top of page

Geneva Accord on Laos Documents

supported Committee for the Defense of National Interests. The most important of these was Col. Phoumi Nosavan. This was Phoumi’s time, when hard-line measures made reconciliation impossible. As secretary of state for defense, Phoumi made sure the government used maximum force and made no last-minute compromises. Yet he did so without risk to his own power base—Phoumi hailed from Savannakhet in the Laotian panhandle and commanded the Laotian Third Military Region, which was not involved in the crackdown. When the armed forces created a new military region around Vientiane itself, Phoumi took charge of it, putting a trusted ally in his former command. From Eisenhower’s perspective, Phoumi was the perfect ally. It got even better at the end of 1959, when Phoumi engineered the fall of the cabinet of which he was a member. He emerged as military strongman with a promotion to brigadier and the post of defense minister, pulling the government’s strings behind the scenes. In that capacity, Phoumi rigged the April 1960 elections to ensure leftist candidates would be defeated.


Meanwhile, the United States increased its role. The French had rejected the PEO’s 1958 bid for an expanded participation in training on the predictable grounds that the Americans would be abrogating Geneva. But Paris had to deal with the Algerian revolution, a greater priority, and could spare few men and little money for Laos. It reduced its training mission from 1,500 advisers to just a few hundred. The offer of Americans, and, more important, American funds, proved irresistible. Finally the French acquiesced, and the secret war burgeoned.


By the end of 1959, the number of PEO personnel had increased to 531, including 190 Filipino specialists, but also more American military personnel. The Filipinos replaced Frenchmen who had been working with the Laotian air force and maritime service, a few as field advisers.

The first dozen U.S. Special Forces teams for Operation White Star arrived in July 1959. There were field units called “A” detachments, with a control unit called a “C” team at headquarters, under Lt. Col. Arthur “Bull” Simons. A legendary figure among Special Forces today, Simons rented a Vientiane house for headquarters, dispersing the “A” teams to four Laotian armed forces regional bases that became training centers. For White Star, the detachments were cut back to eight men and called “hotfoot teams”; in all, these involved 108 Americans.


The CIA also increased its activity. Henry Hecksher, who ran its station in Vientiane, felt he had a free hand. Ambassador Smith thought otherwise, but under operating rules at the time, Hecksher decided what to tell the ambassador—or keep from him. American diplomats were uncomfortable with what the CIA had the Laotian Committee for the Defense of National Interests doing but were powerless to control those operations. Hecksher assigned case officers to each key Laotian figure—John Hasey to Phoumi was an example—and gave them free rein. Hasey would arrange to have certain money, rice, and weapons delivered directly to Phoumi without going through aid programs at all. When Gordon Jorgensen replaced Hecksher, that arrangement remained in place.


In Washington, meeting with State Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff representatives as early as January 1959, Gen. Charles P. Cabell, deputy director of the CIA, expressed a need for urgency in dealing with what the CIA viewed as a deteriorating situation in Laos. The agency took the lead role in organizing a program in the Philippines in which several classes of Royal Laotian Armed Forces officers were instructed in scout-ranger techniques.


Meanwhile, Allen Dulles continued to brief the National Security Council in somber tones. A CIA National Intelligence Estimate in May, now declassified, warned that government military capabilities were eroding. In August, the agency brought in Air America (newly converted from Civil Air Transport) for Laotian airlifts. Dulles and his operations chief Richard Bissell attended another State–Defense–CIA meeting in September and warned that Laos was ideal terrain for guerrilla warfare, adding that facts on the ground were hard to come by and that the Communists had declared civil war.

A civil conflict was undoubtedly under way in Laos, but it had not yet erupted in full-scale war. The most apparent threat came in late July and early August, 1959, when Pathet Lao regulars overran several government outposts in Sam Neua province and challenged Vientiane for control. There were reports—which the U.S. was too quick to accept—that North Vietnamese troops were with them. A United Nations fact-finding mission, sent to Laos, found a welter of confusion but indeterminate evidence of a North Vietnamese presence. Actually, Hanoi did have an ad hoc advisory unit in Laos at that time, but only created a permanent doan to work with the Laotian Communists in September. The Pathet Lao mounted their threat, then faded into the jungle while the United States hastened past new milestones on its own road to involvement.


The Joint Chiefs of Staff again demanded that the PEO be converted into a standard military advisory group, and that as a matter of policy the United States free itself from all constraints on its actions. Joint Task Force 116 under Marine Maj. Gen. Carson Roberts moved toward carrying out a plan to airlift a marine regimental combat team into Laos.


On September 8, Gen. Thomas H. White, U.S. Air Force chief of staff, asked the Joint Chiefs to authorize the deployment of a squadron of Boeing B- 47 bombers of the Strategic Air Command to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. From there they would stand ready for a campaign against the Pathet Lao—by striking selected targets in North Vietnam with conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. General White called this rash scheme “decisive termination of hostilities in Laos.”


All this happened in the face of little apparent Pathet Lao activity, even in Sam Neua. President Eisenhower, keeping a cooler head, perhaps reacting to this immediate invocation of a nuclear threat, instead bucked the matter up to America’s regional allies. The Australians, British, and New Zealanders all expressed qualms. The French military attaché in Vientiane insisted there was no evidence of North Vietnamese activity in Laos. The 

Joint Chiefs quashed the Air Force proposal and called off the joint task force intervention.


The autumn round of Washington deliberations led to several decisions. The United States increased its funding to the Laotian armed forces and for local self-defense militias known by their French name, Auto-Défense de Choc. They concentrated on recruiting militia from among tribal minorities in the Annamite Mountains. American planners knew these tribesmen were mostly at odds with the Vientiane government. The CIA carried the ball on that initiative, as it did in encouraging Thailand’s participation. The “5412 matters”—a White House euphemism for CIA covert operations—that President Eisenhower reviewed both on September 25 and November 30, 1959, may well have concerned the beginnings of the secret army in Laos, starting with the CIA recruiting Laotian Auto-Défense de Choc.


