Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

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INTRODUCTIONTO INTERDICT/OND
An early-morning artillery barrage was followed by four flights of General
Phasouk's T-28s, bombing and strafing as the ground troops tried to descend
the cliff face toward the cave entrance. The sheer slope foiled this effort, but a
diversionary effort got better results. A helicopter dropped two dummies, each
dressed in paratroop uniform. One floated past the cave on its way to the valley
floor below, and some 70 enemy troops dashed out of the cave in pursuit.
T-28s scored direct hits on the village into which they chased the presumed
paratrooper, and even though Phasouk then withdrew the ground forces-he
believed they were being flanked---t=l was gratified by the smooth
unfolding of a complicated undertakin~
Under pressure from Washington and having no workable alternative to a
quasi-unilateral approach to Corridor operations, the station proceeded to create
more and larger SGUs. Recruiting under the auspices of General Bounpone
in Savannakhet went relatively well, and by January 1967, the program
had 3,500 effectives. D
J9
The most successful ground operation in the Panhandle during this period
had nothing directly to do with the Corridor. On 8 January, al I
team guided by a recent escapee raided a Pathet Lao prison camp, killing one
guard and scattering the others. They freed 57 prisoners, inclUdi~g four
members of a roadwatch team overrun six months earlier and a forme l
shot down in 1966 while serving as an Air America kicker. Their rescuers led
them northeast, away from Thakhek, to the safety of a roadwatch command
post.40D
At this point, CIA's promise of combat units for the Corridor had done more
to shut out MACY than to slow the traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Few of
the new units had yet seen combat, and those that had were deployed on
armed reconnaissance patrols in detachments of 15 to 30 men. With the NYA
still streaming down the Trail, the Defense Department continued to lobby for
a larger role in Laos. In February, it won a small vroJ when President
Johnson approved company-strength SOG operations."
These would enjoy air support to the full depth of an operating area now
extended to more than 12 miles from the border. Ambassador Sullivan pointed
,,[ I
"Vientiane Embass Tele ram 4405, 21 Janllar 1967, FRUS I964-J968, 553-54.
"
L---c--c-~c!and Landry did not ask Vientiane's permission for the raid, and Ted Shackley
recalled thinking that their ex postfacto assertion of theneed to acton perishable intelligence may
have concealed somedoubt that Vientiane would approve an advance request. Whatever the fact
of the matter, Shackle ioined in the a lause. (Shackley interview.)D
41 ientiane
Embassy Telegram 5248, 25 February 1967, FRUS 1964-1968, 560-62.
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