AIR AMERICA OPERATIONS IN LAOS

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 03142329
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 26
• Document Creation Date: July 13, 2023
• Document Release Date: November 15, 2022
• Case Number: F-2019-00307
• Publication Date: February 6, 1970

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OGC 70-0218
DI:VS 70-0506
6 FEB 1970
MEMO RANDUM FOR: Chief of Operations, Far East Division
SUBJECT : Air America Operations in Laos
I. In accordance with your request of yesterday, there is attached
a blind memorandum which outlines the scope of Air America operations
in Laos.
2. Except for the General Counsel, who has looked over the paper,
and this Directorate, the paper has not been cleared within the Agency.
I suggest that your people undertake such additional clearance as is necessary
prior to its inclusion in the package for Dr. Kissinger as requested by Mr.
Chapin on 4 February.
Att.
cc: General Counsel
SlifiEj R. L. Owl.(,,,rinan
R. L. Bannerman
Deputy Director
for Support
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1. Air leverica. Inc.. has been actively engaged for some twelve
years in air euivort of operations in Laos. This support involves airlifting
substantial quantitIc f rice, other foodstuffs, supplies and military equip-
teent, refugees and iaeigeneus soldiers through Laos. Air America's operating
and maintenance faciiielee at 'Vientiane and at Udon Thant, across the Mekong
in Thailand and forty miles eouth of Vientiane, served as the blue of operations
during 1969 for 230 Aires, 46 fixed-v4r.g aircraft and 37 helicopters. These
pilots made 139,000 landings with fixed-wing aircraft and 157,300 helicopter
landings, while traeeoorting 739,000 eaesenger and 130,000 tons of cargo
In 1969. Some 120, 030 aircraft flying hours were required and this represents
a growth from 304 flying hours in 1917, the Company's first year of operation
in the interior of Laos.
2. The great ieajority of the landing strips used for fixed-wing
aircraft are in e,ountainous areas where only small sites can be developed.
Pregamely operations can be undertakee from one direction only due to
the gradient of the te -rain or the proximity of hills. One such strip is at
?hie Louang. It is at an elevation of 4500 feet, 596 feet long, 55 feet wide,
and has a dirt urfaee. I4ndings can only be made up-hill toothe south and
notices to pilots caution that the approach is subject to strong updrafts frow
the canyon off the north end of the strip. In addition to the small single-
engined aircraft that operate into these strips, Aix- America provides flight
crewe to ,ean C-L0e and C-1238 for operation into some larger landing areas
and for airdrops.
. There are 139 landing strips which remain active in Laos, approximately
200 more have been closed for one reason or another, principally the presence
of unfriendly forces. In addition, soine 240 helicopter pads are in current
use. Many of these operating sites are in close proximity to and even surrounded
by unfriendly forces and safe availability to Air America must be checked
before each day's operation. Navigational facilities are available at only
a half-dozen of the larger airports. In addition, a substantial portion of the
operation is conducted over territory held by unfriendly forces and subject
to ground fire. In the course of these service operations 56 Air America
employees have been killed and 56 aircraft have been lost or destroyed in
Laos of which 33 were helicopters.
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4. Although Air America first went in to Laos in 1957, associated
companies have been in Southeast Asia since participating in the airlifting
of supplies to the French forces in the ill-fated defense of Dien Bien Phu
In early 1954 ope:ating from Haiphong.
5. Living conditions in the interior of Laos are rudimentary, yet
pilots remain occasionally overnight at sites which can be considered reasonably
secure. Aircraft maintenance and communications station personnel are
frequently exposed for extended periods at remote locations. The transportation
and storage of supplies for up-country refueling is always a challenge.
6. Supporting the entire Air America operation are 21.3 Americans
and 1109 employees of other nationalities in Laos and 172 Americans and 1325
employees of other nationalities at Udon 'rhea', Thailand.
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TRANSMITTAL SLIP
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TO:
General Counsel
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FORM NO.
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REPLACES FORM 36-8
WHICH MAY BE USED.
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THOMAS H, KARAMESSINES
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February 1970
Air America:
Flying the U.S. into Laos
N THE CLOSING DAYS OF THE 1968 presidential campaign,
the Democrats made an eleventh-hour bid for the
presidency through a White House announcement that
all bombing in North Viet-Nam was being stopped and
that serious peace negotiations were about to begin. This
move was apparently torpedoed within 30 hours by President
� Thieu of South Viet-Nam who publicly rejected the coming
negotiations. Three days later, the Democratic candidate lost
to Richard Nixon by a narrow margin.
After the election, it was revealed that a major Nixon fund
raiser and supporter had engaged in elaborate machinations
in Saigon (including false assurances that Nixon would not
enter into such negotiations if elected) to sabotage the Demo-
crats' plan. It was also revealed that, through wire taps, the
White House and Humphrey knew of these maneuvers before
the election and that a heated debate had gone on among
Humphrey strategists as to whether the candidate should
� exploit the discovery in the last moments of the campaign.
Humphrey declined to seize the opportunity, he said, because
' he was sure that Nixon was unaware of and did not approve
� of the activities of his supporter in Saigon.
The supporter in question was Madame Anna Chennault,
and her covert intervention into the highest affairs of state
� was by no means an unprecedented act for her and her associ-
ates. Madame Chennault's husband, General Claire Chennault,
had fought in China with Chiang Kai-shek; after the war he
formed a private airline company. Both husband and wife
� have, through their involvement with the China Lobby and
the CIA's complex of private corporations, played a profound
role throughout our involvement in Southeast Asia. General
Chennault's airline was, for example, employed by the U.S.