Phoumi Nosavan’s family relationship with the military dictator of Thailand, Marshal Sarit Thanarat, who had taken power late in 1957, helps explain why Americans favored Phoumi. The Sarit-Phoumi relationship opened the door for Thailand to become a key pillar of the war. Almost simultaneously with Washington’s aid expansion in the fall of 1959, Thailand agreed to host an eight-week training program for Laotians at its Camp Erawan, near Lopburi. In this exercise, the entire Laotian para troop force brushed up on counterinsurgency tactics.


In the summer of 1960, pressed by the Bangkok CIA station chief, Marshal Sarit agreed to provide covert Thai airborne ranger teams to the new CIA secret army project. And Bangkok turned a blind eye as the CIA proprietary company Sea Supply, long active in Thailand, became a major conduit for clandestine logistics into Laos, while agency proprietary Air America used Thai airfields for its rapid expansion into the war zone.


Early in 1961, the Thai permitted the CIA to build camps where agency employees trained a regular rotation of Laotian battalions. Some of them worked directly with the Royal Thai Army. Sarit also permitted the U.S. Air Force to set up its own phony company as a cover for American pilots and crews of combat aircraft that flew attack and rescue missions in Laos and instructed Lao aircrews. The Laotian war would have been impossible without Thai help.


The conflict erupted into full hostilities during 1960, and moved to an early climax in 1961 and 1962. A good case can be made that the main catalyst was the United States’ ally Phoumi Nosavan— and the key events took place in Vientiane, not the bush. Phoumi maneuvered to oust the government in December 1959. Ambassador Smith wanted to support the sitting prime minister, who in his heyday had been lauded in Washington circles as America’s best friend.


The CIA backed Phoumi. During most of this period, the Pathet Lao were building strength, not mounting offensives. They only moved when Phoumi’s maneuvers created resentment among the Lao elite.


Creatively organized by Phoumi, elections in April 1960 were a farce. No leftist candidate won. Right-wingers polled thousands of votes in Pathet Lao strongholds; leftists only dozens. In one district, a leftist polled fewer votes than the number of his family members eligible to vote, while Phoumi’s candidate again amassed thousands. The result smacked of arrogance, and not only to the leftists.


Phoumi also treated the Lao military in a high-handed fashion, yet expected them to back him at every turn. This proved too much for Capt. Kong Le, commanding the 2nd Paratroops, the army’s best battalion. Early in August, Kong diverted his men from a scheduled operation and occupied Vientiane instead, overthrowing the Phoumist government. This action marked the beginning of a confusion of musical-chairs politics that fueled war and unsettled Laos for almost a decade. Kong Le invited Prince Souvanna Phouma to form a new neutralist cabinet, and Souvanna crafted a fresh coalition in service of that aim, inviting the Pathet Lao back into government.


For a week or so Eisenhower was uncertain how to proceed: the United States even warned officers with Phoumi not to encourage him to fight the neutralists. But it soon reverted to its established role, attaching senior PEO officers directly to Phoumi and funneling aid outside government (now neutralist) channels directly to Phoumi’s troops around Luang Prabang. On August 18, Ike told top officials it was important “that disaffection be stimulated in Vientiane,” in effect making an enemy of the official Lao government. Soon Washington was mulling over the “Kong Le problem.”


Early in September General Phoumi, enlisting another royal, Prince Boun Oum, declared “revolution” against the neutralist government, and began moving against Vientiane. A brief truce in October quickly disintegrated. Phoumi’s troops captured Vientiane on December 17.


At that point, Laos erupted into an international crisis. Souvanna’s neutralist government asked for foreign assistance. The Soviet Union responded but asked the neutralists to ally with the Pathet Lao. A constitutionalist coup on December 8, designed to support Souvanna and prevent such an alliance, further confused matters. Without many alternatives, the neutralists did as the Soviets asked, and made a deal in Hanoi on December 10. Soviet aircraft immediately delivered an initial shipment of a few artillery pieces to Vientiane. Russian officials later reported this effort to be the Soviets’ largest aerial operation since World War II, and when the neutralists were driven out of Vientiane, taking refuge in the Plain of Jars, Russia continued the deliveries to airfields there.


For some time intelligence reports had acknowledged that the Pathet Lao were extending control over villages in many areas, particularly in the Plain of Jars, while solidifying their bases in Sam Neua and Phong Saly, yet there had been little open fighting except that initiated by the Royal Laotian Armed Forces. In March 1960 Allen Dulles reported the Pathet Lao were attempting to reach their goals through subversion. Military attachés on the scene saw the Pathet Lao as being “capable” of resuming their insurgency. But the advent of the new coalition government—and the Phoumist counteroffensive—brought an end to the combat hiatus.


By October, ahead of any actual alliance of Souvanna and Kong Le with the Pathet Lao, CIA reports referred to “Kong Le–PL” forces, and Dulles claimed the Pathet Lao “have been gaining strength.” In December the Pathet Lao began their own offensive, openly clearing provinces near the Vietnamese border. The Souvanna government’s retreat to the Plain of Jars solidified the Pathet Lao–neutralist alliance.

New factors came into play on both sides in 1960. For the Pathet Lao, the big change was the recrudescence of their relationship with the North Vietnamese. Hanoi had created an ad hoc Doan 800 to assist the Pathet Lao in early 1959, followed that fall with the permanent Doan 959. This unit advised the Pathet Lao throughout the Laotian war.


