History Channel: The CIA's Covert War in Laos

[Guest fountainhall]

Earlier this evening there was an important programme on the History Channel: The Most Secret Place on Earth - The CIA’s Covert War in Laos. In the 1960s, this was a totally secret operation. Even today, very few people are aware of it, or the fact that Laos as a result became the most bombed country in the history of the world.

 

In 1962, the USA, along with other World Powers, agreed at a Conference in Geneva that Laos was to remain neutral of foreign military intervention. Yet, in that very same year, the CIA established a top-secret base at Long Tieng in Laos. It was from this base that it largely planned and executed a secret war against the Laotian communists. Soon the hastily built airport at Long Tieng became the busiest airbase in the world. Even today, Long Tieng’s existence remains classified.

 

To fight their war, the CIA recruited an army of Lao soldiers from the Hmong hill tribes. When these young conscripts had been killed, the CIA agents went back to the villages to recruit even younger men. Eventually the village heads objected, saying they needed these men to work on the farms and harvest the rice, as well as to provide husbands to produce the next generation. The Americans prevailed. When this next batch were all killed, back went the CIA and took teenagers. The villagers no longer had enough labour for farming. So they turned to opium production as the only way of making a living. This resulted at one time in 30% of all US soldiers in South East Asia being heroin addicts – more than back in the entire USA.

 

Soon, the older teenagers had been killed and it was the turn of mid-teens. By then, US ground troops had been sent to Vietnam in much greater numbers, and the US air force had started carpet bombing Laos in attempts to cut North Vietnam’s supply routes. For a period of 9 years, there was a bombing mission over Laos every 8 minutes! That statistic is horrific and staggering – over 9 years, every 8 minutes! Virtually 600,000 ‘missions’! More bombs were dropped on the small South East Asian nation than all the tonnage dropped on Germany AND Japan during the entire Second World War.

 

As this was going on, the CIA was back in the villages recruiting children who had barely reached their teens. All were killed, all casualties of this undeclared US war. The Secret War was the biggest operation ever conducted in the history of the CIA. As one former CIA officer said on the programme: “The US is guilty of systemic war crimes in Northern Laos. We wiped an entire Hmong community off the face of the earth. We incinerated, we atomized humans in this war. And what happened in the end? We lost.”

[Guest anonone]

Interesting, to say the least.

Thanks for posting this fountainhall.

 

I will have to see if I can catch a re-run of this sometime...though it may just give me one more reason to be ashamed of my country....

[Guest fountainhall]

Here's the schedule from The History Channel website -

 

Monday 18 April 6:00 PM HK/SIN/MAL 5:00 PM Thai/WIB

Tuesday 19 April 11:00 PM HK/SIN/MAL 10:00 PM Thai/WIB

Wednesday 20 April 11:00 AM HK/SIN/MAL 10:00 AM Thai/WIB

Wednesday 20 April 5:00 PM HK/SIN/MAL 4:00 PM Thai/WIB

Saturday 23 April 12:00 AM HK/SIN/MAL 11:00 AM Thai/WIB

Thursday 28 April 7:00 PM HK/SIN/MAL 6:00 PM Thai/WIB

Friday 29 April 3:00 AM HK/SIN/MAL 2:00 AM Thai/WIB

Friday 29 April 7:00 AM HK/SIN/MAL 6:00 AM Thai/WIB

Friday 29 April 1:00 PM HK/SIN/MAL 12:00 PM Thai/WIB

[Guest]

And what happened in the end? We lost.

 

Not only that, but Vietnam seems to be embracing capitalism in any case, just like their neighbours to the north.

[Guest fountainhall]

I think most people now agree that the root cause of the US disasters in S E Asia was a complete failure to understand that the wars they were fighting were essentially not communism v. capitalism but nationalism v. capitalism. Had Roosevelt and Truman accepted Ho Chi Minh's repeated requests for assistance in getting rid of the French colonialists after World War 2, who's to say how the region might have turned out?

 

But for two main reasons, the USA did not do so.

 

1. Despite its anti-colonialist stance, the US was not prepared to anger France, whose help it needed in creating a stronger bulwark against advancing communism in Europe.

