Four years before the first American boots landed on the ground in Vietnam, Richard Secord was one of 151 U.S. airmen sent there under “Operation Farm Gate.” 

Farm Gate was part of a cover story that the United States was sending advisers to train South Vietnamese pilots to fight against the communists to the north. What really happened was Secord flew more-than-daily combat missions, dropping bombs and Napalm. 

The work was the literal meaning of “flying under the radar.”

Secord's instructions were to fly just above the jungle tree line, he explained in a recent 2-1/2 hour interview in an airplane hangar near his son's home in Spruce Creek Fly-In located in Port Orange, Florida. When Secord would fly back to base, vegetation was wedged into parts of his plane. Staying low equated to staying safe.

Or at least as safe as possible in an active shooting war. His plane was struck by gunfire from the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong rebels, but Secord himself eluded injury.

“I’m too wiggly,” he joked.

Wife died amid stressful family legal fight

For more than three decades, Secord has flown under the radar. But the long-retired Air Force major general, who turned 92 on July 6, is still alive and — after a career stretching from those bombing runs in Vietnam to facing a congressional inquiry and criminal trial for his involvement in the late 1980s Iran-Contra affair — he is in the middle of another bitter battle between his own family members.

On one side is his son John, the Spruce Creek Fly-In resident who in recent months moved his dad to an assisted-living facility in the Daytona Beach area. On another is Secord’s grandson Stephen Korfonta, an Army reservist for five years who previously served 17 years on active duty, much of it in special forces.

In the interview, with John Secord present, the retired general told The Daytona Beach News-Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, that family strain, particularly the stress from a lawsuit filed by Korfonta, preceded the death of Jo Ann, his wife of 62 years, in Fort Walton Beach in January. She was 84.

From Richard Secord's perspective, the lawsuit led to questions about his competency and decision-making ability. He agreed to the interview, including the airing of some family dirty laundry, in an effort to demonstrate his cognitive skills as well as tell the story of an extraordinary life that began in an ordinary place.

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Path to becoming a general 

Secord was born in 1931 in La Rue, Ohio, and earned an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1950.

After graduation, Secord opted for the newly created Air Force over the Army.

“I have not-so-jokingly told a lot of friends I got tired of crawling around in the mud,” he said.

After pilot training, Secord spent three years as a flight instructor and, to his complete surprise and disappointment, was tagged to become an English teacher at the new Air Force Academy in Colorado.

He was ordered to go to the University of Oklahoma to earn a master’s in English. He struggled.

But it was in Oklahoma that he met Jo Ann. Right before they married in 1961, he got an opportunity to join covert operations and avoid the academy.

Goodbye classroom, hello Vietnam, where Secord flew 285 combat missions.

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Secord builds military record

After Vietnam, Secord was sent to Iran, then a U.S. ally, to aid the Shah's ragtag air force using “ancient” T-6 trainers from the WWII era against Kurdish rebels in the northern part of the country.

Later, Secord returned to southeast Asia. This time Jo Ann and the Secords’ young daughter, Julia, moved to Bangkok, Thailand. Jo Ann was pregnant and flew back to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to have the twins, John and Laura in 1968.

Secord was “loaned” to the CIA to head up its Laos air operation in a secret war to prevent the spread of communism beyond North Vietnam.

While in Laos, Secord played a key planning role in the Ban Naden Raid, the only successful prisoner-of-war attack in the war. Some 50 prisoners were ultimately rescued from captivity.

He described the raid as “reconnaissance in force,” having one of the escapees lead 30 or so fighters back to the camp, killing the guards and freeing some 40 to 50 prisoners. The strategy was taught for decades in CIA officer training, John Secord said.

Yet that triumph was one in a sea of tragedy.

By its 1975 exit from Saigon, the United States failed to achieve its mission in Vietnam, and more than 58,000 service members lost their lives. By then, Secord and his family were on to a new destination: Tehran, where the U.S.-backed Shah’s power was fading. Secord was made commander of the military advisory group, which had around 3,500 people including contractors, for three years. He initially wasn’t planning on bringing his family, but Jo Ann insisted on going.

“We lived in a poor, little hut,” Secord joked.

John Secord said the family lived in a Shah-provided palace with a view of Mount Damavand.

It was beautiful but dangerous.

Security trailed the Secords everywhere they went in Iran.

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The Secords left Iran in 1978, the year before the Iranian Revolution leading to the hostage crisis where 52 Americans were held for 444 days before their release.

A month after a failed mission to rescue the hostages in April 1980, Secord – who said he had no role in the planning of the failed mission – was appointed to major general and put in charge of planning a second military operation to bring the hostages home. Secord said he was to assemble an Air Force special operations team, and the Navy’s Seal Team 6 was started the same year to be part of that effort, John Secord said.

