Will Williams in Vietnam

Since Will Williams became an officer of the National Alliance in the early 1990s, it has happened from time to time that someone would try to cast doubt on his military record. For example, Dr. William Pierce wrote in the National Alliance Bulletin of November-December 1992 that one such detractor "has insinuated in his recent letters that our Membership Coordinator, Will Williams, is ... an imposter who falsely claims to be a former Special Forces officer."

Here are some facts.

Lieutenant Will Williams was stationed at a Special Forces camp A-414 near the village of Thanh Tri, in a border-area west of Saigon nicknamed "the finger" because it formed an indentation into Cambodia. The dozen or so American Special Forces soldiers assigned to this camp became known as the Defenders of the Finger.

This plaque, made while Will Williams was in Vietnam with a carved hand that he bought in Thailand, represents Vietnamese territory in yellow and Cambodian territory in red, and shows the anomaly in the border known as "the finger," where the base was located.

Because of its proximity to Cambodia on three sides, the base was frequently shelled by the Viet Cong, who used Cambodia as a refuge. Whenever that happened, somebody would have to run to the top of a steel observation tower called "Silver Star Tower," (because whoever would climb that tower while the base was under attack deserved a medal) to try to determine whence the fire originated.

Terry McIntosh's documentary Double Agent Down narrates a particularly harrowing incident that Will Williams experienced in Vietnam while leading a CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Group).

Ten days after this battle, Lieutenant Will Williams was promoted to Captain.

Fred Streed's Affidavit for Will Williams

Fred Streed has information impeaching the credibility of the woman who  accused Will Williams of misdemeanor battery. Fred is well known as an honest man (entrusted by Dr. Pierce with the execution of his will), and nobody can twist his arm. I thoroughly believe what he says about this matter.

Some of it I can confirm from my own personal experience. I know, for example, that there was never any violence from Will Williams toward his wife Albina, because Albina herself told me.

Fred says (point 3 of the Affidavit) that during his recent stay on the National Alliance's property he noticed that Garland DeCourcy was "insisting events happened that I knew to be untrue," and not only about Will Williams. For example, she was claiming that the National Alliance was "raided" several times during Dr. Pierce's lifetime. (I was a member of the National Alliance from 1992 until after Dr. Pierce's death, and this is the first time that I ever heard such a story!) "Garland would spend an hour or more detailing convoluted conspiracy theories," writes Fred. The woman seems to have a wild imagination.

In the altercation between Garland DeCourcy and Will Williams, Will Williams' account of what happened (in response to my questioning) is this:

I held my right arm out as she came at me, wagging her finger in my face aggressively, screaming that I'm a "psycho," among other ridiculous things an employee doesn't scream at her employer. Between the crook of my thumb and forefinger was her chin. I never touched her neck. [Will Williams, 3 April 2016]

Michael Oljaca (a.k.a. Olanich), Garland's young boyfriend, was present and somehow intervened. Will's account of Michael's role is this:

He stood up, but his alleged effort at physically "separating" us is laughable. I think he may have yelled "stop," but directed more at her than at me. I wasn't the one who had jumped up and started screaming hysterically.

[...]

I removed my hand from her chin as soon as Mikey stood up. I then left the room and went back to typing for the September BULLETIN in the office across the hall. I let Garland know when I paid them [a short time later] that her services were no longer needed for the Alliance.

Garland's version is that Will was strangling her and that Michael interrupted it, saving her life. The SPLC has it that Will "allegedly attempted to beat and strangle" her.

Fred indicates in point 4 of his affidavit that he encountered Will, Garland, and Michael shortly after the alleged incident, and saw no sign that any violence had occurred:

On September 30th, 2015, Garland and Mr. Williams evidently had a heated conversation. I talked with Mr. Williams right after it happened, he was calm and did not appear angry. I also talked with Garland and Mr. Olanich soon after my conversation with Mr. Williams. She seemed very excited and angry but made no mention of an assault on her. I did not see any bruises on her throat or other signs of a physical altercation. 

Will Williams is a burly and vigorous former Special Forces soldier. Michael Oljaca is said to be not so formidable. The notion that Michael Oljaca tussled with Will Williams and emerged without a mark on him is no more credible than the claim that Will "attempted to beat and strangle" Garland and that the only mark she had to show for it was this little rash:

Nonetheless Michael O., the only eyewitness other than the plaintiff and the defendant, has been supporting the plaintiff's account. 

