Bio, Rowe, James N. "Nick"

Deceased

James Nicholas Rowe is buried in Section 48 Arlington National Cemetery.

Other Personnel in Incident: Humberto R. Versace (missing); Daniel L. Pitzer
(released 1967).

Source: Compiled by HOMECOMING II from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK May
2002 with information from American Ex-POWs historian, Helen Smith. 2019

SYNOPSIS: The U.S. Army Special Forces, Vietnam (Provisional) was formed at
Saigon in 1962 to advise and assist the South Vietnamese government in the
organization, training, equipping and employment of the Civilian Irregular
Defense Group (CIDG) forces. Total personnel strength in 1963 was 674, all but
98 of whom were TDY from 1st Special Forces Group on Okinawa and 5th and 7th
Special Forces Groups at Ft. Bragg. USSF Provisonal was given complete charge
of the CIDG program, formerly handled by the CIA, on July 1, 1963.

The USSF Provisional/CIDG network consisted of fortified, strategically located
camps, each one with an airstrip. The area development programs soon evolved
into combat operations, and by the end of October 1963, the network also had
responsibility for border surveillance. Two of the Provisional/CIDG camps were
at Hiep Hoa (Detachment A-21) and Tan Phu (Detachment A-23), Republic of
Vietnam. Their isolated locations, in the midst of known heavy enemy presence,
made the camps vulnerable to attack.

On October 29, 1963, Capt. "Rocky" Versace, 1Lt. "Nick" Rowe, and Sgt. Daniel
Pitzer were accompanying a CIDG company on an operation along a canal. The team
left the camp at Tan Phu for the village of Le Coeur to roust a small enemy
unit that was establishing a command post there. When they reached the village,
they found the enemy gone, and pursued them, falling into an ambush at about
1000 hours. The fighting continued until 1800 hours, when reinforcements were
sent in to relieve the company. During the fight, Versace, Pitzer and Rowe were
all captured. The three captives were photographed together in a staged setting
in the U Minh forest in their early days of captivity.

Rocky Versace had been torn between the Army and the priesthood. When he won an
appointment to West Point, he decided God wanted him to be a soldier. He was to
enter Maryknoll (an order of Missionaries), as a candidate for the priesthood,
when he left Vietnam. It was evident from the beginning that Versace, who spoke
fluent French and Vietnamese, was going to be a problem for the Viet Cong.
Although Versace was known to love the Vietnamese people, he could not accept
the Viet Cong philosophy of revolution, and spent long hours assailing their
viewpoints. His captors eventually isolated him to attempt to break him.

Rowe and Pitzer saw Rocky at interludes during their first months of captivity,
and saw that he had not broken. Indeed, although he became very thin, he still
attempted to escape. By January 1965, Versace's steel-grey hair had turned
completely white. He was an inspiration to them both. Rowe wrote:

                  ..The Alien force, applied with hate,
                  could not break him, failed to bend him;
                  Though solitary imprisonment gave him no friends,
                  he drew upon his inner self to create a force so strong
                  that those who sought to destroy his will, met an army
                  his to command..

On Sunday, September 26, 1965, "Liberation Radio" announced the execution of
Rocky Versace and Kenneth Roraback in retaliation for the deaths of 3
terrorists in Da Nang. A later news article stated that the executions were
faked, but the Army did not reopen an investigation. In the late 1970's
information regarding this "execution" became classified, and is no longer part
of public record.

1Lt. Nick Rowe was scheduled to be executed in late December 1968. His captors
had had enough of him - his refusal to accept the communist ideology and his
continued escape attempts. While away from the camp in the U Minh forest, Rowe
took advantage of a sudden flight of American helicopters, struck down his
guards, and ran into a clearing where the helicopters noticed him and rescued
him, still clad in black prisoner pajamas. He had been promoted to Major during
his five years of captivity.

Rowe remained in the Army, and shared his survival techniques in Special Forces
classes. In 1987, Lt.Col. Rowe was assigned to the Philippines, where he
assisted in training anti-communists. On April 21, 1989, a machine gun sniper
attacked Rowe in his car, killing him instantly.