� government in 1954 to fly in support for the French at Dien
Bien Phu. It was also a key factor in the new fighting which
by Peter Dale Scott
had begun in Laos in 1959; moreover, it appears that President
Eisenhower was not informed and did not know when his
office and authority were being committed in the Laotian ,
conflict, just as Nixon did not know of the intrigue of Mme.
Chennault. But that is precisely the point of parapolitics and
private war enterprise. ,
In its evasion of Congressional and even Executive controls .
over military commitments in Laps and elsewhere, the CIA
has long relied on the services of General Chennault's "pri-
vate" paramilitary arm, Civil Air Transport or (as it is now
known) Air America, Inc.
[HOW AIR AMERICA WAGES WAR]
IR AMERICA'S FLEETS OF TRANSPORT planes are readily
seen in the airports of Laos, South Viet-Nam, Thai-
land and Taiwan. The company is based in Taiwan,
where a subsidiary firm, Air Asia, with some 8000
employees, runs one of the world's largest aircraft maintenance
and repair facilities. While not all of Air America's operations
are paramilitary or even covert, in Viet-Nam and even more
in Laos, it is the chief airline serving the CIA in its clandestine
war activities.
Until recently the largest of these operations was the supply
of the fortified hilltop positions of the 45,000 Meo tribesmen
fighting against the Pathet Lao behind their lines in northeast
Laos. Most of these Meo outposts have airstrips that will
accommodate special Short Take-off And Landing aircraft, but
because of the danger of enemy fire the American and Na-
tionalist Chinese crews have usually relied on parachute drops
of guns, mortars, ammunition, rice, even live chickens and
pigs. Air America's planes also serve to transport the Meos'
main cash crop, opium.
The Meo units, originally organized and trained by the
French, have provided a good indigenous army for the Amer-
icans in Laos. Together with their CIA and U.S. Special
Forces "advisors," the Meos have long been used to harass
Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese supply lines. More recently
they have engaged in conventional battles in which they have
been transported by Air America's planes and helicopters (New
York Times, October 29, 1969). The Meos also defended, until
its capture in 1968, the key U.S. radar installation at Pathi
near the North Vietnamese border; the station had been used
in the bombing of North Viet-Nam.
Further south in lraos, Air America flies out of the CIA
operations headquarters at Pakse, from which it reportedly
supplies an isolated U.S. Army camp at Attapu in the south-
east, as well as the U.S. and South Vietnamese Special Forces
operations in the same region (San Francisco Chronicle, Oc-
tober 15, 1969). Originally the chief purpose of these activities
was to observe and harass the Ho Chi Minh trail, but recently
the fighting in the Laotian panhandle, as elsewhere in the
country, has expanded into a general air and ground war. Air
America planes are reported to be flying arms, supplies and
� reinforcements in this larger campaign as well (New York
� Times, September 18, 1969).
Photograph of.General Claire Channault by Slack Star
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Ostensibly, Air America's planes are only in the business of
charter airlift. Before 1968, when the U.S. Air Force trans-
ferred its operations from North Viet-Nam to Laos, air
combat operations were largely reserved for"Laotian" planes;
but it has been suggested that at least some of these operated
out of Thailand with American, Thai, or Nationalist Chinese
pilots hired through Air America. In addition, many of Air
� America's pilots and ground crews have been trained for ,
intelligence or "special" missions: a reporter in 1964 was
amused to encounter American ground crews whose accents
and culture were unmistakably Ivy League. And for years
Air America's pilots have flown in a combat support role. As
early as April 1961, when U.S. "advisors" are first known to
have guided the Laotian army in combat, Air America's pilots
flew the troops into battle in transports and in helicopters
' supplied by the U.S. Marines.
. The 1962 Geneva Agreements on Laos prohibit both "for-
eign paramilitary formations" and "foreign civilians con-
nected with the supply, maintenance, storing and utilization
. of war materials"; Air America's presence would appear to
� constitute a violation under either category. In calling Air
� America a paramilitary auxiliary arm, however, it should be
stressed that its primary function is logistical: not so much
to make war, as to make war possible.
[THE EARLY HISTORY OF AIR AMERICA]
0 UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEX OPERATIONS of Air
America, one must go back to 1941 and the establish-
ment of the "Flying Tigers" or American Volunteer
la Group (AVG), General Claire Chennault's private
air force in support of Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese.
At that time President Roosevelt wished to aid Chiang and
he also wanted American reserve pilots from the three services
to gain combat experience; but America was not yet at war
and the Neutrality Act forbade the service of active or reserve
personnel in foreign wars. The solution was a legal fiction,,
worked out by Chennault's "Washington squadron," which
included Roosevelt's "Brain Truster" lawyer, Thomas G. Cor-
coran, and the young columnist Joseph Alsop. Chennault
, would visit bases to recruit pilots for the "Central Aircraft
Manufacturing Company, Federal, Inc.," (CAMCO), a cor-
poration wholly owned by William Pawley, a former salesman
for the old aircraft producer Curtiss-Wright, Inc. and head of
Pan American's subsidiary in China. According to their
�� contracts, the pilots were merely to engage in "the manufac-
ture, operation, and repair of airplanes" in China; but
Chennault explained to them orally that they were going off
to fly and to fight a war.
In theory, the whole contract was to be paid for by the
Chinese Government; in practice the funds were supplied by
the United States Government through Lend-Lease. The
operation was highly profitable to both of Pawley's former
employers. Curtiss-Wright was able to unload 100 P-40 pursuit
. planes, which even the hard-pressed British had just rejected
as "obsolescent." Pawley nearly wrecked the whole deal by
.� insisting on a 10 per cent agent's commission, or $450,000, on
� the Curtiss sale. Treasury Secretary Morgenthau protested, but
. was persuaded by the Chinese to approve a payment of
$250,000. For its part, Pan Am's Chinese subsidiary was later
able to use many of Chennault's pilots in the lucrative charter
, airlift operations over the "hump" to Chungking.
