Cafasso and The Laos Story

Here is a copyrighted screengrab showing Cafasso's being 56 years old, when he was born in 1956, which makes him actually 50. This is from the names database, and shows his siblings and their corresponding ages. It came from a search of the Carteret High School database, which only shows his sister having graduated in 1979. There is no record there of his having graduated High School, so we'll send some members of our team over there to discover the truth behind the claims, since it's difficult to ascertain what is fact and what is fiction in Cafasso's Walter Mitty stories.

What is interesting is Cafasso HAS to be 56 in order to be old enough to have served in Vietnam. Whitestar (Laos), which he claims he was a part of, was around 1971 and that would put him in SOG, Special Operations Group in Laos. Not very clever when he was born in 1956, and was a freshman in High School at the time.

Operation White Star was a Special Forces campaign in Laos during the pre-Vietnam era. And Cafasso is dumb enough to have claimed he was a part of that. Historically speaking, it's a good example of how SF engaged in UW (Unconventional warfare) tactics and successfully attacked an insurgency without attacking the regime in power.

But our boy is no way near old enough to have engaged in this, although it makes for great conversation that wow's his drunken audiences in bars. And the reason I say this is-the first rotation of Americans arrived in Laos in July 1959. White Star was originally called "Hotfoot," and was led by Lieutenant Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons. It was only 107 SF soldiers, all from the 77th SF Group. Later, the number of SF soldiers gradually increased to a peak of 433 by July 1962.

Special Forces soldiers are elite groups of fighting men who are willing to take extraordinary risks. Out of 100 men who try, only 5 end up qualified and making it through the course. Imagine how sadly desperate a man must be to want so badly to be identified as one of these extraordinary people.

You can go back and look at heroes from that era like Dick Meadows, who enlisted in the Army in August of 1947 at the age of 16, but this is WAY off the charts of what is reasonable to assume that Cafasso did, even if his lie about being 56 years old were true.

Cafasso was born in 1956, when all of this was going on. He was an infant during this period of time.

Cafasso couldn't even possibly have participated in this, even though he has many emotional stories around Vietnam and Laos and even cries over his fallen friends; it's all simply make believe, a pitiful melodramatic display to invoke the listener's sympathy.