Waugh was born in Bastrop, Texas, on December 1, 1929. In 1945, upon meeting two local United States Marines who returned from the fighting in World War II, the then 15-year-old Waugh was inspired to enlist in the Marine Corps. Knowing that it was unlikely that he would be admitted in Texas because of his young age, Waugh devised a plan to hitchhike to Los Angeles, where he believed a person had to only be 16 to enlist. He got as far as Las Cruces, New Mexico, before he was arrested for having no identification and refusing to give his name to a local police officer. He was later released after securing enough money for a bus ticket back to Bastrop. Now committed to serving in the military once he finished school, Waugh became an excellent student at Bastrop High School, graduating in 1947 with a 4.0 grade point average.[1]
Shortly after the end of the Korean War, Waugh met two U.S. Army Special Forces members on a train in Germany. They informed him of openings for platoon sergeants; shortly after he requested a transfer.[3] He began training for the Special Forces, and earned the Green Beret in 1954, joining the 10th Special Forces Group (SFG) in Bad Tölz, West Germany.[2]
Special Forces sleeve insignia, with "Airborne" tab
In July 1965, he was serving with 5th Special Forces Group A-team A-321 at Camp Bồng Sơn, Bình Định Province, commanded by Captain Paris Davis. Following a night raid with a Regional Forces unit on a VC encampment near Bong Son, the unit was engaged by a superior VC force. Many of the Regional Forces soldiers refused to fight and most of the A team were injured by VC fire, including Waugh, who was shot multiple times and left between the VC and U.S./South Vietnamese forces. Waugh was later rescued by Davis under fire.[4] He spent much of 1965 and 1966 recuperating at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., eventually returning to duty with 5th Special Forces Group in 1966. He received a Silver Star and a Purple Heart (his 6th) for the battle at Bong Son.
Prior to his retirement from U.S. Army Special Forces service, Waugh was senior NCO (non-commissioned officer) of MACV-SOG's Command & Control North (CCN) based at Marble Mountain on the South China Sea shore a few miles south of Da Nang, Vietnam. Waugh held this Command Sergeant Major role during the covert unit's transition and name change to Task Force One Advisory Element (TF1AE). Waugh conducted the first combat High Altitude, Low Opening (HALO) jump,[5] a parachuting maneuver designed for rapid, undetected insertion into hostile territory. In October 1970, his team made a practice Combat Infiltration into the NVA-owned War Zone D, in South Vietnam, for reassembly training, etc.[5] Waugh also led the last combat special reconnaissance parachute insertion by American Army Special Forces HALO parachutists into denied territory which was occupied by communist North Vietnamese Army troops on June 22, 1971.[2]
Waugh retired from active military duty at the rank of sergeant major (E-9) on February 1, 1972.[2]
CIA career
After Waugh retired from the military, he worked for the United States Postal Service until he accepted an offer in 1977 from ex-CIA officer Edwin P. Wilson to work in Libya on a contract to train that country's special forces. This was not an Agency-endorsed assignment and Waugh might have found himself in trouble with U.S. authorities if it were not for the fact that he was also approached by the CIA to work for the Agency while in Libya. The CIA tasked him with surveilling Libyan military installations and capabilities – this was of great interest to U.S. intelligence as Libya was receiving substantial military assistance from the Soviet Union at the time. Wilson was later indicted and convicted in 1979 of illegally selling weapons to Libya.[6][7] It was later found that the United States Department of Justice had relied on a false affidavit when prosecuting Wilson; as a result, Wilson's convictions were overturned in 2003 and he was freed the following year.[8]
In the 1980s Waugh was assigned to the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands to track Sovietsmall boat teams operating in the area and prevent them from stealing U.S. missile technology. Some of his more critical assignments took place in Khartoum, Sudan during the early 1990s, where he performed surveillance and intelligence gathering on terrorist leaders Carlos the Jackal and Osama bin Laden along with Cofer Black.[7][9]
Confronting Iran: Securing Iraq's Border: An Irregular Warfare Concept, A Small Wars Journal collaboration with Brig. Gen. David L. Grange (USA, ret.), Scott Swanson (military) (AKA J.T. Patten, Author), Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub (USA, ret.) and Billy Waugh, November 10, 2007.[13]
Licensed to Kill, Hired Guns in the War on Terror by Robert Young Pelton. In the book Pelton details his meeting with Waugh to discuss Waugh's link between watching Osama bin Laden in Khartoum to chasing him in Afghanistan. Waugh details his time with the CIA's Special Activity Division as a contractor.
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