|
BY JOHN PRADOS
The agreement reached in Geneva in July 1962
represented an attempt to return Laos, a nation that President
Dwight D. Eisenhower once considered the cornerstone of
Southeast Asia, to its former status as a neutral nation.
That did not happen.
Instead Laos, “The Land of a
Million Elephants,” plunged
into a miasma of rising tensions culminating with a resumption
of warfare in April 1963. Conflict endured through the end
of the Indochina War.
The Laotian war was “secret” because
all sides preferred to pretend that the 1962 Geneva Protocol
remained in force. The conventional account holds that North
Vietnam and the communist Pathet Lao conspired to breach
it, and that the North Vietnamese never withdrew their troops
from the country as required by Geneva, using those forces
to attack the Royal Laotian Government.
As with so much of
the story of the second Indochina War, this account represents
a vast oversimplification. Re-examining the history offers
an opportunity to shed light on what made the Laotian war
the intractable morass that it became, a nightmare for Laotians
and a headache for both the Democratic Republic of North
Vietnam (DRV) and the United States.
A key feature of the
Laotian scene, one that made a neutrality agreement possible
in the first place, was an array of political tendencies.
Unlike South Vietnam, where the pro-American South Vietnamese
government contended with the DRV-aligned National Liberation
Front, Laos had different factions that favored neutrality,
each of which had forces strong enough to impose a change
of government by coup d’état.
Like the Vietnamese,
Laotians were happy to shift their alliances with the wind,
but these shifts were made across the political spectrum,
not just among those in government. In addition, because
a neutralist Royal Laotian Government (RLG) had existed—however
fictively—since 1954, there was at least some tradition
of political figures working together.
A further important
distinction is that the Laotian monarchy under King Savang
Vatthana was largely acceptable to all because it provided
a legal framework for whatever government held power. Princes
of the royal house also were important leaders on many sides
of the political divides in the country, thereby providing
the potential that a government of any particular party might not be anathema
to the rest.
Prince Souvanna Phouma, the leader installed after the 1962
agreement, had led the RLG from 1956-58 and the neutralist
government in Vientiane from August 1960. It is a measure
of Laotian politics that the same government, overthrown
by right-wing General Phoumi Nosavan on December 11, 1960,
had continued to function in the bush, protected by neutralist
armed forces under Captain Kong Le.
President Eisenhower had not liked Souvanna. The Laotian came to the United States
in January 1958 to try to overcome what he called American “misunderstanding.” Ike
received him with platitudes about spiritual and moral partnership, then terminated
American foreign aid to force Souvanna to abandon neutrality for the American
camp. Eisenhower also used the CIA to finance a right-wing coalition of young
Laotians to defeat Souvanna’s party in elections.
John F. Kennedy also kept
Souvanna at arm’s length but rejected Eisenhower’s
advice to fight a war for Laos. Kennedy appointed W. Averell Harriman to negotiate
a settlement, which, in fact, led to the Geneva Protocol. Harriman convinced
JFK that Souvanna was the best that the United States could get.
“The Americans
say I am a communist,” the prince once said. “All
this is heartbreaking. How can they think I am a communist?
I am looking for a way to keep Laos non-communist.” Souvanna
said he wanted to build a bamboo bridge between the left
and right in his country.
As the situation developed, Washington’s
main man, General Phoumi Nosavan, grated and frustrated American
officials, constantly mounting military adventures—nearly
all of which failed. In the worst, early in 1962, Phoumi
fought a battle at a place called Nam Tha, a Dien Bien Phu-style
siege in which the Royal Laotian Armed Forces (RLAF) lost
some of its best units. This suddenly made a Geneva agreement
necessary from the military point of view. Souvanna Phouma’s
leadership soon began to look positively promising to President
Kennedy.
The regime that came out of the Geneva negotiations,
the Second Coalition (the first had been in the 1950s), was
a “troika,” so-called because ministers
represented each of the three political tendencies in the
country. Each faction held territory and had its own armed
forces. In effect, this was an informal partition of Laos.
