American Intervention in Laos: The Secret War Begins
Traveling through the mountains and valleys of Laos today, it is hard to imagine that this peaceful landscape once stood at the center of one of the Cold War's most dangerous battlegrounds. Yet in the early 1960s, Laos became the focus of a hidden struggle that drew in superpowers, guerrilla armies, and secret operatives.
When Laos gained independence from France in 1953, freedom did not bring stability. Instead, the young nation descended into a bitter power struggle. Competing factions fought for control: royalists backed by the West, neutralists seeking to keep Laos out of the Cold War, and the communist Pathet Lao, supported by neighboring North Vietnam.
To Washington, Laos was more than a remote kingdom. It occupied a strategic crossroads in Southeast Asia. American policymakers feared that if Laos fell to communism, the rest of the region would topple like a row of dominoes.
President Dwight Eisenhower responded by quietly sending military advisers from the U.S. Army's elite Seventh Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Officially, they were instructors. Unofficially, they were America's first line of defense in a country sliding toward civil war.
Their mission changed dramatically in August 1960. A coup led by Captain Kong Le seized the capital, Vientiane, and plunged Laos into chaos. By November, American Special Forces found themselves accompanying the troops of pro-Western General Phoumi Nosavan as they advanced to retake the city. When Phoumi's forces entered Vientiane, Kong Le escaped and forged a new alliance with the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army.
Captain Kong Le in 1954 (Credit / source Wikipedia)
Major General Phoumi Nosavan (Credit / source Wikipedia)
The conflict intensified on the windswept Plain of Jars, one of Laos's most mysterious landscapes. Among its rolling hills and ancient stone jars, neutralist, communist, and North Vietnamese forces clashed with Phoumi's troops and their American advisers. Here, in early 1961, the U.S. Special Forces suffered their first casualties in Laos.
Plain of Jars (Credit / source https://www.newscientist.com/ by Chris Simms)
One of them was Sergeant First Class John Malcolm Bischoff, a medic with Company B, Seventh Special Forces Group. On April 22, 1961, while advising a Lao infantry battalion near Ban Pha Home, north of Vang Vieng, his unit was overrun by Pathet Lao forces. Bischoff was killed during the withdrawal. His body was never recovered, and his name is inscribed on the Missing Tablets at the Honolulu Memorial. (Photo credit findagrave.com)
Another American lost that day was Sergeant Gerald Biber. His remains were also never found. His name is commemorated on the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Members of Captain Walter Moon's four-man field training team were killed as well. Moon himself was captured, followed a week later by Sergeant Orville Ballenger. (Photo credit sogsite.com)
As fighting escalated, the crisis in Laos became the first major foreign policy challenge facing President John F. Kennedy. Eisenhower warned his successor that Laos was the key to Southeast Asia and suggested that American ground troops might ultimately be required. If Laos fell, he argued, South Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, and Thailand could be next.
Kennedy chose a different path.
Rather than commit combat troops, he pursued diplomacy. In April 1961, he concluded that a negotiated settlement offered the best chance for peace.
More than a year of difficult talks followed, culminating in an international agreement in July 1962 that declared Laos neutral and independent.
"The security of all Southeast Asia will be endangered if Laos loses its neutral independence," Kennedy warned in a televised address on March 23, 1961.
The agreement, however, changed little on the ground.
Telegram of President Kennedy for Laos independence day 9 May 1962
Prince Souvanna Phouma of Laos response to President Kennedy telegram
Laos remained divided, and the struggle for power continued. For North Vietnam, control of eastern Laos was essential because it contained the growing network of roads and trails that formed the Ho Chi Minh Trail—the vital supply route supporting communist forces in South Vietnam. For the United States, preventing North Vietnamese expansion became a strategic priority.
The task was handed largely to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Under a covert program known as Operation Momentum, the CIA recruited and armed thousands of Hmong tribesmen to fight a secret war against the Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies. Led by charismatic Hmong commander General Vang Pao, this "armée clandestine"—the clandestine army—became one of the most effective guerrilla forces in Southeast Asia. By the end of 1963, some 20,000 Hmong fighters had joined its ranks.
Programs Evaluation Office (PEO) adviser Jack F. Mathews with then Major Vang Pao, commander of the 10éme Bataillon de Infanterie (10 BI), at Nong Net, July 1960 (Credit / source Wikipedia)
"Supporting the "Secret War": CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955-1974 by William M. Leary
The largest paramilitary operations ever undertaken by CIA up to this writing took place in the small Southeast Asian Kingdom of Laos. For more than 13 years, the Agency directed native forces that fought major North Vietnamese units to a standstill. Although the country eventually fell to the Communists, the CIA remained proud of its accomplishments in Laos. As Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms later observed: “This was a major operation for the Agency. . . . It took manpower; it took specially qualified manpower; it was dangerous; it was difficult.” The CIA, he contended, did “a superb job.”
Air America, an airline secretly owned by the CIA, was a vital component in the Agency’s operations in Laos. By the summer of 1970, the airline had some two dozen twin-engine transports, another two-dozen short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) aircraft, and some 30 helicopters dedicated to operations in Laos. There were more than 300 pilots, copilots, flight mechanics, and air-freight specialists flying out of Laos and Thailand. During 1970, Air America airdropped or landed 46 million pounds of foodstuffs–mainly rice–in Laos. Helicopter flight time reached more than 4,000 hours a month in the same year. Air America crews transported tens of thousands of troops and refugees, flew emergency medevac missions and rescued downed airmen throughout Laos, inserted and extracted road-watch teams, flew nighttime airdrop missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, monitored sensors along infiltration routes, conducted a highly successful photoreconnaissance program, and engaged in numerous clandestine missions using night-vision glasses and state-of-the-art electronic equipment. Without Air America’s presence, the CIA’s effort in Laos could not have been sustained." (Credit / source CIA)
Air America UH-34s at Sam Thong, Laos, 1961. The shirtless man at the left is Edgar "Pop" Buell, senior USAID official at Sam Thong. Photo courtesy of E.C. Eckholdt. (Credit CIA)
Air America Dornier DO-28 being refueled by buckets at a mountain airstrip in northern Laos, 1963. Photo courtesy of E.C. Eckholdt. (Credit CIA)
What followed became known simply as the Secret War.
For more than thirteen years, Laos served as a hidden battlefield where the CIA directed the largest paramilitary operation in its history. Much of the fighting remained invisible to the outside world, overshadowed by the larger conflict raging in neighboring Vietnam.
Yet Laos paid a terrible price.
As North Vietnamese forces continued using the Ho Chi Minh Trail, American aircraft launched an immense air campaign designed to disrupt communist supply lines and support anti-communist forces. Although U.S. ground troops largely stayed out of Laos, American bombers did not.
Air America C-123 on ramp at Long Tieng, 1970. Photo courtesy of D. Williams. (Credit CIA)
Between 1964 and 1975, U.S. aircraft flew more than 580,000 combat missions over Laos, dropping over two million tons of bombs on the country. Villages, mountains, forests, and valleys became targets in a war many people around the world scarcely knew existed.
The result was staggering. By the end of the conflict, Laos had become the most heavily bombed country per capita in human history—a legacy that remains visible today in the unexploded ordnance still scattered across its countryside.
For travelers crossing Laos now, the scars of that secret war can still be found beneath the tranquil landscapes, hidden among the mountains, rice fields, and ancient jars that once witnessed one of the Cold War's most secret and consequential conflicts.
Air America complex at Udorn, Thailand, 1973. Photo courtesy of Judy Porter. (Credit CIA)