Gordon Cucullu Biography

I am a former Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel and Vietnam vet now living in St. Augustine, Florida. My first book was about North and South Korea. I'm currently working on a new book about the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that I've visited five times. In April-May 2008 I had the opportunity to spend a one-month embed with Military Police units in Iraq and intend to write a book about their mission. My many adventures have included raising llamas and alpacas in upstate New York, serving as the Executive Director of the Korea Society in Manhattan, working as an international marketing VP for General Electric in Asia, living in El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Vietnam, Korea, Okinawa, and Japan, and traveling through corners of the world that few have had the privileged of experiencing.

As the son of an Air Force officer and descendant of a long line of military men, I was accustomed to frequent moves, so bounding around from place to place to this day seems natural. Looking back on it, while growing up I was inoculated by the military in a major way.

Like most of my contemporaries I got married upon graduation and we moved to Chapel Hill, NC where we were graduate students. After a few months of terminally boring research in a dim library basement carrel, plowing over ground that was so well worked that it had turned to dust, I gave back my three-year fellowship and enlisted in the Army, a move that many of my contemporaries - including my then-wife and her relatives - thought insane. The year was 1967, and the Vietnam War was peaking.

Within a year and a half I had completed basic Infantry training, been commissioned a second lieutenant through Ft. Benning's OCS, and successfully completed Airborne and Special Forces training. After a stint at beautiful Monterey, CA for Korean language training I was off to the war. Or so I thought.

My Special Forces (SF) apprenticeship passed through 1st SF Group in Okinawa. There, under the tutelage of senior non-commissioned officers with decades of experience and more patience than a new officer deserved, I learned my profession. We parachuted at night with full equipment into South Korean rice paddies and Taiwan's forests. My Operational Detachment A was designated to train the rest of the Group on covert insertion and extraction methods. We practiced helicopter rappelling - reaching the ground with all combat gear intact from a hovering helicopter by sliding down a 120 foot nylon rope, using gear such as the McGuire and STABO rigs to allow teams to be pulled from dense jungle, and climbing up and down aluminum and cable ladders dangling from a Huey overhead. This was good preparation for what lay ahead.

By 1970 it was tough to get an assignment to Vietnam. The drawdown was underway and personnel levels were being cut. Still I saw contemporaries returning for second and third tours while I was still a combat cherry. Determined to get into the fight, I submitted several requests for transfer to Vietnam, all of which were denied. Finally, in desperation, I had a drink with my friend Gene Hanratty who was personnel officer. "You talk to the assignment people a couple of times a week right? Tell them that there's this captain who's bragging that he won't ever get assigned to Vietnam. Let's see what happens." Within two weeks I had transfer orders in hand.

Two days after arriving in country, I was assigned to the top-secret Studies and Observation Group - a euphemistic cover name for the black programs carried out directly for the MAC-V commander. That morning hopped into a black sedan with the SOG sergeant major for a ride up to Camp Long Binh, the normal in-country personnel processing center to get the paperwork squared away. He casually tossed a CAR-15 rifle and a couple of bandoliers of ammunition into the back seat. Replying to my question of "will we need that?" the sergeant major replied, "I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it." That philosophy stuck and stays with me to this day.

At our sub-unit headquarter in Nha Trang my interview with the commander did not go well. He and the local Air Force commander wagered on unit volleyball matches, sometimes hundreds of dollars per game. I tartly answered his invitation to the team by saying, "I didn't come here to play frickin' volleyball!" As a consequence I was tossed into the briar patch. It was my good fortune to attend the last Recon Team Leaders course at Camp Long Thanh as punishment. After completing the three-week course as honor graduate I went to the Central Highlands camp of Command and Control Central. From there we attempted to transition all-Vietnamese recon teams to take over the cross-border mission. It was a high-casualty business, placing teams into Laos, Cambodia, or into the NVA's backyard of the Ia Drang and A Shau Valleys.

These programs were classified Top Secret until 1995. We were informed, belatedly, that we had been awarded a classified Presidential Unit Citation, which was faintly amusing as most of the program's veterans were long out of service. Best reading to learn about the incredibly brave men who carried out long range reconnaissance into denied areas are John Plaster's excellent books that I highlight on the book page of this site.

Despite the harshness that too frequently was our daily fare, Vietnam was an overall positive experience. I learned a lot, made life-long friends, and for the first time in the Army felt like I was doing a meaningful job. Toward the end of my tour I tried several times to extend my stay. All requests were denied. Finally, in desperation, I went AWOL, hitching a C-130 ride to Pleiku from Danang where I was then stationed, and attaching myself to a SOG unit there. All went well for a couple of months until my boss came in one day with a puzzled look on his face asking "You are on orders here, right?"

