Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

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C05303949
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Target: KongLeD
IRONAGE GUERRlUASD
Doing something about Kong Le had not lost its attraction for Washington,
and Headquarters sent a peevish cable reminding! lof his failure to
reply to "repeated queries re possibility of ambushing or capturing Kong Le."
Had the ambassador disapproved? If not, why had regular contacts with Yang
Pao not produced some planning? Returning to the point three days later,
Headquarters complained of being embarrassed in interagency meetings by its
inability to promise action to "negate" the rebel leader's position. JD
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reply hinted that he saw this preoccupation as little more than a
dIstraction from the essential task of creating a force capable of holding the
surrounding hills while FAR recaptured the Plain of Jars. Kong Le had been
"on our list," he said, since the beginning of the Hmong program, but problems
remained to be solved. One was that of persuading the Hmong to enter
the Plain of Jars, which hosted KongLe's headquarters, to gather information
on his location and movements. "So far, Meos evince much more enthusiasm
for shooting up isolated convoys than for entering [the] enemy's main camp."
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~as offering bounties for prisoners, for example, but had as yet no
results. And no operation against Kong Le ever did take place. His gradual
disenchantment with his communist allies would eventually bring him into de
facto alliance with the American-supported RLG.24D
The Chinese Connection=:]
Agency efforts to help shore up the Laotian government's military position
were not restricted to the northeast. In February]
FlUthorized Stu
Methven, in Luang Prabang, to help FAR challenge the neutralist and communist
forces west and north of the royal capital. With the help ofl
he proceeded to organize tbrei irrerlar units, totaling about 150 members, of
several local highland tribes.> .
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~
~---------- IThe fortunes
of war had put the United States, and thereforeCIA, in the position of favoring a "bad guy"
over a "good guy." Many anticommunistLao regarded Phoumi as "a crook," though they tended
to see this as mitigated by his pro-American slance. Kong Le, in CIA's own judgment, was a
"highly competent professional soldier," an essentially apolitical "born leader" whose motivation
when he staged the August 1960 coup was hostility toward the admittedly "corrupt bureaucracy"
of his own government.]
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