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Sifting through secrets - Father’s death on mission leaves daughter searching for answersBy Rex Hogan Karen Daughtry remembers her father, Lt. Col. Clarence Blanton, telling her in 1968 that he was going to Laos to work as a civilian. “He told me he was going to Laos, that he had a desk job and would be sharing a house with other men,” she said. The Air Force knew that story wasn’t true. High-ranking Central Intelligence Agency officials knew too. Blanton was “Air Force all the way,” Daughtry said. So it was somewhat surprising to his family when in 1967, he “separated from the Air Force” and became a Lockheed Corp. employee. Lockheed was a California airplane manufacturing company, known for making super secret spy planes. Over the years, Daughtry has pieced together the events that led up to what she now accepts was her father’s death. “The Air Force has told me some things. I’ve read service magazines and looked over old newspapers,” she said. Lt. Col. Blanton was 47 years old and was a radar technician. In 1967, he and 47 other men were picked for a “top secret mission in northern Laos,” she said. “The mission was named ‘Heavy Green,’” Daughtry said. “American troops were not supposed to be in Laos at that time. The Air Force was sending them to Laos with fraudulent IDs, because if they were captured they could pretend they were civilians. “If the military was caught wearing civilian clothes, they had no protection under the Geneva Convention,” Daughtry said. In October of 1967, Blanton and the other technicians were flown to site 85 and began calling in air strikes in North Vietnam. By January 1968, the North Vietnamese Army apparently had figured out what site 85 was all about. Daughtry said they launched mortar attacks against the compound, but “it was written off as a probe.” By the middle of February, the CIA had issued a warning that the security at the site “couldn’t be predicted past March 10,” Daughtry said. The warning was ominous. On that date, the North Vietnamese Army launched an attack on the mountain with 3,000 troops. They fired rocket and mortar rounds on the compound. U.S. F-4 Phantom jets streaked overhead, attacking the insurgents. Daughtry said around midnight, 33 enemy soldiers climbed the western side of the mountain. “The next day, my dad, who was the senior officer, heard gunfire and went outside to face the enemy. Dad tried to explain he was civilian and reached to his back pocket to get his ID. He was shot at point blank range,” Daughtry said. She still remembers when Air Force officials came to El Reno to tell her and her grandfather that her father was missing. “For years I had myself believe because of his rank that he was taken captive,” she said. Daughtry said in 2003, a U.S. Pow-Mia Accounting Command team, with the assistance of the Vietnamese government, including two commandos who took part in the attack, went to site 85. The commandos showed U.S. officials where they “had thrown bodies off the cliff.” Three years later, another U.S. team traveled to site 85. They found a pair of pants with Blanton’s Lockheed ID card in the pocket. In 1984, Blanton received the Bronze Star. If should the impossible happen and Blanton should suddenly be found alive, Daughtry said she would say a word about his decision to go to Laos. “I’d tell him how hurt we were,” Daughtry said. Recent IssuesSpecial Sections |
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