Mr. Green entered the Border Patrol as a member of the 61st Academy Class at El Paso, Texas in August, 1955.  He was a long-time flight  engineer  and pilot of multi-engine Border Patrol Aircraft.  He had many unusual experiences in the Patrol including transportation of Hungarian Refugees, deportation of aliens to the orient, air transportation of mafia racketeers, Bureau  of Prisons transportation,  Cuban tractor swap for U.S. prisoners after Bay of Pigs invasion, and flew into Oxford, Mississippi for the James Meredith situation.  His interview was conducted at his home in El Paso, Texas  by  Ms. Esther Cornell,  Institute of Oral History of the University of Texas at El Paso, Texas on September 30, 1986.

GREEN: My name is Paul Green. I was born August the third 1924. My parents were coal miners in Oklahoma. I spent most of my life in Oklahoma. I became a Border Patrolman in 1955 in El Paso, Texas. The starting salary at that time, I think, was about 3200 dollars. I was in the 52nd class. Here in El Paso.

C: Why did you become a Border Patrolman?

G: I had always wanted to become a law enforcement officer. Really my first desire was narcotics, but I have ‘policeman’ written all over me, so I could never become a narcotics agent. So consequently that took care of that. In World War Two, I was with field artillery, light third armored division. My first station was Marfa, Texas, prior to entering the academy. I was really with sort of a horse patrol down there in the Big Bend Park.

C: How long were you down there?

G: Six mouths — no three months the first time, then I went to the academy, then I got out of the Academy, then was stationed back down in the Marfa Sector again. I stayed there until I finished probation. At that time, the service had looked over my record, my background, and decided to put me on the Airlift. So I immediately left Marfa for Brownsville, Texas.

C: When you were down at Big Bend, was that a park? A brand new park?

G: Yes, it was a park, fairly new, and it was really desolate. It was really desolate down there. The wife and I were down there awhile back and we could hardly recognize things anymore because civilization had hit there. We used to camp out when we went down there since  there was no place to stay. Mainly we were after the illegal aliens working in the wax camps, making candelaria wax.

When I joined the Airlift, I flew with the Airlift Sector about a year out of Brownsville, and then General Swing was Commissioner — and he had procured a DC—4 from the Air Force. The back end of it was partially burned of, so the airplane was sent to Oklahoma City to the FAA, and the FAA spent about a year rebuilding and making this particular DC—4 into a, you might say, into a hospital ship. The purpose being, the mental institutions of New York City were completely running over with illegal aliens, mainly because people had brought their parents and other people into the United States and they had become mentally incompetent, so they immediately put them in a mental institution for the state to take care of.

C: These would be European aliens?

G: European aliens, yes.

C: What year are you talking about now?

G: We’re talking about 1957. In 1957, Oklahoma City had the airplane finished. It  had a hospital section, and then it had about 30 seats in back beyond the hospital section. So we made our first run into New York City. Well, first we went up to Oklahoma City  and the crews trained, for about a couple weeks, I think. Then we went into New York City for our first run to Europe. The passengers we got were very hostile. They suspicioned that something was wrong when they brought them in to Idlewild Airport to put on the airplane and consequently, numerous ones didn’t want to get on the airplane. And so our only alternative was to put them on the ground, pull their pants down, and have a psychiatrist give them a shot. And knock ‘em out.

C: What had they been told?

G: That they were being taken to another hospital. Transfered to another hospital. So at times there were quite a few episodes right at the bottom of the stairway before we could get the aliens on board. The aliens were extremely pitiful. Some of them were old ladies, old men. Some of them were very  mean. There were murderers, there were homicidal maniacs, there were prostitutes, there were communists, every category you could think of  undesirable aliens, they were there, for us to take back to Europe. Needless to say, we were not equipped as the flight crew — let me go over. On a trip, the crew consisted of 4 pilots and one engineer, being myself. We would have usually 2 psychiatrists, 2 female attendants from the mental institutions there in New York City and 2 male attendants. Then we would have, New York City Airport maintained a port receptionist to assist the Immigrant Inspector in the conducting of people through the migration area. So we used the port receptionists, young females, as our stewardesses. And we would carry four of those. It pretty well balanced out, we had 2 complete crews. And then we had beds, called bunks — seats that made into beds — on the airplane, where the off—crew could sleep while the other crew was flying. Because this was not a situation where you go you stop. You don’t stop in this particular situation.

C: You had a huge crew then? Two complete crews?

G: Yes, two complete crews. The reason being, once we left New York City we would not stop, other than for fuel and to let off our deportees off, until we got most of the time to Athens, Greece. The typical trip would be leaving New York City usually early in the morning, and we’d go from there to Gander, Newfoundland, from Gander, Newfoundland, across the North Atlantic to Shannon, Ireland, or else Prestwood, Scotland, and then from there we would go, most of the time, up to Copenhagen, Denmark. I’ll explain that particular procedure later. From Copenhagen, Denmark, we would head south then to Frankfort, Germany, sometimes over to Madrid, sometimes into Portugal. Then we would go into Vienna, Austria. From Vienna, Austria, we would go across the Alps to Rome, Italy, From Rome, Italy, into Belgrade, Yugoslavia. however, one exception on the Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Tito at that time was very sensitive, so consequently he would only permit one crew and whoever we were bringing back to his country, and one psychiatrist, to go into Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Everybody else, the other crew and everything, we had to leave where we made our last stop. That was always touch—and—go, getting into Belgrade and getting out of Belgrade, because we were always extremely afraid we were gonna be interned, which we almost did one time because after leaving Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the pilot failed to make a turn that he should have and we ended up over one of his airfields. So we were immediately challenged, and luckily they considered that we were dumb Americans and let us go on. But we thought we had had it.