In
Vientiane, the administrative capital, each faction had its
own police and security troops in the city. Government ministers
from the Pathet Lao retained a personal guard force of a
hundred men. General Phoumi became minister of finance while
retaining his command of the RLAF.
A side pact among the Lao
parties (the “Three Princes’ Agreement”)
provided for unification of the government and armed forces,
but progress depended on the confidence of the factions,
all of which were intensely suspicious.
Still in place was
The International Control Commission (ICC), which was created
by the 1954 agreements that neutralized Laos the first time.
The ICC was weakened, however, by a rule that its conclusions
regarding violations had to be unanimous. This had a direct
impact upon compliance judgments regarding the Geneva Protocol,
which required the withdrawal of foreign troops as part of
its neutralization program.
North Vietnam exploited this weakness.
American intelligence estimated that the DRV had 9,000 troops
in Laos, divided between northern Laos, where a unit called
Doan 959 helped the Pathet Lao, and the southern panhandle,
through which ran the Ho Chi Minh Trail, replete with Vietnam
People’s Army defense units,
maintenance centers, and rest stops. The intelligence estimates,
however, never distinguished between the two, whose functions
were very different.
In addition, it is not clear whether
the estimates included Hanoi’s infiltrators
who were passing through Laos on their way to South Vietnam.
In 1962, there were 500-1,500 DRV troops in passage at any
given time. The People’s Army force
permanently stationed along The Trail grew from 2,000 in
1961 to some 4,500 in early 1964. So, somewhere between a
third and half of Hanoi’s forces were
engaged in activity very different from helping the Pathet
Lao fight the RLG. It is important to note that the United
States had no expectation that the DRV would take its troops
out of the panhandle and shut down The Trail.
While these
facts do not excuse Hanoi’s failure to meet Geneva
requirements, they do indicate that the DRV’s performance
came closer than suggested by the accepted version, which
almost uniformly ridicules North Vietnam for pulling out
a mere forty soldiers. That number was due to the ICC’s
establishing only two checkpoints to verify DRV withdrawals,
one at a border village, the other an airfield on the Plain
of Jars. The ICC teams witnessed an initial departure of
seventeen soldiers across the border, a flight out of eighteen
officers and men plus technical experts at the end of September
1962, and a final withdrawal of five unidentified North Vietnamese
in late October.
American intelligence reported, however,
the withdrawal of at least four People’s
Army battalions, totaling about fifteen hundred troops. State
Department intelligence and the CIA told Kennedy at a National
Security Council meeting as early as August 1962 that “we
do have evidence there is some genuine movement…as
well as the staged withdrawals.” By March 1963 the
CIA estimated North Vietnamese troops in Laos at 2,000-5,000.
The
best data on Doan 959 credits it with a headquarters staff
of about fifty at Gia Lam airfield, outside Hanoi, and a
forward command center in Laos. The North Vietnamese had
some planners and specialists at high levels among the Pathet
Lao (PL). Attached to each PL battalion were one officer
and one political adviser, with a staff of three to five
men helping them. At this time the PL units probably also
had military advisers at company level. This indicates a
total size of the DRV advisory contingent in the hundreds.
The balance of People’s Army troops
were in supply services and combat units.
The official history
of the People’s Army notes the dispatch to Laos of
infantry, artillery, and engineer battalions of two different
People’s
Army brigades, one division, and one independent regiment,
starting in November 1960—a total of 12,000 over the
period, without specifying strength at any point in time.
So, while Hanoi took only a fraction of its forces out of
Laos, the contingent of relevant forces in northern Laos
was smaller than usually claimed and the size of the withdrawal
larger.
Meanwhile, a new American ambassador, Leonard Unger,
arrived in Vientiane. Unger presided over a mission in which
the CIA and American military had a larger-than-usual role
due to their work with the right-wing faction and Royal Lao
Government. This greatly diminished with the post-Geneva
withdrawal, over which Unger presided. The Americans realigned,
but did not eliminate, their mission.
The Program Evaluation
Office (PEO), a disguised American military advisory group,
had sixteen hundred personnel in mid-1962. By the deadline
date in the Geneva Protocol, 665 had moved out. The United
States, therefore, also did not meet its obligation. More
importantly, the commander and many of these specialists
merely moved across the border into Thailand, ready to intervene
again.