Within a day or so I was back in Saigon, got a Bronze Star pinned on my chest and dire warnings to get back to the States ASAP. For the next several years I had a more or less typical Infantry career. I trained soldiers at Ft. Polk, Louisiana, and ran a mechanized infantry company there with the newly reformed 5th Infantry Division for a year. The Army decided it wanted us to have two specialties then so I volunteered for and was selected to be a Foreign Area Officer. (Special Forces was not considered a separate specialty at the time, unfortunately.) After a classroom course at Ft. Bragg I went back to Monterey for a Korean language refresher. After arriving in Seoul I learned - to my dismay - that I was going to be the first American officer assigned as a student to the Republic of Korea staff college.

By the time I was headed for Korea I already had two kids. My son, Gordy, was born at Fort Ord, CA while I was in language school the first time. Michele just missed being born on Okinawa and came into the world while I was in Vietnam, on my way to the Recon Team Leader's Course. I ended up missing most of Gordy's first and third years, and Michele's first year. By the time I got back to the States they had bonded with their paternal grandfather and it was tough to get them to see me as a permanent figure. Being a fairly typical military dad, I was both strict and soft with them. When we got to Korea in 1978 they were just getting started in school. Living was comfortable because the Navy gave us accommodations at the small advisory base that served the Korean fleet headquarters.

Though located in a beautiful area of South Korea - Chinhae is famous for its cherry blossoms and local stories tell of how under Japanese colonial occupation many of those trees were transferred to Washington, DC - the Korean staff college course was exhausting. Classes were conducted all in Korean language, for which I was woefully unprepared, five-and-a-half days a week, and more than a year long. Graduation was a huge relief, although I again, I forged lasting friendships among some Korean officers.

Not all Korean officers welcomed my presence. In the highly competitive Korean military community my presence meant that a ROK officer, often one of their friends, did not make the cut. One particular major, Song, decided that it was his personal mission to harass me. On a hot, humid day at the rifle range he began to rag on me about my poor language capability and for taking up a friend's slot. To the amusement of some of my classmates I lost my temper with Song. I suggested that he arrange for one of the Korean officers attending the comparable U.S. program at Ft. Leavenworth to trade places with me. Then he and I would both be happier. And, if he couldn't do that to shut the hell up. Later, during the PT test and the 1,500 meter run, I smoked Song and all but one of the other Korean officers. His ragging stopped but I became the invisible man to him and a few others who passed me frequently in the halls without returning a polite greeting. His loss, was the way I figured it.

I ended up with three more years in Seoul, first as special operations planning for the newly-minted Combined Forces Command, then as an advisor on the Joint Military Assistance Group. During the tour I was able to pick up a masters degree from USC, working at night with instructors sent to Asia from the Los Angeles campus to teach primarily military students. While at JUSMAG, who should appear but Song, a newly promoted lieutenant colonel. He was begging for copies of the newest U.S. Army field manuals for use in the Korean staff. Now all sweetness, he said how much he really needed the newest publications. We had a stack available, and I gave him a set, but insisted that they were lent, not given. I knew he'd never return them, but felt a small sense of pleasure in at least putting a minor guilt trip on him.

I was fortunate to represent JUSMAG at an especially productive Ministerial level meeting in San Francisco, chaired by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Apparently impressing one of the senior DOD officers, I got a by-name request to join his staff. Somewhat reluctantly, I had my orders changed from 25th Division Hawaii, to Office of the Secretary of Defense staff at the Pentagon. I knew at the time that while we take some forks in the road of life unwittingly, that the change to Washington was a major turning point.

On reporting to the Pentagon, I expected to work East Asia issues, but was told to fill a vacancy in the Central America desk. My first instinct was panic. I was ignorant of the region, the language, and the culture. A mentor told me, "Look, you're a foreign area specialist. You know what you need to learn. Learn it, and get going." So I did. My first stop was the Pentagon basement office of Army mapping where I obtained maps of the area. And I set out to learn. For the next three years, I traveled extensively to El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and other countries in the region learning and assisting in the fight against communist revolution.

During those years I handled with the overt, legal assistance to the region, occasionally working with my National Security Council counterpart, Colonel Oliver North, who was - as we all now know - dealing with the covert side of affairs. My job stress levels were high: "Get those trucks moving to El Salvador by close of business or don't plan to come to work tomorrow!" was the sort of thing that became my daily fair. Comparatively, Ollie had ten times the pressure on him. He was in a no-win situation and eventually was hung out to dry by politicians who had an axe to grind with the Reagan administration.

