Victor Vescovo

then 9 11 happened and i was mobilized and cross-trained into counter-terrorism so i became a targeting officer but for organizations and individuals not bombing targets and i was deployed to pearl harbor for about a year and a half and was involved with some of the communities all real estate rescue in the philippines and other things yeah

The Burnhams.

They were two Christian missionaries that were being held by Abu Sayyaf, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in the Philippines.

And our job was to try and track them down and help get them out.

And

It's documented now in novels and other things, but we were with the other members of the community.

Three letter agencies, you know who they are.

We were able to locate them and we desperately wanted CL6 to go in and get them out of where they were in the Philippines.

But the Filipinos are quite strict that US combat forces are not allowed to conduct operations on their soil.

And from what I understand, this went all the way up to the White House, and it was denied.

And they gave the mission over to the Filipino Rangers.

And in the rescue operation, they came over the hill where the hostages were.

They had undisciplined fire control.

They killed one of the two American hostages by accident, and they shot Gratia Burnham, the wife, in the leg.

They evacuated her, and then I was fortunate enough to do the debrief of her for about three days after that.

Wow, man.

But we learned an immense amount from her in the debrief about their operations, who they were, all that.

Do you want to talk about that at all?

Not a lot, but I will just say that, yes, it can be very valuable to learn what people see and heard

Hostages often know a heck of a lot more than they think they do if you debrief them properly.