Not Secret War in Laos
The not so secret war in Laos was unknown by the American public, but everyone else knew.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ran the “Secret War”
Air America was the CIA air transport for this operation.
Why a covert war?
JFK and all the presidents up to Nixon thought it was a good idea to have clandestine operators in Laos so that they could claim, no military troops in neutral Laos during the Vietnam War.
President Eisenhower’s administration started this idea of a domino theory, the United States proclaimed Laos a buffer state due to it bordering North Vietnam and China.
The Laotian conflict involved the U.S., China, Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, France, and Cambodia.
Objectives of the Secret War
Blocking force so that the PL / NVA / VC did not overrun Laos
Assist the war in Vietnam
Harass and degrade the PL / NVA / VC troops in Laos
Prevent the domino theory effect
Establish Laos as a supply line and jumping off point into Vietnam and Cambodia.
Harass and cripple the (HCMT) Ho Chi Minh Trail cargo, and troops moving down the trail.
Paris Accords
A former Air America pilot wrote a response and is paraphrased here.
America signed the 1962 Geneva Accord with sincerity, and they intended to abide by the covenants contained therein. And, by the way, the CIA acts by instructions from the National Security Council. So, it was America’s war, not the CIA’s war in Laos. But, it was not America that violated the agreement. It was the North Vietnamese. America had a commitment to South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were using Laos to infiltrate South Vietnam because they assumed America would not stop them in a neutral country. In 1959 and the early '60s, America tried to train the Royale Lao army to defend themselves. It was a difficult undertaking because Laos was split into three factions that had been at war with one other many years before an American military presence arrived. Laos was a sleepy kingdom with few roads and different tribes with different ideologies, and the Hmong were only one of them. None of the hill tribes paid allegiance to the Royale Lao government. Most didn’t even know it existed.
America faced severe choices. They could confront the North Vietnamese overtly, which would have brought condemnation by a host of other countries; attempt to thwart the NVA covertly, or walk away.
America chose to act secretly and clandestinely.
[https://www.air-america.org/air-america-history.html]
Why Laos?
Location, location, location.
HCMT
Ho Chi Minh Trail
The series of informal trails were named after the leader of the North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh.
Over the years, the Trail went from simple footpaths in the jungle covered by triple canopy, to hidden paved streets from Northeastern Laos all the way down to Southern South Vietnam.
The trail was put into operation beginning in 1959, after the North Vietnamese leadership decided to use revolutionary warfare to reunify South with North Vietnam. Accordingly, work was undertaken to connect a series of old trails leading from the panhandle of North Vietnam southward along the upper slopes of the Annamese Cordillera (French: Chaîne Annamitique; Vietnamese: Truong-Son) into eastern Laos and Cambodia and thence into South Vietnam. Starting south of Hanoi in North Vietnam, the main trail veered southwestward to enter Laos, with periodic side branches or exits running east into South Vietnam. The main trail continued southward into eastern Cambodia and then emptied into South Vietnam at points west of Da Lat.
The network of trails and volume of traffic expanded significantly beginning in the 1960s, but it still took more than one month’s march to travel from North to South Vietnam using it. Traffic on the trail was little affected by repeated American bombing raids. Efforts were gradually made to improve the trail, which by the late 1960s could accommodate heavy trucks in some sections and was supplying the needs of several hundred thousand regular North Vietnamese troops active in South Vietnam. By 1974, the trail was a well-marked series of jungle roads (some of them paved) and underground support facilities such as hospitals, fuel-storage tanks, and weapons and supply caches. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was the major supply route for the North Vietnamese forces that successfully invaded and overran South Vietnam in 1975.
[https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ho-Chi-Minh-Trail]
Pathet Lao
The local communist enemy combatants were the Pathet Lao (PL)
Lao communist forces, known as the Pathet Lao (PL), were challenging the government’s Royal Lao Army (FAR) throughout the country. Although badly organized and poorly trained and equipped, the PL was bolstered by support from North Vietnam, whose units were called the VC (Vietnamese Communists).
The opposing forces in Laos at the time also included a renegade FAR captain, Kong Le, who commanded an elite battalion of parachutists. Angered by corruption in the FAR, he had staged a coup in Vientiane in 1960. When the coup failed, he had broken away from the FAR to form what he called neutralist forces. This group, known as the KL, fought the FAR, but not the PL or the VC.
