CIA activities in Laos started in the 1950s. In 1959, U.S. Special Operations Forces (Military and CIA) began to train some Laotian soldiers in unconventional warfare techniques as early as the fall of 1959 under the code name "Erawan". Under this code name, General Vang Pao, who served the royal Lao family, recruited and trained his Hmong and Iu-Mien soldiers. The Hmong and Iu-Mien were targeted as allies after President John F. Kennedy, who refused to send more American soldiers to battle in Southeast Asia, took office. Instead, he called the CIA to use its tribal forces in Laos and "make every possible effort to launch guerrilla operations in North Vietnam with its Asian recruits." General Vang Pao then recruited and trained his Hmong soldiers to ally with the CIA and fight against North Vietnam. The CIA itself claims that the CIA air operations in Laos from 1955 to 1974 were the "largest paramilitary operations ever undertaken by the CIA."
For 13 years, the CIA paramilitary officers from what is now called the Special Activities Center directed native forces against North Vietnamese forces. The CIA particularly organized Hmong people to fight against the North Vietnamese-backed Pathet Lao. The Pathet Lao were the communists in Laos. The CIA-backed Hmong and Iu Mien guerrillas used Air America to "drop 46 million pounds of foodstuffs. ... transport tens of thousands of troops, conduct a highly successful photo-reconnaissance program, and engage in numerous clandestine missions using night-vision glasses and state-of-the-art electronic equipment." Alt URL This was the largest paramilitary operation in which the CIA participated, spanning 13 years until the Afghanistan War. The CIA was responsible for directing the natives of Laos to fight the North Vietnamese. Although such efforts ended at the 1973 signing of the Paris Peace Accords, the CIA believed it was a success as it managed to fight the enemy to a standstill and combat the communist threat. They saw it as a victory and as an accomplishment. The director at the time, Richard Helms, called it superb and discussed the amount of manpower required, and said that the CIA did a good job in supplying it.
Along with funding anti-communist militias, the CIA also conducted a massive bombing effort in Laos from 1964 to 1973. 580,000 bombing missions took place over the nine-year campaign, but it is not known how many of them were dropped by the United States Air Force and how many were dropped by the CIA. For the CIA, this was the largest paramilitary operation they had to date. By the summer of 1970 the CIA owned airline Air America had two dozen twin-engine transports, two dozen STOL aircraft and 30 helicopters dedicated to the operations in Laos. This airline employed more than 300 pilots, copilots, flight mechanics, and airfreight specialists flying out of Laos and Thailand. Although the bombing campaign was only formally disclosed to the American public in 1969, stories about the Laos bombing effort were published prior to that in The New York Times.
Background
Politics of Laos and the CIA A 1962 Time magazine article about Laos makes some points that help illustrate the context of the overt and covert actions of all sides in Laos before the Vietnam War. One of the first points the article makes is that a Laotian national identity, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, was a rare thing (since parts of Thailand and Laos were one and the same before French colonizers drew new borders and territories and Laos was part of the vast French-controlled Indochina for generations). Communist groups and those from outside, including the French colonial administration and the CIA, often exploited power vacuums that existed within the region.
"Though it has a king, a government and an army and can be found on a map, Laos does not really exist. Many of its estimated 2,000,000 people would be astonished to be called Laotians since they know themselves to be Meo or Black Thai or Khalom tribesmen among other small ethnic groups that resided in the countryside. It is a land without a railroad, a single paved highway or a newspaper. Its chief cash crop was opium."
Laos was dreamed up by French Diplomat Jean Chauvel, who in 1946 was France's Secretary-General of Foreign Affairs. At the time, post World War II France was trying to reassert its authority over its colonies in Indochina. The rebellious inhabitants had no desire to return to their prewar status as colonial subjects. In place of original Indochina, consisting of various kingdoms and principalities, Paris put together three new autonomous states within the French Union: Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos. Drawing lines on a map, Chauvel created Laos by merging the rival kingdoms of Luangprabang, whose monarch became King of Laos, with Champassak, whose pretender was consoled by being made permanent Inspector General of the new state.
French influence did not survive long after the 1954 defeat at Dien Bien Phu. When the French declared Laos independent, it did not have a cohesive government: two Laotian provinces were run by the communist Pathet Lao under Prince Souphanouvong. His half-brother, Prince Souvanna Phouma, was chosen as Premier in 1956, and Souphanouvong and his provinces were put underneath the fledgling central government. A subsequent national election increased communist strength in the National Assembly to nine of the 21 seats, which aroused the ire of the U.S. government, which distrusted Souvanna Phouma, "both as a neutralist and a compromise with the Reds." Regime change to the right-wing General Phoumi Nosavan came not from a coup, but from stopping U.S. economic aid, which was the responsibility, subordinate to the White House, of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The new dictator invited U.S. military advisors, who came with both U.S. Defense Department and CIA personnel.