 

2. After 1949, successive leaders and governments in the USA were paranoid about the “loss” of China. A huge PR campaign ensured these internal flames of guilt were continuously fanned. Three people were largely responsible. Henry Booth Luce, the Chinese-born son of a missionary, was the founder and publisher of TIME magazine. A fervent support of Chiang, he was stunned that the Truman administration did nothing to ‘save’ Chiang. TIME then became a totally partisan pro-Chiang player, fitting perfectly into the anti-communist McCarthy witch-hunt mentality of many in power. Claire Lee Chennault had led the Flying Tigers, the US air network set up in China during World War 2 and later to become the basis for Air America (which features heavily in the Laos Covert War). His Chinese wife, Anna Chennault, became one of Chiang Kai Shek’s most outspoken supporters and chief lobbyists in the US. Then, Chiang’s last wife, Soong Mei Ling, had since the 1930s realised the need for American public opinion to support her husband. Following the defeat, she found a large and eager audience in the US, and lobbied incessantly and very publicly to make sure people heard her. The New York Times said in its obituary –

 

As a fluent English speaker, as a Christian, as a model of what many Americans hoped China to become, Madame Chiang struck a chord with American audiences as she traveled across the country . . . She seemed to many Americans to be the very symbol of the modern, educated, pro-American China they yearned to see emerge - even as many Chinese dismissed her as a corrupt, power-hungry symbol of the past they wanted to escape

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soong_May-ling

 

With ‘friends’ like these - and allied to the situation in Europe, it’s not hard to see how the domino theory evolved as the key factor in US foreign policy. Had there been more knowledgeable and far-sighted experts in the State Department, perhaps countries like Vietnam would not have turned communist. But then, the major powers have rarely regarded a detailed historical, political and economic understanding of a country as an essential prior to waging war.

[KhorTose]

The best book on the whole China fiasco is "Stillwell in China" by Barbara Tuchman -well know historian and author of "The Guns of August." It is a must read for the whole Chinese mess and agrees with everything you said.

 

As for Vietnam and Laos, please look up this key player who made a long series of stupid foreign policy decisions. I am talking about conservative Christian John Foster Dulles who was the real leader of America's foreign policy during the majority of Ike's Administration.

Oh, do not forget his older brother, Allen Dulles who was just as bad and led the CIA.

[Guest fountainhall]

Thanks KhorTose. I have read several of Barbara Tuchman’s books but not this one. It’s now on my list.

 

Dulles seems to have been initially more understanding of the desire for control over their own destiny by the Vietnamese and other South East Asian peoples. In 1950 he was even working to reduce the influence of France in Vietnam, eventually concluding it was time for France to “get out.” Was this, perhaps, just a way to ensure increased American presence in the region, for he certainly became one of the hawks in US foreign policy?

 

Even before Dulles, though, Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson surely has to take a fair chunk of blame. Originally a ‘dove’, he also did a complete U turn to become, in the words of one historian, the “primary architect” of the Cold War.

[Guest anonone]

I will admit I am not as conversant in the history of the US in the region as some appear here. Learning is a continual process and I hope to keep educating myself for a long time to come.

 

From what I have learned so far, the US seemed/still seems quite intent on pushing its agenda and philosophy on other members of the world, mostly with disastrous results. I can't help but echo the thought of how different things would be if peoples were to allow their self-interest to develop naturally. While it seems to go against the very grain of a politician, most times the best course of action is to do nothing and allow events to transpire. It may be messy, but most times the outcome is a lot better....and we don't look like evil stooges to the world.

 

Same applies with most domestic policy as well. Quit tinkering with the economy (money supply) and let things settle down and find the equilibrium. (Allowing for the necessary role of oversight that should have prevented most of the problem in the first place)

 

Of course, a politician can't get on TV every day and proclaim their brilliance of action if they stop putting their hands into everything.....Hurts the re-election odds.

 

I guess it is pretty obvious I am fed up with our 2 party, hypocritical, faux-religious government system.

[KhorTose]

Thanks KhorTose. I have read several of Barbara Tuchman

[Guest fountainhall]

I will gladly defer to you on matter of US political history. On the subject of the Cold War, though, I suspect Acheson was just one of a vast number of Americans whose good intentions were altered by the developing realities of the post war period.

