CIA activities in Laos

The CIA organized Hmong tribes to fight against the North Vietnamese-backed Pathet Lao communists in Laos, and used Air America to "drop 46 million pounds of foodstuffs....transport tens of thousands of troops, conduct a highly successful photoreconnaissance 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. The CIA was responsible for directing natives of Laos to fight the North Vietnamese communists. Although such efforts were ultimately a failure, the CIA nonetheless still boasted of helping the people of Laos combat the communist threat.

Along with its humanitarian efforts, the CIA also conducted a massive bombing effort in Laos from 1964-1973. 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. By the summer of 1970 the CIA owned airline Air America had to 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 eventually disclosed to the American public formally in 1969, stories about the Laos bombing effort were published prior to that in The New York Times. Even after the United States government made the war public, the American people were in the dark as to how large scale the bombing campaign was.

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 Laos had been a territory of Thailand and part of the vast French-controlled Indochina for generations). Communist groups and those from outside, including the French colonial administration and the Central Intelligence Agency, 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.

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Wikipedia