In December 1960, Hanoi also committed small bodies of regular troops. Equally important, Hanoi decided to help insurgents in South Vietnam by moving cadres and supplies down the eastern side of the Laotian panhandle, infiltrating them along what became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This strategic supply route gave Hanoi a far greater stake in Laos, resulting in an increase of North Vietnamese aid to the Pathet Lao, whose inroads prevented the reconstituted Phoumist government from focusing on the trail. Special Forces Col. Bull Simons, who appreciated the threat very quickly, convinced superiors to let him try to organize irregular troops in the south of Laos, especially on the Bolovens Plateau, to shut down the trail, and a portion of his White Star teams were active there through 1960.


Now offensive air missions began. Since the Phoumist Royal Laotian Air Force lacked attack aircraft, President Eisenhower ordered that rectified in the fall of 1960. Once again the Thai were key. Thailand supplied 10 North American T-6 Harvard trainers modified as fighter-bombers. Since the Lao also had no combat pilots, Thai “volunteers” flew the planes. Under Project Millpond, U.S. and Thai instructors drilled Lao pilots in Thailand. Even so, Thai pilots continued flying operational missions in Laos for a long time. Ike also ordered his Air Force to give helicopters and transport planes to Air America, and created a covert unit with Douglas B-26 bombers.


Irregular troops became another keynote of change. In addition to Simons’s White Star forces, the United States had the CIA begin Project Momentum, mobilizing Hmong tribesmen in northern Laos. Later, under different code names, they appealed to other Montagnards. A major element in the CIA effort, recruiting the Hmong armée clandestine, or secret army, flowed directly from the AutoDéfense de Choc.


Vang Pao, a Laotian government officer and Hmong himself, was recruited by the CIA to lead the Hmong tribal army; and Bill Lair, who secured General Phoumi’s agreement, set Project Momentum in motion. He convinced the Thai to contribute volunteer advisers who could talk to the Hmong in their language and then interface between them and the CIA, keeping the number of Americans to a handful.


By late 1960, this Hmong secret army numbered over 4,000 and, impelled by Eisenhower’s orders to expand, it passed the 9,000 mark in early 1961. By fall there would be 18,000 secret forces. Vang Pao would become a Royal Laotian Armed Forces general and his Hmong would be the best fighters on the government side. They were almost the only troops in the Laotian uplands when the Pathet Lao moved to control the region.


All this occurred while Eisenhower was in the White House, but in 1961 his presidency gave way to that of John F. Kennedy. During Ike’s final weeks in office, Laotian events piled upon each other like horses coming out of the starting gate. General Phoumi’s troops, having taken Vientiane from Kong Le, installed Prince Boun Oum as prime minister of a fresh Phoumist government. His forces slowly pursued the neutralists, who regrouped in the Plain of Jars and linked up with the Pathet Lao. The Russians began their airlift. The Pathet Lao attacked in the mountains. The Hmong secret army was on the move along the rim of the plain. Reports claimed North Vietnamese troops were invading the country. During the presidential transition Ike warned Kennedy that Laos would be his biggest problem.


John Kennedy would be an activist president, but he found Laos a poor arena for crisis. South Vietnam was far preferable—bad though its port and transportation infrastructure were, it had much better facilities than Laos. Kennedy found it difficult to move U.S. forces into Laos and even harder to sustain them there.


The local allies had extremely limited capabilities. The Hmong could seem attractive allies to the CIA in part because the Phoumist Laotians were poor fighters. Phoumi’s troops moved slowly and often ran away when battle loomed. This lethargic progress ground to a halt in the face of the relatively small number of heavy weapons the Soviets provided the Kong Le–Pathet Lao forces.


The covert B-26 bomber unit, envisioned as a CIA project, fell short when the agency, its hands full with the Bay of Pigs operation (which included a similar air force of Cuban exiles), could not muster the crews. Efforts to recruit nationalist Chinese also failed. Kennedy resorted to using U.S. Air Force crews, passing another waypoint on the road to American combat involvement. Meanwhile the Pathet Lao counterattacked, overrunning important government posts and forcing the Hmong from their ancestral villages.


Washington reconsidered intervening, despite the poor conditions. All the significant options involved moving through Thailand. Most schemes not only involved SEATO but also required improvement of the Thai infrastructure: making roads, airfields, and ports serviceable enough to accommodate the supplies required by the combat troops. Kennedy approved the infrastructure work, and briefly reactivated Joint Task Force 116 to signal his determination, but he also pushed for a new Geneva negotiation to defuse the Laotian situation.


On May 3 the sides declared a ceasefire, which both quickly violated while insisting it was intact. Talks began in Geneva and dragged on for months.

A new complication arose when Chinese nationalist troops entered Laos from Burma, where they had long been established, and took up positions at a town called Nam Tha. Some Chinese left but General Phoumi rechristened others as a Royal Laotian Armed Forces special battalion, complete with an American training team. Despite the ceasefire, General Phoumi reinforced them and started an offensive into Pathet Lao country in October 1961. Phoumi’s forces advanced but North Vietnam committed unprecedented numbers to counter them. The Phoumist troops pulled back to Nam Tha, a vulnerable position with no road connections to government bases further south, and almost as close to Dien Bien Phu as to Luang Prabang.


In January 1962 the North Vietnamese laid siege to Nam Tha. American advisers urged Phoumi to abandon the post. Instead, he sent in more Royal Laotian paratroops and artillery. Brig. Gen. Andrew J. Boyle, leading the military advisory group (which had finally supplanted the PEO), refused Phoumi’s demands for Air America to airdrop the paratroops. When the United States rejected Phoumi’s requests for bombs for the Lao/Thai T-6 aircraft, the general got them through his relative, Marshal Sarit. Nam Tha became a Dien Bien Phu–style siege.