Secord and his team planned a raid, Operation Honey Badger, for early 1981. It was canceled when the hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. Secord finished his military career as deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, retiring in 1983.

Key role in Iran-Contra Affair

As a private citizen, Secord formed a new company, Stanford Technology Trading Group International with a contact he made in Iran, Albert Hakim.

Together, they managed arms sales to Iran on behalf of Lt. Col. Oliver North, a staffer of the National Security Council under Reagan. North devised a plan to covertly transfer profits from those arms sales to the Contras, a rebel group fighting against the socialist government in Nicaragua. U.S. government support for the Contras was specifically banned by Congress.

This led to a scandal that dominated headlines in 1986 and 1987, with televised hearings and indictments. How much did top Reagan Administration officials know about the trading? Secord gave four days of testimony to a Congressional panel investigating the matter.

Along with North, Hakim and National Security Advisor John Poindexter, Secord was charged with multiple felonies related to defrauding the U.S. government. In 1989, he pleaded guilty to one count of lying to Congress about illegal gifts he provided to North. The guilty plea allowed him to avoid trial on 12 felonies.

Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh wrote in his report Secord personally received at least $2 million in a Swiss bank account in 1985 and 1986, that he “set up secret accounts to conceal his untaxed income, and he later lied and encouraged others to lie to keep it concealed.”

Media accounts from 1990 state Secord was sentenced to two years probation but no jail time or fine.

“In my judgment, there has been punishment in this case,” U.S. District Judge Aubrey Robinson said. “The necessity for incarceration does not exist.”

Ten years later, a federal judge vacated the conviction altogether.

When he was asked what he wants the public to remember most about his career, Secord said he wants the erased conviction to be more widely known, as the media mostly ignored it.

“My view on ... American voters is that when you have a conviction, as I had, that you never live it down, really,” he said. “But to have it reversed, and not only was it reversed, but it was, to use the language of the lawyers, ‘ab initio.’ It means from the beginning. In other words, as a matter of law, this whole thing, this Iran-Contra thing never existed, even. It was expunged. Never existed.”

The Secords left the Washington, D.C., metro area and moved back to northwest Florida, near where he had been stationed at Eglin Air Base in the Fort Walton Beach area.

They settled into an area with a large population of military retirees, lots of friends and a life very different than Vietnam, Iran and D.C.

Company founding leads to lawsuit

In 2016, Secord’s old Air Force buddy Richard Ryer founded SocoSIX Strategies LLC, where Secord said he was a cofounder and unpaid adviser. Ryer hired Secord’s grandson, Korfonta and they worked together building SocoSIX, which describes its offerings as “boutique, custom risk management solutions with a focus on an international portfolio.”

Korfonta is now suing, saying Ryer hired him as chief operating officer, responsible for developing and managing the company, and that Secord would be on the board and one of the principals. The lawsuit states Ryer agreed to his terms: An equal partnership in SocoSIX, control without interference, and later, a five-way split in ownership, with one of the shares going to Secord, who would serve as chairman of the board, according to the lawsuit. 

Secord denies serving on the board or having an ownership stake. 

From December 2016 until January 2020, Korfonta “worked tirelessly to create, develop, operate, manage, strategize and implement every facet of SocoSIX,” the lawsuit stated. Then Korfonta called Ryer and told him he was resigning, but “at no time” did he relinquish his ownership, the lawsuit states. 

Korfonta declined to comment on details of the lawsuit, but expressed optimism he has a winning case. 

“I can assure you (with) litigation going on for four years," Korfonta said, "that there’s validity to it or else it would have been thrown out by a court." 

Ryer, who has since died, testified in a deposition that Korfonta was never an owner and that he merely offered him a job. Secord and Shannon Presley, the current CEO, have also said Korfonta was never an owner. 

Korfonta contended that John Secord is manipulating his father “a geriatric patient with memory issues,” citing a vascular dementia diagnosis. He blames John Secord for moving the retired general six hours away without letting other family members and friends know. 

Richard Secord told The News-Journal that his former home was too large after his wife’s death and he wanted to be closer to his son John, who shares power of attorney for his father along with his twin sister Laura. 

While he was still living in the Florida Panhandle, Secord had been diagnosed with vascular dementia, damage that blocks blood flow to the brain, diminishing cognitive ability, a public relations executive, Ron Sachs, explained. Once he moved to the Daytona area, doctors determined he had hypercapnia, a condition in which the body retains too much carbon dioxide. 

"Now he's on a regimen where he's getting the medicine he needs, and he does not have a vascular dementia diagnosis," Sachs said.  

As the lawsuit plods forward, Secord was asked if he had any message he’d like to convey to his grandson. He replied: “Bail out.”