According to Norman
B. Hannah, the State Department desk officer for Laos and
Cambodia, Harriman and Roger Hilsman, State director of Intelligence
and Research, concocted an approach that called for American
violations of the protocol in the expectation that DRV participation
would not exceed that which existed in mid-1962. According
to Hilsman, the National Security Council met shortly before
the protocol deadline, and he and Harriman briefed President
Kennedy together. Their judgment was that the DRV would keep
its military presence small and inconspicuous if “there
was continued evidence of an American determination to prevent
their taking over.”
On September 28, 1962, JFK approved
National Security Action Memorandum No. 189, which provided
for the withdrawal of the remainder of the American advisory
group, the maintenance of American combat troops in Thailand,
extra money for the Souvanna government, and a special intelligence
watch on the North Vietnamese.
The significant American subversion of the Geneva Protocol
came not over the minutiae of troop withdrawals, but with
the CIA paramilitary project that had created a large force
of mountain tribesmen, who were the most effective fighters
on the non-communist side. This initiative, Project Momentum,
had begun under Eisenhower in 1960 and recruited an armée
clandestine, a “secret
army” that fought the Pathet Lao and its North Vietnamese
allies on their own ground. Based primarily among the Hmong
tribe and led by a Hmong RLAF officer named Vang Pao, by
1962 the secret army numbered about 17,000 troops, a force
almost as large as the Pathet Lao.
While it was a key American
goal in the Geneva negotiations to preserve this armée
clandestine, the CIA intended to maintain it regardless.
As early as May 1961, when a provisional ceasefire was extended
over Laos in anticipation of negotiations, a CIA paper on
Project Momentum foresaw that under conditions like those
of the Geneva protocol, “The Meo [a slang pejorative
name for the Hmong used at the time] could be instructed…to
make a show of disarming and being pacified. The actual arms
they would turn in, however, should be only a small percentage
of their total armaments.”
The paper, likely prepared
by the Laos branch chief at CIA headquarters, Charles S.
Whitehurst, presented CIA’s view that the United States
had to commit to “full support of the [Hmong] position
at Geneva” and to “resupply
of [Hmong] units and their families.” A month later
the State Department Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs reported
on contingency plans for helping the Hmong, including one
to use the International Red Cross so the aid would be multilateral.
Nothing seems to have come of this idea. The United States
already was using the CIA airline Air America to supply the
armée clandestine
with emergency food aid and its arms and ammunition as the
Hmong, under Pathet Lao military pressure, migrated from
their old villages to new ones.
Another problem with the secret
army was that General Phoumi, Washington’s
key ally, feared it. His CIA case officer and next-door neighbor,
John Hasey, who often seemed to lead Phoumi in directions
antithetical to American and CIA policy, did little to change
Phoumi’s opinion. Washington’s antipathy
rose to such a level that the 5412 Special Group, Kennedy’s
covert operations managers, discussed removing Phoumi on
January 5, 1962.
Averell Harriman engineered Hasey’s
replacement, while agency station chief Gordon L. Jorgensen
was transferred to Saigon. His successor, “Whitey” Whitehurst,
solidly backed the armée clandestine. Meanwhile, Phoumi’s
military debacle at Nam Tha left Vang Pao’s army as
the only significant RLG resource in the Laotian uplands,
forcing Phoumi to moderate his jealousy. It was in 1962 that
the CIA first briefed Congress—the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee—on
Project Momentum.
When the Geneva protocol was signed, President
Kennedy carefully provided for the secret army along the
exact lines recommended by the CIA in 1961. Souvanna came
to Washington soon after the agreement. Kennedy first conferred
with his top advisers on July 27, and Harriman reported that
the Laotian prime minister had a more favorable opinion of
the CIA.
But Souvanna thought of the Hmong as bandits. Harriman
asked CIA director John McCone to take up the issue with
him but to “not reveal our first alternative
to hold Meos intact with arms hidden.” As for Hanoi’s
use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, “It was felt Souvanna
would not have the capability of policing this.” Harriman
and McCone met with Souvanna. The Americans felt they succeeded
in clearing the air on the CIA role and got Souvanna to agree
to “continued supply of rice and non-war materiel.”
