Clandestine Army operative Michael Froede, suspected he was being followed. For weeks after he returned from a highly classified mission in Vietnam, he would see people watching him in Washington, D.C.
Michael Froede suspected he was being followed. For weeks after he returned from a highly classified mission in Vietnam, he would see people watching him in Washington, D.C. They’d be parked outside his house or tailing him while driving. Sometimes while on the road, Froede would pull a U-turn and swing back around on the suspected surveillance team to take their pictures, to let them know that he knew they were there.
Yet his recent behavior had seemed erratic to supervisors and peers at COMTECH, which was based out of Fort Meade. His supervisors had referred him to Barquist Army Health Clinic just four days earlier, but he was released after doctors there decided he wasn’t a danger to himself or others. “That was what he did with his whole job. He pretended to be someone he wasn’t and go places we were not supposed to be and do things we are not supposed to do,” Kate Kemplin, his ex-wife, told Yahoo News. “And you are telling me you have no clinical method to tell when they are not telling you the truth? It blows my mind.”
“If we did that for every single soldier, we would set the MRI machine on fire,” he told her, she recounted. While his career was on track, Froede was struggling with his personal life. His marriage deteriorated, and Kemplin divorced him. He remarried, but that marriage also collapsed. The facade that Froede built up appeared to be crumbling, but he continued working sensitive deployments, including as part of a small team sent to Vietnam ahead of then-President Donald Trump’s expected summit with North Korean leadership.
Due to his mental health issues, Froede felt alone and ostracized by his teammates. “My peers do not want to talk to me anymore,” he wrote. Froede’s teammate whom he had previously confided in, and also copied on his bizarre letter, remained in touch with him. The teammate even persuaded him to see an operational psychologist at Meade Behavioral Health. But while sharing a cigarette outside one of the unit’s buildings in June, Froede made a startling admission, telling his teammate that if he were ever to kill himself, he’d jump.
Hours later, she received a phone call that Froede was in the hospital in critical condition. She got in her car and began driving to Maryland. Those struggling can be referred but not forced to seek mental health care, and London pointed out that it runs up against HIPAA, privacy issues and potential litigation.
The Army Intelligence Command , under which COMTECH falls, declined to answer a detailed list of questions about mental health issues affecting soldiers assigned to the command, citing a new investigation into Froede’s death.Statistics about mental health care for clandestine Army personnel are not publicly available, but anecdotal evidence suggests that INSCOM has a growing problem with suicides.
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