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." 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 == In April 1953, the French had established a leading military base at Dien Bien Phu, based deep in a mountain basin in Tonkin Province remote northwestern Vietnam. The base was designed to block communist supply lines in neighboring Laos. The base would also be a tantalizing target for the Viet Minh attacks that the French could readily defend with their superior firepower. Unfortunately, the communist foes besieged the base and five other separate firebases which facilitated to the French colonial forces in Indochina requesting U.S. air transport "to fly tanks and heavy equipment to their hard-pressed forces in Laos. "Having such equipment," the French emphasized, "might mean the difference between holding and losing Laos."
At this point, the CAT role evolved from clandestine to covert. The Eisenhower Administration, unwilling to give overt support, decided to use CAT to fulfill the French request, in Operation SQUAW, which got underway on May 6. The U.S. Air Force provided CAT with "sterile" (i.e., with American military identification removed) C-119 transports, capable of carrying the heavy loads required by the French. CAT personnel was unfamiliar with the C-119, and the Air Force held a short but intense training course for them at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. On May 5, they flew six of the transports, repainted with French insignia, to Gia Lam airbase, outside Hanoi, and parachuted supplies and equipment to French forces in Laos until July 16 with CAT pilots making numerous airdrops to French troops in Laos.
== 1954 == In 1954, the French again asked for help in supporting their isolated base at Dien Bien Phu. CAT, contracting with the French in January 1954 to provide 24 pilots to fly 12 C-119 aircraft, agreed to maintenance under USAF ground crews at Hanoi's Cat Bi airfield in support of Dien Bien Phu. Flights started in March, as the Viet Minh began their assault, and continued until Dien Bien Phu fell on May 7. Two CAT pilots died and one other was wounded.
CAT operations continued after the fall of Dien Bien Phu. The C-119s supported isolated French outposts, and CAT also provided 12 C-46 transports to evacuate civilians from North to South Vietnam. CAT also carried members of the CIA's Saigon Military Mission (see Vietnam 1954) north of the 17th parallel, in a futile attempt to set up stay-behind networks. Laos was declared neutral but due to its location, it effectively functioned as a microcosm of the war. Per the Domino theory, the United States proclaimed Laos a buffer state due to it bordering North Vietnam and China.
== 1955 == In January 1955, the U.S. created the United States Operations Mission (USOM) in Vientiane, Laos, to provide foreign aid. By the end of the year, a Programs Evaluation Office (PEO), staffed by retired military personnel or military officers, quietly delegated leadership to the CIA. The PEO was a covert equivalent to a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), organized within USOM to handle military aid, though not usually within the scope of USOM. The CIA was involved with the PEO until US military involvement was acknowledged and a MAAG established.
In July 1955, USOM officials learned that a rice failure threatened famine in several provinces in Laos. Because a number of these areas were in remote, mountainous regions, airdrops proved the only feasible means to delivering essential supplies of rice and salt. Three CAT C-46s arrived at the northeastern railhead of Udon Thani, Thailand on September 11 to begin the airlift. By the end of the month, CAT had flown more than 200 missions to 25 reception areas having delivered 1,000 tons of emergency food. This airdrop relief operation, conducted with smooth efficiency, marked the beginning of CAT's—and later Air America's—support of U.S. assistance programs in Laos.
== 1957 == A new CAT contract was signed in 1957, and Bruce Blevins flew a C-47 to Vientiane in the service of the U.S. Embassy. When he flew elsewhere in the country, conditions were technologically underdeveloped. Vientiane had the only control tower, radio navigational aid, and non-dirt runway in Laos. The U.S., again through covert means, increased its level of support.
Furthermore, a 1957 cable from American intelligence officials in Laos to Washington noted the inability for the communist Pathet Lao (PL) and Royal Laotian Guard (RLG) to come to a peaceful resolution. The cable stated that in late 1957, agreements were signed between the two groups to cease civil conflict. While the deal was also intended to result in the assimilation of the PL into larger Laotian society, the CIA had gathered intelligence implying that the PL had not meant to abandon its "radical" ideology and desire to overthrow the democratic government headed by the RLG. Instead, the CIA believed that the PL desired to establish a communist government via subversive political and covert actions as opposed to overt military operations. Nevertheless, the CIA feared that the PL was more than willing to revert to the use of force if their new tactics proved unsuccessful.