The United States had opted to use Agency for International Development (AID) programs, AID advisers, and ultimately “covert action” to bolster the Lao government. The CIA’s paramilitary efforts in Laos were divided roughly along geographic lines: There were separate programs in north Laos, where I was initially assigned; central Laos—also known as the Panhandle—where I would later be assigned; and south Laos. Each program involved working with different tribal/ethnic groups, such as the Hmong in the mountainous north and the Lao in the lowlands.
Although the Hmong and the Lao had a common enemy, they did not like each other. Nonetheless, they had their own reasons for working with us and their objectives were complementary. North Vietnam’s primary goal was to make free use of eastern Laos to support its war against South Vietnam. The average tribesman could not have distinguished between communism and capitalism, but the ethnic groups felt threatened by the Lao communists and their Vietnamese supporters and decided to fight to preserve their autonomy and their territory. All they wanted from us was financial and material support.
The biggest and most active of our programs was the one in north Laos, supporting the Hmong tribe. Bill Lair struck the first agreement at a meeting with leader Vang Pao in December 1960. For the Hmong, it began more than a decade of fighting and dying.
Agency for International Development (AID) was also known as United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
[https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-47-no-1/recollections-of-a-case-officer-in-laos-1962-1964/]
Major CIA Bases
Long Tieng (also spelled Long Chieng, Long Cheng, or Long Chen)
It was located in a valley at 3,100 feet elevation, high enough to have chilly nights and cold fogs. It was surrounded by mountains and on the northwest side of the runway were karst outcrops several hundred feet high. In the shadow of the Karst outcrops was "Sky" the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Long Tieng.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tieng]
It was referred to as Lima Site 98 (LS 98) or Lima Site 20A (LS 20A).
The unofficial name used by the Agency was ALTERNATE, a purposely vague name that would not raise suspicions.
That is also why CIA case officers would say the “Agency” or working for the “Company”
So someone could say I was traveling to ALTERNATE and not give away that you're traveling to a secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) base in Laos.
At the height of its significance in the late 1960s, the "secret city" of Long Tieng maintained a population of 40,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in Laos at the time, although it never appeared on maps throughout this period.
In 1962 the CIA first set up a headquarters for Major General Vang Pao in the Long Tieng valley, which at that time had almost no inhabitants. By 1964 a 1260 m runway had been completed and by 1966 Long Cheng was one of the largest US installations on foreign soil, becoming one of the busiest airports in the world.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tieng]
The CIA bar on base had two Himalayan beer addicted bears, with the cages attached to said bar. Many visitors would be entertained by these bears, and these animals became legends.
Major General Vang Pao was known all over the Kingdom of Laos as VP.
Udorn (Thailand)
Udorn-Thani AFB was a very busy airbase that supported the Secret War.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udorn_Royal_Thai_Air_Force_Base]
NKP (Thailand)
NKP was a TOP SECRET airbase and navy base that supported the Secret War.
Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Navy Base also known as “Naked Fanny” and NKP
[https://aircommandoman.tripod.com/]
Major Operations
Tony Poe and his Special Tribe
Tony Poe was a CIA case officer that worked in remote parts of Laos, including NAM YU: LIMA SITE 118A
Anthony Alexander Poshepny, known as Tony Poe, was a CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer in what is now called Special Activities Division (renamed Special Activities Center in 2016). He is best known for his involvement in Laos with the Special Guerilla Units (SGUs) under the command of General Vang Pao, a U.S.-funded secret army in Laos during the Vietnam War, and is often referenced as the model for Colonel Kurtz in the movie Apocalypse Now.
Tony was no Colonel Kurtz. He married a Hmong princess, lived and bled with the Hmong, and was totally impeded with those mountain tribes.
Part of Tony’s mission was to be concerned about the construction of a Chinese Road into Laos.
Operations to inserting friendly Agents into China.
Blocking force so that the PL / NVA / VC did not overrun Laos
Trail Watchers
CIA offices soon found that the North Vietnamese Army had failed to remove 7000 troops, who were expanding Northern Vietnamese positions in Laos. CIA reports from officers in the hills were soon pleading for arms so that the Hmong could defend themselves against the NVA onslaught. Secretary of State Averell Harriman granted these requests on an individual basis going forward.
