1964 Laotian coups

The 1964 Laotian coups were two attempted coup d'etats against the Royal Lao Government. The 18 April 1964 coup was notable for being committed by the policemen of the Directorate of National Coordination. Although successful, it was overturned five days later by U.S. Ambassador Leonard Unger. In its wake, Neutralist Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma forged a fragile coalition with the Pathet Lao communists. On 4 August 1964, Defense Minister Phoumi Nosavan attempted to take over Vientiane with a training battalion. This coup was quickly crushed by the local Royal Lao Army troops, as the police sat out the conflict.

The Pathet Lao left the coalition and repudiated Souvanna Phouma. Perforce he was driven to cooperate with the rightist Royalist politicians and military officers. None of the events affected the North Vietnamese usage of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to send troops into battle in South Vietnam.

The United States began bankrolling France's First Indochina War in 1950. When Charles Yost, the first U.S. ambassador to Laos took up his duties in September 1954, he brought with him the U.S. Operations Mission and its corollary, the Programs Evaluation Office. The American mission would increasingly involve itself with both political and military operations within Laos; however, it operated within the constraints of the 1954 Geneva Accords.

General Siho Lamphouthacoul used his powers as the National Director of Coordination to build Laotian police forces into a national power. Siho gathered and trained two special battalions of paramilitary police during the latter part of 1960, dubbing them the Directorate of National Coordination. Siho's new battalions helped carry the day at the Battle of Vientiane, when General Phoumi Nosavan seized power in December 1960. Acquiring the National Police from the Ministry of the Interior, and co-opting local military police, Siho consolidated the Lao police into the DNC. Attaining a strength of 6,500 men, the DNC would be Siho's instrument for power.

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