Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

C05303949
Chapter Twenty-two
first enjoying both sanctuary on its own territory and immunity in Laos, Hanoi
remained free to choose the level of engagement that served its strtegt purposes,
the primary of which was the annexation of South Vietnam.
Laos played a relatively minor role in Hanoi's calculations until the 1964
decision to deploy NVA units into South Vietnam, and to expand Laotian lines
of communication in order to infiltrate and supply them. Up to that point, CIA
and Vang Pao had been able to concentrate on expanding and consolidating
guerrilla forces in the mountains, challenging Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese
influence over the hill tribes. Then, in 1965, the Johnson administration
sent ground forces to save a prostrate Saigon government. With the Ho Chi
Minh Trail now the main conduit for NVA men and materiel, Washington
began to treat Laos in general-and the Hmong in particular-as instruments
of its program in Vietnam.D .
Even then, the United States never treated the Hmong as mere pawns, thrust
into battle to serve American interests in Vietnam. If any of the Laotian irregulars
could fairly be called mercenaries, they were the battalions raised in the
Panhandle for use 'against the Ho Chi Minh Trail,' a target of little interest to
the RLG. In the north, Vang Pao always remained at least an equal partner in
tactical planning, and he inspired the most ambitious and least successful
campaigns, sometimes over his advisers' objections. But it is difficult not to
agree with Bill Nelson; who wrote more than a year before the 1973 cease-fire
that, in the end, the Hmong would have been less badly off had they never
chosen to cast their lot with the United States. 29 D
To most of the CIA people involved, abandoning the Hmong in the aftermath
of defeat had been simply unimaginable. A few, however, seem to have
feared such an outcome. Bill Lair recalled having wanted to preserve a leading
role fori ' loutof fear that the United States would eventually
weary of its commitment in Indochina. Andl
remembered' Bill
Colby's strictures to the same effect. In their view, if the program's survival
depended on American-style communications and logistics-and especially
on massive air support-US withdrawal would bring on total collapse.
Accordingly, they believed that a more modest, defensively oriented guerrilla
effort,I
Istood a better chance of
discouraging Hanoi from investing the Hmong's highlands after the United
States departed. 0 '
3
29 Blaufarb's study echoes Nelson's sentimentII
30 The prospects for a postwar resistance crumbled with YangPao's departure. Early CIA associates
like Lair andl
Isaw the general as having, over the years, been seduced by highlevel
Washington attention into thinking of himself more as military commander than as tribal
leader. Observers holding this oQinion tended to see him as having abandoned his people when he
fled Long Tieng in May 1975.0
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