40 RAMPARTS
It was agreed that Pawley's new CAMCO Corporation
could not take American pilots into the private war business
without presidential authorization, and there was some delay
in getting this approval. But on April 15, 1941, Roosevelt
signed an Executive Order authorizing the enlistment of U.S.
reserve officers and men in �the AVG-Flying Tigers. Thus
CAMCO became a precedent for the establishment of a private
war corporation by government decision. It does not appear,
however, that the CIA was quite so fastidious about obtaining
presidential approval in the postwar period.
After the war Chennault saw that a fortune could be made
by obtaining contracts for the airlift of American relief supplies
in China. Through Corcoran's connections�and despite
much opposition�the relief agency UNRRA supplied Chen-
nault not only with the contracts but also with the planes at ,
bargain prices as well as with a loan to pay for them. One of
Corcoran's connections, Whiting Willauer, promptly became
Chennault's Number Two man. With the generous financing
of the American taxpayers, Chennault and Willauer needed
only a million dollars to set up a new airline, Civil Air Trans-
port (CAT), the forerunner of Air America. According to The
Reporter, CAT was originally bankrolled by T. V. Soong, then
Chaing's ambassador to the U.S., whose personal holdings in
the United States�after administering Chinese Lend-Lease,
were reported to have reached $47,000,000 by 1944. There is
no sign that the Soong interest in the CAT-Air America com-
plex has ever been brought out. .
The World War was over, but the Chinese Revolution was
not. CAT, established for relief flights, was soon flying military
airlifts to besieged Nationalist cities, often using the old Flying
Tigers as pilots. Chennault himself spent a great deal of time
in Washington with Corcoran, Senator William Knowland
and other members of the Soong-financed China Lobby: he
campaigned in vain for a $700,000,000 aid program to Chiang,
half of which would have been earmarked for military airlift.
After the establishment of the Chinese People's Republic
in October 1949, Truman and the State Department moved
to abandon the Chiang clique and to disassociate themselves
from the defense of Taiwan. By contrast, CAT chose to expand
its parabusiness operations, appealing for more pilots "of
proved loyalty."
To help secure Taiwan from invasion, Chennault and his
partners put up personal notes of $4,750,000 to buy out
China's civil air fleet, then grounded in Hong Kong. The
avowed purpose of this "legal kidnapping" was less to acquire
the planes than to deny them to the new government pending
. litigation. It is unclear exactly who backed Chennault finan-
cially in this critical maneuver (Soong denied that it was he).
But it is known that shortly before the Korean war CAT was
refinanced as a Delaware-based corporation by "a group of
American businessmen and bankers." By the Winter of
1950-'51 CAT was playing a key role in the airlift of supplies
to Korea, and Chennault (according to his wife's memoirs)
was into "a heavy intelligence assignment for the U.S. Govern-
ment" (A Thousand Springs, p. 248).
(CHENNAULT'S AMBITION OF ROLLING BACK COMMUNISM]
C.
� HENNAULT'S VISION FOR HIS airline WAS summed up
in 1959, the year of CAT's entry into Laos, by his
� close friend and biographer, Robert Lee Scott:
'"Wherever CAT flies it proclaims to the world that
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somehow the men of Mao will be defeated and driven oil the
mainland, and all China will return to being free."
As late as March 1952, according to Stewart Alsop, the
Truman Administration had failed to approve the "forward"
policy against China then being proposed by John Foster
Dulles (Saturday Evening Post, Dec. 13, 1958). Yet in a CIA
operation in 1951, CAT planes were ferrying arms and possibly
troops from Taiwan to some 12,000 of Chiang's soldiers who
had fled into Burma. In his book, To Move a Nation, Roger
Hilsman tells us that the troops, having been equipped by
air, undertook a large-scale raid into China's Yunnan Province,
but the raid was a "colossal failure." Later, in the "crisis" year
1959, sonic 3000 of the troops moved from Burma to Laos. On
another CIA operation in 1952, a CAT plane dropped CIA
agents John Downey and Richard Fecteau with a supply of
arms for Nationalist guerrillas on the mainland.
In 1954 Chennault conducted a vigorous political campaign
in support of a grandiose but detailed proposal whereby his old
friends Chiang and Syngman Rhce would be unleashed
together against the Chinese mainland with the support of a
470-man "International Volunteer Group" modeled after his
old Flying Tigers. "Once Chiang unfurls his banner on the
mainland," promised Chennault, "Mao will be blighted by
spontaneous peasant uprisings and sabotage."
Chennault actually had a list of pilots and had located
training sites for the Group in Central America, where his
former partner Whiting Willauer, now U.S. ambassador to
Honduras, was playing a key role in the CIA-organized
deposition of Guatemalan President Arbenz. (Willauer was
also one of the two chief officials responsible for the planning
of the Bay of Pigs operation under the Eisenhower Adminis-
tration.) Chennault's plan seems to have had CIA support. It
was defeated however by opposition in the State Department,
Pentagon, and Nationalist Chinese Air Force.
CAT, however, had by no means been idle. It flew 24 of the
29 C-119's dropping supplies for the French at Dien Bien
Phu. The planes were on "loan" from the U.S. Air Force, and
some of the "civilians" flying them were in fact U.S. military
pilots. According to Bernard Fall, who flew in these planes, the
pilots were "quietly attached to CAT to familiarize themselves
with the area in case [as Dulles and Nixon hoped] of American
air intervention on behalf of the French." Well in a Very Small
Place, p. 241).
