Mystery surrounds Laos plot suspect

Former colleagues and war buddies of retired California National Guard Lt. Col. Harrison Jack say it's hard to believe he's accused of plotting to overthrow the Laotian government. Some, however, are re-examining an e-mail for signs that he had never fully let go of his experience in the Southeast Asian jungle decades ago.

In the February e-mail, obtained by The Associated Press, Jack asked for urgent help to raise money and provide other aid to Laotian Hmong refugees. He said the communist regime in Laos had recently ordered the genocide of the estimated 75,000 remaining Hmong in the country.

"I have personally seen copies of this order," Jack wrote. "Communist forces have already begun extermination efforts at points of least resistance."

Jack promised more details in a conference call for supporters and concluded his message with a personal appeal:

"I am writing this e-mail out of respect for and in tribute to those who valiantly served, rescued and protected American servicemen during the Vietnam era," Jack wrote. "I owe them my life."

Federal prosecutors allege that Jack, 60, was the central arms broker in an elaborate Rambo-esque plot to buy millions of dollars worth of Stinger missiles, AK-47s and grenade launchers, then send mercenaries along with the weapons into Laos to topple the country's communist regime.

Prosecutors were scheduled to ask a federal judge Thursday to keep Jack locked up, pending an arraignment in the widening investigation. He is one of 10 people charged in the overthrow plot and the first person the U.S. has asked to detain. Officials said their probe may extend to a former Wisconsin state senator, an unnamed congressman and the California Highway Patrol.

A diplomat with the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said he will wait to comment until U.S. officials briefed authorities.

Mary French, Jack's federal public defender, said her office has gotten several requests to submit character letters on Jack's behalf because he has a lot of community support.

"It's just shocking, completely out of character," said retired Maj. Gen. William Jefferds, who was Jack's commanding officer with the California National Guard until he retired in 2005.

He spent two days with Jack and his second wife last week at meetings for a nonprofit in San Diego.

"I just _ I don't know what to believe," Jefferds said.

In Laos, Hmong people are still subject to detentions and human rights violations, according to the U.S. State Department. Many recent immigrants arrive still traumatized by war and decades of persecution, said Sharon Stanley, director of Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries.

Friends and colleagues said they initially interpreted the e-mail solicitation as one of several retirement projects the hardworking Jack took on since leaving the California National Guard in 2005

"I figured this was another one of his schemes," said Donald Ullrich, a former military judge advocate who had worked with Jack to set up two unsuccessful nonprofits. "His ideas were all planes on the runway, they never got off the ground."

Now Ullrich and others wonder whether Jack's clandestine missions nearly 40 years ago on the front lines in Vietnam, where he served two tours as an Army Ranger, rushed back into his life in a way they never would have expected.

"You've probably seen movies of people who would paint their face up and stuff and go out. That's what we did," said Steve Castile, a staff sergeant whom Jack appointed as his chief field officer during the second of two tours the two men served together in Vietnam.

"We did long-range, six-man patrols into Laos, Cambodia _ places we weren't supposed to be, and our government didn't acknowledge we went to for a long time," Castile said.

He said he had lunch with Jack at a Napa Valley restaurant this year and said his former commanding officer had talked about the plight of the Hmong in Laos.

"There apparently was some manifesto about genocide, or something," Castile said. "I don't know about the charges, whether they are true or not. But I can see there may have been some sympathy there.

"I think there's a feeling among a lot of Vietnam veterans that we left people and put them in harm's way and still wish we could help."

If Jack reached a tipping point in recent months, it diverged drastically with the public and private persona he had built over the past two decades.

Jack's reputation was benign _ one of a good guy and a hard worker. The West Point graduate and Bronze Star recipient was one of only a handful of National Guard soldiers known to dutifully wear his full uniform on 100-plus-degree summer days in California's capital.

Jack was hired in March as the first ombudsman in Yolo County, near Sacramento.

"He was very articulate and energetic. 'Excellence' was the word he used a lot," county spokeswoman Beth Gabor said.

If colleagues saw faults, Jack occasionally was boastful and perhaps exaggerated about personal relationships with Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and others listed on his resume.

Jack also had seemed restless since retirement, jumping from one ambitious business venture to another, associates say.

He launched a nonprofit to create a military academy for disadvantaged youths, only to see the organization go belly-up when he couldn't persuade investors.

He also attempted to capitalize on his experience in overseeing military base closures by forming an environmental consulting business. That plan, as well as a water-bottling business in Fresno, also foundered.