On August 17, 1962, five American prisoners released by the Pathet Lao, as well as several members of NSBC in Laos, estimated the North Vietnamese Forces in Laos to be around 10,000. CIA road watch teams reported trucks full of North Vietnamese troops heading toward the North Vietnamese border, but would be unable to confirm whether all the troops had left Laos. A document released by the CIA makes a note of Souvanna Phouma possibly making a deal with Souphanouvong to keep the Vietnamese and Chinese communists’ presence secret if they left Laos, again making it difficult to confirm their departure.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Laos]
Hmong with electronic counters
CIA technicians invented and used this unusual device in the 1960s to keep track of the enemy in Southeast Asia. The mission was to count people and supplies moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam to South Vietnam along the borders of Laos and Cambodia. Many of the Laotian trail watchers whom CIA recruited could not read or write, let alone understand English. And so the device featured “pictograms,” such as symbols representing troops, trucks, motorcycles, carts, bicycles, tanks, cannons, small artillery, missiles, donkeys, and yes, occasionally elephants, a common beast of burden in Laos. Alongside each pictogram was a knob that could be set to a number, and then the data could be transmitted to an airplane by activating a toggle switch. Though such devices were ingenious in concept and design, the realities of life on the ground in SE Asia meant that it was always difficult for CIA to arrive at an accurate measure of traffic on the trail.
[https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/artifact/elephant-counter/]
ELINT beacons of Igloo White
Operation Igloo White was a covert United States joint military electronic warfare operation conducted from late January 1968 until February 1973, during the Vietnam War. These missions were carried out by the 553d Reconnaissance Wing, a U.S. Air Force unit flying modified EC-121R Warning Star aircraft, and VO-67, a specialized U.S. Navy unit flying highly modified OP-2E Neptune aircraft. This state-of-the-art operation utilized electronic sensors, computers, and communications relay aircraft in an attempt to automate intelligence collection. The system would then assist in the direction of strike aircraft to their targets. The objective of those attacks was the logistical system of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) that snaked through southeastern Laos and was known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Truong Son Road to the North Vietnamese).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Igloo_White]
[https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/195948/igloo-white/]
Bombing the HCMT - Ho Chi Minh Trail
During Operation Arc Light (sometimes Arclight) from 1965 to 1973, the United States deployed B-52F Stratofortresses from bases in the US to Guam to provide battlefield air interdiction, including strikes at enemy bases, supply routes and behind the lines troop concentrations, as well as occasionally providing close air support directly to ground combat operations in Vietnam and Laos. The conventional bombing campaign was supported by ground-control-radar detachments of the 1st Combat Evaluation Group (1CEVG) in Operation Combat Skyspot. Arc Light operations usually targeted enemy base camps, troops concentrations, and supply lines like the Ho Chi Minh Trail (HCMT)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arc_Light]
Agent Orange
This pesticide and defoliant was used in Laos and Vietnam for the following reasons:
Deny the enemy use of camouflage while operating in the jungle
Deny the enemy of rice and other food supplies
Clear “free fire” zones around friendly bases
Agent Orange was toxic to the people spraying it and to the people that absorbed it in, when in the jungle.
This pesticide and defoliant still affect people today.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ranch_Hand]
B-52 Rolling Thunder
B-52 high altitude bombing raids.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder]
The Ravens
Raven FACs Forward Aerial Controllers
Key Personalities
Ted Shackley was CIA Chief of Station (COS) in Vientiane
Ambassador William H. Sullivan was the US Ambassador stationed in Vientiane
Vang Pao (VP) was a Major General in the Laotian Army, who was an ethnic minority from the mountain Hmong tribe and lived at the secret base of Long Tieng (ALTERNATE). He was the physical and spiritual head of the Hmong Indig guerilla fighters, paid and supported by the CIA and AA.
Sullivan, Shackley, and VP basically locally ran the Secret War in Laos.
The diplomat, the spy, and the warrior.
Tony Poe was a CIA case officer that worked in remote parts of Laos
Dr. Charles Weldon, MD
A brave doctor that worked to help all the indigenous (Indig) tribes in the remote rural area of Laos. I wrote a whole chapter about this man and his heroic work.
Summary
One day in Laos, my father asked me a question about the Chinese building a road into Laos. He asked me, as Americans, should we be concerned?
My answer was that there was nothing strategic in Laos worth taking.
Enough said.
I never heard of the domino theory before that moment, that the National Security Counsel (NSC) had been pushing for years and was frankly obsessed with.
I had little previous bias and I saw first hand the misery, death, sacrifice, costs, and the permanently crippled people, both mentally and physically.
As a 12-year-old, the political worries meant nothing, only reality did.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)