CAT's C-119's were serviced in Viet-Nam by 200 mechanics
of the USAF 81st Air Service Unit. Five of these men were
declared missing on June 18, 1954. Thus the CAT operation
brought about the first official U.S. casualties in the Viet-Nam
war. Senator John Stennis, fearful of a greater U.S. involve-
ment, claimed the Defense Department had violated a "solemn
promise" to have the unit removed by June 12.
From the passing of the 1954 Geneva Agreements until
Chennault's death four years later, CAT seems to have
played more of a waiting than an active paramilitary role. But
CAT continued to train large numbers of Chinese mechanics
at its huge Taiwan facility. As a right-wing eulogist observed
in 1955, they were thus ready for service "if the Communists
thrust at Formosa or Thailand or Southern Indochina... CAT
has become a symbol of hope to all free Asia. Tomorrow the
Far Eastern skies may redden with a new war and its loaded
cargo carrier may roll down the runways once more" (Saturday
Evening Post, Feb. 12, 1955, p. 101). '� � ' �
[ALSOP'S "INVASION": AIR AMERICA ENTERS INTO LAOS]
T_ . I-IE QUEMOY CRISES OF 1954 and 1958 were generated
s
in large part by a build-up of Chiang's troops on the
offhore islands, from which battalion strength com-
mando raids had been launched. While this build-up
was encouraged by local military "advisors" and CIA per-
sonnel, it was officially disapproved by Washington. The crises
generated new pressures in the Pentagon for bombing the
mainland, but with their passage the likelihood of a U.S.-
� backed offensive seemed to recede decisively. United States
intelligence officials later confirmed that the Soviet Union had
disappointed China during the 1958 crisis by promising only
defensive support. Some CIA officials concluded that the
U.S. could therefore risk confrontation with impunity below
China's southern border, since any response by China would
only intensify the Sino-Soviet split. The fallacy of this reason-
ing was soon to be made apparent.
After Quemoy, Laos appeared to present the greatest likeli-
hood of war in the Far East, though hardly because of any
inherent aggressiveness in the Laotian people themselves. In
1958, the non-aligned government which had been established
in Laos under Prince Souvanna Phouma appeared to be close
to a neutialist reconciliation with the pro-Communist Pathet
Lao. Fearful that this would lead to the absorption of Laos into
the Communist bloc, the United States decided to intervene, . i�
and Souvanna Phou- ma was forced out of office on July 23,
1958, by a timely withholding of U.S. aid. Egged on by its
. American advisors, the succeeding government of Phoui
Sananikone declared itself no longer bound by the provisions
. of the 1954 Geneva Agreements and moved swiftly toward a
covert build-up of U.S. military aid, including non-uniformed
"advisors." Even so, the CIA and the military were not
satisfied with the new government, which the State Department
had approved. As Hilsman and Schlesinger have revealed, the
cIA organized a right-wing power base under General Phoumi
Nosovan and made him a key figure in its subsequent scenarios.
CIA and Pentagon officials were now set upon a course, often
opposed to that of the U.S. ambassador in Vientiane, which
led to the further destabilization of Laos and hastened the
growth of the Pathet Lao. The CIA's plotting on behalf of
General Phoumi has therefore frequently been derided as
self-defeating. This assumes, however, that the CIA's interest
. was confined to the rather amorphous internal politics of
Laos; in fact the scope of its strategy is far wider.
In December 1958, both North Viet-Nam and Yunnan
Province in southern China began to complain of over-flights
by American or "Laotian" planes. These charges, which
Arthur J. Dommcn confirms, may refer in fact to "flights of
American reconnaissance aircraft." (Dommen's excellent book,
Conflict in Laos, was prepared with the aid of the Council on
Foreign Relations, published by Praeger, and dedicated to
one of the most notorious CIA agents in Taiwan and later
in Laos, Robert Campbell James). Soon afterwards, Peking
began to complain of U.S.-supplied Nationalist Chinese
Special Forces camps in Yunnan Province.
By March 1959, according to Bernard Fall, "Some of the
Nationalist Chinese guerrillas operating in the Shan states of
neighboring Burma had crossed over into Laotian territory
and were being supplied by an airlift, of 'unknown planes.'"
Laos was already beginning .to be what it has since clearly
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become: a cockpit for international confrontation.
In 1959, following a government crackdown against the
leaders and military forces of the Pathet Lao, the country
saw an outbreak of sporadic fighting which General Phoumi
quickly labeled a North Vietnamese "invasion." On August
23, the New York Times reported the arrival of two CAT
transports in the Laotian capital, Vientiane. More transports
� arrived soon thereafter. On August 30, a "crisis" occurred
which was to be used as a pretext for a permanent paramilitary
airlift operation. (Also, sometime about this period, before
y September 30, 1959, CAT, Inc. changed its name to Air
America, Inc.)
� All through August, reports from three of Phoumi's generals
created a minor war hysteria in the U.S. press, which depicted
an invasion of Laos by five or more North Vietnamese
battalions. At one point, when August rains washed out a
bridge, the New York Times reported "Laos Insurgents Take
Army Post Close to Capital," and speculated that they were
trying to cut off Vientiane from the south. As for the August
30 "crisis," the Washington Post wrote that 3500 communist
rebels, "including regular Vietminh troops, have captured 80
� villages in a new attack in northern Laos." Much later, it was
" learned that in fact not 80 but three villages had been evacu-
ated, after two of them had been briefly blanketed by 81-mm
mortar fire at dawn on August 30. No infantry attack had
been observed: the defending garrisons, as so often happened
in Laos, had simply fled.