The
Kennedy administration fully understood that it was violating
the Geneva Protocol. In preparation for a late-August NSC
review of American actions in that context, staffer Michael
Forrestal cited language from the 1954 and 1962 agreements
forbidding the introduction of foreign forces or war materiel.
At the meeting on August 28, the president asked what was
being done about Vang Pao. Harriman answered that the United
States had agreed with Souvanna on food shipments. Deleted
text in the document undoubtedly refers to military supplies.
Harriman also noted that the CIA still had advisers with
the Hmong, and that “their
presence would not constitute violation of the Geneva Accords
until after October 6” (the withdrawal deadline).
Air
America received the contract for supply drops (contract
AID-439-342). Souvanna Phouma also requested help, as he
did on September 24, to aid starving refugees. Air America
always benefited from the work, and the CIA appreciated the
contract as cover for Hmong flights.
In late September, when
the idea arose of demanding that the Russians formally renounce
their airlift supporting the Pathet Lao and neutralists,
Ambassador Unger advised: “To safeguard our efforts
to maintain Air America as unobjectionable civilian-type
airlift operation≤it would be prudent not
to object.”
Another issue was getting supplies to remote
locations—such as Hmong villages.
Souvanna worried Unger by suggesting that the supply arrangements
exclude “any
commercial firms under contract,” that is, Air America,
and that the flights operate under direct RLG control. Unger
warned Washington about the danger of “interference
and distortion by unfriendly officials.” Secretary
of State Dean Rusk agreed that no one should compare Air
America to the Russian airlift, publicly or privately. He
also directed the embassy to “begin immediately
to build up as much public support as possible among allies,
Souvanna, and ICC for continuation [of Air America] operations.”
American
plans did not forestall the Laotians. The next day Prime
Minister Souvanna presented a formal letter to Unger declaring
that aid to the Hmong must flow through the RLG, for “to
take any other course would be to give the ethnic minorities
the impression that the central government is weak and without
any real authority.” A second letter asked for American
help getting supplies to the three Lao armed forces—the
regular army, the neutralists, and the Pathet Lao.
Rusk instructed
Unger to respond with two letters, one accepting the request
to do the supply work (and inviting the RLG to inspect Air
America aircraft), the other specifically on the Hmong. Unger’s
reply said that “assistance
provided…will be carried out through USAID/Laos and
will of course be conducted in a manner consonant with the
civilian status of that agency and in conformity with the
provisions of the Geneva Accords of 1962.” That
meant Air America. There was no offer to inspect its supply
flights.
The Americans breathed a sigh of relief. On October
5, Unger told Washington that he had had subsequent conversations
with Souvanna, who had not stated any reservations. “This
would suggest we are in the clear on continuation of Air
America operations,” Unger said. He had said nothing
to indicate that Vang Pao’s secret army would be excluded.
Unger told Souvanna that a direct RLG-Air America contract
could be worked out “later,” and
it would be funded by the United States. The Russians, to
whom Souvanna sent similar letters, handed over some planes
for Laotian use, terminating their airlift.
So the Air America
lift to the armée clandestine continued in the face
of the Geneva Protocol. The Pathet Lao denounced the supply
flights. This operation remained very sensitive at all times,
and the provision of weapons and ammunition was particularly
delicate. The CIA’s Far East division
chief, William E. Colby, had weekly meetings with Harriman,
who was now undersecretary of state, at which arms for the
Hmong was a recurring subject.
“My arguments became
more forceful, reflecting the intense cables I was receiving,” Colby
said. Harriman approved flights individually, along with
packing lists. He also demanded that the weapons be used
solely for defense against the Pathet Lao, who continued
fighting Vang Pao, saying that the Hmong were bandits. Flights
bearing weapons were double-documented, with one set of papers
indicating they contained rice or non-military supplies.
