Home page of Special Activities Detachment III, United States Army Security Agency

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All of these were taken between summer of 1970 and June 1972

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The entrance to Duffy's Tavern, 1971.

Duffy's bar. Patio is to the left.

Duffy his own self on the patio. He was a big guy.

Peeled a few of these off bottles at Duffy's. Cal Harth brought this one home.

Duffy's peace sign.

The road between the station and the front gate, looking toward the station. The messhall is on the left. Just before the messhall is the road to the NCO club. Across the road from the mess hall is officers housing. Wish I had 100 won for every time I walked down this road.

The ROK guard station along the road to the main gate, which can be seen in the upper left. Looks like he's busy fending off an invasion from the local kids militia.

An Jung-ri, aka The Ville

You turned left off the main drag to go to Duffy's and right to go down Drug Store Boulevard.

Main Street, An Jung-ri. Just outside the main gate.

Korean dairy farm west of An Jong-ri

Hardly the best soil in the world.

A farmer on the edge of town.

Sunset after a storm lights up the Ville, 1972

Harvesting rice from the paddy behind the barracks. Square concrete pole is for the new security fence that was erected in late 1971.

My landlady, her son and friend. Had quite a crush on the friend, Kim Gi Suk. She was a good and decent kid.

Yup, Kim Gi Suk pretty much had me at "hello." She eventually married an ex-MP and moved to San Diego. I hope she had a great life.

Ted Spencer and his Captain America `48 Plymouth. Great car -- took us from Devens to Vint Hill and back. Photographed in the H Company parking lot at Devens, summer 1970.

Photo Courtesy Willard Eldridge
If you lived here, you'd be home now.

As if they had to remind an ASA troopie in 1971.

Photo Courtesy Ken Williams
Ken Williams, SAD-III company clerk. Necklace is good sign Master Sgt. Craft wasn't around.

These pages owned and operated by John Mikes, ex-E5, ex-33C20. United States Army Security Agency, 1969-72.
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Photos Courtesy of Bill Davidson (Click for larger, uncropped versions)

Special Activities Detachment - III sat on the hill overlooking the operations compound at the Army Security Agency Field Station at Camp Humphreys, ROK. SAD-III was officially known as Project Leftout, but no one who knows why is talking.

U.S. Army Security Agency
Special Activities Detachment-III
1969-1975

SAD-III was the last of the ASA special activities units created in the 1960s. SADs-I and - II were airborne: SAD-III was ground-based.

SAD-III was a mobile unit on three semi-trailers that could be bolted together in parallel to form a functioning station. Two of the trailers had three cargo containers placed end-to-end housing the communications center and equipment maintenance areas. The third trailer had two containers up front with electronic eqiupment, and a multi-frequency antenna at the rear.

An overhead view
looking north, with antenna field and operations buildings
in the background. Taken
from the water tower.

A full description SAD-III's mission must await word from the U.S.Army on information declassification status. A letter requesting access to all declassified information was sent October 2003.

Sad-III came into being in 1968 at Vint Hills Farm. It was intially deployed to Japan for testing late that year via ship, then returned by plane to Vint Hills in late 1969 for a complete redesign and refit. In December 1970, the trailers were loaded one each into Air Force jet transports at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington and flown to Korea.

The unit remained in Korea until 1975, when it was returned to Vint Hills for another refit. I'll let Bill Davidson, a former ASA soldier and SAD-III's last civilian rep, tell you about the end:

"In January 1974 I was assigned to Project Leftout (SAD III) for 18 months. Sadly in June 1975 NSA pulled the plug on the operation. ASA left two enlisted guys to help myself and another Radiation guy named Bill Lappin pack the system for shipment back to Vint Hill Farms. The worst part of trying to get the system ready for shipment was to rebuild the wheels and breaks along with the leveling jacks which hadn't be used since the system was installed. The system was shipped from Puson as deck cargo in early July 1975.

"The next time I saw the system was at VHF in mid August 1975 where it was being stripped down for refurbishment. After refurbishment the system was supposed to go to Germany to pick up for operations that were shut down in Turkey but in November the refurbishment was stopped "do to lack of funds." About a year later I heard that the antenna system was removed from its trailer and sent to Norway for use by the boys from Langley. That's the last I ever heard about the SAD III system."

Photo by John Mikes
Taken from off post, just west of An Jong-ri, summer 1971. The side door is open, as it often was, because the crappy, undersized and overworked air conditioners were usually broken down, despite the valiant efforts of our AC tech Randy Harrison.

The antenna array, with compound guard tower in the background.

Rear of the trailers, with the antenna pointing north. Main entry was by the canvas tunnel at the right.

These pages owned and operated by John Mikes, ex-E5, ex-33C20. United States Army Security Agency, 1969-72.
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If there was one thing Korea had in abundance, it was cute kids.

Ted Spencer and Ron Artis lived down this path. This little girl was watching ants at work.


Life was good when the cotton candy vendor sat up shop on main street.

I've always wondered what happened to this little guy.

I suspected he was thinking, "I can take that skinny wimp."