At the end of three years I was wrung out. When an offer came to compete for a job at the State Department as political-military advisor for the assistant secretary for East Asia, I jumped at it. The problem was I was two grades under the requirement. Though I was a major on the lieutenant colonel promotion list, the position called for a full colonel. And there were several highly qualified colonels around who coveted the job. In desperation I learned that John Negroponte, who was serving ambassador to Honduras and had become friendly to me, was in town. I asked if he would call up to assistant secretary Paul Wolfowitz with a recommendation. "No, I won't call," he said. "I'll just go see Paul right now."

Over some Army assignment manager's preferences I got the job on a by-name request. For the next three years I put together assistance budgets, oversaw transfer of military equipment, and helped formulate policy for all East Asia countries. I also learned that the cultural differences between State Department and Defense are greater and more at odds than those of between some hostile countries.

Toward the end of my tour I was approached by General Electric Aerospace with an offer to open an office in Seoul. Accepting the position I relocated once again to South Korea in late spring 1987. My son Gordy was off to college, and my first wife decided to stay in the States. Michele came with me to finish high school at Seoul Foreign School, and my mother, Elizabeth, who had just retired from nursing, came along to run the house. She was free because my father died young of cancer, holding on till a month after I returned from Vietnam. While I was there GE Aerospace enjoyed great success, selling radar systems and eventually a direct broadcast satellite to that country, wining orders worth hundreds of millions of dollars in orders. By 1991, GE felt that future sales opportunities were limited and pulled me back to the Washington office.

There I learned about corporate personnel manipulation. The position turned out to be tenuous. I was informed in January that I should start outplacement services as I would be laid off. So I did. Then a month later was told that the job was secure, so work at it. So I did. This went on and off on a monthly basis. It was bizarre. I wasn't focusing on finding a new job; and was interrupted when trying to do the one to which I was assigned. I took to bicycle commuting, enjoying the 45-minute ride each way into the Pennsylvania Avenue office from a rental in Mount Vernon. On the first of July a car cut in front of me and I fell, breaking my femur. This was in the same leg that had a knee replacement just two years prior.

The morning after surgical repair I got a call from the human resources manager at GE. "I guess this isn't the best time to tell you," he said, "but we've decided to lay you off." I agreed: it wasn't the best time to tell me.

Landing on my feet, I was offered a position as executive director of the Korea Society, a non-profit organization located in Manhattan. It came with a catch. "We only have funds to pay your salary for six months," the board told me. "So you're going to have to do a lot of fundraising to keep the organization - and your job - intact." For three years it was a success. We expanded programs from one or two a year to one or two a week, grew funding multi-fold, launched a newsletter, attracted many new members, and began an endowment fund. The board directed me to hire a chairman, a visible leader to be my boss. I approached a retiring former ambassador, we hired him, and within six months he dismissed me to put in his own people. It was a crushing ego blow.

By this time my marriage that had been on the rocks for years finally took on too much water and sunk. It was a depressing time and I needed, after 18 years in major population centers, to escape. I bought a farm in Upstate New York, near Walton village, and began to raise llamas and alpacas. Until then the largest animal I'd had experience with was my Labrador retriever. Out of necessity I became a fast learner. My partner and later wife Ranyee Lee, a career nurse in Manhattan, joined me at the farm when she was free and was a major contributor to the operation. By 1998 I had partnered with a Chilean couple and we imported 238 alpacas. Within a year I had the largest operation east of the Mississippi. We won competitions across the country and had several good sales including an elegant auction at Cooperstown in a circus tent behind a Belgian microbrewery. But it was a tough business and I had terminal conflicts with partners. I did learn how to make a small fortune in the alpaca business: start with a large fortune!

After the September 11, 2001 attacks I realized that it was time to reengage with foreign issues. Fox News and several radio talk shows contacted me for interviews and by the opening of the Iraq War in 2003 I was on-camera analyst for WABC TV Channel 7 in New York City. Concomitantly I had decided to follow a goal which was to write a book. Fortunately during my Upstate time I had a brief stint as editor of a weekly newspaper, the Walton Reporter. I learned a lot in that short period including how to write on deadline. So I first picked up some fiction that I'd been working off and on for years.

I determined to finish the book, set a date, hit my deadline, and found an agent, Joanne Wang. She was unable to find a publisher for my fiction but suggested that I write a non-fiction book on North Korea. I accepted the challenge and five months later handed her a manuscript for what she sold and was titled Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin. Lyons published it in 2004.

