Heroes Behind Headlines

Patti Naughton is one of the first female operatives recruited as the drug wars heated up in the late 70's and early 80's. Patti was instrumental in helping to make dozens of cases against organized drug traffickers, including the Detroit mafia and the Outlaw motorcycle gang. As a woman, her role was especially dangerous. In this episode, Patti speaks about how she chose a career in crim...

Former member of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, journalist and author Christopher Whitcomb shares his perspective on the crisis in the Middle East. This timely conversation shares one man's perspective, as the world's focus is trained on Israel and the Middle East. Chris describes his visit to Gaza to meet Yasser Arafat, as well as his observations about violent crises and the path to reso...

Author Damien Lewis shares the details from his book Agent Josephine  of the career of Josephine Baker as a secret agent during World War II. Utilizing her celebrity as a performer, she furthered the cause of freedom as an Allied spy in the French Underground. Her adventures spanned France, Portugal, and North Africa. Her  experiences with issues of race, equality, and freedom motivated her to tak...

Henry L. "Dick" Thompson had to swear to stay silent for 20 years when he joined the ultra-secret, badass MACV-SOG. Now uncensored, he speaks about his insane adventures serving in the Vietnamese jungle, and how he applied his skills as a natural-born tracker raised on his grandparent's farm to the job of team leader: "I could actually smell the NVA."   Though their missio...

Henry L. "Dick" Thompson had to swear to stay silent for 20 years when he joined the ultra-secret, badass MACV-SOG. Now uncensored, he speaks about his insane adventures serving in the Vietnamese jungle, and how he applied his skills as a natural-born tracker raised on his grandparent's farm to the job of team leader: "I could actually smell the NVA."   Though their missio...

When he was sixteen, Brent Poppen was horsing around with another kid, and ended up with a broken neck and permanently wheelchair-bound. But Brent, who was already a budding athlete, didn't let that stop him. Now the winner of numerous Gold Medals and titles, including and a Bronze Paralympic Medal. (Athens '04) Brent describes his journey from basic mastery of his 'new' body t...

Thrown into a chaotic and deadly maelstrom of combat during the $785B Iraqi War, you can almost feel the bullets whizzing past as Benjamin Sledge speaks about how he came through his literal 'trial by fire.'  Though raised in a family with generations of soldiers, Benjamin's experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq were still shocking, and the psychic armor he developed to survive transf...

When policeman David Yuzuk first befriended the diminutive Richard J. Flattery living on the streets of Aventura, Florida, he assumed he was just another man down on his luck. Then in Spring 2015  Richard started to share his life story -- one filled with heroic combat as a platoon leader in Vietnam and later, secret missions for the CIA. He warned that by doing so, he was taking a risk. Officer Y...

Chuck Mawhinney grew up hunting in the Oregon woods on his grandfather's farm, and was selected for sniper training his first day of shooting practice in the Marines. Serving in Vietnam for 16 months, he went on to post the Corps' highest number of confirmed kills (103), and the highest number of probable kills (216).  Hear his journey of skill, survival and helping his fellow soldiers....

In the early '80s, undercover DEA Agent Frank Panessa posed successfully as a made member of the Sicilian mafia in order to combat an international $1.6B heroin smuggling ring that operated through pizza parlors across the U.S, and from various global locales in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.  Frank takes us inside the colorful and highly successful operation, describing the unique mafia cu...

In 1944, Sgt. Donald D. Fida was tortured and gutted by Japanese solders and left to die in the Philippine jungle, when his childhood friend miraculously came upon him and saved his life.  Because of this experience, Donald survived and continued to fight til the war's end, living to finally tell his tale at age 99. Twice a Purple Heart recipient, Donald shares his first-person account of his...

Tony Lyons, President and Publisher at Skyhorse Publishing, shares a cautionary tale of encountering both subtle and overt censorship, as he worked to bring Robert Kennedy Jr.'s manuscript The Real Anthony Fauci  to market. Tony describes the systematic hurdles placed in his path to block the book's publication and then discredit it. The book went on to sell over 2 million copies.  In hi...

