Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

C05303949
FOCUS ON THE PANHANDLED
Carlon, Headquarters relied on anecdotal indications, such as increasing
Pathet Lao defectors and an influx of refugees from communist-dominated
territory to the east. 61 0
L'Armee ClandestinO
American recognition of the superiority of the North Vietnamese Army
over Vientiane's ground forces was accompanied by continual, if usually sublimated,
anxiety about Chinese intervention through the Yunnan salient into
northwestern Laos. The Pathet Lao had exercised de facto control over Phong
Saly, one of the two provinces there, since the 1950s. But both there and in
Nam Tim, they displayed little energy and exerted even less popular appeal,
especially among the numerous hill tribes. For several years, the Agency had
engaged in desultory efforts to enlist various of these tribes into intelligence
and staybehind guerrilla units; as we have ser' tt main instrument of these
efforts after 1962 was Yao leader Chao Mal.62
When the Geneva Agreements came into force in October 1962, a force of
about 1,000 CIA-supported Yao tribesmen was scattered over the mountains
of Nam Tha Province. Supplied by boat and mule trainI
I
jon the scene, Chao Mai's
guerrillas played a minor role. Nevertheless, the collapse of the Geneva
Agreements, beginning in 1963, stimulated some additional support aimed at
preempting population and territory in the northwest. By mid-1964 the CIAsupported
guerrillas in the northwest numbered some 4,400 men-half of
them still armed only with the local muzzle-loading rifle-drawn from a variety
of tribes. 6l D .
In the wake of FAR and Hmong reverses in early 1964, the northwest began
to get more attention. A battalion or more of communist Chinese troops and
an equivalent force of North Vietnamese arrived at Muong Sing in Nam Tha
in April. News of these reinforcements intensified the perennial worry about
Chinese intentions and led Ambassador Unger to approve 300 weapons to arm
new intelligence teams targeted at Yunnan Province in southern China. These
were to be run by the station in the quasi-unilateral manner typical of the
Hmongj
lunits, that is, with communications and tactical
I
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Also seeo interview. Drecallcd that Phasouk, when he found out about the trip,
thought it a littletoo adventurous, es ecially as thefamily had returned to Pakse from Saravane
south across theBolovens Plateau,
ea
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