So that would be our usual trip agenda.

G: As to some of the experiences that happened, numerous bad experiences happened in New York trying to get the criminals on board, trying to get the homicidal maniacs, the completely irrational people on board. The New York State institutions would assist us considerably by, the night before the planned trip the next morning, they would completely sedate the particular individual that was going to give us a lot of trouble. When they brought him to the airplane, he was almost a mummy. But some of them still realized that they had problems and what was happening to them, and so we had to give them more sedation at the bottom of the stairs.

We were getting rid of our Communists in Copenhagen, Denmark. This particular situation, in a way it was pitiful, but it had to be done like this. We had a Communist seaman. So we stopped in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was fairly rational. We let him off along with a male attendant who was supposed to put him on a Russian airliner that left the Scandinavian countries, stopped in Copenhagen, and then went directly into Russia. We dropped him off, along with the attendant, expecting everything to go alright. We went on from there on into Vienna, Austria. That particular trip we stopped in Vienna, Austria. We didn’t have any passengers going to Italy or Greece. So I’d just gotten to bed and the telephone rang and the two pilots involved were Pilleod and Brown, So they said, we got to go back to Copenhagen, because, the old seaman’s name was Joe, Joe had become extremely uncooperative and would not get on the Russian airliner. So they said, we’re gonna have to go back and do something with him. So we got the psychiatrist, who at that time happened to be Dr. Buckman, who was chief psychiatrist and director of King’s Park Hospital, the biggest mental institution out on Long Island, I think encompassing about 10,000 patients. A massive institution. So we woke up Dr. Buckman and we told him what our problem was and he said, I can take care of it for you.” So the 4 of us, including the psychiatrist, flew back to Copenhagen, Denmark. We landed and picked up the seaman and the male attendant.

C: The male attendant was American?

G: someone in the institution there in New York City. So our only alternative was to take this seaman to another location in the Scandanavian countries and I can’t remember what city it was, but we checked the schedule and found that the Russian airliner also landed in this particular city. So we went ahead and put the seaman on board , We told Buckman what our problem was and he said, “I will take care of it for you.” So after we had been  air born  about an hour , 30 minutes to an hour, Dr. Buckman came forward and he said, “he  is completely sedated. I can’t give him another shot or it’ll kill him, but he’ll do anything that you want him to do.” So I went back and I looked at him, and he looked like a mummy, but he was still walking. So we landed at this other city and we put old Joe and the male attendant off again.

So that got rid of him. As I said, it was rather a pitiful situation, but it had to be done. And that got rid of that Communist.

We had another rather interesting situation in Vienna, Austria. I was out on the airplane, gassing the airplane up, we were gonna go down into Belgrade, Yugoslavia. We had a man and his wife to deliver down there. The man Tito wanted, because he was a convicted murderer and I don’t know what else, but anyhow, he was important cargo as far as Tito was concerned. So at the same time we got rid of ours, we had to accomodate other government agencies as to what they wanted. So as I was gassing up, let’s see, I was on the right wing, and the cabin entrance door was to the left and the rear. So I heard this horrible commotion back there.

Supposedly one of the pilots was supposed to be guarding that door, so that nobody got off. But the Yugoslavian was desparate, so he got by the pilot, and I looked down and the  Yugoslrvian was running away from the airplane across the ramp. Needless to say, the ramp usually encompasses 10, 15, 20 acres of completely barren territory, you might say. So I jumped off the airplane wing, down on the stand, and  down on the ground. There was a Volkswagen coming by that was part of the ground crew. So I commandeered the Volkswagen and I told the Volkeswagen to chase the guy that was running,  the Yugoslavian. So he took out   he got quite a kick out of it, I think, because he took out after the Yugoslavian. Well, by that time, the Yugoslavian had gotten to a wood fence that was the boundary of the airport, so he jumped over the wood fence it  was about 6—7—foot tall, I guess, and he got over the fence before we got there, but I jumped out and I got up on the fence and I could see if I made one great big leap I might get the Yugoslavian. So I did. I jumped and I landed, fortunately, right on top of him, Well, the battle was on. He bit, scratched, and everything you could think of, trying to get away from me, and of course he had the advantage of the adrenalin that I didn’t have. So anyhow, he didn’t get away from me and I was able to keep him under control until the Vienna policemen arrived. By that time the Hungarian revolt was pretty well over with and the Viennese were extremely sympathetic to the Hungarians, and to anybody that wanted refuge. So they found out the story that the Yugoslavian was headed back to Yugoslavia, so they said no, you can’t have him. So they wouldn’t give him to us. So here we are with the guy’s wife, and she immediately becomes absolutely hysterical. I just can’t describe how hysterical she got. Because she knew that we were taking her to Yugoslavia, but her husband wasn’t going along. So we went ahead and could do nothing but give the Viennese the Yugoslavian. We kept the wife, and the doctor finally had to sedate her because she’d become completely unruly. The situation was that as long as we maintained control or sovreignty of the airplane, as long as the people stayed upstairs, but once they reached the ground, why, we’d lost control of them. They belonged to whatever country we were in. So we went ahead and took her on in to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and got rid of her.

C: Did you tell the Viennese that he was a murderer?

G: They didn’t care. they’re very sympathetic. Anybody that comes into Austria and wants asylum, they’re gonna get it. That pretty well closed out that situation.

OK, along with the mental patients which was our prime concern, the Hungarian revolt I think had stopped about that time, but there were still Hungarian refugees streaming across. But a lot of Hungarian refugees had become disenchanted with this country. So the Government was bringing those back into New York, processing them, and then we would take numerous ones of the Hungarians back to Vienna, Austria. We couldn’t go into Hungary.

