Cork Graham is an American author.

Vietnam

In 1983, and only a teenager, Graham got assignments from Reuters and the Associated Press, through the luck of gaining the mentoring of such journalistic luminaries as the father of Thai actor, Ananda Everingham, John Everingham. Graham photographed the anti-communist resistance of the Hmong people fighting the Pathet Lao and the fighting between Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese in what was then called Kampuchea.

News at the time was Col. Bo Gritz's forays into Laos after American POWs supposedly left from the Vietnam War. Graham's first assignment was an attempt to enter Laos with Hmong fighters to search for MIAs and lost reporters Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, who had been seen travelling under NVA guard through the area years before. The Hmong were ambushed on the Lao side by Pathet Lao. Rumor is they were Hmong drug-runners of an opposing faction and not Pathet Lao. Graham lost his first set of camera equipment in the event. He swam the full width of the river near Vientienne, with a lifeguard hold on a wounded Hmong teenager. The 14-year-old died from his wounds at Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand.^[1]

While searching for work, like many expatriates and trekkers in Bangkok, Graham was hired to play a U.S. Marine in the evacuation scene of The Killing Fields. ^[2]

Graham earned notoriety as the teenaged combat photographer^[3] invited on a treasure hunting expedition to a forbidden island in Vietnamese waters in the Thai Gulf, Iles Des Pirates (Pirates Islands in French), twelve miles (19 km) west of Ha Tien.

Graham and the leader of the expedition, Richard Knight.^[4], a British comedy actor-turned treasure hunter, were captured by island militia.^[5] Knight was following a theory he developed after disagreeing with the thesis put across in a book about the Oak Island Money Pit Mystery by Rupert Fourneaux, called The Money Pit Mystery.^[6] They were imprisoned at the Kien Giang Province political prison on false charges of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency. Knight had the incredible, though heavily researched, theory that Captain Kidd had always been a pirate, long before his more famous trial, and buried treasure there while marauding Dutch ships from Indonesia^[7]

Negotiations for Graham’s freedom were especially aggravated by the fact that in 1983 the US and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) didn’t have normalized relations and so no American Embassy in Saigon, where the two were eventually moved. All negotiations for Graham’s freedom were handled through the British Embassy in Hanoi—the SRV didn’t admit for the first three months of their imprisonment and heavy-handed interrogations of the two men. "Vietnamese Embassy spokesman said, the provincial court fined the two men $10,000 each." ^[8] Graham and Knight were supposed to be released 28/11/1983.^[9]

Investigators from the Defense Intelligence Agency’s POW/MIA Division,^[10] now called the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA), confirmed the two’s capture by interviewing Thai fisherman who had been held at the same prison in Rach Gia, Kien Giang Province. This led to an uproar in the press community, who reminded the Vietnamese government that Graham was a journalist and should have been released immediately.^[11]

Central America

Soon after his return Graham continued in combat journalism as a stringer for the Associated Press in Central America. During his coverage of the war in El Salvador, he became the second American to complete the naval special forces course created by the CIA and US Navy SEALs in La Union, El Salvador. He covered the Salvadoran Civil War from 1985 until 1989. The school was initially commanded by Lt. Cmdr. Albert Schaufelberger after command moved from the CIA to the US Navy and MILGROUP--Lt. Cmdr. Albert Schaufelberger was assassinated by the FMLN in 1983.

Graham provided aid as a field corpsman.^{[12] [13]}

Post-War

Graham's memoir about his Vietnam adventure in which he confronted his case of PTSD, The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War was an Amazon.com Topseller at #2 for three weeks on its release in 2004.^[14]

Is a speaker and writer on the subject of post-traumatic stress.^[15] Graham coined the term "Post-Traumatic Stress Response" [PTSR] to help in removing the stigma associated with PTSD and other terms like "shell-shock" among many others.^[16]

Cork Graham is a screenwriter/doctor, feature writer and book author based in the San Francisco Bay Area.^[17][18]

Bibliography

• The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War (2004)
• The Sacred Art of Hunting (2000)
• Pacific Big Three (1997)

Filmography

• Winter Run (2009) - writer, director (pre-production)
• Fotografo (1987) - writer, director, co-producer, actor

Television/Radio

• Cork's Outdoors (2009) - writer/host
• Surprise (2007) - actor
• KFOG Morning Show (2006) - guest
• Good Morning America (1984) - guest
• NBC News (1984) - commentator

References

External links

• Web Site
• Combat Photography Gallery
• PTSD Blog