By 2005 I had become a regular on some talk shows and was asked to join an informal group of primarily retired military personnel on what was known as the Pentagon advisory group. That summer I was offered a trip to Guantanamo to inspect the detention facility. On return I wrote an article for The American Enterprise magazine called "Gitmo Jive," that was well-received. Sensing there was a book here I continued research for the next three years at my own expense. I visited Guantanamo four additional times and spent several days in Washington, DC conducting interviews. Months of Internet and other research produced a manuscript that Harper Collins purchased for publication.

I began to get a lot of questions related to my writing. "How do I get published?" you might imagine, was the most frequent one. In a partial answer to some of those questions I have included a tutorial on writing for publication here on the site, and address many of those needs also in my FAQs page.

Meanwhile, my mother's health began to deteriorate to the point that I was worried about her and her older brother living alone. They couldn't stand the cold Upstate NY winters - so relocating to Walton was out of the question, and frankly I was getting worn out from the long cold myself. It was decision time. I figured that I'd stayed at the alpaca party too long anyway, and that writing and speaking full time was a better option.  So  I therefore had to quickly sell off my llamas and alpacas (along with a lot of tears, sweat, blood, and emotional ties), divested the farm and moved to St. Augustine, Florida. I moved my aging mother and uncle over from Orlando to care for them.

By spring 2008, my mother, Golden retriever, Zack, and cat, Star, had all passed away, and my uncle was in terminal condition in a nursing home. With an empty house I was able to arrange an embed with American soldiers in Iraq and spent a month in April-May, 2008 with Military Police units in the environs of greater Baghdad. It was an amazing experience and on return, thanks to the initiative of Avery Johnson, leader of a research team I had engaged to finish the Guantanamo book, launched a website called Support American Soldiers that requests that we thank these brave soldiers by picking up a meal check or buying them coffee or drinks when we see them traveling. It also includes many stories about the MPs I patrolled with in and around Baghdad. 

The things I saw and learned in Iraq have encouraged me to do a book based on that experience, and that project is underway at present.

During the years that I left GE, I've been called on often to coach and train corporate executives and managers in international business. Beginning in 1990 when I was still a GE employee, I began courses of instruction in conducting successful business in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore, and other East Asian countries. I expanded into Latin America and Europe shortly thereafter. Over time I was pleased to have made presentations to CEOs and top execs in many Fortune 50 companies, many of whom enjoyed great success as a result. One senior VP in Atlanta told his associates, "I learned more in a few hours from Gordon than I learned in six years of travel to Korea." He honored me, while also indirectly suggesting that if he got so much out of it then perhaps I should offer some key points here on the internet.  I've therefore included an introductrial tutorial on international business on this website with essential principles and success stories.

Throughout the years I've also been pleased to have spoken to audiences across the country on military issues, foreign affairs, and particularly terrorism and the war. Every group has supporters and detractors, some of whom can be quite vocal and confrontational. While I'm finally comfortable in front of a group, it takes practice.  You need to get comfortable in your own skin to be effective, and learn to take both excessive praise and personal criticism in stride. So I added some pages here on the site about speaking skills. It's a bit of a tutorial might serve as a short cut towards the long path in honing or developing the skills that you already have in you.

Once when addressing a California audience, I was asked, "All this is good information but what can we as ordinary people do to help?" As a consequence, I devised some points for concerned citizens, things that you, as Americans, regardless of political differences, can do to influence things. It's uncomfortable for me, as for many of you also, to simply turn our affairs over to government. We need more personal responsibility and involvement. There are things you can do, and I encourage you to participate.

On the personal side, both kids are doing well. Michele is a financial whiz. Having won a Masters Degree in Chemistry from Cal Tech she now handles equity accounts for the University of California endowment system. She married a great guy from Spain, Pedro, who is a highly sought after solar engineer. Gordy married a California girl, Jill, and they have a son, Gordy IV (poor kid!), Ellie, and Phoebe. Jill took time out from a Pepperdine law career to manage the handful plus of children. Gordy is a senior manager at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, and builds spacecraft that go to Saturn and Mars. I can't figure where the kids got their smarts from. Must have skipped a couple of generations.

At the moment, writing books and columns and speaking to audiences has been rewarding and I intent to continue on that road. I'm working on arranging an embed with soldiers in Afghanistan once I complete the Iraq book. These days I still have a regular radio segment out of St. Louis on KFTK, 97.1 Talk on Wednesday mornings and am asked to participate on a frequent basis with talk show hosts around the country and in Canada. In 2007 I was invited to join the Los Angeles Adventurer's Club (member number 1131) and have enjoyed by association with some amazing people. The LAAC is dedicated to "those who have left the beaten path in search for adventure." In my small way I intend to keep living life in that manner.