Of the seven U.S. Army Special Forces personnel captured at Hiep Hoa and Tan
Phu, the fates of only Versace and Roraback remain unknown. The execution was
never fully documented; it is not known with certainty that these two men died.
Although the Vietnamese claim credit for their deaths, they did not return
their remains. From the accounts of those who knew them, if these men were not
executed, they are still fighting for their country.

----------------------------
NICK ROWE: U.S. KNEW INDEPENDENTLY OF THREAT TO HIS LIFE
INTELLIGENCE WAS NEVER PASSED ON

In the Fall prior to Col. Nick Rowe having been gunned down on April 21, 1989
by members of the communist New Peoples' Army (NPA) in the Philippines, the
U.S. State Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau had assimilated
reliable information on the Communist Party's intensified efforts to ferret
out and execute "deep penetration agents" working for the CIA inside the
Philippines' communist organization, U.S. Veteran News and Report has learned.

The seriousness of this threat contrasted significantly with the State
Department's having ignored Rowe's own warnings that the NPA, the Philippine
equivalent of the Vietcong, was planning major terrorist acts against U.S.
military advisors.

A highly decorated Green Beret and Vietnam veteran who survived five years of
captivity in a Viet Cong prison camp, Rowe was chief of the army division of
the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) providing counter-insurgency
training for the Philippine military. In this capacity, he worked closely with
the CIA, and was involved in its nearly decade-old program to penetrate the
NPA and its parent communist party in conjunction with Philippine's own
intelligence organizations.

Rowe was killed instantly by one of a volley of bullets that were fired from
an M-16 and a .45-caliber pistol from the hooded NPA occupants of a small
white car that had pulled alongside Rowe's unarmored chauffeur-driven
limousine in the Manila suburb of Quezon City.

By the time Rowe was killed, however, the State Department had known for
months about the Philippine Communist Party's efforts to identify CIA-backed
agents which had been infiltrated into the party's ranks since the early
1980's. The State Department also knew that "a number" of these agents had
already been captured, interrogated and executed. For almost a year prior to
Rowe's assassination by the NPA, the State Department had been monitoring the
communist's counter- intelligence efforts, and knew that the CIA's assets in
the party were in jeopardy as a result.

By February, 1989, Rowe had developed his own intelligence information which
indicated that the communist were planning a major terrorist act. As a result
of the intelligence and his analysis of the situation in the Philippines, Rowe
wrote Washington warning that a high-profile figure was about to be hit and
that he, himself, was No.2 or No.3 on the terrorist list.

The State Department ignored Rowe's letter and apparently never warned him
about the seriousness of the threat. Intelligence sources say Rowe was a
"classic expendable;" that he was not warned because he likely would have
tried to safely get out any agents he personally knew of inside the NPA or
communist party.

"Undoubtedly there were some who didn't want to loose those assets," an
intelligence source said.

One reason such assets may have been deemed important enough not to alert Rowe
to the threat was that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was receiving
information on possible growing Cuban involvement with the NPA.

Six months before Rowe's murder, the DIA had learned that Cuban advisors
appeared to be assisting the NPA in the South-Central Luzon province, one of
the two provinces where the NPA was focusing on ferreting out CIA agents
within its ranks.

Neither the DIA or the State Department would comment on any of the
intelligence it has collected on the NPA or Communist Party. Although Rowe was
a visible military official and certainly a target for the communist
terrorists, some intelligence sources believe his assassination resulted from
his having been fingered as a possible control officer or trainer of agents
inside the NPA or Communist Party who had been identified and interrogated.

Evidence suggests that Rowe's Vietnam experience was not coincidental to his
selection as a target. In June of 1989, from an NPA stronghold in the hills of
Sorsogon, a province in Southern Luzon's Bicol region, senior cadre Celso
Minguez told the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine that the communist
underground wished to send "a message to the American people" by killing a
Vietnam veteran.

"We want to let them know that their government is making the Philippines
another Vietnam," Minguez, a founder of the communist insurgency in Bicol and
participant in the abortive 1986 peace talks with President Corazon Aquino's
government told the REVIEW.

In May 1989, U.S. Veteran News and Report reported that according to a source
who had served under Rowe, the Vietnamese communist also wanted Rowe dead and
very likely collaborated with the Philippine insurgents to achieve that goal.

