Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

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Chapter Eighteen
As they had so often done in years of bitter but inconclusive combat in
Laos, the Vietnamese counted on cloud cover to avoid becoming targets for
the rockets and cluster bombs of the US and Laotian air forces. They had
sometimes lost this gamble, as at Muong Phalane, and they did so again on II
June. The sun burned off the overcast while the NVA was still advancing over
open terrain, and the Lao decimated them with 88 T-28 sorties. This blunted
the attack, but NVA still managed to circle around behind Soutchay's defenders,
blocking the road back to Pakse. 33 0
'-=-_~~_~=-_~_-c__~~----o=-~---,But the NVA facing
Soutchay's task force, just to the east, had suffered even more grievously-as
many as 700 men killed by air, so jan Y
Ithat vultures became a hazard to aircraft
in the area for several weeks. 34 .
Operation SAYASILAD
The tactical result of this carnage was the restoration of the status quo, with
the front line just west of its earlier location at Ban Gnik. Despite the feeble
performance of the FAR task force there, the Lao were unprepared to accept
this outcome. The ever-cautious General Phasouk had counseled against it,
but during a visit to Pakse on I July 1971, King Savang Vatthana explicitly
ordered a renewed effort to retake Paksong and the western Bolovens."D
The US Mission supported the proposal. The joint effort, called Operation
SAYASILA, was tobegin with a diversionary helicopter-borne infantry attack
on Saravane, north of the Plateau, to interdict the roads and waterways in that
area. It would serve to divert the NVA from the Paksong sector even as it
interrupted some North Vietnamese logistic activity along the Trail.'6D
Seven of Operation SAYASILA's 17 battalions-nine from FAR plus eight
BGs,! ~would require helicopter infiltration and evacuation.
The record reveals no Headquarters anxiety about the unprecedented scale of
~l Ibid.
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