As part of Workers World newspaper’s coverage marking the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Vietnam on April 30, 1975, this is Part 2 of Al Glatkowski’s story told to WW managing editor John Catalinotto. It concerns a March 1970 direct action he and Clyde McKay took to stop U.S. bombs from slaughtering women, children and all peoples of Indochina, which is described in Part 1.

It was in March 1971 when I walked into the penitentiary in Lompoc, California. We were stripped naked, and this big cop got right in my face with details about me on my I.D. card that he had to process. And he said, “So you’re the motherf–king Po–ck hippie that hijacked that ship.”

And I walked up to him, and I was just butt naked, and I got right in his face. And I said, “Number one, I don’t know about no mf Po−ck hippie that hijacked the ship. If you’re asking me if I’m the guy that mutinied and is sentenced to mutiny, then you have the right person.” That was the very first day.

People who were in Lompoc for antiwar activities knew that I was coming in. Within hours of entering, I walked into the chow hall.

In the chow hall, Blacks sat over to one side. Whites sat over to the other side. Latin Americans and Chicanos were in this area over here. The Indigenous sat there. Nobody sat up front in the center, as it was too far from an exit in case anything broke out.

I got my tray. I sat down in the f–king center of that f–king chow hall. Up front. All of a sudden, within minutes, my table started filling up one-by-one with people, and they were all antiwar resisters — draft resisters, military resisters and others.

And we sat there, and we talked. After that day, the chow hall started to be more integrated. It was voluntary. I guess it took someone to make that first step.

Coup in Cambodia

A year earlier, after hijacking the Columbia Eagle, Clyde McKay and I were given asylum by Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia and were flown to the capital, Phnom Penh, after we surrendered the ship to the Cambodian government. We had just started to relax. But just two days later, on the night of March 18, 1970, a coup overthrew Sihanouk.

The media in the U.S. presented the overthrow of Sihanouk as “a bloodless coup.” It was a coup the U.S. arranged. The “bloodless” part was a myth.

Our asylum wasn’t officially revoked, but McKay and I were prisoners, no longer guests. We were placed into something like a bungalow. We were at one end of the bungalow, the other end had two other doors. That night, there was a lot of shooting going on in Phnom Penh.

People were being rounded up and brought to this base, which was at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and the Mekong Rivers. There was lots of blood on the vehicles, and most of the cars were all shot up. They would pile people off, people tied up with wire by their wrists.

They were all Sihanouk supporters, lined up under this canopy that went all the way back to our door. And they were taken into the far room and came out more bloodied.

McKay and I helped some of the people. We brought them cigarettes and water. Then we noticed that some of the people we helped would disappear.

McKay spoke a little French, and so he found out from some of the guards what happened to the people. The guards pointed to the pier. The people were taken to the pier and thrown in. You can’t swim when your arms are hooked together. Or when you’re unconscious.

A few days later they moved us to a paratrooper training base, which was further along the Mekong. Off the end of a pontoon pier was a ship, an old World War II LST. And inside of it, that’s where they stored their ammunition. It was basically full of ammunition.

But the top deck had extruded metal screens on the windows, on the ports, and it was used for Sihanouk’s family. All of the top deck, down one whole side, were members of the cabinet. They were high-ranking supporters, Sihanouk’s people. None of them were tortured, that I saw. We were then moved from the base and onto this floating prison ship.

Our water came from a bucket dipped into the Mekong off of a long rope. Every couple of days, bodies and body parts would float by, usually two or three days after B-52 bombing runs. Although the bombs were dropped far away, we could feel them when they exploded, and we could see the sky light up in the distance.

Escape in Cambodia

McKay and I had tried to escape a couple of times. We realized that it might be possible to disguise ourselves as press. I had two semi-professional cameras and a shortwave radio that looked like a tape recorder.

About that time I started suffering from sensory deprivation and cultural shock. McKay was in better shape. I started to have what I thought was something like a nervous breakdown.

I tried to escape and swim across the river. They caught me. They took and put me away in a cell that was a cage. You couldn’t stand up in it. You had to stay hunched over.

Later they took us to the Palais du Gouvernement. That’s what the Cambodians called it. We were given one big bedroom with two beds. It had a fence around it, you know, walls around it and gates to go through with lots of guards. We almost gave up on escaping.

One night they took us to eat out in a commandeered taxi, followed by a taxi full of armed soldiers who kept guard at the restaurant. That happened a couple of times, when they needed to use the Palace for an event.