C: Why did they want to go back?

G: They just didn’t like the United States. They had become disenchanted with the United States and their relatives were in Hungary, so they wanted to go back. It was a complicated situation process, the Hungarian situation, as far as who took what. I don’t want to discuss the political ramifications of all the.... On our return trips we would also bring back Hungarians who had escaped into Austria, in Austria, and wanting to come to the United States, so we had Hungarians going both ways, really. Those brought home disenchanted, those coming to the new country

The usual trip, by the time we left New York, would take anywhere from 20 to 30 hours depending on how many stops we made, what countries we had to land at to disembark aliens or mental patients. We would usually end up either in Vienna, Rome, or Athens, Greece. We’d spend about two or three days there resting up, and then start back on our return trip. Most of our return trips were empty, unless there were some Hungarians who had escaped into Austria, and we would stop in Vienna, pick them up, and bring them into New York.

The weather...One of the most exciting, probably, would be the weather. The North Atlantic is horrible. In wintertime, if you go down, I think the survival rate in the water is about 2 1/2 minutes. So you don’t have to worry too much about ditching in the North Atlantic. We had one extremely close call as far as ditching in the North Atlantic. We left Gander, New­foundland, and were only about 2 or 2 1/2 hours out from Gander, Newfoundland. Now to a layman, this sounds rather peculiar. We lost an engine. Actually, we had an indication that we had a fire in one of our engines, so we shut the engine down. But the head winds, if we turned around and went back to Gander, Newfoundland, it would take us longer to do that due to the headwinds than it would to proceed on to Shannon, Ireland. So, in that situation, you go to wherever you can get there the fastest, and Shannon, Ireland being it. So we proceeded to Shannon, Ireland, but we hit horrible ice. Needless to say, we were pretty heavy, we had the nose pretty high, then we started hitting the ice and the ice started building up on the wings and on the bottom of the wings. So we were carrying many  pounds of ice and the power was no longer available to us, so we had to...,we just started drifting down. We started out, I think, at about 10,000 feet when we hit the ice. Gradual drift—down due to the weight which we couldn’t do anything about and we ended up 3,000 feet above the North Atlantic and luckily were able to maintain our altitude. And we made it on in to Shannon, Ireland.

It was a very  close call. As one of the ground crew — of course, the section that handled the crossing of the airplanes across the Atlantic knew we were in serious trouble, so they assisted us in every way they could. As far as traffic. And as one of the Irish ground crew put it, when we landed and taxied up to the airport, he said, “You had a squeaky one.” And yes, it was a very squeaky trip.

The other very close call was — numerous times we would leave Gander and go into Bermuda or Lodges in the Azores. Lodges was a city in the Azores. So I can’t remember whether it was Bermuda or Lodges. The airport starts at the beginning of the runway at a cliff. The cross winds were just absolutely unreal. At Lodges or Bermuda, whichever it was, they only have one runway. So you can only land in one direction, and the Wind was 180° opposite of the runway, which meant we had about a 70—knot cross wind. This  proved to be a very bad problem. The pilot was able to maintain directional control by landing really on one landing gear and the nose wheel, and he kept the other landing gear up. And he was able to maintain directional control until we rolled out.

C: Do you recall who the pilot was?

G: Yes, that was pilot John Wright, I might add that after the squeaky trip that I mentioned when we encountered the ice, John Wright went back to Washington — he was the pilot on plane — and about 2 1(2 weeks later he died in his sleep. So I don’t know whether the strain had anything to do with him dying or not, but anyhow, it was a horrible strain on all of us.

Another situation was in either Lodges or Bermuda, the winds were real bad again, which they nearly always were, We were heading into this cliff and we didn’t seem to be able to get above the cliff. We kept adding power and adding power and adding more power trying to get above the cliff to the end of the runway. So finally we ended up almost with maximum tower before we were able to overcome the down—draft that was occurring at the edge of the cliff there that kept us from getting up to the edge of the runway to land. So it was a very close situation that we had there. I think that pilot was Ed Parker, I’m not sure.

Another close situation we had was....our navigators that we used on this trip....back in those days we used navigators and we always carried two navigators, one on and one off. We always had one student navigator. Well, the navigators came from a reserve unit out on Long Island, and Air Force Reserve unit and they had navigators out there. So our navigators consisted of one experienced navigator and one student. So we took these two navigators to Europe one time. We got into I think Austria or Rome and one of the navigators was Jewish — our main navigator was Jewish — and he received a message from New York City that one of his parents had died. They were Orthodox Jews which meant that they didn’t embalm them, I guess, and they buried them as quick as they could. So the navigator told us, he said, “I got a horrible problem here, I’m due to go back, I need to go back, but the navigator I’m gonna leave you with can’t get you back to New York.’ So needless to say, that really shook us. But we figured, we’ll get back to New York, you go ahead and catch a commercial airliner and go back to New York and take care of what has to be done there. That left us with the student. The student turned out to be absolutely worse than we ever anticipated. From the very time we left — let’s see, at that time I think we were in Vienna Austria, I guess it was. Because we left Austria, went over to Portugal, and we were going from Portugal to Lodges in the mid—Atlantic. Immediately, whenever he gave us a course after leaving Portugal, we knew that he was way, way out.