After it was all over, the Laotian government claimed only
that it had lost 92 men during the period of the "invasion"
crisis from July 16 to October 7, 1959; more than half of these
deaths ("estimated at 50 killed") took place on August 30. A
U.N. investigating team, after personal interviews, reduced
the latter estimate from 50 to five. Further, as a RAND
Corporation report for the U.S. Air Force concluded, "it is
�� apparent that the Sananikone government precipitated the
final crisis which led to war in Laos." No North Vietnamese
invaders were ever discovered. Though the Laotians claimed
at one point to have seven North Vietnamese prisoners, it was
later admitted that these were deserters who had crossed over
from North Viet-Nam in order to surrender.
Joseph Alsop, however, who had arrived in Laos just in
time to report the events of August 30, wrote immediately of
a "massive new attack on Laos" by "at least three and perhaps
five new battalions of enemy troops from North Viet-Nam." In
the next few days he would write of "aggression, as naked, as
flagrant as a Soviet-East German attack on West Germany,"
noting that "the age-old process of Chinese expansion has
begun again with a new explosive force." Unlike most re-
porters, Alsop could claim to have first-hand reports: on Sep-
tember 1 at the town of Sam Neua, he had seen the arrival on
foot of survivors (one of whom had a "severe leg wound")
� from the mortared outposts. Bernard Fall, who was also in
Laos and knew the area well, later called all of this "just so
� ; much nonsense," specifying that "a villager with a severe leg
wound does not cover 45 miles in two days of march in the
Laotian jungle." (Street Without Joy, p. 303). Alsop, by Fall's
' account, had been a willing witness to a charade staged for his
� benefit by two of Phoumi's generals.
As on many occasions between 1959 and 1964, Alsop's
� ' reports were to play an important role in shaping the Asian
developments he described. The London Times drew attention
to the stir his story created in Washington. Senator Dodd and
� others clamored vainly that in the light of the "invasion"
Khrushchev's impending visit to America should be put
off. Though this did not happen, there were three lasting conse-
quences of the "great Laos fraud" of August 1959.
First, on August 26, the State Department announced that
additional U.S. aid and personnel would be sent to Laos:
thus the military support program was stepped up at a time
when a congressional exposure of its scandals and futility had
threatened to terminate it altogether. Second, reportedly under
a Presidential Order dated September 4, CINCPAC Com-
mander Harry D. Felt moved U.S. ground, sea and air forces
into a more forward posture for possible action in Laos. (A
signal corps unit is supposed to have been put into Laos at
this time, the first U.S. field unit in Southeast Asia.) Third, the
planes of Air America were moved into Laos to handle the
stepped-up aid, and additional transports (over the approved
1954 levels) were given to the Laotian government. At the
same time a Chennault-type "volunteer air force" of U.S. ac-
tive and reserve officers ("America Fliers for Laos") was said
by the Times to be negotiating a contract for operations "like
those of the Flying Tigers."
The timing of these germinal decisions is intriguing. On the
day of the aid announcement, August 26, Eisenhower had left �
for Europe at 3:20 in the morning to visit Western leaders
before receiving Khrushchev in Washington. At a press con-
ference on the eve of his departure, he professed ignorance
about the details of the Laotian aid request, which had just
been received that morning. He did, however, specify that the
State Department had not yet declared the existence of an
"invasion" (something it would do during his absence). The�
date of the "Presidential Order" On Laos, September 4, was
the day allotted in Eisenhower's itinerary for a golf holiday
at the secluded Culzean Castle in Scotland. According to his
memoirs, which corroborate earlier press reports, "our stolen
holiday was interrupted the following morning (i.e., September
5) by bad news from Laos." Eisenhower added, "My action
on return to the United States was to approve increased aid
to the pro-United States government" (emphasis added). He
is silent about the troop movements he reportedly authorized.
Knowing this, one would like to learn why a U.S. response
to an artificially-inflated "emergency" on August 30 was
delayed until Eisenhower's virtual isolation five days later, even
though it could not await his return to Washington three days
after that. Once again it is the knowledgeable Joseph Alsop
who supplies the corroborating details: "Communications are
non-existent in little Laos. Hence word of the new 'invasion'
took more than 48 hours to reach the commander of the
Laotian Army, General Ouane Rathikounc. There was, of
course, a further delay before the grave news reached Wash-
ington. Time also was needed to assess its significance."
Bernard Fall rejects this explanation: "The Laotian Army
command ... did know what went on in the border posts since
it had radio communications with them." The Senate Foreign
Relations Committee would do well to investigate the resulting
possibility that the first U.S. field unit in Southeast Asia was
put in by a combination of deliberate misrepresentation and
evasion of proper presidential review. Washington columnist
Marquis Childs reported soon after the "invasion" that: "A.
powerful drive is on within the upper bureaucracy of Defense
and Intelligence to persuade President Eisenhower that he
, .
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must send American troops into Laos.... They will consist of
two Marine regiments of the Third Marine Division now
stationed on Okinawa and components of the 1st Marine Air
Wing, also on Okinawa [having been moved up in the course
of the crisis]. Notice would be served on the Communists�
Red China and North Viet-Nam�that if they did not with-
draw in one week, they would be attacked. According to one
source, they would use the tactical atomic weapons with which
they are in part at least already equipped."
� Senator Mansfield asked in the Senate on September 7,
whether the President and Secretary of State Herter still made
foreign policy, or whether the various executive agencies, like
Defense and CIA, had taken over. Today, with Air America
deep in Laotian war business, Congress should surely learn
.1 more about the arrival of CAT's planes in Vientiane on
t; August 22, more than a week before the U.S. government's
two critical policy decisions. The Chennault-inspired "Amer-
ican Fliers for Laos" would violate the provisions of the
Neutrality Act quite as clearly as had the Flying Tigers: was
there then an authorization from Eisenhower to parallel that
granted by Roosevelt? One witness Who might be called to
� testify is Joseph Alsop, who like some of the China hands in
the CIA and the Pentagon, had himself worked for Chennault
in China during World War H.