By now, President Kennedy had become frustrated with Phoumi, seeing the general’s political adventurism as a threat to the United States’ careful calculations. His obstructionism impeded agreement in negotiations, and his mediocre military leadership was proving an embarrassment. Phoumi had to go.


Declassified minutes show that on February 5, 1962, the Special Group 5412, the ultrasecret Washington board that controlled covert operations, considered plans to neutralize Phoumi. The schemes ranged from bribes to induce him to depart, to arrest, and worse. Instead, the United States recalled Phoumi’s CIA minder, John Hasey, and cut off the money flow. But the United States’ writ did not run everywhere in Laos, and Phoumi kept his job.


Nam Tha scared Kennedy to his boots. By May all three of the government’s paratroop battalions and five of its infantry units were in or near the camp but could not hold it. On May 6, Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese assaults took the position, almost exactly eight years to the day since the fall of Dien Bien Phu. The CIA concluded that the attack force was smaller than the 4,500 Phoumist troops defending Nam Tha. Many of the defenders were killed and 2,000 Phoumists marched into captivity, while others retreated into Thailand. President Kennedy faced new pressures to escalate, though he was stunned when Dwight D. Eisenhower, briefed by a Kennedy emissary, sent word he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if required.

Kennedy reactivated Joint Task Force 116 yet again, sending marines to Thailand to take up positions along the Laotian border. The United States re- doubled efforts to improve Thai roads and air- fields. But negotiating efforts in Geneva were now bearing fruit and a new set of accords was reached late in June, renewing the neutral status of Laos and providing for a fresh coalition government, again under Souvanna Phouma, to replace the Phoumist cabinet.


Phoumi Nosavan could not survive the Nam Tha debacle. Obliged to give up his military posts, he joined Souvanna Phouma’s coalition as deputy prime minister and minister of finance. He would be progressively marginalized, and as his military allies attempted coups and political maneuvers that failed, they were broken. In February 1965, Phoumi departed for exile in Thailand. Kong Le was also marginalized, and he too went into exile. The war had already reignited in the spring of 1963, fueled by reciprocal assassinations of neutralists and of Pathet Lao allies.


When fighting resumed, the recipe for war was complete: the CIA led the Laotian war for the United States, the Hmong secret army its most powerful instrument; the Royal Laotian Government was officially neutral but actually fighting alongside the United States, which insisted it stood behind the Geneva agreements of 1962. Laotian armed forces were a limited quantity despite their growing strength. Air power predominated, with the United States’ operational scheme to run the war remotely from Thailand using the Thai as the essential ally. The North Vietnamese stiffened and eventually overshadowed the Pathet Lao.


Had Laos remained neutral there would have been no Ho Chi Minh Trail, and a North Vietnamese invasion of Laos designed to create one would have become a case of open aggression that Washington could have confronted with far more international support and alliance backing.

It is remarkable how all the pieces were put into play so early in this buildup to Vietnam.


Concurrent with its machinations in Laos the United States moved beyond supporting an anti-Communist government in South Vietnam to backing Saigon leaders in their effort to eradicate the last enemy cadres—all in Eisenhower’s day. When the Communists bit back, using their networks to mount an insurgency, and Hanoi intervened to sustain them, creating the threat against which Kennedy and Johnson progressively escalated, the panhandle of Laos became Hanoi’s broad avenue to join the war in the south. In the end, Dwight Eisenhower’s success at pushing Laos out of its neutral Cold War stance became the foundation for one of the biggest headaches to confront American commanders in South Vietnam.


Originally published in the Summer 2009 issue of Military History Quarterly. To subscribe, click he​re.

Obama Acknowledges Scars of America's Shadow War on Laos

VIENTIANE, Laos — President Barack Obama, declaring that it was time to pull America’s secret war in Laos from the shadows, told an audience here Tuesday that he stood with them in “acknowledging the suffering and sacrifices on all sides of that conflict.”


Obama, the first sitting U.S. president to visit Laos, recalled that the United States had dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on this country during the height of the Vietnam War, more than it dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II. That made Laos, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in human history.


“Villages and entire valleys were obliterated,” Obama said. “Countless civilians were killed. That conflict was another reminder that, whatever the cause, whatever our intentions, war inflicts a wrenching toll, especially on innocent men, women and children.”


At the time, the United States did not publicly acknowledge its combat operations in Laos, a CIA-directed expansion of the war against the Communist North Vietnamese. Even now, the president said, many Americans were unaware of their country’s deadly legacy here.


“It is important that we remember today,” Obama told an audience of 1,075, including a scattering of Buddhist monks in saffron robes. Those gathered listened politely and applauded occasionally.


The president did not formally apologize for the bombing. But in a “spirit of reconciliation,” he said the United States would double to $30 million a year for three years its aid to Laos to help find and dismantle unexploded bombs. These explosives lie buried under fields and forests, killing and maiming thousands of children, farmers and others who stumble on them.


It was a day that mixed America’s wartime legacy in Southeast Asia with Obama’s hopes for a future of deeper engagement with the region. The president put his outreach to Laos in the same category as his overtures to two other formerly closed societies, Cuba and Myanmar. He followed his message of reconciliation to the people of Laos with a fervent restatement of his strategic focus on Asia, often called the pivot.

