Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

C05303949
NEW RULESOF ENGAGEMEmD
recoilless rifles to Hmong positions within range of Pathet Lao positions and
to step up munitions deliveries to the Hmong and their neutralist allies. The
Hmong already held one position jointly with Kong Le's men, andI
believed that, absent a North Vietnamese attack in'force, the proposed level of
activity would save Kong Le. All this was done without consulting Souvanna
Phouma, whose resentment of communist perfidy had not yet turned him into
,a reliable partner of the anticommunist forces in Laos. D
71
To bring the prime minister into consistently active opposition to the communists
had been an American goal ever since the conclusion of the Geneva
Agreements. The US Mission now sought to engage him in supporting the
anticommunist forces in the northeast by offering the government a gift of
several C.-46 cargo planes. Souvanna accepted these, for they gave him the
capability directly to support Kong Le's units, the only forces personally loyal
to him. He then began allowing airport authorities to clear other C-46s, merely
leased to the Lao but also carrying Laotian markings, to pick up ordnance at
the border town of Paksane for delivery to Long Tieng. One of these even
picked up ammunitionI
Iand flew it
direct to Kong Le's headquarters on the Plain of Jars, The ploy thus paid for
itself: giving Souvanna control of some of the air transport supplying Kong Le
and the Hmong not only secired his yrsonal involvement but legalized some
of the direct flights between and upcountry sites."D
On 26 April, Governor Harriman saw Chairman Khrushchev and Foreign
Minister Gromyko in Moscow. He got little satisfaction: Gromyko denied the
presence of North Vietnamese troops in Laos, and Khrushchev responded to
pleas for a more active ICC by appealing to the inviolable socialist principle
of noninterference in other nations' affairs. But things quieted down on the
Plain of Jars in the week that followed. To some in the White House, it seemed
that Hmong support had supplemented direct material aid to the neutralists in
damping down the Pathet Lao campaign to expel Kong Le from the Plain of
Jars. D
73
In the relative quiet that prevailed during most of May, Kong Le, Vang Pao,
and a Phoumi representative prepared to retake key positions the communists
had seized from the neutralists on the eastern Plain of Jars and at Xieng
Khouang town. Reporting this to Headquarters, Ambassador Unger pointed
out the risks'; to make a move in force might invite a decisive riposte from
rl--
"I I
1) Memorandum of Conversation. 26 April 1963, FRUS 1961-1963. 1000-05: Memorandum
from Michael V. Forrestal to President Kennedy. "Help to K~ Le and Meos," 1 May 1963,
FRUS 1961-1963,1007--08; Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 152.U
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