If you want to understand how it is possible that a woman could get a man or several men to support her in an accusation that might be exaggerated or false, look at the recent accusation of misdemeanor battery against Donald Trump's campaign-manager Corey Lewandowski. The journalist Michelle Fields wildly exaggerated and distorted what happened in her brief physical interaction with Lewandowski and talked two male witnesses who could have contradicted her story (Washington Post's reporter Ben Terris and photographer Jabin Botsford) into going along with it . (See this exposé.) I heard a female caller to Rush Limbaugh call it "playing the woman-card." In the jargon of men's rights it is also called damseling, and the complementary male behavior is called white-knighting. A well known phenomenon.

A lack of any inherent importance in whatever did happen between Will Williams and Garland DeCourcy on 30 September 2015 is also implicit in the fact that she waited two months, until 2 December 2015, to file a complaint. The police-report does not say that she had suffered any physical harm.

Fred's observations unfortunately were not admitted as evidence for the trial, which took place in the Magistrate Court of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, on 28 March 2016 and, with neither a witness nor an affidavit to support the defendant, ended in Will Williams' being convicted on a misdemeanor charge of battery.

About Will Williams

I just want to say a few words about Will Williams in light of a controversy that has arisen in the past few weeks. The controversy is that Will Williams is alleged to have laid hands in a hostile way on Garland DeCourcy, an employee of the National Alliance, of which Will is the chairman. I read that he was charged with misdemeanor battery for this, but that he has acquired an attorney and is fighting it.

I do not know anything about this alleged altercation beyond the police-documents that have been published online. There is no statement in those documents that the plaintiff incurred any physical injury. If there were bruises, they would have been invisible by the time of the report on the incident, because the documents indicate that Garland DeCourcy waited two months (from 30 September 2015 until 2 December 2015) to file a complaint.

I can only say that in my experience it is not typical of Will to do something like that. I would say that he has an aggressive and audacious personality, but I have never known him to be violent. I cannot say that he never would, but in 22 years I have neither seen nor heard about him doing anything violent toward anybody.

There is a story from the last of Ben Klassen's memoirs, Trials, Tribulations, and Triumphs (1993), that alleges that there were violent altercations between Will Williams and his girlfriend Lucinda Coleman during the time when they both worked for him in the late 1980s. This story has been cherished by certain people that have made a hobby out of attacking Will.

I had a chance to talk to Lucinda several years ago, and, according to her, Klassen's account of the nature of the relationship between her and Will is very inaccurate and permeated with negative bias.

Klassen makes this claim: "In one fight, Will had kicked Cindy around with his hob-nailed army boots, and when she tried to protect her behind with her hand, he kicked her so hard he broke one of the metacarpus bones in her right hand."

According to Lucinda, there was no fight, only horseplay between herself and Will, wherein her hand was accidentally injured. Will kicked her in the butt (not hard enough to harm her butt) but because she put her hand in the way, a bone was broken.

Klassen also makes much of the fact that Will slept by himself, apart from Cindy. Klassen took it as an indication of discord between them, but I think it most likely has to do with PTSD from the Vietnam War, which commonly includes sleep-disturbances that can be troubling for someone else trying to sleep in the same room.

In any case, Cindy indicated to me that Will was not physically abusive to her.

It is evident from the rest of Klassen's last book that he had a very sour outlook in general at that stage of his life. After all, it was only a short time later that he killed himself. It is not hard to believe that his perception of what happened between Will and Cindy was distorted.

All these years later Will and Cindy are still on good terms.

I can also say that Will seems to get on very well with his current wife, with whom he has been married, I am not sure how long, but more than a decade. I had a chance to observe this when I visited in 2012. It was apparent to me that Will makes efforts to accommodate her and to keep her happy, as a man normally does in a healthy, loving relationship.

In the past I did not consider Klassen's "Will and Cindy" story very worthy of discussion, but it seems important to dispel it now because some people are bringing the allegation from 1988 to bear on the current misdemeanor battery charge and saying that together they imply a pattern of violence toward women. Regardless of how the present accusation may turn out, there does not seem to be any basis for claiming such a pattern, because, in addition to the huge time-interval between the two allegations, the woman who was supposed to be the victim of violence in 1988 says that it did not happen.