So we ignored him and let him go ahead and navigate and we went ahead and flew our course. We had radar on board that was good, I think, about 300 miles. It was weather radar, hut it was extremely good about picking up islands. So I spent most of the evening looking at the scope trying to find the Azores. And he was navigating, but his courses were terrible. We finally saw a little speck in the scope, and I told the pilot, “I believe I found it.
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From there, we had to some how or other get to Gander, Newfoundland. So we took off again and he gave us an unreal heading. So we went ahead and the pilot navigated his own bearing as to what he thought would be it, considering the winds and everything. And it’s quite a long leg. So about, oh, I think about 4 hours, we were beginning to get a little concerned because we couldn’t pick up nothing on the radar as far as a landfall. So the pilot started tuning in what’s known as an ADF, it’s a directional finder, and it was intended, really, for this type of navigation. But the pilot finally, luckily the set and the direction finder would also home in on commercial stations. So finally the pilot heard this opera singer. So he started listening to the opera singer and sure enough, after awhile, the station identified itself and it turned out to be a station on Newfoundland, in Gander. So after a few more miles, why the needle would home in on this particular station in Newfoundland, so we were able to go ahead and follow the needle on in to Newfoundland. And then from Newfoundland on in to New York, why, nothing to it. You got easy navigating. So we did make it back to New York, but at times we were very skeptical that we were going to.

Another real touchy situation was, we were coming in from either  Shannon, Ireland, or the Azores, and we always had to land in Gander to pick up fuel, because we just didn’t have the capacity to do anything else. So the closer we got to Gander, Gander told us their weather was absolutely stinkin’. That it was 0—0. Which meant that you couldn’t see anything’ up or down or forward or anything else. But they did have what’s known as a GCA, which is a Ground Control Approach system, and the guy sitting in a radar—controlled house, he spots you on a scope and then he has the facilities to, hopefully, bring you to the ground. with his radar system. So that was our only alternative was to take it. As I said, the situation was 0—0. The pilot at that time was John Wright, who was a very capable instrument pilot, a terrific person as far as instrument work. So he was good; the guy on the ground was good; so between the two of them they started out to get us on the ground. We got closer and closer to the ground, which is real close, and the guy on the ground said, “You should be seeing the runway.” Well, all we could see was one runway light at a time. We were actually over the runway, coming in to the runway, at the end of the runway, but we couldn’t see two lights. Because one light wouldn’t...you couldn’t... John couldn’t set up directional control to go to the next light. All we could see was one, so we didn’t know which direction the second light was. The air was full of ice crystals, and when we turned on the landing lights, it made it worse. It just reflected off the ice crystals. So anyhow, we made that pass and we didn’t make it on the ground. So we aborted the landing and went around again and set up for another approach. I think the guy on the ground had made up his mind, “I’m gonna get that airplane in.” And John Wright had made up his mind, “I’m gonna land this airplane.” So we went for the second approach. And we left the landing lights off the second time so we wouldn’t get the reflection off the ice flakes. Well, again, all we could get was one runway light at a time and so we didn’t make it that time. Again we made an abort landing and went around again and started for our third approach. And this one had to be it, because we only had enough fuel to go to our alternate airport which was quite a few miles on the other side of Greenland — I mean, Newfoundland. So he tried his third approach. Everything was beautiful, both of them were absolutely fantastic in their coordination, but we just couldn’t get that second runway light in sight on our approach, so we had to abort that landing. So then we had to head on to another airport, cause that’s all the fuel we had left. We had just come ... we had used up all our fuel. So that pretty well took care of another hairy situation.

The situation on deporting some of the people was just real pitiful from the standpoint of, we’re talking about young people here in the United States who had brought their mothers over, they’ve become mentally unbalanced, and they were sending the old people back home to Lord knows what kind of situation and some of the cases, I don’t know how the kids’ conscience let them do it. It was just unbearable to ...my heart bled for the old people when I saw them on board the airplane. It was just a horrible situation, but I guess the kids didn’t care, I don’t know.

In addition to our European trips, once a year we’d usually fly to the Orient. This really taxed the capabilities of the DC—4, because of the distances involved and the headwinds. Our usual trip on the Orient would be New York to San Francisco, and then I would cram every ounce of fuel I could get, by means of using a pencil and some Filler necks, and what have you

Cornell: A pencil and some what?

Green: Oh, I used a little system of putting a pencil in a filler neck and I could get quite a bit more fuel in the tanks. Because the leg from San Francisco to Hawaii took us 13 and a half hours and that pretty well stretched the capabilities of the DC—4 as far as fuel quantity. We always insisted that we have nothing but the best navigators and we didn’t carry any student navigators on these particular trips. Our load usually consisted of people from Mainland China — we got rid of them through Hong Kong. So we would leave Frisco, go to the Hawaiian Islands and I can’t remember whether it was Guam or Wake. Guam was our next stop after Hawaiian Islands and it was just about as long, if not longer, from San Francisco to Hawaii. So again it taxed our fuel capabilities. And from there on into Hong Kong we had no problem. Island hopping, but the navigator could easily stay on course. We would end up in Hong Kong, China. The airport in Hong Kong, China, is a very difficult airport to get into. You gotta go between two mountains to get to the airport, and you can only go through there in good weather, But luckily, weather was good and we had no trouble getting into Hong Kong. By that time, we were pretty well bushed. We’d spend 4 or 5 days in Hong Kong. Some times we had deportees for other countries around Hong Kong, so our male attendants would take the other patients or deportees we had, leave Hong Kong and go into the other countries and then come back into Hong Kong and we’d be waiting for them to return so we could head back to the United States. There was nothing real eventful about the Hong Kong trips. Never any close encounters, no particular violent patients of any kind. Pretty  routine.