The source who wished to remain anonymous said that prior to Rowe being
assigned to the Philippines in 1987, at one point in Greece while Rowe was on
assignment, Delta Force, the U.S. anti-terrorist organization, moved in,
secured the area and relocated Rowe. They had received reports that Vietnamese
communist agents were planning an action against Rowe.

"He was a target when he went over there because of his dealings with the
North Vietnamese and his time as a prisoner," Robert Mountel, a retired
Special Forces colonel and former commander of the 5th Special Forces Group,
subsequently explained, confirming what the other source had said. "They had
him on their list."

Despite the clear danger especially posed to Rowe and other intelligence
operatives, Rowe was not given a heavily armored car to travel in. One reason
for this, U.S. Veteran News and Report has learned, is that budget cuts for
the Defense Attache System (DAS) for 1989 had resulted in a 72 percent cut in
the DAS's vehicle armoring program, causing the program to be canceled
entirely last year (except for a skeleton infrastructure maintained to handle
basic functions). This had a direct impact on the DAS's ability to provide
adequate security to U.S. personnel abroad, according to a well-placed
intelligence source.

---------------
The book "Pacific Stars and Stripes, VIETNAM Front Pages" published in 1986
states:

Saigon (AP) ....The three Americans listed as missing and believed captured were two
officers and an enlisted medic. Stragglers returning from the rout said both
officers had been wounded early in the fight -- one in the head and one the
other in the leg.

The Army identified the three as Capt. Hubert R. Versace, Baltimore; 1st Lt.
James M. Rowe, McAllen Tx; and Sgt. Daniel L. Pitzer, Spring Lake, N.C.....

Report 2 Advisers Executed
Saigon (UPI) -- The viet Cong executed two captive servicemen Sunday
morning, the clandestine Liberation Radio said late Sunday night.

The communist radio identified the two Americans as Capt. Albert Rusk Joseph
and Sgt. Kenneth Morabeth (as received phonetically)......

The assassin of Col. James Rowe, the "political prisoner" Danilo Continente,
is scheduled to be freed from prison on June 28th after serving his maximum
sentence. Philippine President Fidel Ramos refused to pardon Continente
during his term of office despite representations by 'human rights
organizations'. But with his sentence served, Continente will soon be a free
man. The left-leaning Philippine Daily Inquirer has started a countdown to
the blessed moment.

In just nine days, Donato Continente becomes a free man. And for him,
freedom means becoming a full-time father to his 6-year-old son. Continente,
43, one of two men convicted in the killing of US Army Col. James Rowe in
1989, is set to be released from the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) in Muntinlupa
on June 28. Bureau of Corrections records show that he has served the
maximum sentence of 16 years.

His chief regret, the Inquirer says, has been an inability to spend time
with his son, conceived on a conjugal visit.

During the occasional visit, after the child had become comfortable with his
father, they would spend the allotted eight hours chatting and frolicking in
the prison's playground. "He would often ask me if it was really a prisoner
because he couldn't see barred cells and barbed wire." ... Continente was
initially convicted as a principal in the murder of Rowe, for which he was
given a life sentence on Feb. 27, 1991. But upon review, the Supreme Court
ruled in August 2000 that he was only an accomplice and lowered his sentence
to 14 years. He was recommended for release thrice under the Ramos
administration's amnesty program: In January 1993, by the Presidential
Review Committee secretariat; in June 1993, by the Department of Justice,
and in 1994, by the Presidential Committee for the Grant of Bail, Release on
Pardon and Parole. But Continente remained behind bars, allegedly because of
pressure from the US government.

The Left always kept the faith with Continente, who at the time of the
murder was a staff member of the Philippine Collegian, the student newspaper
of the national university, famous for its radical politics. Ever and again
they clamored for his release as they are even now doing for terrorists
imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. The New York Times reports:

May 29 - In the last few months, the small commercial air service to the
naval base at Guant namo Bay, Cuba, has been carrying people the military
authorities had hoped would never be allowed there: American lawyers. And
they have been arriving in increasing numbers, providing more than a third
of about 530 remaining detainees with representation in federal court.
Despite considerable obstacles and expenses, other lawyers are lining up to
challenge the government's detention of people the military has called enemy
combatants and possible terrorists.

It's a way of sending them their love, showing that they care. And they do.
Describing the treatment of terrorists confined in Guantanamo, Sen. Richard
J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said:

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent
describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control," he said,
"you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets
in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no
concern for human beings."