 

It must have been pretty obvious that the relationships thrown up by the war were never going to last. Commenting on the Yalta Conference at which he had been a participant, Britain’s Anthony Eden, a future Prime Minister, wrote in his Memoirs -

 

The President shared a widespread American suspicion of the British Empire . . . Roosevelt did not confine his dislike of colonialism to the British Empire alone, for it was a principle with him, not the less cherished for its possible advantages. He hoped that former colonial territories, once free of their masters, would become politically and economically dependent upon the United States, and had no fear that other powers might fill that role.

Not a situation with which Churchill could be happy, as he cherished the ‘Empire’ and did not want to see it broken up. Yet, booted out of power in the post-war election and with Truman now at the White House, Churchill used his famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in 1946 to bolster his case for a strong Empire/Commonwealth.

 

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent . . . I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire is the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines . . . From what I have seen of our Russian friends and allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness . . . There never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented, in my belief, without the firing of a single shot . . . but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool.

 

We must not let it happen again. This can only be achieved by reaching now, in 1946, a good understanding on all points with Russia under the general authority of the United Nations Organization and by the maintenance of that good understanding through many peaceful years, by the whole strength of the English-speaking world and all its connections.

 

If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealth be added to that of the United States, with all that such cooperation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe, and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary there will be an overwhelming assurance of security.”

By that stage, Empire or not, Truman had zero option. He had to work with Britain and other European allies in preventing further Soviet expansion on that continent. Events in China and South East Asia, whether involving colonial powers or communists, no doubt had to take a back seat - for the time being. Mao in 1949 changed all that.

[Guest]

I guess the West just needs to remember the lessons of history and learn from it.

 

In east Asia, North Korea is the obvious communist era relic, overdue a resolution.

IDEALLY, China, the US & South Korea would reach some agreement on how to smoothly end the dictatorship in North Korea, & re-unify the country. Having such an unstable regime with nuclear weapons can be in no-ones interest. Of course communism in North Korea WILL end eventually, the question is how & when.

 

As for Laos, I hope the US continues responsibly assisting in the clearing of unexploded ordnance.

[Guest fountainhall]

North Korea is the obvious communist era relic, overdue a resolution.

IDEALLY, China, the US & South Korea would reach some agreement on how to smoothly end the dictatorship in North Korea, & re-unify the country.

Isn’t it ironic that less than 25 years ago, China and Russia (in the guise of the then Soviet Union) were technically enemies with South Korea and would not even talk to the country? Now they are all the best of chums!

 

Gorbachev’s reforms and China’s desire to transform itself with rapid economic growth helped overcome that. So, too, though, did the holding of the Olympics in Seoul in 1988. The South Koreans eagerly seized on this as an opportunity to open dialogue with both countries in various fields. Detente soon followed.

 

Sadly, I cannot see this happening with North Korea. From what I read, the North wants to hold direct talks with the US. This is partly because there is a major US threat to its existence in the form of 30,000 well-trained and well-equipped troops sitting just across its borders. The communists desperately want a non-aggression pact with the US, which the US will not agree to. But it is partly also because the North feels it needs the respect that direct talks will afford.

 

After some headway with direct dialogue in the last years of the Clinton administration, George Bush completely cut that off. When finally persuaded that on-going talks were vital in the light of the nuclear issue, the Bush administration insisted on “6-party talks” – so the US would go arm and arm into North Korean talks alongside South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. But these talks have always broken down. Each party has its own agenda and is not prepared to bend sufficiently to agree on a set of defined common objectives. Everyone wants the nukes dismantled. Thereafter, China wants to ensure there is no mass influx of millions of refugees on its border. South Korea wants to absorb the North for both historical and economic reasons. Quite what Russia and Japan are doing there, I don’t know, other than letting George Bush save face with his U-turn.

 

Its one helluva complicated ballgame. And as we saw just recently, the North can lash out virtually at will. With the leadership about to change in Pyongyang, it’s all become even more unstable. The diplomats and politicians in the west have got to realise that even one wrong step and the whole region could become engulfed in nuclear flames. Remember that Seoul and its population of over 10 million lies a mere 200 kms from Pyongyang. There are no simple solutions.

 

This site gives an excellent background.

