Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

C05303949
Chapter Twenty-two
with the strictures of both Thai and American law]
DiasporaD
Yang Pao andl
Inow his escort, found a house for the family in
Missoula, and the search for suitable farmland continued. But the trauma of
defeat and wretched conditions at Nam Phong were taking their toll, even on a
family as favored as that of the tribe's leader. One of the general's daughters
attempted suicide by poison, and a son, only 16, shot himself in the face after
being forbidden to marry a girl at the carrip.19D
Yang Pao, convinced that camp conditions were responsible for all this turmoil,
was frantic to get back to Thailand. He wrote a desperate appeal to
Prime Minister Kukrit, who replied with masterful Thai ambiguity, and the
general was reduced to dotgr he could by telephone to arrest the slump
in morale at Nam Phong.s"
Persuaded now that he was "being given the run-around," the general talked
wildly about simply giving up on the Agency and flying to Washington from
Missoula to beg for help from Henry Kissinger and from his friends in Congress.
Prolonged separation from most of his family and continuing reports of
slow resettlement in Thailand provoked more spasms of despairing rage;2lD
With resettlement stymied by legal and diplomatic impediments, the
Agency fell back on ceremony to try to restore Yang Pao's equanimity. On 15
December 1975, DCI William Colby bestowed the Distinguished Intelligence
Medal on this "man without a country," as Ted Shackley described him. The
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Surviving files do not specify how many of Yang Pao's family eventually joined him in the United
States·D
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