CIA Document on Laos

14. The Pentagon Papers and the United States Involvement in Laos by Walt Haney 1. INTRODUCTION We incur hundreds of thousands of U.S. casualties [in Indochina] because we are opposed to a closed society. We say we are an open society, and the enemy is a closed society. Accepting that premise, it would appear logical for them not to tell their people; but it is sort of a twist on our basic philosophy about the importance of containing Communism . Here we are telling Americans they must fight and die to maintain an open society, but not telling our people what we are doing. That would seem the characteristic of a closed society. We are fighting a big war in Laos, even if we do not have ground troops there. Testimony for 3 days has been to that effect, yet we are still trying to hide it not only from the people but also from the Congress. -Senator Stuart Symington' Many times in years past, the war in Laos has been called the "forgotten war." Forgotten because the U.S. government has not been , as Senator Symington puts it, "telling our people what we are doing ." Indeed, because of U.S. government secrecy, the war in Laos has been so completely forgotten that William Fulbright, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, could testify in October 1969 that he "had no idea we had a full-scale war going on" in Laos.2 Now, after publication of the Pentagon Papers in three different versions, we have further evidence of how much Laos has been forgotten , not only by the public but by U.S. policymakers as well. For most of the last twenty years, excepting the crises of 1960 through 1963, Laos has been for the United States little more than a sideshow to the conflict in Vietnam. Though the United States has spent billions of dollars in the Kingdom of Laos, top U.S. officials in Washington have only rarely given their attention to this small country and then only in times of military crises, or in terms of how events in Laos affect U.S. involvement in Vietnam . As one American official in Vientiane put it in 1960, "This is the end of nowhere . We can do anything we want here because Washington doesn't seem to know it exists." 3 Because the documents in the Pentagon Papers reflect largely the views of Washington, and because they focus on Vietnam, they provide insight into only a small portion of U.S. involvement in Laos. It is the fuller account of U.S. involvement in Laos' forgotten war, both that revealed in the Pentagon Papers and that omitted from them, which we will treat in this essay. Copyright © 1972 by Walt Haney The Pentagon Papers and U.S. Involvement in Laos.


249. II. THE EARLY YEARS OF U.S. INVOLVEMENT: 1950-1954 The course of U.S. policy was set to block further Communist expansion in Asia. -NSC 48/2 December 30, 19491 In April 1946, French troops reoccupied Vientiane and the leaders of the Lao independence movement, the Lao Issara, fled across the Mekong into Thailand. Shortly thereafter occurred what Arthur Dommen in his book Conflict in Laos calls "the first in a long series of contacts between the Lao Issara and Americans in territory outside Laos." 2 In that meeting in the spring of 1946 , Prince Souphanouvong3 of the Lao Issara asked OSS Major Jim Thompson for "official United States support for removal of the French from Laos." 4 There is no record, however, that the United States provided any support for the Lao independence movement. U.S. sentiments against the reimposition of French colonial rule were held in check by the fact that the strongest independence movements in Indochina displayed Communist leanings. And after the defeat of the Chinese Nationalists in 1949, and the growing conflict in Korea, U.S. ambivalence toward the French-sponsored colonial governments of Indochina gave way completely to anti-Communist sentiments. On February 3, 1950, President Truman approved a memorandum from Secretary of State Dean Acheson recommending U.S. recognition of the "three legally constituted governments of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia . . ." (Gravel ed., 1:65). On May 1, 1950 Truman approved $ 10 million "for urgently needed military assistance items for Indochina" (Gravel ed., 1:67). In December of that year, the United States concluded mutual defense agreements with the governments of the three French Union States of Indochina; Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.5 One stipulation of these agreements was that all U.S. military assistance to Indochina go directly to the French, who then controlled its distribution. Therefore, exactly how much U. S. military aid went to Laos during the period of French control, 1950-1954 , is not precisely known , byt has been estimated at roughly $30 million .6 Despite the agreement to channel U.S. military assistance to Laos through the French, this period saw the first instance of direct U.S. military involvement in Laos. r In March and April of 1953 Viet Minh troops moved into northern Laos from i Dien Bien Phu. They advanced down the valley of the River Ou toward Luang Prabang. In response to this threat on the Royal Capital of Laos, the United States "rushed supplies to Laos and Thailand in May 1953 and provided six C-119's with civilian crews for the airlift into Laos " (Gravel ed., 1:86). This form of involvement displayed elements which were to become familiar to U.S. involvement in Laos in the next twenty years; expanded involvement as a response to crisis, the use of civilians in military and para -military operations, and the reliance on air power. Only in 1954 after the Geneva Conference did Laos achieve true independence outside the umbrella of the French Union. For Laos, the Geneva agreements stipulated a general ceasefire, the withdrawal of Viet Minh and French Union forces and the regroupment of Pathet Lao forces in Sam Neua and Phong Saly provinces pending a political settlement. Also, the agreements prohibited introduction of foreign military personnel and military advisers except for 1,500