In addition, to the missions, so far as the European trips, we had a secondary function involving VIP trips. At this particular time, General Swing was Commissioner, in my estimation, one of the finest men and Commissioners we’ve ever had as far as getting jobs done. He knew how to do it, he had two very capable assistants — Ray Farrell and Ed Lochran. Ray Farrell was a politician and a PR man deluxe. Ed Lochran was a terrific money man. Everybody in Washington has to have some little gimmick and so Swing and Farrell decided on the secondary function of the DC—4 .   So they notified me to make up a configuration by which I could take the interior of the airplane and change it around and give it what I called a VIP configuration. At that time, we were keeping the airplane with Lockheed in New York, Lockheed Aviation. So I went to the engineers at Lockheed and I told them what I wanted. I never at any time had any trouble with money. What I spent and what I did was never questioned. So Lockheed informed me they had just finished building and outfitting a Lockheed Electra — no, a Lockheed...I can’t remember. A four—engine massive airplane. At that time it was a transport plane. But anyhow, it’s immaterial. Eisenhower was president, he had decided

Give it to .Hailee Salasee.  Salasee had his particular type he wanted on the interior, so they had some engineering plans left over from it. But as a side line, this particular airplane that they built for  Salsee,  Lockheed finished it and they notified Hailee Salasee, he sent his crew in, Lockheed trained the crew and the crew left New York to take it back to Ethiopia, It was quite an impressive airplane. It had the Lion of Judah painted from front to back, real colorful airplane. So the crew proceeded to take the airplane back to Ethiopia. On landing, the crew cracked up the airplane and burnt the airplane up. So Hailee Salasee  never got to use his airplane that had been fixed up so elaborate for him.

But anyhow, mainly I needed some tables and some configuration to make this DC—4 into sort of a VIP airplane, so Lockheed had the ideal plans that I wanted, so I got them to make them up, They were fully detachable. I could set up a VIP configuration in about 3 hours, from a transport configuration. The secondary function, then, was to see that Congressman John Rooney, Democrat of New York, Chairman of the Appropriations Subcomm­ittee.

Cornell:How do you spell that Rooney?

Green: ROONEY. He was a most influential little fellow. Italian, and   quite a drinker. He loved to be catered to. So Farrell being the good PR man he was — when we weren’t busy on our missions, why then we would go into New York, pick up numerous dignitaries — Swing, Farrell, Congressman John Rooney and his wife, Katie, who was quite a character herself. She was a very tall woman. She was a fun—loving woman, just had a good time anything she went at. In one particular instance, it was quite hurry—up trip, evidently, Congressman John wanted to go somewhere and he didn’t tell Katie in time. So I get on board the airplane and after a short while, I look up in the aisle and here’s Katie’s underwear. She had washed it out and hung it in the aisle! But nothing bothered Katie.

So that was our secondary function. Some of the people that the Immigration Service catered to over the years were Congressman and Mrs. John Rooney, Senator James Eastland, Democrat, Mississippi, we hauled him quite a few times; Congressman Frank Bow, Representative from Ohio — he always had the habit of somehow or other wanting a trip home, so we would go from New York into Washington, DC, pick him up and take him down into Ohio. Congressman Thane and daughter from Arizona; Supreme Court Justice Brennan; Senator Harrison Williams, Jr., Democrat from New Jersey; Attorney General Robert F.  Kennedy; Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach; Mexican Immigration officials — I think there was about 25 of those that we picked up in Mexico City, hauled numerous places in the United States, it was about a two or three week trip — went up into Canada as guests of the Royal Mounted Police. Sort of an interesting feature there, we landed with all these important dignitaries on board and the Mounted Police really wasn’t interested in them too much — they wanted to know who the Border Patrolmen were and they wanted to take us in tow. And of course, we always wore civilian clothes, so they gave us a royal treatment.

And the Associate Commissioner Mario  Noto — this was a very interesting individual. Captain William R. Anderson. Captain Anderson was skipper of the submarine Nautilus. He was a personal friend of Bobby Kennedy. And to refresh your memory, Captain Anderson was the skipper that took the first nuclear submarine under the North Pole. He had retired from the Navy and had decided to go into politics. And being a personal friend of Bobby, Bobby got ahold of us and had us haul him around to different places in his particular state, I forget which one it was. Sort of feel him out to see if he could be elected from Congress, which I think he was. But anyhow, he was a fine individual. He had written a book and when he left the airplane, he said, “I’ll see that you boys get an autographed copy of my book.” And we figured, yeah, we know that stuff, you know. Not figuring that we’d ever get a copy of his book. But a short time later, we all got autographed copies of his book, which we thought was very nice gesture on his part.

Ah,  Jim Wagner, who is nephew of Mayor Wagner of New York. Al  Fishbein — a very colorful individual, you’ve probably seen him on TV. He was Sergeant at Arms of the House.  General  Swing’s dog. I can’t remember what the dog’s name was, but he was a good old dog.

Cornell: Did he travel in a dog carrier?

Green: No, General Swing’s dog was getting old. He was getting feeble. He was having trouble with his kidneys. At that time, the Border Patrol had taken over the Port Isabel and made an academy out of it. So Carlos Beechie was Director of the Academy facility down there. So General Swing figured that that would be a good place for the old dog to spend his retiring years and die down there. So we went into Washington and we picked up General Swing’s dog. He had about two boxes full of pills that the old dog had to take, so we had to minister his pills on the trip to Brownsville. So to have a little fun, we got ahold of Carlos Beechie by radio and told him we were bringing in a VIP into Port Isabel, to meet us at Brownsville. So Carlos....we landed in Brownsville and looked out the window and we couldn’t help but just be tickled to death, because here was Carlos in his Lincoln Continental all dressed up, and Dud Underwood. There was a full complement there to welcome the VIP. So we went down and they said, “Well, where’s the VIP?” So the pilots went down first and they said, “Well, Green’s bringing him.” And so here I walk out with the old dog. (Laughter)

Cornell: Were you carrying the dog?