�
[AIR AMERICA HELPS TO OVERTHROW A GOVERNMENT]
AmouGH THE CIA'S General Phoumi was largely respon-
sible for the intrigues of the August "invasion," the
State Department's Phoui Sananikone was still in
office. On December 30, according to Schlesinger, the
CIA "moved in" and toppled Phoui.
A few months later, in April 1960, the CIA helped to rig
an election for their man Phoumi. Dommen reports that
"CIA agents participated in the election rigging, with or
without the authority of the American Ambassador. A Foreign
Service officer . . . had seen CIA agents distribute bagfulls of
money to village headmen." But this maneuver was so flagrant
that it discredited the government and led to a coup in August,
restoring the old neutralist premier, Souvanna Phouma.
Over the next few weeks, Souvanna Phouma's new govern-
ment succeeded in winning the approval of the King, American
Ambassador Winthrop Brown, and the new right-wing, but
pliant, National Assembly. In due course his pro-neutralist .
government was officially recognized by the United States.
Nevertheless General Phoumi, after consulting with his cousin
Marshal Sarit in Thailand, decided to move against Souvanna,
proclaiming a rival "Revolutionary Committee" in southern
Laos. Phoumi's first announcement of his opposition took the
form of leaflets dropped from a C-47 over the Laotian capital.
Presumably the pilot was an American mercenary, as the
Laotians were not known to have been trained to handle
these planes.
In the next three months, according to Schlesinger, "A
united embassy, including CIA [i.e. CIA station chief Gordon
L. Jorgensen] followed Brown in recommending that Wash-
ington accept Souvanna's coalition. . . . As for tliii Defense
Department, it was all for Photimk. Possibly with encourage-
ment from Defense and CIA men In the field, Phoumi ... pro-
claimed a new government and dbhounced Souvanna. The
Phoumi regime became the recipidht of American Military
aid, while the Souvanna government in Vientiane continued
to receive economic aid. Ambassador Brown still worked to
bring them together, but the military support convinced
Phoumi that, if he only held out, Washington would put him
in power." The words which I have italicized are inexcusably
misleading: Phoumi, from the beginning of his formal in-
surgency in September, had high-level CIA and Pentagon en-
couragement to oust Souvanna's supporters in Vientiane. The
proof of this was that while Sarit's forces in Thailand block-
aded Vientiane, Air America was stepping up its military
airlift to Phoumi's base at Savannakhet.
"It was plain," writes Dommen, "that General Phoumi
was rapidly building up his materiel and manpower for a
march on Vientiane. From mid-September, Savannakhet was
the scene of an increased number of landings and take-offs by
unmarked C-46 and C-47 transports, manned by American
crews. These planes belonged to Air America, Inc., a civilian
charter company with U.S. Air Force organizational support
and under contract to the U.S. Government."*
In October, Hilsman reports, Ambassador Brown was
telling Souvanna that the United States "had Phoumi's
promise not to use the aid against. .. the neutralist forces" in
Vientiane. Yet even as he did so, two men "flew to Savanna-
khet and gave Phoumi the green light to retake Vientiane"
(Saturday Evening Post, April 22, 1961, p. 89). The two men
were not some CIA spooks "in the field," but John N. Irwin II,
Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security
Affairs, and Vice-Admiral Herbert D. Riley, chief of staff of
the U.S. Pacific Command. Meanwhile the Meo tribesmen,
encouraged by the CIA, defected from Souvanna in mid.
October, at which point Air America .began supplying them
with materiel and U.S. Special Forces cadres from. Savanna-
khet. Despite the 1962 Geneva Agreements, this airlift has
continued up to the present.
[DECEMBER 1960: EISENHOWER O.K.'S AIR AMERICA IN LAOS]
HY DID TOP U.S. OFFICIALS deliberately' foment a
conflict between non-Communist forces in Laos, a
conflict which led to rapid increases in the terri-
tory held by the Pathet Lao? According to Time
magazine (Mar. 17, 1961), "the aim, explained the CIA, who
called Phoumi 'our boy,' was to 'polarize' the Communist and
anti-Communist factions in Laos." If so, the aim was achieved:
the country is today a battlefield where U.S. bombings, with
some 400 to 500 sorties a day, have generated 400,000 refugees.
"Polarization," as sanctioned by the Thai blockade of Vien-
tiane and a U.S. refusal of supplies, forced Souvanna Phouma
to request an airlift of rice and oil (and later guns) from the
Soviet Union, and in the end to invite in North Vietnamese
and Chinese "technicians." The first Soviet transport planes
arrived in Vientiane on December 4, 1960; and the Russians
were careful to send civilian pilots. As Dommen notes, they
were "following the precedent set by the United States."
� Schlesinger, so scathing about "CIA spooks" in Laos, is discreetly
Silent on thc subjcct of Air America. Even Hilsman, while attacking the
"tragedy" of inter-agency rivalry and the CIA's "attempt to 'play
God' in Lao political life," says merely that "air transports of a civilian
American airline began a steady shuttle to Phoumi's base in Savanna-
khet" (To Move A Nation, p. 124). It is important to remember that
Schlesinger and Hilsman (both ex-OSS) were intimately involved with
covert CIA operations clueing the Kennedy Administration.
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In late December an American transport was actually fired
on by a Soviet Ilyushin 14, and a major international conflict
seemed possible. Of course, there were some in CIA and
Defense who thought that a showdown with "Communism" in
Asia was inevitable, and better sooner than later. Many
more, including most of the Joint Chiefs, believed that
America's first priority in Laos was international, to maintain
a militant "forward strategy" against an imagined Chinese
expansionism. Thus the actual thrust of American policy, if
not its avowed intention, was towards the Chennault-Air
America vision of "rollback" in Asia.