250. Gravel Edition/The Pentagon Papers/Vol. V French officers and men to train the Laotian army. ? It was this last stipulation which was to prove most troublesome for the U .S. involvement in Laos. III. NOTHING THAT WE DID: 1954-1958 Our fear of communism has been so great as to be irrational . We have virtually imbued it with superhuman powers. Its very nature , in our thinking, assures its success. We fail to see that, like other political ideologies, it can only take root among a receptive population . . . . We do not consider the possibility that our antagonists in fact may be in better tune with the grievances of the people whose loyalty we seek to win, and thus have been able to promise remedies which to the latter appear realistic and just. -Roger M. Smith' On October 20, 1954, barely three months after Geneva, Prince Souvanna Phouma resigned as Prime Minister of Laos. He had only just begun the difficult task of reaching a political settlement with the Pathet Lao, and the circumstances surrounding his resignation have yet to be explained completely . Most accounts link the fall of Souvanna Phouma in October 1954 to the assassination of his Minister of Defense, Kou Voravong , in September . However, years later, in 1961, Souvanna Phouma attributed his fall in 1954 to foreign interference.2 After the Prince's resignation, a new government was formed under Katay Don Sasorith, who favored closer relations with Thailand and evidently harbored reservations on the sagacity of coalition with the Pathet Lao.3 At any rate, talks with the Pathet Lao foundered and were broken off in April 1955. Twice more , once in the summer and once in the fall , talks between Katay and the Pathet Lao were resumed only to be broken off. During all this time the Pathet Lao resisted Royal Lao government attempts at reimposition of control over Sam Neua and Phong 1 Saly provinces. As former British military attached to Laos Hugh Toye recounts it, "The Pathet Lao argued, against the obvious intention of the Geneva Agreement, that the provinces were theirs until a full political settlement was reached." 4 General elections were held in December 1955 without Pathet Lao participation, but when the new assembly convened Katay found himself lacking enough support to continue as Prime Minister . Souvanna Phouma gathered support and formed a new government in March 1956, on a pledge of reconciliation with the Pathet Lao. He resumed talks with them and from August 1956 through February 1957 , signed the first seven of ten agreements between the Royal Government and the Pathet Lao which came to be known as the Vientiane Agreements.5 Souvanna Phouma's efforts at reconciliation with the Pathet Lao were interrupted in May 1957 when upon receiving only a qualified vote of confidence in the National Assembly, he resigned . However, after an extended period of confusion, when no other leaders were able to muster enough support to form a government, Souvanna Phouma returned as Prime Minister in August. He again resumed talks with the Pathet Lao and reached final agreement for the inclusion of two Pathet Lao representatives as Ministers in a new coalition cabinet. During all of this period, the United States was by no means inactive in Laos. The chief characteristic marking all of U.S. policy in Laos throughout the 1950s was quite simply anticommunism . An NSC memorandum (5612/ 1, 5 September 1956) clearly reveals this attitude . Among the stated elements of U.S. policy toward Laos were the following:


The Pentagon Papers and U.S. Involvement in Laos

251. In order to prevent Lao neutrality from veering toward pro-Communism, encourage individuals and groups in Laos who oppose dealing with the Communist blow. [sic] * -Support the expansion and reorganization of police , propaganda and army intelligence services, provided anti-Communist elements maintain, effective control of these services. -Terminate economic and military aid if the Lao Government ceases to demonstrate a will to resist internal Communist subversion and to carry out a policy of maintaining its independence.6 In Congressional hearings Walter S. Robertson , the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs under Eisenhower , stated U.S. objectives in Laos even more bluntly; Our policy objectives in relation to Laos have been and are to assist the Lao: 1. In keeping the Communists from taking over Laos. 2. In strengthening their association with the free world; and 3. In developing and maintaining a stable and independent government willing and able to resist Communist aggression or subversion." 4 For Assistant Secretary Robertson there was no question as to Laos' strategic significance: . . . when you look at the map you will see that Laos is a finger thrust right down into the heart of Southeast Asia. And Southeast Asia is one of the prime objectives of the international Communists in Asia because it is rich in raw materials and has excess food. We are not in Laos to be a fairy godfather to Laos, we are in there for one sole reason, and that is to try to keep this little country from being taken over by the Communists. . . . It is part of the effort we are making for the collective , security of the free world. Every time you lose a country, every time you give up to them, they become correspondingly stronger and the free world becomes weaker. This isn't happening only in this little country of Laos, it is happening all over the world, everywhere. We are engaged in a struggle for the survival of what we call a free civilizations The only difficulty with the implementation of this policy was that under the Geneva Agreements the United States was prohibited from establishing a military mission in Laos. An alternative possibility would have been to work through the French military mission in Laos, but such an alternative was clearly less than wholly satisfactory. As stated in a NSC memorandum (NSC 5429/2, 20 August 1954 ) on Indochina policy, the United States should work "through the French only insofar as necessary. . . ." This obstacle was overcome in January 1956 when the United States established a military mission, but called it by a different name-a Program Evaluation Office (PEO) attached to the U.S. aid mission. There is little doubt that the PEO violated the spirit if not the *Throughout this paper explanatory comments added to quotations will be placed within brackets.


252. The letter of the Geneva Agreements. PEO clearly served as the functional equivalent of a military advisory group. For example, the chief of PEO from February 1957 to February 1959 was Brigadier General Rothwell H. Brown, U.S. Army (retired). Before coming to Laos, Brown had served as chief of the Army section in the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) Pakistan, as deputy chief of MAAG South Vietnam, and as chief of MAAG Pakistan. After retiring from the last position in 1956, he was "asked by Admiral Radford and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in November 1956" to go to Laos on an inspection tour and shortly thereafter he was appointed as chief of PEO Laos.10 Indeed, the PEO ploy was so obvious that even the U.S. State Department on one occasion in 1957 forgot the pretense and listed Laos as one of the "countries where MAAG personnel are stationed." 11 In addition to the military mission, U.S. involvement was growing in other realms. A United States Operations Mission (USOM) had been established in Vientiane in January 1955 and in July of that year an agreement was reached with the Katay government on new economic aid and an increase in military assistance. The aid program mushroomed to such an extent that from 1955 ,through 1958 U.S. aid to Laos totaled approximately $167 million.12 The bulk of this aid went for support of the army of Laos, "the only country in the world where the United States supports the military budget 100%. . . ." 13 Yet it was clear that U.S. interests in Laos were suffering. Souvanna Phouma's negotiations with the Pathet Lao evidenced a Laotian veering away from "pro-Western neutrality," and with the scheduling of elections in May 1958, U.S. officials were clearly worried. Despite the magnitude of the U.S. aid program very little of it ever trickled down to reach the average Laotian peasant. In December 1957, with the discovery of import irregularities in the U.S. commodity import program, U.S. aid was briefly withheld. One authority recounts that the aid abuses served as a "pretext for disciplining the Laotian government." 14 What clearly upset U.S. officials was Souvanna Phouma's flirtation with the Communists, and this as much as anything prompted the aid cutoff. Indeed, if corruption had been the real reason for "disciplining the Laotian Government," many American officials ought also to have been disciplined. For corruption was by no means limited to the Laotian side of the aid program. As a U.S. House Government Operations Committee later reported: 1. One U.S. aid officer "accepted bribes totaling at least $13,000" for helping a construction company "secure lucrative contracts and overlooking deficiencies in their performance." 2. The former USOM director sold his inoperable 1947 Cadillac to the head of the same construction company at an inflated price and shortly thereafter the car was "cut up and the pieces dropped down an abandoned well." 3. The former director's testimony before the Committee on Government Operations was "misleading and conflicting." 4. The same USOM director was charged with violating aid contract regulations "in several respects" including "writing two contracts for one job" and writing a contract which included "a provision that the contractor . . . was not required to complete any work under the contract." 15 When confronted with the charges of their corruption the aid officials "sought to excuse deficiencies and maladministration in the aid program in Laos . . .


