A retired neighbor who moved to my area from Northern VA was in Vietnam well before the war broke out. He was in Viet Nam two years prior to the US getting involved in the war there.

He was “stationed” there until we pulled out. He was not in the military. He never divulged what he was really doing there. He married a Vietnamese woman he met there

His wife told stories of how he ended up helping some Vietnamese people out of Vietnam onto the planes before they left. She was in Canada at the time of our pull out on business and he told her not to come back. He apparently brought a number of Vietnamese women (possibly friends or family of his wife) through the gates claiming they were his wife. She sent him to find her brother who was far away from the American compound at the time. In spite of not finding him her brother survived the purging of Vietnamese who aided the Americans when the Viet Cong took over when the US left.

This neighbor also had pictures on the wall of his home of when he was in Afghanistan before our war began there. He explained they were tribal leaders all sitting in a circle with what looked like to us as the Taliban.

He never really said why he was in either place. But we both considered that he was in the CIA. The guy was nice enough but my husband never liked or trusted the guy bc he said he had a fake smile. To us he was always Mr CIA. He’s since moved away