J. Vinton Lawrence to train Hmong hill tribes in Laos to fight the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces which were then trying to take over that country. Poshepny gained the respect of the Hmong forces with practices that were considered barbaric by agency standards. He paid Hmong fighters to bring him the ears of dead enemy soldiers, and on at least one occasion mailed a bag of ears to the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane to verify his body counts. He dropped severed heads onto enemy locations twice in a grisly form of psy-ops. Though his orders again were only to train forces, he repeatedly went into battle with them and was wounded several times by shrapnel. Over the years, Poshepny became disillusioned with the U.S. government's management of the war. The CIA extracted Poshepny from Laos in 1970 and assigned him to a training camp in Thailand until his retirement in 1974. He received another Intelligence Star in 1975. Retirement After the United States withdrew from Vietnam, Poshepny remained in Thailand with his Hmong wife and four children. He moved the family to California in the 1990s. He frequently appeared at Hmong veterans' gatherings and helped veterans immigrate and settle in the US. He freely admitted his controversial acts during the war to reporters and historians, saying they were a necessary response to Communist aggression. A number of press stories have implied that Poshepny was the model for Colonel Walter Kurtz in the film Apocalypse Now. Tony Poe and his colleagues from the CIA, including Jerry Daniels, pushed for a memorial to the Hmong that fought with the United States in Laos and were successful. That memorial was established in Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day of 2018. A new section devoted to Tony Poe is now being displayed at the Patpong Museum in Bangkok, Thailand. See also Kingdom of Laos North Vietnamese invasion of Laos Hmong people Lao Veterans of America Laos Memorial Vang Pao Air America Royal Lao Army References Declassified reading CIA and the Generals, Covert Support to Military Government in South Vietnam CIA and the House of Ngo, Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954–63 CIA and Rural Pacification Good Questions, Wrong Answers CIA's Estimates of Arms Traffic through Sihanoukville, Cambodia, During the Vietnam War. The Way We Do Things, Black Entry Operations into Northern Vietnam Undercover Armies, CIA and Surrogate Warfare in Laos Further reading