Bought a lot of Coke, rice and veggies at this store.

A candy maker. Never did develop a taste for Korea candy -- wasn't sweet enough for my American taste buds.

This street ran parallel to and west of main street. Nick Justice lived in the neighborhood.

Headquarters of a local, uh, union.

Wayne Parnin, Ken Williams, Jim McGhan

Left to right: Jim Robinson, Joe Black, Cal Harth, Paul Dobson

SAD-III lived on the second floor of the barracks on the left. We had a lovely view of Da Ville from our back porch.

I put a couple of Army stickers in the urinals at our first Korean barracks. Don't know if they were still there when the Navy security detachment moved in.

Our house guys, taking a break.

The Mud Bowl 1971. Tackle football on the swampy lawn, which we turned into a muddy mess. HQ first sergeant went ballistic. We didn't care what that jackass thought, because we answered to MSgt Craft, and he rather enjoyed how we irritated the full-of-himself HQ top.

Flag football. Several SAD-III
troopies can be identified.

Doc Halladay

An unintentional double exposure. Darrel Packer is lifting the can of Fallsflat beer. A ghostly Nick Justice is on the left.

Lou Gibbons

Cold warriors in training. John Mikes, Tom Doman, Tom Seay, Moses, Johnson in the red barracks at Devens.

Tom Seay adjust his television in the Devens barracks. Sore necks in our future.

These pages owned and operated by John Mikes, ex-E5, ex-33C20. United States Army Security Agency, 1969-72.

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Photo courtesy of Bob Warth

Jeez, was I ever really this young? I guess I was in 1970. We had just returned from firing our M-16s, except I hung out in the trucks all day and never got around to going to the range. That's me in my army suit in the foreground, all of 19 years old and looking about 16. Behind me, carefully camouflauged so he couldn't be seen by any lifers, is Jim McGhan. And behind Jim is The Ville, An Jung-ri.

"Well, if you don't want to be a door gunner,
how about being a spy?"

In the summer of 1969 I was 18 years old, fresh out of high school, with an ominous 1A stamped on my draft card. With the draft looming (and I do mean looming -- the odds of a draftee earning a quickie M16/jungle boot combination were very good in those troubled times) I enlisted in the U.S. Army Security Agency. The recruiter told me that in exchange for a four-year commitment the ASA would give me the easiest way through the Army. I can't say the guy lied to me.

After a brief, yet never-ending, stop at Ft. Leonard Wood for basic training, I traveled to Ft. Devens, MA, in September 1969 to become a 33C20S1 -- intercept equipment repairman/space data collection. I was one of the lucky ones -- spent a single day in the casual company in the old wooden barracks down by the lake, and never pulled KP at the dreaded Con 4 mess hall. Some of my colleagues in SAD-III did weeks of KP waiting for their security clearances to come in so they could start school.

My luck continued when I was sent to C Company to attend 33B school at night. H Company was the official night student company, but I was overflow, I guess. I was the only night student in my platoon bay in the old concrete barracks that were located near the PX. Later, when we moved to the newer, red brick barracks in Sherman Square, the night students were grouped together mostly on the third floor. Our only responsibility was to make the daily formation and march to school at Vicksburg Square. We got up when we wanted to, came and went as we pleased. Except for the lousy pay (about 90 bucks a month for a PFC), bad haircuts and green clothes, it was pretty close to civilian life. After B school came day duty for C school, but the informality continued: I remember one room inspection, one parade, one night of guard duty and one night of being the Officer of the Day's runner during my 12-plus months at Devens. And, heck, the OD runner duty was the result of flunking the one and only room inspection after the First Sergeant took a look at my shoddy footlocker display, asked me if I was taking the Army seriously, and I replied, "Not really."

My memory ain't what it used to be and I can't remember many names from the Devens days. There was Ted Spencer, my classmate who accompanied me to Korea and became my roommate and lifelong friend. Tom Seay was another classmate in B school. He went to Germany and lives in Ohio. I remember spending a day with him at the nearby Hanscomb Field Air Force Base trying to get a hop to Ohio. Didn't make off the base, but we did get to see a U-2 take off. There was Tom Doman, from Pennsylvania, and Howard Bischoff from Buffalo, New York. Tom Bierman, a close friend of Tom Seay, broke his leg badly (I don't remember how) and was sent home on leave to heal. And Moses Johnson, who was with me during basic training. There were many others whose faces I can see but can't put a name to.

In late October 1970 I was assigned to SAD- III, which was headquartered at Ft. Devens and refitting at Vint Hill Farms Station, VA. In December 1970 we received orders to Camp Humphreys, South Korea.

SAD III was my home until I accepted a one year early out in June 1972. Had I stayed in for my last year, I would've gone to Sinop, Turkey.

I'm looking for anyone who might have served with me at SAD III. I'd also like to hear from anyone from the C Company crew, Ft. Devens, from September 1969 to October 1970.

E-mail me if you have info to share.

--John Mikes

These pages owned and operated by John Mikes, ex-E5, ex-33C20. United States Army Security Agency, 1969-72.

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