 

http://www.cfr.org/proliferation/six-party-talks-north-koreas-nuclear-program/p13593

[Guest]

The diplomats and politicians in the west have got to realise that even one wrong step and the whole region could become engulfed in nuclear flames. Remember that Seoul and its population of over 10 million lies a mere 200 kms from Pyongyang.

 

I might be wrong, but wouldn't North Korea have just a few Hiroshima sized A-bombs, rather than a huge arsenal of hydrogen bombs?

Then I doubt they would be able to deliver them all to their intended targets.

 

Ideally, China & the US would co-operate to kick out the North Korean regime, but that's probably too optimistic. Assembling 1 million Chinese troops on their northern border and half the US air force to the south should focus a few minds.

[Rogie]

The diplomats and politicians in the west have got to realise that even one wrong step and the whole region could become engulfed in nuclear flames. . . There are no simple solutions.

 

Assembling 1 million Chinese troops on their northern border and half the US air force to the south should focus a few minds.

 

Too risky, z!

 

It might focus a few fingers on the nuclear button, unless the USAF can be sure to shoot down any nuclear missiles.

[KhorTose]

Ideally, China & the US would co-operate to kick out the North Korean regime, but that's probably too optimistic. Assembling 1 million Chinese troops on their northern border and half the US air force to the south should focus a few minds.

 

As much as China would like to see the end of this regime, I doubt they would cooperate. In the meantime China is being forced to deal with thousands of refugees from North Korea. Some human rights organizations estimate some 300,000 North Koreans are now living in China. The official figure is between 30,000--50,000. The best solution for North Korea may be to authorize the CIA to execute members of a certain family and hope the regime change would lead to a more positive outcome. I just hope if they try it, they do better then they did with Castro. Yes I know this is now illegal under US law, but I think it is time we took a good look at that law. Like it or not I think it may be moral at times to sacrifice the one for the good of the many..

[Guest fountainhall]

The best solution for North Korea may be to authorize the CIA to execute members of a certain family and hope the regime change would lead to a more positive outcome.

I am sure attempts have been made. The problem is these "people" are almost totally reclusive. They never travel outside the country, except by bullet proof train to Beijing - and no-one is surely daft enough to try and bomb that in Chinese territory, unless its the Chinese themselves. When you look at the CIA's more recent efforts, if they can't find Osama Bin Laden after almost a decade and they couldn't find Saddam Hussein for months even after taking over control of his entire country, I for one don't hold out much hope for success in eliminating that lot. With probably a quarter of the country having the same surname, no doubt they'd end up killing the wrong family

 

But my own view from what I read is that it is not just the family that has to be wiped out. The military commanders seem a pretty hard-line bunch, plus you have a population that has almost certainly been more brainwashed than ever imagined by George Orwell. So, if you sever the head, I'd really not be surprised to see mass suicide on a scale the world has never before witnessed.

 

Ideally, China & the US would co-operate to kick out the North Korean regime, but that's probably too optimistic. Assembling 1 million Chinese troops on their northern border and half the US air force to the south should focus a few minds.

I doubt if it would change the situation, though. China is not going to move against North Korea unless it attacks Chinese territory, something not even that regime would be stupid enough to contemplate. So, to the south that leaves the US troops already there, and the 700,000 strong South Korean forces plus its 4.5 million or so military reservists, all sitting literally just down the road. I just cannot see shows of even greater strength being effective.

 

If the world had had the foresight to tackle this problem before North Korea had developed nukes . . . If the Clinton initiatives had been given time to develop . . . Who knows? Maybe that might have resulted in something more positive. We can only guess.

 

As to the country's nuclear arsenal, I doubt if it has more than a few bombs as yet. But all they need to do is lob one on Seoul. They don't have to do that from wherever their main missile site is. The DMZ is just 40 kms from Seoul. A couple of nuclear bombs from a mobile launcher and - boom! They wipe out hundreds of thousands of South Koreans, destroy much of a huge city, and sow panic everywhere. No doubt they'll have people shorting stock markets and then cleaning up when they tumble. These guys may give the impression of being complete fools, but that they certainly are not - alas!

[Guest]

The way to take out the leadership is to blow up that train the next time it crosses back from China into North Korea.