As a result, the weapons became known as “hard rice.” Eleven
CIA arms flights took place between October 1962 and February
1963, in addition to the AID supply deliveries.
At the time,
Air America employed 275 people in Laos, among them 17 American
supervisors. The Vientiane station manager was Mason L. Stitt,
formerly of the U.S. Navy. The flow of supplies to the Hmong
averaged 40 tons a month by mid-1962, even though Air America
operations in Laos overall were down by more than two-thirds
since Geneva. Aircraft leases were cancelled. Helicopters
went to South Vietnam, but 14 transport aircraft continued
active.
Like Air America, the CIA reconfigured
its project with the secret army to minimize visibility.
Only two officers stayed at Hmong headquarters at Long Tieng.
Vint Lawrence was the senior adviser to Vang Pao. Anthony
Poshepny was the tactical adviser, with strict instructions,
which he ignored, to stay out of the field. In most accounts
this is the entire story, but there was more.
The CIA men
retained the services of two teams of a dozen Thai special
forces advisers. Three other teams of Thais moved to bases
on the border, from which they operated inside Laos. Another
CIA case officer, Art Elmore, remained for a time to build
supply dumps, then relocated with Jack Shirley elsewhere
in Thailand to run a training camp for Laotian irregulars.
In December they got their first group of trainees, mostly
Hmong, with a handful of other tribesmen.
Simultaneously,
Vang Pao concentrated at Long Tieng the five hundred soldiers
trained out-of-country and formed a “Special Guerrilla
Unit,” a formation
that became the mainstay of the armée clandestine.
Project Momentum continued under the direct control of CIA’s
Bill Lair, who left Vientiane to work from a village across
the Mekong in Thailand, then from Udorn. There was no question
of including the CIA army in the integrated RLAF envisioned
by Geneva.
Air America flew a lot and suffered losses. The
best known occurred on November 27, 1962, when a C-123 on
one of the Souvanna-authorized flights, piloted by Fred Riley
and Don Heritage, was shot down by neutralists while on final
approach to the airfield in the Plain of Jars. Americans
at first blamed the Pathet Lao. Ironically, the plane carried
supplies for the neutralists—flights approved
by JFK just three weeks before. The Pathet Lao shot down
an Air America plane over Padong, Vang Pao’s old village,
and one from a different transport company, Bird & Sons,
over the Laotian panhandle in January 1963.
Seeking a new
perspective, in January 1963 President Kennedy sent his NSC
staffer Forrestal and State INR chief Roger Hilsman on a
survey mission. They visited the Plain of Jars and Long Tieng
in addition to other stops. Forrestal studied the supply
problem in some detail. He concluded that “some new
arrangement must be worked out if we are to continue supplying
the Meo during the next year,” partly
because “despite…our official position…to
the contrary, we do not have a firm agreement with Souvanna
on supply flights to the Meo.”
Under continuing Pathet
Lao protests, Souvanna had begun backing away from his agreement
of October 1962, and Forrestal found problems with Air America
itself. Pilot morale had dropped and “Air America has
become politically about the most unpopular institution in
Laos. Its past associations are public knowledge…Souvanna
Phouma and Sophanouvong [his half-brother and a Pathet Lao
leader] both dislike it because its personnel have grown
so accustomed to behaving as if Laos were not a sovereign
country, that they have behaved…in
an arrogant way even toward right-wing officials.”
Forrestal
was right. Before he left Laos, Souvanna gave an interview
in which he claimed no knowledge of Air America supplies
to the Hmong and proposed that the U.S. (like the Soviets)
give the Laotians aircraft, which would be flown by American
crews. The Embassy in Vientiane knocked Souvanna down hard,
publicly referring for the first time to the October exchange
of letters.
The Hmong lifeline was in danger. Forrestal pressed
for making Hmong supply a subject for negotiation. He also
liked Unger’s
idea to draw up a white paper on Air America relief operations,
claiming that they were permissible and required for moral
and humane reasons. Released toward the end of January, the
paper argued (without visible basis in fact) that support
for the Hmong had been a condition of American adherence
to the Geneva Protocol. Unger and CIA station chief Whitehurst
were simultaneously attempting to come up with plans for
Hmong resettlement and self-sufficiency. Souvanna reiterated
his claim not to have known of the Air America flights but
did nothing to stop them.