Green: Yea, I carried the old dog. And so we all had a good laugh out of it. The biggest user of the airplane, really, was John Rooney and Ray Farrell. Rooney liked to travel. I will never forget — I came back one trip , I had been to, I think, Mexico City, New Orleans, Kingston, Jamaica, and Montego Bay, Jamaica, and our passenger on board was Congressman John Rooney and an entourage of General Swing’s daughter, Mary Ann who’s now Mrs. Chuck Fullalove, Dave Crockett who was OIC in charge of the administration of the State Department, Jay Rowell who was Congressman Rooney’s Administrative Assistant — a very brilliant young man, lie really was Congressman Rooney’s brains. Rooney had the personality and Jay Howell had the brains, so it made a terrific team. Anyhow, when I got home, I happened to see a LIFE Magazine and whose picture should be on the front but Congressman John Rooney, and so I thumbed through it and it said the hardest working Congressman in Washington, DC, hadn’t had a vacation in umpteen years, and as I said, we’d just returned from about a 10—day vacation trip into Mexico, New Orleans, Kingston, Jamaica, and Montego Bay. So all the things you read, naturally, is not true.

Another time, I think we took him into Bermuda, Nassau, Palm Beach.

Cornell: Did he have a justification for these trips, or was this just fun?

Green: Congressman Rooney always had, ah     after all this was pretty well over with, I’d become Assistant Chief at El Paso. So one day I got a notice from the FBI that they wanted to talk to me. So I said, “Well, what do you want to talk about?” And the FBI said, “We want to talk about the DC—4 and your trips.” And I said, “Well, possibly I don’t want to talk about the DC—4 and my trips.” then they said, “We believe that you do, otherwise you’re gonna be classed as a hostile witness and ~ gonna be sent in to California.” So I decided maybe I’d better talk about the VIP trips. So they sent two agents out. They questioned me for about 4 hours about the VIP trips — who was on board, who was involved. And I said, “Well, what are you going to do with all this stuff?” Well really, to begin with, they couldn’t believe that all this transpired. I had my notes, and finally curiosity got the best of them and one of the FBI agents said, “I’ve got to see those notes.” And so I showed him that it was all verified, you know. So finally I said — my curiosity —“Are you going to give me a copy of all this, after you transcribe it and every­thing?” And they said, “No.” So I said, “Well, what is the urgency and what are  you going to do with it?” And they said, “It goes from here directly into the Attorney General”. And so that’s the last I ever heard of that. I don’t know...nothing ever came of it. I don’t know of anybody that ever got in trouble over it.

Congressman Rooney really protected himself. As I told the FBI agents, I said, “You’re really barking up the wrong tree because Congressman John Rooney is also chairman of the appropriations committee for the State Depart­ment. And consequently, every place that we ever took Congressman John Rooney, there was either an embassy there or there was a consulate there. So Jay Lowell, being the brilliant young man that he was, Congressman John had his recreation and Jay Howell spent all his  time going to the American Consulate or going to the American Embassy and reviewing procedures and what have you. So, yes, everything was legitimate as far as Congressman John Rooney and where we took him.

One of the most interesting things that happened. We had just...we’d gone up to New Foundland, I think it was, to pick up Supreme Court Justice Brennan. I think Fishbein was with Supreme Court Justice Brennan, and I don’t remember.., there were a few more people in Justice Brennan’s party. So we hauled them into Washington, DC, and then flew back into New York where we kept the airplane. And I was going through the airplane, as usual, after a trip, to see if anybody had left anything. And so I found this little book and I just barely turned the pages, which I regret that I didn’t took at it more complete. But anyhow, I didn’t pay much attention to it and I just put it in a manilla envelope and postmarked it into Washington, DC, to our Central Office. Well, unfortunately, I had no more than dropped that in the mailbox when  the phone started ringing, And I mean it was ringing terrible. (Laughter) And they said, “Did you find a book?” And I said, “Yes, I found a book.” “What did you do with the book?” I  said, “I post­marked it, I put it in a  manila  envelope and postmarked it into Washington, DC.” “When did you do that?” I said, “Today” or yesterday or whatever it was — yesterday. So they said, “Did you look at it?” I said, “No, I merely thumbed through it and saw that it appeared to be maybe a personal book of some kind, so I didn’t fool with it.”

And needless to say, the Post Office really fouled things up and the book didn’t get in to Washington, DC, for three or four days, and that was the hottest piece of cargo that you ever saw. I mean, I got more telephone calls over that one book than anything, I think, that I’ve ever fooled with.

Cornell: Do you know what it was? (No answer)

Green: I’d like to take just a few minutes here to discuss General Joe Swing. As I said previously, I think, he was one of the finest men that I have ever encountered in my life,. He was spit—and—polish, an extremely fair individual. The way he become Commissioner of Immigration was he was at one time under General Dwight Eisenhower. When General Eisenhower become president, the illegal alien situation was completely out of hand, and fortunately at that time — we’re talking about 1955, 54 — the alien situation — numbers do not even compare with the present—day numbers, but it was still enough to where the labor unions were upset. When the labor unions become upset, then they started exerting pressure. General Eisenhower considered using troops on the southern border — using Army troops. General Swing told him, “You let me be Commissioner of Immigration and let me pick the type of men I want and train the men that I want, how I want them trained, give me all the money I need, then I will handle the illegal alien situation with civilians.” So General Swing set about the procedures and he done a terrific job. A lot of this stuff may seem like a waste of taxpayers’ money, but by the same token, the Immigration Service profited greatly, by catering to politicians. Congressman Rooney was easily influenced by pomp and ceremony and so General Swing saw that Congressman Rooney was entertained. And consequently, when our appropriations came up in the sub—committee, there was no problem. Our money appropriations  was approved. General Swing as an individual — on the airplane, I enjoyed immensely talking with him. He was strictly spit—and—polish   but yet he had a good sense of humor. He surrounded himself with a good PR man, being Ray

Farrell. He got him a good money man, being Ed Lochran. he also brought on board..

