Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

CHOREOGRAPHY BY CIAO
As the H-34 hovered over the Ta Viang landing pad, its main rotor kicked
up a choking cloud of dust that almost obscured the setting sun. Lair had
strict orders not to sta overni ht, and the Hot was threatening to leave without
him, so he left
to find Yang Pao as he returned
to Vientiane.v
I
He
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and Yang Pao had talked nearly all night, and .oined the consensus
about Van~: "This is the man we've been ooking for." Lair confirmed
~that now he could discuss the specifics of an armed Hmong
resistance and boarded the helicopter for another flight, this time to a new and
more secure bivouac at Muong Om. 43 0 .
Yang Pa9
~reeted Lair, who was again struck by the boyishness
of the Hmong leader's animated face, with its round shape and narrow, Mongolian
eyes. After a characteristically voluble welcome, Yang Pao led the way
to the meeting site, on a bank high over the Nam Sane. The meeting exhibited
the collective quality of Hmong life. His FAR subordinates, village elders, and
ordinary mountain men crowded around Yang Pao as he introduced his visitor.
He began the proceedings with a stemwinding oration-in the Hmong language,
but with enough Lao vocabulary for Lair to follow its thrust-about
the imperative for the Hmong people to preserve their way of life against the
predatory Vietnamese.D
The oration called up memories of Vietnamese abuses, and Yang Pao told
of Hmong old women he had seen forced to drag logs to a sawmill. One listener,
overcome with emotion, leaped to his feet, lost his balance, and fell to
his death into the torrent below. This seemed only to intensify the emotion
generated by Yang Pao's fiery rhetoric, and, when the speech came to an end,
Lair already knew the answer to his first question: With the communists and
neutralists installed on the Plain of Jars, what exactly did the Hmong people
want to do?D
Yang Pao made it explicit. The Hmong had just two alternatives, either flee
to the west or stay and fight, and he and his people wanted to stay. He had
10,000 men, he said. Adequately armed and trained, they could hold the
mountains in most of Xieng Khouang and even Sam Neua Provinces, harassing
enemy activity along the roads and in the valleys. He described the distribution
of the Hmong population throughout the area, and it appeared to Lair
I fhat he might well command the manpower he claimed·D
But arms given to fight the communists might be turned against the government,
and Lair wanted to know how the United States could be sure that this