The following cable demonstrates this type of subversion: "PL propagandists and terrorists continued to visit the villages telling the villagers to refuse to obey RLG officials, and that the PL would soon take overall power and punish those who opposed them, and that the refusal of the people to support the PL would mean a renewal of the civil war." As a result, the return of the two provinces to the RLG had been nullified and the PL continued to rule the provinces except places occupied by Lao National Army.
== 1958 == In an October 1958 memorandum, the CIA acknowledged that the agency had been handed the responsibility to oversee covert operations within Laos. The State Department recognized the CIA's covert operations and suggested the development of overt operations. Additionally, the State Department outlined a document that covered all hypothetical situations in Chile and hinted that the CIA might consider taking action for one of those hypothetical operations. The memorandum requested the chief of the Far East Division to consider the role of the CIA in Laos and how valid their suggestions for operations were. This memorandum revealed that there existed a well-thought-out plot that took into account Laotian concerns and U.S. interests in Laos and not merely a simple military reaction. However, the actual plans were redacted from the document as well as the names of those involved. Though this could suggest the planning of something more wicked, it could also be a diplomatic choice in not angering a nation long after the fact that certain considerations were never acted upon.
As the civil war grew in intensity, CAT C-47s and C-46s passed with ever greater frequency over Vientiane to fulfill urgent airdrop requests. Blevins was also kept busy, landing throughout the country and making numerous airdrops to isolated posts of the Royal Lao Armed Forces (Forces Armées du Royaume or FAR). He developed an especially close relationship with a CIA case officer who had arrived in October 1958 and who was assigned to support neutralist Capt. Kong Le's parachute battalion, a Laotian officer who would rise to the highest ranks. '
1959
Victor B. Anthony and Richard R. Sexton, two Air Force historians, prepared a 400-page document called The War in Northern Laos, 1954-1973 showing that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had conceived a plan for U.S. military intervention in Laos as early as 1959, two years earlier than previously thought. In fall 1959, the U.S. Special Forces initiated training a number of Laotian soldiers in unconventional warfare tactics under the codename Erawan. This development occurred due to the U.S. being unable to integrate the Pathet Lao communist army with the royal army. Air America—the name changed on March 26, 1959, primarily to avoid confusion about the air proprietary's operations in Japan 16—provided essential transportation for the expanding American effort in Laos.
Since the Laotian government wanted U.S. assistance to remain secret in the Laotian Civil War against the Pathet Lao, the CIA established a unit from the United States Army Special Forces who arrived on the CIA proprietary airline Air America, wearing civilian clothes and having no obvious U.S. connection. These soldiers led Hmong tribesmen against communist forces. The covert teams, called white star teams, in Project Hotfoot. At the U.S. Embassy, Brigader General John Heintges was labeled the head of the "Program Evaluation Office".
During the summer of 1959, North Vietnam invaded Laos, which made the U.S. believe that its chances of success became even lower. They believed that the anti-Pathet policies had little chance of success due to the invasion. As part of the effort to turn the tides around, the “Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Thomas D. White proposed that a “full-time” MAAG military operation should be established in Vientiane. White suggested that, due to the turn of events, it was prudent to fully take over the training from the French. White was convinced that it was the call in the right direction despite a possible international conflict this might spark, as it would serve as the means of saving “Laos from communism”. On the flip side while White's proposal was under review, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Robert D. Murphy warned of the possibility of China entering the war if the United States Army rushed to enter the war as the proposal of General White suggested. Murphy reasoned that there was “no proof” supporting the claim that North Vietnamese troops “were fighting in Laos”. Despite the caution from Murphy, the MAAG proposal was approved by president Dwight D. Eisenhower following a joint Chief of staff memorandum to the Secretary of Defense which was in support of the military operation.