A living legend of MACV-SOG and the Green Berets, John "Tilt" Stryker Meyer shares some of the most daring first-person stories of combat ever told! Inserted by Kingbee helicopter into the dense jungle along the Ho Chi Minh trail in  Laos and Cambodia during the height of the Vietnam War, Tilt and the US and indigenous members of Strike Force Idaho  deployed on  one impossible  top-secre...

A living legend of MACV-SOG and the Green Berets, John "Tilt" Stryker Meyer shares some of the most daring first-person stories of combat ever told! Inserted by Kingbee helicopter into the dense jungle along the Ho Chi Minh trail in  Laos and Cambodia during the height of the Vietnam War, Tilt and the US and indigenous members of Strike Force Idaho  deployed on  one impossible  top-secre...

Kelsi Sheren grew up in rural Canada, joining the Canadian military at 18, where she was trained to fire the powerful M777 howitzer.  Deployed  to Afghanistan in 2008, Kelsi was assigned to multi-national teams serving alongside British and American soldiers, responsible for searching Afghan women as the team entered villages, a task forbidden to her male comrades in that Muslim country. On one mi...

Since fleeing Communist Poland and arriving in the USA in 1984, Drago Dzieran has daily pledged to become a better American in gratitude for his life here. He describes growing up in post-war Soviet-controlled Poland, where he and his family knew fear, hunger, and oppression. Jailed for being part of the Soviet-toppling Solidarity movement, he relates what it is like to speak out against censorshi...

Former Head of Detectives of the Compton Police Department turned award-winning writer, Frederick Reynolds tells the story behind his gripping new non-fiction book Saint Bloodbath , about a series of brutal murders that took place in a homeless encampment in Long Beach, California in 2008. Joining Fred are Detective Mark McGuire (LBPD) and Captain Martin Rodriguez (LASD) who both played key roles...

Self-described working class writer and factory worker Frank Bill speaks candidly about the personal stories that inform his searing new novel Back to the Dirt, and the psychological and physical devastation that has ripped through his home turf of southern Indiana. Inspired in part by the story of his father, a Marine who served in Vietnam as an infantryman and mine sweeper, and pictures Frank, a...

On December 5, 2005, Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Israel “DT” Del Toro’s life changed in a flash of light when the Humvee he was riding in ran over an IED in southeastern Afghanistan. The resulting explosion and fire burned over 80% his body.  Doctors gave him only a 15% percent chance to survive. What they didn’t count on were the promises he had made to his wife, son and father, his courage...

Shot down over Formosa and facing a firing squad, Sgt. John Shott – radio operator and rear gunner of a B-25 Mitchell bomber – spent the remainder of World War II starving in a Japanese POW camp. Today we’re deeply honored as he tells his inspiring story. Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

When today’s guest Christopher Fulton inherited the Cartier watch President Kennedy wore the day he was assassinated, little did he know that he was holding the single most compelling piece of evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone and the fatal shoot was fired from in front of the limo. What happened to Christopher next is chilling.  Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pez...

Our guests today are Bronze Star-recipient Maj. Fred Galvin and author Sal Manna, authors of A Few Bad Men – the incredible true story of an elite team of US Marines set up to take the fall for alleged Afghanistan war crimes they did not commit, and their leader (Major Galvin) who fought for the redemption of his men. Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Enginee...

Today’s guest, former Hollywood Homicide detective Steve Hodel, has solved over 300 cases in his career. He had retired with many honors when his father died and he was confronted with his most difficult and most emotionally challenging case ever. He discovered that his father George Hodel had been one of the most terrifying, prolific and diabolical serial killers to ever live. Perhaps George Hode...

Charlene Hummert had been strangled to death using a dog collar when her body was found in her SUV in the parking lot of a grocery store on March 21st 2004. The murderer planted a series of handwritten letters, pretending to be Charlene’s non-existent stalker, in an attempt to draw police attention away from himself. However, due to the expert testimony of a forensic linguist, the jury needed less...

On the 26th of December 1944, Lt. John Fox commanded a mere 70 Americans - all of whom were black - against a massive German assault. The mountaintop village of Sommocolonia, along Italy’s northern most border, stood between the Germans and the strategic port of Livorno, 40 miles south. If successful, they would have choked off supplies to the Allied forces. In Lt. John Fox’s first and only battle...