primary military component of the February 1986 Revolution (and the August 1987 rebellion) and the SFP was the organization of military supporters of former president Ferdinand Marcos.

The rebellion lasted through 9 December, with most of the fighting taking place in the Metro Manila town of Makati, and nearly brought down the government.  The most embarrassing factor for the U.S. was that the rebels had used a joint military exercise with U.S. forces as cover for their organizing, for a change maintaining OPSEC so that the rising came as a complete surprise to our military as well as the Philippine government.

Needless to say, all American bases were on lock-down for the entire nine days, with limited civilian personnel allowed on base and most military personnel who lived off-base remaining home the entire time.  At the BEQ, which had been my duty station since having my security clearance pulled earlier in July, we worked regular hours during the day and stood watch every evening and night.

13 May 1990 assassinations

The location of this incident was Dau, Mabalacat, Pampanga, Philippines.

Since my EAOS date was 27 January 1990, this falls outside my active service (though I was in the active reserve).  However, there are aspects which may connect it to my time of service in the Navy at Clark as well as possibly being the first sign of post-traumatic stress disorder.

On this occasion, Airman John H. Raven, 21, and Airman James C. Green, 22, were assassinated sparrow-style by elements of the NPA in front of the Holiday Lodge and Drive Inn in barangay Dau of Mablacat municipality just outside the base at about 1530 hours.  The two victims were participating in military exercises at Clark with their unit, the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing out of Kunsan Air Base in South Korea.  A third man, Airman 1st Class Ronald Moore, 23, escaped the incident unhurt.

The murders happened just an hour and a half after I had caught the bus back to Manila at the stop on Dau Access Road (to MacArthur Highway) a couple of  hundred meters away.

I had arrived in the vicinity in late afternoon that Friday, 11 May, immediately proceeding to my fiance’s family’s home in purok Gasdam, barangay Dau.  From there we headed out to her place of employment at Cheers Entertainment Complex just outside what was then Friendship Gate on the south side of the base’s perimeter.  As we approached within two or three blocks of the club, the feeling of being under surveillance came over me suddenly and overwhelmingly.

One night when I was at Cheers during my NIS investigation, I had experienced the same feeling of being naked and exposed and under scrutiny, the first time I had ever had that feeling in my life.  One of my one-day interrogations by Special Agent Smithcame the next week, and my first question before we even started was whether I’d been under surveillance by NIS at Cheers that particular evening.  He initially waved the question aside, but later in the session confirmed that that had indeed been the case.  In that situation, given that I was under NIS investigation, coming under covert surveillance (I never saw them; my awareness of it came solely from the creepy feeling down my spine), was not unexpected.

In light of this and given the fact that on this later occasion such surveillance was totally unexpected, I looked ahead, looked back, then darted across the street in between two oncoming jeepneys.  I recall thinking that as I tried to drag Grace with me and she dug her heels in that it was better she did that since she would be safer that way, given known sparrow unit MO.  When I got to the other side of the street, I was facing the tall chainlink fence of the base perimeter.  I turned around expecting to be shot at point-blank range, but there was no one there.  Either my swift evasive action had ruined their plans or else everything had been entirely in my head.

Ten minutes later, Grace is clocking in to work and I’m sitting in Cheer’s terrace restaurant section with USAF and civilian friends I made when I was at Clark in the Navy.  I’d’ve needed a razor sharp katana to slice through the tension.  Stark fear was apparent on everyone’s faces.  When I asked, they told me there were highly credible warnings of NPA action against four targeted individuals that weekend.  Civilian NGOs, even if connected to USG assets, didn’t get such warnings.  I told them I didn’t think any of us had anything to worry about, at the same time saying to myself, “Oh, that’s what that was about in the street”.

The next day, my about-to-be in-laws kept me in Gasdam and on Bonifacio Street all day, and when it came time for Grace to go to work Saturday night, her father drove us rather than letting us take the jeepney as usual.

Sunday afternoon when they dropped me off at the above-mentioned bus stop, the vendors and sari-sari owners made me sit down in their covered area and gave me free San Miguel beer in order to keep me inside and out of sight as much as possible.   They barely let me go out to urinate one time.  Their actions were unsolicited and they refused my offers of payment. When my bus arrived, a couple of them and their assistants surrounded me tightly until I boarded the bus and chased away vendors that came to my window until the bus pulled out.

This was two weekends before my wedding.  Airmen Raven and Green were not among the four initially targeted by the NPA, whose plans had been disrupted by the arrest of the original team leader that Friday afternoon (whose name, oddly enough, I still remember; it was printed in more than one newspaper).  I did not learn of their deaths until I saw the newspaper the next morning.

If I was, in fact, one of those originally targeted, the reason or justification for that could only have come from my time at Clark, possibly stemming from rumors of which I was aware that arose in the wake of the NIS investigation.

Natural disasters

These were not part of my claim, but the four worst natural disasters of the 20th century hit the Philippines while I was there.

On 24 October 1988, Typhoon Unsang/Ruby hit Central Luzon, where Clark Air Base, Subic Naval Station, Cubi Naval Air Station, and Camp O’Donnell were located.  It was the seoncd worst typhoon to hit that region in the 20th century and the worst to hit the country since 1970.

On 6 November 1988, Typhoon Yoning/Skip hit Central Luzon less than two weeks later.  This typhoon was even stronger than Unsang, but since the earlier typhoon had destroyed so much, there wasn’t much left for Yoning to destroy.  The remaining trees were strong enough to withstand it, and the less sturdy buildings were already collapsed.

On 16 July 1990, an 8.0 level earthquake hit the main island of Luzon.  Its epicenter was Rizal, Nueva Ecija, but it shook the entire region from the Cordilleras into the Southern Tagalog region.  I was out at the Refugee Processing Center in Morong, Bataan, at the time.  It was not only strong, it shook for nearly two full minutes.  The mountain city of Baguio was especially hard hit, and it shook Metro Manila hard and destroyed many buildings. 

A week later, at almost the exact same time of time, an aftershock hit the same region and I got to experience a small taste of what being on the 12th floor of a swaying building was like.

On 15 June 1991, the centuries-dormant Mount Pinatubo exploded in the biggest volcanic eruption of the 20th century on the entire planet.  That same day, Typhoon Diding/Yunya made landfall in Manila.  In addition to those, several earthquakes shook the city the whole weekend and into the following week.  Things were much worse for our relatives in Mabalacat, much closer to the volcano; there the ground shook continually.