The U.S. Special Forces Group, code-named Project Hotfoot, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Arthur "Bull" Simons, deployed clandestinely to Laos. Twelve Mobile Training Teams took up duties in Vientiane, Luang Prabang, Savannakhet, and Pakse. CIA officials in Laos had requested additional air transport resources. The CIA, in August 1959, directed CIA proprietary Air America to train two helicopter pilots. Further, Air America directed search and rescue missions in Laos in addition to its role in combat operations. Originally posted as a short-term requirement, this operation served as the beginning of a significant rotary-wing operation in Laos. Vang Pao expressed concerns that the Hmong were likely to suffer reprisals from communists and, with assistance from a U.S. Special Forces team, he began to organize a Hmong stay-behind force. Declassified documents from 2008 also revealed that the U.S. ambassador in Laos at the time served as the field commander of the so-called "secret war" there.
Still concerned about whether the MAAG military operation could succeed in solving the Laos crisis, On September 8, General White requested from the joint Chief of Staff for more advanced sophisticated military arsenals like the “squadron of Strategic Air Command (SAC) B-47 jet bombers to the United Air Base in the Philippines. According to the CIA military historians, Victor Anthony and Richard Sexton, White aimed to cripple the opposing forces together with their supply tracks, including targeted sections of the North Vietnam territory.
Previously secret U.S. Air Force official histories of the Vietnam war were published in April 2008 by the National Security Archive which disclosed for the first time that, outside of just training locals, Central Intelligence Agency contract employees had a direct role in combat air attacks when they flew Laotian government aircraft on strike missions. Additionally, the Air Force actively considered nuclear weapons options during the 1959 Laos crisis. Although these considerations and the entire proposal were withdrawn, White believed it was a step in the right direction due to it possibility of restraining Asian communists from participating in the war if they were aware that the United States' “counteractions would not be confined to Laos or conventional weapons.”
By December 1959, Vang Pao had to either fight the communists or leave the country. If the United States supplied the weapons, Vang Pao claimed that he would fight and raise an army of 10,000.
This aforementioned activity in 1959 was caused by an inability to integrate the Pathet Lao communist military into the Royal Lao Armed forces (FAE), precipitating a civil war in which the U.S. Air Force deployed a squadron of B-47 bombers to the Clark Air Force Base. This deployment ensured that the bomber could be used to interfere or destroy Pathet Lao communications to the North Vietnamese.
== 1960 == From 1960 to 1961, the CIA initiated operations code-named Erawan in which U.S. Special Forces trained Laotian soldiers in methods of unconventional warfare to be used against the enemy. The previous training of the Laotian military was underdeveloped and had "caused friction between the Americans and the French." After a request from Phoumi in February, Washington decided to extend training programs for the Laotian military. However, negotiations over the nature and structure of the training programs created divisions between the French, Washington, and Phoumi. The French wanted to retain complete control over the Laotian Army, but Phoumi objected. Phoumi asserted his desire to have the French completely removed from Laos. He also voiced sentiments advocating for the U.S. Special Forces to control the training operations. The French voiced objections to U.S. presence in Laos stating that such intervention violated the Geneva accords, a position supported by Souvanna Phouma. After a long series of negotiations combined with interventions from the Royal Thailand Government, U.S. Special Forces infiltrated the Lao countryside and began training Laotians in unconventional warfare and anti-guerilla tactics.
Eventually, four CAT pilots were trained on U.S. Air Force H-19A helicopters in Japan and the Philippines. The CAT contingent did not reach Laos until March 1960. Due to the operating limitations of the H-19s, the underpowered helicopters could fly only at lower elevations in the country. "Generally, they were used to carry CIA case officers to meetings in outlying areas and to distribute leaflets during elections. By June 1960, it had become clear that helicopters would form a permanent part of Air America's operations in Laos."
Air America hired four experienced U.S. Marine Corps helicopter pilots who obtained their discharges in Okinawa to fly the H-19s. Later in the year, the CIA arranged for the Marine Corps to transfer four UH-34 helicopters to Air America to replace the H-19s.
Also in 1960, a national election was held of dubious integrity. "Phoumi's group gained a sweeping majority. On the surface, a relatively tough U.S. policy of containing Communism seemed to be an overwhelming success ... $250 million in U.S. economic and military aid had too powerful an effect on the Laotian government, which was soon reeling with corruption. Promised reforms never materialized, and practically no funds reached the peasants and forest tribes. The Communist Pathet Lao guerrilla bands began raiding in the north. Red Prince Souphanouvong not only walked out of jail but took most of his prison guards with him."