Civil war had broken out between the neutralist forces of paratroop commander Kong Le and right-wing Gen. Phoumi Nosavan. The Communist Pathet Lao supported Kong Le, while the US military and CIA lined up behind Phoumi. As Adm. Harry D. Felt, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, explained: "Phoumi is no George Washington. However, he is anti-Communist, which is what counts most in the sad Laos situation."
The CIA was largely responsible for conducting military operations in Laos, but the U.S. ambassador was the man in charge. The secret war in Laos, author Charles Stevenson has emphasized, "was William Sullivan's war." Ambassador from December 1964 to March 1969, Sullivan insisted on an efficient, closely controlled country team. "There wasn't a bag of rice dropped in Laos that he didn't know about," observed Assistant Secretary of State William Bundy. Sullivan imposed two conditions upon his subordinates. First, the thin fiction of the Geneva accords had to be maintained to avoid possible embarrassment to the Lao and Soviet Governments; military operations, therefore, had to be carried out in relative secrecy. Second, no regular U.S. ground troops were to become involved. In general, Ambassador Sullivan and his successor, G. McMurtrie Godley, successfully carried out this policy.
CIA operations in Laos, proprietary airlines According to William M. Leary, a historian at the University of Georgia who analyzed Laotian operations for the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, CIA-led covert action in Laos was the largest paramilitary operation in the history of the Agency.
In 1950, the CIA—supporting but not directing covert action until 1952—determined that it could best meet its support responsibilities with a proprietary airline under its private control and purchased Civil Air Transport (CAT), changing its name to Air America in 1959. Air America flew a variety of missions in Laos, including transporting supplies, personnel (both civilian and military) and conducting covert operations. The airline was crucial to the CIA's covert operations in Laos and disguised itself as a commercial airline to maintain secrecy. "In August 1950, the Agency secretly purchased the assets of Civil Air Transport (CAT), an airline that had been started in China after World War II by Gen. Claire L. Chennault and Whiting Willauer. CAT would continue to fly commercial routes throughout Asia, acting in every way as a privately owned commercial airline. At the same time, under the corporate guise of CAT Incorporated, it provided airplanes and crews for secret intelligence operations. During the Korean War, for example, it made more than 100 hazardous overflights of mainland China, airdropping agents and supplies."
Allegations of CIA drug trafficking
As a Ph.D. candidate in Southeast Asian history at Yale University, Alfred McCoy, testifying before the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee on June 2, 1972, "accused American officials of condoning and even cooperating with corrupt elements in Southeast Asia's illegal drug trade out of political and military considerations." One of his major charges was that South Vietnam's President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, Vice President Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, and Prime Minister Trần Thiện Khiêm led a narcotics ring with ties to the Corsican mafia, the Trafficante crime family in Florida, and other high-level military officials in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Those implicated by McCoy included Laotian Generals Ouane Rattikone and Vang Pao and South Vietnamese Generals Đặng Văn Quang and Ngô Dzu. He told the subcommittee that these military officials facilitated the distribution of heroin to American troops in Vietnam and addicts in the United States. According to McCoy, the CIA chartered Air America aircraft and helicopters in northern Laos to transport opium harvested by their "tribal mercenaries". He also accused United States Ambassador to Laos G. McMurtrie Godley of blocking the assignment of Bureau of Narcotics officials to Laos in order to maintain the Laotian government's cooperation in military and political matters. McCoy reiterated similar charges in his 1972 book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia published by Harper and Row. He stated that the CIA was knowingly involved in the production of heroin in the Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand, and Laos. The CIA denies the accusation that they may have been involved in the drug trade.
The United States Department of State responded to the initial allegations stating that they were "unable to find any evidence to substantiate them, much less proof." Subsequent investigations by the Inspector General of the CIA, United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (i.e. the Church Committee) also found the charges to be unsubstantiated.
McCoy's allegations were later cited in Christopher Robbins' 1979 book Air America providing the basis for a film of the same name released in 1990. According to Leary, a University of Georgia historian who analyzed Laotian operations for the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, the film Air America was responsible for Air America's poor public image. He stated that his two decades of research found Air America not involved in drug trafficking. Nonetheless, McCoy finds the CIA culpable in drug-trafficking on the part of the Laotians. According to Leary, "The CIA's main focus in Laos remained on fighting the war, not on policing the drug trade."
1953