Green: General Swing surrounded himself with very capable individuals, as I mentioned before, Ray Farrell, Ed Lochran, and he also brought on board two generals who had been subordinates of his: General Frank Partridge and another general whose name I can’t think of right now. A peculiar part about General Swing, he didn’t like people to tell him what he couldn’t do. H e said, “I know what I can  do. You tell me what I supposedly can’t do, how to do it.” And that was his philosophy. Nothing would stand in his way if he wanted to do something, he did it. There were no ifs ands or buts about it.

The DC—4, the airplane we spoke so much of, was built at the expense of thousands of dollars. Congress was never aware that he had procured this airplane and that all the money was being spent on the airplane, until it got in service. That’s the reason there was so much stress put on getting this thing operational, and let’s do a job with it so I can go back to Congress and say, “Hey, I’ve spent a lot of money on an airplane.” And that ways he said he wouldn’t have any problem with it

He loved a good drink. If somebody had invited him somewhere, regardless of how sick he was — I’ve seen him just vomiting his toes out, especially after a trip to Mexico — but he had been invited to a party and he attended and I’m sure he must have been deathly ill, along with a bunch more of the others. The whole entourage that we took to Mexico City got Montezuma’s Revenge and the only two eating were General Swing and me for supper. And after that, he got sick. But he was there regardless of anything else. His daughter, Mary Anne, was a very delightful young lady. She accompanied us at times. His wife I have never seen. He had a son, Joe Swing, I’ve never seen Joe. Joe worked for the State Department.

While the airplane wasn’t being used for the European trips, which wasn’t too often, but occasionally, in addition to the VIP functions, we also had another function which involved getting rid of some racketeers. Bobby Kennedy had become Attorney General. We’re talking about the Kennedy Administration now, and John had appointed his brother Attorney General. To my notion, Bobby Kennedy was one of the finest little Attorney Generals we ever had, Mainly because he was treacherous, and it takes a treacherous individual to be a good Attorney General, in my notion. Things would be done and Bobby would completely deny, he didn’t know anything about it. But actually, numerous times we didn’t move until Bobby gave us the word to move.

Bobby was not Attorney General during this particular mobster situation. It involved, I think his name was Frank Bruno. Re was a relative of Angelo Bruno who is one of the head Mafia members on the east coast now. You see his name quite often. But this Frank Bruno, they had lost him. They couldn’t find him any  where, they didn’t know where he was. Frank Bruno had slipped into Houston and had decided to get him a woman for the evening. He checked into the hotel or motel and got him the woman for the evening, but the woman robbed him. When the police came out to check his complaint, they said they didn’t know this was a Bruno. So they said they’d have to take fingerprints, yours included, to compare them’ with what’s around the room here. So they took the fingerprints, and lo and behold, when those hit Washington, all hell broke loose. Things started moving real quick. We were in Brownsville, and we got a notice to head for Houston. So we slipped into Houston, and stayed there two days. And finally we got notice at the hotel, okay, let’s go. So we went out to the airport and they brought Bruno out there, and we put Bruno on board, and coincidentally, the first thing he did was check his billfold, see how much money he had. We got airborne and headed for Bermuda.

C: You mean he intended to bribe you?

G: No, just see if he had enough expense money. And surprisingly, I think he only had $35 or $40 in his pocketbook. He really didn’t know what was happening to him, but we knew what was happening to him. We were taking him to Bermuda. Alitalia, the Italian airlines, had a non—stop flight that stopped in Bermuda, and from there it was non—stop into Italy. So we landed in Bermuda and put Bruno on board Alitalia and he ended up in Italy. And as far as I know, he never got back.

The second mobster was under the Bobby Kennedy Administration. It involved Carlos Marcello. Carlos Marcello is the head racketeer, Mafia— controlling member of the Gulf Coast. He’s worth millions of dollars. His territory is  fabulous, The government has been trying to get him for years. They have never really got him, other than the one time when we got him. Immigration had been after him for years. He claimed to be — well at first, he was born in Sicily — there are questions about that, too — but he had those records erased. They were all done away with. So Bobby said, “Find out where he was born.” So they checked and they said he told them Guatemala. So they sent an investigator down to Guatemala and check the books, and sure enough, at the bottom of the page in the margin in brand—new ink was ‘Carlos ~ So Bobby Kennedy said, “Fine. The man is from Guatemala, we’ll take him to Guatemala.” We slipped into New Orleans. Carlos thought he was home free, because nothing was pending against him Immigration—wise. It was sort of status quo at that time. He still had to report with his attorney to the Immigration office, I think, every 60 days. So Bobby decided that whenever he reported the next time, we’d take him to Guatemala, since nothing was pending against him to hinder us taking him there. So he and his attorney reported to the Immigration Office. Well, unbeknownst to them, we were sitting at the airport ready to go. We had a guy in the control tower at New Orleans airport. There was a guy sitting on the street outside Carlos Marcello’s home. There was a police escort waiting downstairs for Carlos Marcello. Everything worked beautifully. Carlos reported to the Immigration, the Immigration officer read him a warrant of deportation, they took him under control and they put him in the cars and the police escort escorted him and his attorney to the airport. We could hear them coming because of the sirens. So we already had two engines running by the time they got there. The only engines we didn’t have running were the ones on the side of the door. The car stopped at the stairway. His attorney jumped out of the car and started running for the airport terminal, hopefully to get to a phone to get a writ before we could get airborne, but he didn’t stand a chance. The minute we closed the door, we started the other two engines and we were taxiing by the time that his attorney got to the terminal building.