253. With the assertion that our aid program, however poorly administered, has saved Laos from going Communist." 16 The exposure in public testimony of corruption among U.S. aid officials no doubt made it more difficult thereafter, or at least more embarrassing, for the U.S. mission to object too strenuously when Laotian officials siphoned off their own share of aid money and cried communist "Wolf!" to divert attention. After all, such officials could claim, they were only learning from the Americans! The real battle, though, was not against corrupt officials. The main task was preventing a "Communist takeover." Such an aim had intrinsic value for U.S. policymakers but also was geared toward preventing the spread of insurgency into neighboring Thailand. An Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) Report on Southeast Asia, 28 May 1958, recounted the setbacks for the United States in this struggle: The formation in November, 1957 of a coalition cabinet with Communist Pathet Lao participation, additional communist gains of places in army and civil service, and permission for the Pathet to operate as a legal political party throughout the country, were generally considered as a setback for U.S. objectives.17 With the scheduling of special elections for May 1958 to include Pathet Lao participation, U.S. officials were fearful. A Congressional report summed up the situation: In the fall of 1957, with an awareness of the forthcoming elections, Ambassador Parsons contemplated the cumulative results of the U.S. aid program to date. He was concerned with the possibility that its shortcomings might become election issues for the Communists. He was apparently impressed by the aid program's obvious neglect of the needs of the typical Lao, the rural villager or farmer. In an effort to remedy this shortcoming, the Ambassador conceived Operation Booster Shot.18 Operation Booster Shot was an emergency attempt to extend the, impact of the U.S. aid program into rural Laos. Clearly inspired by the upcoming elections, it was an early version of "winning hearts and minds." The Operation included well-digging, irrigation projects, repair of schools, temples and roads; altogether more than ninety work projects. Incredibly, the program also included the air dropping of "some 1,300 tons of food, medical and construction supplies and other useful supplies" 19 into areas inaccessible by road. One Congressman rather undiplomatically referred to the latter aspect of the program as "drop[ping] a flock of supplies in the jungle." 20 The Congressman cited "one airplane pilot who participated in the airdrop who thought what he was supposed to do was haphazard." 21 But as Assistant Secretary Robertson put it, This was a crash program. Such a program, we felt, would do much to counter the anticipated vigorous Communist campaign in the villages and the growing criticism that American aid benefits the few in the cities and fails to reach the rural population.22 Yet despite the crash nature of the Booster Shot program and the expense which "may have exceeded $3 million," 23 the operation failed to succeed. In


254: The Pentagon Papers/Vol. V the May elections, nine out of thirteen Pathet Lao candidates won seats in the National Assembly. Additionally, four candidates of the neutralist Santiphab (Peace) party, or as they were called by U.S. Ambassador to Laos Graham Parsons, "the fellow travelers," won election.24 Thus "Communists or fellow travelers" had won thirteen out of twenty-one seats contested. Also, Prince Souphanouvong, leader of the Pathet Lao, standing for election in the capital province of Vientiane, won more votes than any other candidate in the elections. A few days after the May 4 elections, when the new National Assembly convened, Souphanouvong was elected Chairman.25 Interpretations concerning the reasons behind the Pathet Lao electoral successes varied widely. The OCB Report maintained that the "Communists' show of strength . . . resulted largely from the conservatives failure to agree on a minimum consolidated list of candidates." 26 The conservatives had run a total of eighty-five candidates for the twenty-one contested positions. A Laotian official, Sisouk Na Chanpassak, who is the current Laotian Minister of Finance gave a different reason: Black market deals in American aid dollars reached such proportions that the Pathet Lao needed no propaganda to turn the rural people against the townspeople.27 Yet whatever the vote was against, it also was a vote for the Pathet Lao. They had organized well for the election. Former Pathet Lao soldiers and cadres acted as grass-roots campaigners and, in contrast to the Laotian government officials, they were honest. As Hugh Toye, former British military attached to Laos, described them, "they behaved with propriety, with respect for tradition, and with utmost friendliness as far as the people were concerned. Their soldiers were well-disciplined and orderly like [their mentors] the Viet Minh. " 28 The electoral victories clearly gave the Pathet Lao added authority in the coalition government. United States reaction was quick to follow. First, the CIA helped to organize a group of young conservatives, the Committee for the Defense of National Interests (CDNI), in opposition to Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma.29 Second, on June 30, the United States again shut off aid to Laos. As Roger Hilsman, who served as Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and later as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in the Kennedy Administration, later wrote, . . . by merely withholding the monthly payment to the troops, the United States could create the conditions for toppling any Lao government whose policies it opposed.30 Surely enough on July 23, in a National Assembly vote, Souvanna Phouma's government was toppled. One observer charged that the United States paid huge sums for votes against Souvanna,31 and another maintains that the CIA was "stage-managing the whole affair." 32 Whatever the exact circumstances, the United States was clearly and deeply implicated in the fall of Souvanna Phouma in 1958 as again it would be in 1960. Yet in a height of pretense bordering on the absurd, Assistant Secretary Robertson, when asked in Congressional hearings whether the United States had done anything to cause the "coalition of the non-Communist elements in the Government which was successful in getting rid of the Communist ministers," answered, "Nothing that we did, no." 33 Such innocence is all the more.