By February the issue had risen
to the level of the International Control Commission. The
Polish ICC member demanded an investigation into whether
Air America was a “paramilitary formation” violating
the Geneva Protocol. In an effort to counter this, Forrestal
recommended and Harriman ordered an extensive State Department
study of Air America. Forrestal believed that the approach
should be that of a trial lawyer. The task was assigned to
John J. Czyak. By the time his analysis was finished, however,
the situation in Laos had gone beyond redemption.
Neutralism
As Washington and Hanoi eyed each other warily, both missed
the real developments that compromised Geneva. The story
of Laos between 1960 and 1963 is of the struggle to define “neutralism” and
give it application. What happened in Vientiane between July
1962 and April 1963 was the denial of the legitimacy of neutralism.
And both sides, because of their efforts to evade the Geneva
protocol, had forces ready to take advantage.
As a political
movement in Laos, neutralism began in 1955, when Quinim Pholsena,
a figure from the movement that opposed the Japanese and
French and prefigured the Pathet Lao, formed a political
party called Peace Through Neutrality (Santhiphap Pen Kang).
It was the major non-military, non-communist faction in Laos.
His political base was in Sam Neua Province, which became
a Pathet Lao hotbed. Pholsena’s
Santhiphab, a leftist non-communist movement, nevertheless
joined with the Pathet Lao for 1958 elections, because Pholsena
had many links to communist leaders.
Neutralism became militarized
with the defection of the 2nd Paratroop Battalion of Captain
Kong Le in 1960. He overthrew the government that Phoumi
Nosavan had empowered after ousting Souvanna Phouma the first
time. Souvanna left, accompanied by his CIA case officer,
R. Campbell James.
Kong Le reinstalled Souvanna in August
1960, but only a few months later General Phoumi roared back
with more troops, recapturing Vientiane. Kong Le retreated
to the Plain of Jars. Phoumi then made war on the neutralists,
not just the Pathet Lao.
Quinim Pholsena had been minister
of information in the Souvanna cabinet and became foreign
minister in the rump government Souvanna ran on the Plain
of Jars. Pholsena went to Hanoi to ask for help. The Soviet
airlift that began in 1960 was originally meant to help the
neutralists.
Much as the Americans tried to recruit everyone
in sight, the Pathet Lao attempted to propagandize and convert
the neutralists. This led to such odd combinations as Kong
Le units being “left-wing” or “right-wing” neutralists.
The anti-aircraft crews that shot down the Air America plane
in November were widely reported to be left-wing neutralists.
The Pathet Lao preferred to view Kong Le’s forces as
a wholly owned subsidiary, which General Kong Le did not
like at all.
Some reports allege that Pholsena was involved
in the Pathet Lao schemes. Others believe Pholsena was a
left-wing neutralist more by resignation than conviction,
and a nationalist fearful of Chinese encroachment. Pholsena
may have been capable of conspiracy, but were these conspiracies
he wanted?
He began supporting Colonel Deuane Sounnalath,
Kong Le’s artillery commander
and another left-wing neutralist, whose crews had destroyed
the C-123. Souvanna meanwhile threw his backing to Colonel
Ketsana Vongsouvan, Kong Le’s
chief of staff and longtime friend. On February 12, 1963,
in an act very unusual in Laotian politics, assassins murdered
Ketsana. On that very day Souvanna and Pholsena left Laos
with the king to tour all the countries that had signed the
Geneva Protocol.
General Kong Le responded by moving to suppress
Deuane. The five people he ordered arrested in the wake of
the Ketsana murder were all Deuane soldiers. According to
Hugh Toye, a close observer of the Lao scene at the time,
the real murderer sought refuge with the Pathet Lao.