In contrast, Colonel Nick Rowe's fate has always been to be forgotten,
though he didn't seem to resent it. When Rowe was held captive as a POW in
Vietnam, during which he suffered from dysentary, beri-beri and fungal
attack -- diseases unknown in Durbin's Guantanamo -- he protected his fellow
prisoners by concealing his identity as a Special Forces Officer, which if
revealed would single them out for special cruelty. His deception worked for
months. But the Left did not forget.

Acting on a request from the North Vietnamese, students in a so-called
anti-war organization in the United States researched public records and
formulated biographies on Americans captured in Vietnam. After reading Lt.
Rowe's biography, his Viet Cong captors became furious. They marched him
into a cramped bamboo hut and forced him to sit on the damp clay floor.
Several high ranking Viet Cong officials were staring down at Lt. Rowe. They
held out a piece of typed onion skin paper.

"The peace and justice loving friends, of the National Liberation Front, who
live in America, have provided us with information which leads us to believe
you have lied to us," they informed Lt. Rowe. "According to what we know,
you are not an engineer . . . you have much military experience which you
deny . . . You were an officer of the American Special Forces."

Lt. Rowe sat dumbfounded, unable to comprehend that his own people would
betray him. He felt it was over. He had lied to the communists for five
years. Worse in their eyes, the Viet Cong had believed him. They had lost
face and, for that, he would be punished. Soon after, the Viet Cong Central
Committee for the National Liberation Front sent orders to Rowe's camp
ordering the cadre to execute the uncooperative American prisoner.

On the day Lt. Rowe was being led to a destination for execution, he and his
small group of guards were caught on the edge of an American B-52 saturation
bombing raid. The guards scattered, leaving Lt. Rowe with only one. Lt. Rowe
knew he had nothing to lose. He bided his time until the remaining guard
carelessly moved to Rowe's front, whereupon Lt. Rowe bludgeoned him with a
log and escaped. Not only did Lt. Rowe survive his ordeal as a POW, he
escaped and emerged stronger than before his capture, more committed to the
American ideal and more convinced than ever that what the communists had
planned for Vietnam and the world was a blueprint for tyranny and human
suffering. Nick Rowe frustrated the communists. They never broke him. They
never shook his faith in the American system. He was the quintessential
American fighting man, unable to be broken mentally or physically.

The communists, however, never forgot Lt. Nick Rowe. They never forgot the
threat men such as he posed to them and their view of world domination.
Shortly before 7 a.m. on April 21, 1989, a small white car pulled alongside
a gray, chauffeur-driven vehicle in a traffic circle in the Manila suburb of
Quezon City. The barrels of an M-16 rifle and a .45-caliber pistol poked out
the window of the white car and spit out more than two dozen shots.
Twenty-one of them hit the gray car. One of the rounds hit Col. James "Nick"
Rowe in the head, killing him instantly. The hooded NPA killers had ties to
the communist Vietnamese, Rowe's old enemies in Vietnam. It took the
communists nearly 25 years, but they finally silenced Nick Rowe. What they
could not do in a jungle cage in South Vietnam's U Minh Forest through
torture, intimidation, and political indoctrination, they did with a .45 and
an American-made M-16 on the streets of Manila.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. � A very special exhibit will be on display in the Airborne & Special Operations
Museum�s temporary exhibit hall, opening at 10 a.m. Friday, February 10, through January of 2013. �The
Animal Called POW�: U.S. Special Forces Prisoners of the Vietcong describes the experience of U.S. Special
Forces and Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) prisoners held in South Vietnam. The exhibit will
also cover rescue missions, Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training and modern prisoners of
war.

http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/DIA-Dedicates-Building-to-Col-Rowe-257731921.html

DIA Dedicates Building to Col. Rowe

May 2, 2014

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Charlottesville dedicated a building today to a former prisoner of war, and
Army colonel who gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country.

Alex Rowe didn't have the chance to get to know his father, but he certainly knows his father's legacy.

�It gives you chills,� says Rowe. �While I was sitting there I said wow that my dad they are talking about.�

On Friday, the DIA dedicated a building at Rivanna Station in Charlottesville in honor of Alex's father, Colonel
James Nicholas Rowe, who was killed on duty in 1989.