The guy in the tower stopped the traffic and we proceeded directly to the runway and away we went. Unfortunately, all our radios went out when we got airborne, so we couldn’t talk to anybody except the ones we wanted to. We really didn’t know what was taking place, either. The guy on board with us said, “go to Guatemala City.” So we set a course for Guatemala City. We got there late at night  and as we landed, they told us we would something see something that DC-4 tell us what to do when we got to Guatemala. So as we landed, we could see down at the end of the runway there was a car down there flicking its lights on and off. So we figured that was our contact. We taxied down to where the lights were going off and on in the car, and sure enough, that was Dewitt Marshall, I believe, waiting there. And he said he’d take Carlos, so he took Carlos off our hands and we turned around and headed back to the United States. We found out later that they had made arrangements to take Carlos way up in the mountains to a cabin up there. I don’t know how long they planned on him staying up there, but that was his fist first stop. But he had too much money far us. Somehow or other, he made some bribes and he got an Aero Commander to fly down there and somehow or other he got away from everybody and ended up back in New Orleans. Which is where he is today, still in New Orleans. And the government still hasn’t deported him. He’s getting to be quite an old man now, I guess late 90’s, and I guess he’s probably here to die, I don’t know.

Another interesting aspect which I forgot was, there was another phase on this particular mission. The man sitting in front of Carlos’ home, his orders were, when he got notice, to go up to the home, ring the doorbell, and talk to Carlos’ wife and tell her that her husband was being deported. If she wanted to go with him, she came out of the house right now — no suitcases. She had to come out of the house, get in the car, and they would take her and let her be deported with her husband. The guy went up to the door and rang the doorbell at Carlos’ home, but the wife was not there, so we didn’t have that complication.

Another little coincidental thing about this. The first thing Carlos did when he got on board was take out his billfold and count his money, the same as Bruno had done. And I think he had $30 or $40 also.

Another interesting aspect was the James Meredith case in Oxford, Mississippi. We were on our way to California or someplace — no, it was El Paso and back and we hadn’t even bothered to bring a suitcase. We got close to Del Rio and we got notice — a radio message — to land in Del Rio and pick up some Patrol Agents. We landed in Del Rio and picked up a complete load of Patrol Agents and they told us that we were going to Oxford, Mississippi.  We didn’t know James Meredith from the man—in—the—moon, but we took the Patrol Agents to Oxford, Mississippi. When we got there, the airport was zilch. It was extremely short and of course, we were in the DC—4 and it was going to be a pretty good job to get the DC—4 down in the runway available there. But the pilot did a good job and we got down.

C: Who was the pilot?

G: Fritz Carl was the co—pilot  I believe.    About 3 plane loads showed up there. We went on to Oxford, Miss., and then they dispatched 2 C-46s out of Brownsville to pick up Patrol Agents in El Paso and all along the border. Then they all landed there in Oxford, Miss., and unloaded. We were already on the ground when they showed up. We tried to get our airplane as far off the runway as we could, which was not very far because there  just wasn’t space available. The other airplanes were in the same situation. So we stayed with the airplane, naturally, and the Patrol Agents
went on into town. From the airport we could see Oxford, the University, and it looked like a battle was going on down there. I mean a World War II battle. Some of the wounded started arriving at the airport and the C—47, being the smaller of the airplanes, took the wounded to Memphis or somewhere, I forget where the hospital was. But when our boys got there, they were not only fighting the rioters, but they were fighting the State Police and the city police and everybody else. The people that they were bringing back for us to haul to the hospital were also some of the state and city police. So we were  having to haul out some of the ones that were fighting our boys. It was a peculiar situation. That went on and the whole thing got completely out of control. There was nothing left to do but call in the Air Force and the Army. So here we sit, just a few feet from the side of the runway and the Air Force started coming in with the troops, and their wing tip was coming within 3 or 4 feet of our airplane because the runway was that narrow and we just couldn’t get off any further. But everything got in and the Army finally took control and we picked up our boys after two or three days and left. There was no food. We finally scrounged some K—rations from the Army when they came in, and we drained some gasoline out of the tanks of the airplanes and made a little fire and cooked our K—rations there, but other than that, we slept in the airplane and we ate K—rations that the Army gave us. If they hadn’t come in with the K—rations, I don’t know what we would have done, because there just wasn’t any food available, Of course, we really didn’t suffer, The boys down­town were the ones that took the beating.

Back to the European flights. We were on our way from Portugal or Spain or some where to the Azores. We had always been going into Lodges, which was an Air Force installation. In other words, the Portugese owned it, but the Air Force had an installation there and gas, so we had been going into there quite often. But the Portuguese told us that we would stop going into there and go to a civilian airport in the Azores. We were proceeding along there and we got a message to go into the municipal civilian airport. Joe White was the pilot and he said, “No, I’m going into the military installation at Lodges.” So the ground controller told us about 3 times to proceed into the civilian section. We kept ignoring their commands and we lauded in the military installation there, taxied up to the terminal, and lo and behold, we looked out and we were surrounded by troops. So we had been seized. (Laughter) Joe White goes in and calls Washington, DC, and they got in contact with  Swing at home, and Swing said to find out who the general was there. Joe White did and notified General Swing back and Swing said, “Oh, I know that old son of a bitch, I will  take care of him.” So Swing made some telephone calls and we were released to proceed on our way.