The last weeks of 1960 were to see ominous indications that
anti-communist forces were only too willing to internationalize
the conflict, especially with the first reports in the Times and
Le Monde that General Phoumi's forces were being bolstered
by Thai combat troops in Laotian uniforms and by Thai
helicopters. The expulsion of Souvanna from Vientiane in
mid-December ended nothing; for the next 18 months Laos
would have two "governments," each recognized and supplied
by a major power.
Did Eisenhower authorize this race to the brink? Years
later, in 1966, an article in the Times claimed that the President
"had specifically approved" the CIA's backing of Phoumi
against Ambassador Brown's advice; the article however said
nothing about the Pentagon and Air America's airlift. Eisen-
hower's own memoirs, in an extraordinary passage, state quite
clearly that it was after December 13 (after the crisis posed by
the new Soviet airlift) that he approved the use of "United
States aircraft" to "transport supplies into the area." (Air
America's planes are clearly referred to, since the use of Air
Force transports was not authorized until April 26, 1961):
"As Phoumi proceeded to retake Vientiane, General Good-
paster reported the events to me. . . . He then posed several
questions: 'First, should we seek to have Thai aircraft trans-
port supplies into the area? Second, if the Thais can't do the
job, should we use United States aircraft?. . . I approved the
use of Thai transport aircraft and United States aircraft
as well!"
These last pages of Eisenhower's memoirs reveal how little
he was briefed by bureaucrats as they prepared for a change-
over to the incoming Kennedy Administration. Just as he
knew nothing of the detailed plans for an invasion of Cuba.
which had been approved by the CIA's "Special Group" on
November 4, so he apparently did not know that Thai
helicopters were already being used in a combat support role,
nor that Air America had been flying missions for Laos for
over a year.
This would help explain why a story reporting the crash of
an Air America plane in November on the Plaine des Jarres
was not carried in any American newspaper, though it was
printed abroad in the Bangkok Post of November 28, 1960.
(The plane's American pilot was wounded seriously; the Chi-
nese co-pilot, son of Nationalist Chinese Ambassador to
Washington Hollington Tong, was killed.)
It also fits in with the fact that U.S. officials announced on
December 7 (six days before Eisenhower authorized the
flights) that they had "interrupted military air shipments" to
Phoumi. � After the interruption, Eisenhower was asked to
authorize what was in fact a resumption of the airlift to Phoumi
? while apparently under the impression that he was initiating
it. Thus Air America was "legalized" just in time for the
incoming Kennedy Administration. For the purposes of this
legalization the Soviet airlift�which Pentagon machinations
had done so much to induce�was not a disaster but a godsend:
the airlift could now be justified to the President (as it was to
the people) by the formula that, as Sulzberger said, "we are
starting to match" the Soviet airlift.
ONSCIOUSLY OR NOT, Air America's operations were
leading our country into war in Southeast Asia. And
it is hard to believe that Air America's directors
were unconscious of this. Retired Admiral Felix
B. Stump, until 1958 U.S. Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, and
. Air America's board chairman since 1959, had told a Los
Angeles audience in April 1960: "World War III has already
started, and we are deeply involved in it." Later he declared
it was "high time" the nation won over communism in the
Far East, and he called for the use of tactical nuclear weapons
if necessary. Containment was not enough; we must "move
beyond this limited objective."
The Admiral was not speaking in a vacuum. Now in one
country, now in another, the tempo of U.S. operations in
Southeast Asia did indeed increase steadily over the next
few years. After a disastrow periment in the latest counter-
insurgency techniques in 1,,,t ;,,r example (with Air America
planes and pilots transporting the Laotian army), the Kennedy
Administration agreed in May 1961 to a Laotian cease-fire
and negotiations. One day later, Rusk announced the first of
a series of steps to increase the involvement of U.S. forces, in-
cluding Air America, in Viet-Nam. A year later the United
States signed the July 1962 Geneva Agreements to neutralize
Laos. Unfortunately, as in 1954 and 1961, the price for
U.S. agreement to this apparent de-escalation was a further
buildup of U.S. (and Air America) commitments in Viet-Nam
and also Thailand. No diplomatic agreements have ever
interrupted this slow but inexorable American buildup in
Southeast Asia. Hence it is not surprising that in the Paris
talks the other side has been intransigent about the principle
of U.S. troop withdrawal, nor that Nixon's public "Vietnam-
izing" of the war should be balanced by a secret expansion
of Air America's role in it.
Despite the '62 Geneva Agreements, Air America has never
dismantled its private war enterprise in Laos. Although the .
Agreements providently called for the withdrawal of "foreign
civilians connected with the supply, maintenance, storing, and �
utilization of war materials," Air America continued to fly
into Northeastern Laos, and it appears that some of the
uniformed U.S. military "advisors" simply reverted to their
pre-Kennedy civilian disguise. The first military incident in
the resumption of fighting was the shooting down of an Air'
America plane in November 1962, three days after the Pathet .
Lao had warned that they would do so.
What made the Air America coterie with its influential
backers in the Pentagon and CIA and its dependent Nationalist
� New York Times, Dec. 8, 1960, p. 7. "At the same time, they
added, the United States has accelerated delivery to South Viet-Nam of
military equipment needed to fight Communist guerrillas [and) also
has recast military training of the Vietnamese Army to emphasize
anti-guerrilla operations." The story shows how (as on many later
occasions) de-escalation in Laos was balanced by escalation in Viet-
Nam; and also how critical military decisions attributed to the Kennedy
Administration in 1961 had in fact been made by the Pentagon during
the lame-duck Eisenhower Administration.
