Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

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Appendix
The topic was not an intelligence target-the mission of upcountry people
was to help run the war-and I ~mpressions were based solely on
casual observation. But widespread addiction among the troops would have
created an enormous problem, and he never saw evidence of this in the Hmong
force,I
D
What he did see suggested to him that Yang Pao was actively opposed to
commercial trafficking even as he wanted opium to remain available to those
Hmong for whom it was the only refuge from pain. At one point, USAID officials
visited Long Tieng, andI Iwas present as they proposed to Yang
Pao a crop-substitution program that would replace the poppy fields. By way
of response, Yang Pao led them to the front porch of his house, where three or
four painfully thin, jaundiced addicts, dressed in rags, lay passively on the
floor. Opium was all they had, he said. If Americans built a hospital to take
care of the underlying medical needs of such people, he would cheerfully
cooperate to eradicate the drug.D
The AID men went home, andl---Iheard no more about crop substitution.
He was inclined to accept that Yang Pao had not used the elderly addicts
as a pretext to protect a commercial traffic in the drug. When the AID mission
appeared, Yang Pao had already banned flights into Hmong strips by an
American entrepreneur, flying an old C-47, who was widely suspected of
picking up opium consignments.D
New allegations against Yao leader Chao La surfaced in August 1972, and
Headquarters called for a thorough review of the station's exposure to charges
of complicity in the drug traffic. Washington feared that
among existing Station [controlled] assets, overt contacts, and collaborators
there may be more "Chao La" types whose past or present
drug related activities, if surfaced, could cause further embarrassment
to CIA. We want to be in position to protect ourselves from
charges of guilt by association and from charges that CIA looked the
other way and permitted the activity to continue. 27 D
Headquarters noted the declining level of tolerance in Washington for any
association, however innocent or operationally productive, with contacts who
were vulnerable to charges of illicit dealings. Henceforth, the station would
have to keep Headquarters advised even of "those who could indirectly cause
embarrassment because of their or their families' association with CIA."28D
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