Before
long, Kong Le privately asked the Americans to expand his
aid to include arms and ammunition. Kong Le’s moves
caused a split within the neutralist armed forces. Deuane
openly joined the Pathet Lao. Colonel Khamouane Boupha, with
1,500 or more men in far northern Laos, joined Deuane. Together
they formed the “Patriotic Neutralists,” accusing
Kong Le of “deviationism.” With
only about 5,500 troops, this split seriously weakened neutralist
power. The bulk of Kong Le loyalists were in the Plain of
Jars.
During this interval, General Kong Le had contacts with
Ambassador Unger and Phoumi Nosavan. He told Unger that Souvanna
and the king had received assurances that Beijing and Hanoi
would stop interfering in Laotian internal affairs. Kong
Le told Phoumi—and the general repeated to Unger—that
he had “liquidated” Deuane
and had the Plain of Jars well in hand. When an ICC delegation
visited the Plain, Kong Le told them that Phoumi must realize
that if he went under there would be no barrier between the
Phoumist forces and the communists. He also reported that
Hanoi’s troop strength near the Plain—the most
important war zone in northern Laos—stood at two battalions.
On March 29 Deuane and Kong Le troops began shooting at each
other after a fight broke out at the marketplace in Xieng
Khouangville.
That morning in Vientiane, before the first
reports of fighting, Unger met his Western counterparts to
discuss giving weapons to Kong Le. The American appealed
to the French for the use of their weapons stockpiled at
Seno in the Laotian panhandle. Using these would avoid a
Geneva violation. The weapons were old and scheduled for
shipment home, but the French ambassador agreed to consider
the proposal.
Ambassador Unger had instructions from Secretary
Rusk not to “tie ourselves
down with technicalities so that we fail to support non-communist
elements to the extent necessary.” Rusk had singled
out Kong Le in that regard. Kong Le himself had told Unger
that he was going to connect more closely with Vang Pao’s
CIA secret army. Unger made no objection.
On April 1 King
Savang Vatthana held a reception in Vientiane to mark the
success of his foreign tour. Quinim Pholsena left about 9:30
that night. As he alighted from his car, a corporal from
his own bodyguard cut Pholsena down with a burst from his
automatic rifle. Although Pholsena’s
stark white house stood at the corner of Samsenthai intersection,
one of the busiest in Vientiane, when a CIA officer reached
the scene within five minutes, he found vehicular and pedestrian
traffic normal. Passersby reported hearing two bursts of
automatic fire but saw nothing unusual. People assumed guards
had shot at an imaginary intruder.
One witness was pilot Mike
LaDue, sitting with a friend at a corner table across the
street, on the veranda of the Lido Bar, a favorite Air America
watering hole in Vientiane. LaDue remembers the sights, sounds,
and smells of the moment—including
the mosquito repellant spirals burning on the tables of the
Lido. He saw Pholsena’s
car, an expensive-looking Mercedes, pull up, and he heard
a burst of about eight shots, then two or three single shots
a moment later. The Air America men were so surprised they
spilled their beers.
In fact, the assassin had been picked
up by a car almost instantly and driven to Wattay Airport,
where he was arrested. He claimed to have acted on his own.
It turned out that he had previously been on Colonel Ketsana’s
bodyguard detail and supposedly was bent on revenge. Senior
members of Pholsena’s
own political party, though surprised at the killing, blurted
out references to something they called “the plan.”
The
Pholsena assassination triggered the final breakdown of the
Geneva Protocol. Some saw it as a right-wing plot, but the
context of the power struggle among neutralist forces seems
quite clear. Pathet Lao ministers fled from Vientiane. Fighting
flared on the Plain of Jars. In Washington, the State Department’s
Bureau of Intelligence and Research predicted: “Quinim’s
assassination is unlikely to lead to an immediate change
in Pathet Lao tactics” because
anything like an all-out offensive on the Plain of Jars “would
presumably require advance consultation with Moscow, [Beijing],
and Hanoi.” But,
in fact, the Pathet Lao intervened in force alongside the
left-wing neutralists on April 6. Colonel Deuane took refuge
with them at Khang Khay. Augmented by Pathet Lao forces,
his troops forced Kong Le back until he was holding on to
just a few defense positions.