We had long discussions through the night on how we might use another dinner to escape. After that we always carried the cameras and radio with us. There was another U.S. soldier with us by then, Larry Humphrey, who told us he left his unit in Thailand.

One time when Humphrey was with us, McKay chose that time to escape. I was in no shape to do it mentally or physically, but I was able to create a diversion. They managed both to get out. They took the cameras and the radio, and they were off and running.

And that’s how they escaped. In the end, I wasn’t able to get asylum elsewhere and surrendered to the U.S. officials in Phnom Penh.

No law against hijacking

I was brought back to the U.S. where they hit me with multiple charges. McKay and I called our seizure of the Columbia Eagle a revolutionary hijacking. I was surprised to find out there was no U.S. law against hijacking. However, there was a law against mutiny, so I was charged with armed mutiny and dereliction of duty on the high seas.

I pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months to ten years. There was a legal maximum of eight years before they had to release me. I kept getting hearings, and they kept extending my sentence, and in the end, I maxed out, that is, I spent eight years behind bars before finally getting parole.

I was in Lompoc Federal Correctional Institution. Originally it was Fort Maxwell and a maximum security penitentiary for the military. I spent almost eight years of my life alone in a single cell. Once I was in solitary confinement for a year, almost straight day for day, after I had attempted to escape.

The only protective custody I had was from my comrades. If they discovered that somebody was being talked to by the guards to get rid of me, they would act. They could talk to the people to get them to stop whatever was being planned. That happened at least twice, and one time it saved my life.

The struggle continues

In prison I hooked up with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who also attended my original hearings. When I got out several years later the authorities made it clear they wanted me out of California. I self-exiled to the East Coast and started running a small family farm.

Some years later, I started to get more and more involved with Veterans For Peace. It was after our children had all reached high school or graduated. Every time the VFP is involved in an organized demonstration in Washington, D.C., I try to go to it.

In 2019, VFP people were at the defense of the Venezuelan Embassy, when the Juan Guaidó people tried to take it over. [Then VFP president] Gerry Condon called me up and said: “We’re doing something with Venezuela. Can you get down there? Can you organize some people?”

I did. I called people up. I live near Harpers Ferry in West Virginia, and it’s not far away.

I was the first person to stand outside of the embassy and throw stuff in through a window to those sitting inside the building. Gerry Condon did it the next day, and he had a cucumber or a zucchini in his hand, and he tossed it in. The cops said it was a missile, and they took him to the ground, then beat him and arrested him.

I also went when that young man [Aaron Bushnell, February 2024] immolated himself in front of the Israeli embassy and the VFP demonstrated. I couldn’t do a full hunger strike in front of the White House on account of my health, but I would go down every other day and support them. I didn’t eat those days.

Just this spring [2025], I went on a solidarity trip with the VFP delegation to Nicaragua. People who knew me from the time I was in prison contributed to sending me. Everything that I can do to help VFP and promote it, I do.

Closing the circle

You know every time I had a hearing at Lompoc, the first thing they would ask me was, “Where’s McKay?”

The U.S. military would buy bones in Indochina, looking to trace soldiers who were killed. They would send the bones to Hawaiʻi for DNA testing, and they said they found McKay’s DNA in a village in Cambodia, near the border with Vietnam.

My son once took me on a tour of Vietnam, and we tried to find out what happened to McKay and Humphrey. We found a taxi driver who spoke English and Khmer who took us to the village where it was reported they had been killed. We met some village elders. The taxi driver told him our story, and they took us to the actual crater, bomb crater, where it happened. The villagers said there were two of them, so I figured Humphrey was killed, too.

The people of the village appreciated that we were honoring my comrades and paying our respects. The family of the elders held a feast. It was in that part of Cambodia that they call the Parrot’s Beak.

When I finally came out of jail, a reporter asked me, “Would you do it again?” I told him, “Yes, only I would do it better.”

“Better,” he said, “how?”

“I might have decided to sink the ship,” I answered.

McKay once tried to sink the ship, but it was when we were in shallow water near Sihanoukville, and I stopped him. It would have just sat there on the bottom and leaked for years, destroyed the port, ruined the fishing for the Cambodians. Earlier, in deep water, maybe we should have sunk it.

Catalinotto is the author of “Turn the Guns Around: Mutinies, Soldier Revolts and Revolutions.” 

Glatkowski recommends listening to these shorter versions of his story as told in song:

1: “Ballad of the Columbia Eagle” by David Rovics  

2: “Deep Water” by R.J. Phillips Band