The Pentagon Papers and U.S. Involvement in Laos

255. remarkable in light of Robertson's testimony on the formation of coalition government. Former Ambassador Parsons had testified "I struggled for sixteen months to prevent a coalition government." Robertson elaborated, there is no difference whatsoever in our evaluation of the threat to Laos which was posed by this coalition. That is the reason we did everything we could to keep it from happening.34 The U.S. did "everything we could" to prevent the coalition government, but when it fell, "Nothing that we did, no." IV. ANTI-COMMUNIST, PRO-FREE WORLD NEUTRALITY After Souvanna Phouma lost the July 23 vote of confidence in the National Assembly, he still tried to form a new government, but CIA agents "had persuaded the CDNI to oppose Souvanna" 1 and his attempt failed. On August 18, Phoui 'Sananikone gathered enough support to form a government. His cabinet excluded the two Pathet Lao ministers who had been in Souvanna's government, but did include four CDNI members who were not members of the National Assembly.2 The coalition government was broken. Phoui soon demonstrated his own brand of neutrality. He established relations with Nationalist China and upgraded the Lao mission in Saigon to embassy status. After agreements on reforms in the aid program and devaluation of the Laotian currency in October, the United States resumed aid to Laos. Then in January 1959, U.S. aid to Laos was increased. In December, Phoui seized upon the occurrence of a skirmish between Laotian and DRV soldiers in the region near the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam to charge North Vietnam with initiating a campaign against Laos "by acts of intimidation of all sorts, including the violation and occupation of its territory." 3 The validity of the charges was questionable, but Phoui nevertheless used the incident as a pretext to request emergency powers from the National Assembly.4 On January 15, he was granted emergency powers for one year. On the same day, he reshuffled his cabinet to include for the first time three army officers who were also CDNI members. On February 11, Phoui declared that Laos was no longer bound by the Geneva Conventions or the limitations on acceptance of foreign military aid.5 As the government became more conservative, now including seven CDNI members, purges were initiated against Pathet Lao officials and sympathizers In the meantime, two Pathet Lao battalions awaited integration into the Royal Lao Army, as called for in the agreements reached earlier between Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao. In early May details of the integration were agreed upon, but at the last minute on May 11 the two battalions, fearing a trick by the increasingly anti-Communist Phoui government, refused to comply with the plan.? Thereupon, Phoui ordered Prince Souphanouvong and the other Pathet Lao leaders in Vientiane arrested, and commanded the Royal Army to encircle the two recalcitrant PL battalions. He then issued an ultimatum to the PL troops; either they be integrated into the Royal Army immediately or be disbanded. The First Battalion complied, the Second did not. Toye relates their escape: On the night of 18 May, the whole seven hundred men, complete with their families, their chickens, pigs, household possessions and arms slipped.


256. Gravel Edition/The Pentagon Papers/Vol. V out of their camp on the Plain of Jarres and followed a long-planned route to an isolated valley near the North Vietnamese border some away." 8 forty-five miles An OCB Report on Southeast Asia, 12 August 1959, commented: the Lao Army displayed a disappointing lack of capacity to control a small scale internal security problem when it permitted the battalion to escape.9 The Royal Lao government, incensed, declared the Pathet Lao troops would be considered deserters. The coalition government, if only broken earlier, was clearly shattered now. In July the Royal Lao government (RLG) reported Communist guerrilla attacks in the north.10 A Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE 68-2-59, 18 September 1959) later analyzed the situation as follows: 7. We believe that the initiation of Communist guerrilla warfare in Laos in midJuly was primarily a reaction to a series of actions by the Royal Lao Government which threatened drastically to weaken the Communist position in Laos. For a period of about one year after the November 1957 political agreements between the Laotian Government and the Pathet Lao, the Communist controlled party in Laos-the Neo Lao Hak Zat-attempted to move by legal political competition toward its objective of gaining control of Laos. The Laotian Government had taken counteraction which checked this effort. Moreover, the U.S. had stepped up its activities to strengthen the Laotian Government, notably through the decision to send military training teams, and clearly was increasing its presence in Laos. The Communist advance in Laos was losing impetus. To the Communist world probably appeared , the future to be one of increasing political repression assets, , declining and a strengthened anti-Communist position in the country." The onus of blame for the resumption of hostilities clearly lay with the Phoui Sananikone government, 12 and indirectly with the United States. Throughout the year the tension and particularly the rhetoric of crisis heightened. One particularly notable, though perhaps not atypical example of the exaggerated air of crisis is recounted by Bernard Fall. On August 24, 1959, the New York Times titled a story on Laos with the alarming report "Laos Insurgents Take Army Post Close to Capital." As Fall points out, the headline should have read "Rain Cuts Laos Vegetable Supply," for there had in fact been no attack. The whole story had mushroomed out of a washed-out bridge which had caused a cutoff in traffic to Vientiane and thus prevented the daily vegetable supply from coming through. The story of the attack on the outpost had been built from speculation as to the cause of the cutoff in traffic! 13 Although the U.S. did expand the PEO group in July and in August increased aid to Laos, direct military intervention was avoided. In September, the RLG reported Communist attacks on Sam Neua and again charged North Vietnam with aggression, but this time the charges were presented before the United Nations.14 The secret U.S. government SNIE of September 18, 1959, acknowledged, however, that there was "no conclusive evidence of participation by North Vietnamese," 15 and a UN team of observers reached very much the same conclusion later in September. 16 After these setbacks in gaining additional international support in his battle against the Communists, Phoui considered.

bottom of page