Enter Vang Pao. It appears that the advance consultation
that occurred was between Kong Le and the Hmong leader, not
on the other side. Within 24 hours of the Deuane-Pathet Lao
offensive—while Ambassador Unger was still referring
to Hmong action as something to discuss with General Phoumi—Vang
Pao activated a plan in concert with the Kong Le forces.
His heavily armed Special Guerrilla Unit moved to a spot
near the Plain from which it could intervene. Other Hmong
forces took control of a bridge over which Kong Le could
retreat and, if necessary, move to block Pathet Lao supply
lines, and detachments joined up with Kong Le’s
forces to reinforce posts north of Xieng Khouangville. Vientiane
CIA station chief Charlie Whitehouse commented on Vang Pao’s
plan, accurately observing that while the secret army maneuvers
were being called “screening actions,” in
reality “the planning carries much further” to
the point of “aggressive
counter-P.L. action.”
What was Vang Pao’s angle?
The mere opportunity for alliance with Kong Le’s weakened
forces cannot have moved him. The surprise indicated in American
documents suggests he was not acting at the behest of Washington
or the CIA. The delicacy of the Hmong relationship with General
Phoumi, and the fact that Phoumi and the American embassy
had yet to decide upon any action, suggest that this operation
was not carried out under RLAF orders.
The best way to view
these actions is as Vang Pao’s bid to escape the straightjacket
imposed by Geneva. Instead of small and infrequent consignments
of “hard
rice,” Vang Pao could transform his situation with
Washington through an overt military response along lines
he knew corresponded to American policy preferences. Then
the CIA would be obliged to back the armée clandestine
to the extent of its capability. The tragic aspect of the
Hmong operation is that Vang Pao, in effect, dragged the
United States in behind him, eliminating whatever chance
there might have been to preserve the integrity of neutralist
government in Laos.
Vang Pao’s scheme worked well. On
April 10 there was a meeting of the National Security Council
at the White House. The State Department planning paper listed
continued supply efforts to Kong Le and the Hmong as the
lead recommendation, with inserting Phoumi forces into the
neutralist army disguised as “volunteers” immediately
behind, and approving Vang Pao’s “tactical redeployment” as
the third.
Averell Harriman supported the supply recommendation
and JFK approved. In a dispatch on April 19, undersecretary
of state George Ball warned that any effort by Kong Le with
Vang Pao’s help to recapture the whole Plain of Jars
would destroy anything left of the Geneva cease fire, but
the CIA’s Whitehouse countered
the next day that Kong Le was in extremis and his position
would be lost “if
not for flexibility now authorized to Meos.”
On April
20 the National Security Council approved initiatives to
secure support for Vientiane from London and Paris, along
with an approach to the Russians, the dispatch of a carrier
task force to the South China Sea, and preparation of plans
for coercive actions against North Vietnam. There was further
talk of supplies to Kong Le and Vang Pao at the NSC on April
22.
Shortly after noon on April 21, President Kennedy telephoned
Harriman. “Am
I talking to the architect of the Geneva Accords?” Kennedy
asked. “I
have been willing to say that,” Harriman answered, “And
if it goes down, to take the blame for it.” Jack Kennedy
replied: “I
have a piece of it, [too].”
War in Laos had resumed
and would continue throughout the Indochina conflict.
Available
records contain no evidence indicating that Hanoi exercised
direct control over the Pathet Lao and none that the Pathet
Lao deliberately tried to destroy the cease fire. Records
also do not show that Washington purposefully attempted to
return to a state of war. On the other hand, there is plentiful
evidence that both sides assumed that their adversaries had
no interest in abiding by the protocol and therefore took
actions at the margin, subverting it as a hedge to counter
the enemy.
The sides created a superheated situation in which
the fight for domination among Laotian neutralists ignited
a spark. North Vietnamese and American clients—in
this case the CIA secret army of Vang Pao—could pull
their sponsors into war. The first casualty became the neutralist
government in Laos. As for the Geneva protocol, the sides
chose to pretend that it worked just fine. Laos became a
secret war.
|
©2006-
2011, Vietnam Veterans of America. All Rights Reserved. 8719 Colesville Road, Suite 100, Silver Spring, MD 20910