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Chinese remnants from Burma, hang on in Laos with such
tenacity? Hilsman tells us that, at least as late as 1962, there
were those in the Pentagon and CIA "who believed that a
direct confrontation with Communist China was inevitable ,"
(p. 311). In his judgment, the basic assumption underlying the
CIA's programs in Laos, and particularly the airlift to the
Mcos, "seemed to be that Laos was sooner or later to become
a major battleground in a military sense between the East
and the West" (p. 115).
In 1962, says Hilsman, a CIA proposal for a "'covert' but
large-scale landing" on the Chinese mainland itself was turned
down; and in June 1962, on the eve of the Laos Geneva
Conference, the Chinese Ambassador in Warsaw was informed
(for the first time) "that no United States support would be
given to any Nationalist attempt to invade the mainland." This
apparent rejection of Chennault's old "rollback" proposals
did not however put an end to covert operations in Southeast
Asia�quite the opposite.
Now that a U.S. attack on China seemed less likely, first
Viet-Nam and later Thailand threatened to move toward
"neutralism" and a reapproachement with their Communist
� neighbors. Many observers now agree with Tom Wicker of
the New York Times that one important reason for Diem's
removal in November 1963 was "Washington's apprehension
that Diem's unstable brother, Nhu, was trying to make a
� 'neutralist' settlement with the Viet Cong and North Viet-Nam
through French intermediaries." �
In 1964 the increasing Vietnamese drift toward neutralism
became an ever greater argument for a U.S. escalation, but
President Johnson proved unwilling to authorize any dramatic
public steps in an election year. Once again, as in the election
year 1960, covert war proved to be the easiest answer to the
democratic vs. imperialist dilemma: how to appear peaceful
at home while intervening abroad.
Once again Laos was the perfect terrain: as in 1960, a CIA-
linked right-wing coup, followed by left-wing reaction, was
the moving cause for a major outbreak of fighting. Once again
Air America's planes were involved in continuous warfare, as
they have been with incremental escalations ever since. They
were now joined by jets of the USAF and Navy (on August 5,
1964, the latter were diverted from their Laotian targets for
the Tonkin Gulf retaliation). Once again (as in the election
year 1960)a covert buildup in Laos supplied the infrastructure
and air capability for a subsequent buildup in Viet-Nam.
0 AN EXTRAORDINARY EXTENT the history of Air
r
America is the history of America's recent involve-
r
ment in Southeast Asia. The airline has grown with
this involvement, so that by 1968 it had amassed a
fleet of nearly 200 planes and employed an estimated 11,000
people. (By comparison, its "competitor," the Flying Tiger
Line, which was the largest all-cargo carrier in the world when
Air America was set up, had only 22 planes and 2089 employ-
ees by 1968.)
It is a striking index of the real war strategy of the current
Administration that Air America's operations, far from being
phased out, are on the increase. The main problem Washington
sees in Southeast Asian policy is that the war has become too
public; the idea now is to hang on by re-emphasizing the
� C.f. The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam, Schurmann at al.-
covert while publicly "Vietnamizing" the war to dull popular
concern. Nixon isagain stepping up our undercover involve-
ments in Southeast Asia, with a special focus in Laos, a
battlefield rarely penetrated by nosy TV camera teams.
As the New York Times reported on September 18, authori-
tative sources confirmed that "United States B-52 strikes along
the Laotian sections of the [Ho Chi Minh] trail have increased
greatly in the last two weeks .. . as many as 500 sorties a day �
were being flown over Laos, and. . . the increase in bombing �
in Laos was part of the reason for the lull in the air war in
South Viet-Nam. . . . United States planes�of Air America,
Continental Air Services and the United States Air Force�
were flying reinforcements, supplies, and arms to advanced
areas, while American Army officers and agents of the Central
Intelligence Agency were advising local commanders."
There are clear indications that this upsurge in covert
warfare is slated to be an enduring rather than a momentary
phenomenon. In October, Air America was making job offers
to pilots who had been processed and given security clearances �
as much as three years earlier, but never employed. One
prospective flyer�who was told he would be based in Saigon
but could expect to operate throughout Southeast Asia�asked
why positions had suddenly become available after such a long
interval. The explanation was that Air America's operations
had been at a steady level for the last four or five years�in-
cluding the peak period of the Viet-Nam escalation�but that
they were now expected to increase!
And in the wake of the Tonkin escalation, one Washington
faction held, as Bernard Fall has written: "That the Viet-Nam
affair could be transformed into a 'golden opportunity' to
'solve' the Red Chinese problem as well, possibly by a pan-
Asian 'crusade' involving Chinese Nationalist, Korean and
Japanese troops, backed by United States power as needed."
(Vietnam Witness, p. 103.)
These strange lusts for conflagration, which do not seem to
have been sated yet, have never quite achieved official domi-
nance in Washington. But the old fantasies of rollback have
been nourished by Chennault and his successor, Retired
Admiral Felix Stump while each was serving as Board Chair-
man of CAT and Air America. And the tandem of Air
America and CIA did manage to advance the fantasy in Laos
�under Kennedy, it seems, as well as Eisenhower�by
strengthening the intransigence of General Phoumi while
"official" U.S. policy was to induce him into a neutral coalition.
What is the source of the quasi-independent political power
that has fueled Air America in such efforts? In the second part
of this article (to appear in the next issue of RAMPARTS) we
shall take a look at Air America's influential private backers
and directors, representing the Rockefellers and other respect-
able New York financial interests. Why should such pillars of
America's "external establishment" involve themselves in
such a shady enterprise, and why choose such a fustian
spokesman for rollback as Stump to be its chairman? To
answer such questions will take us deep into the intricate
involvements that will be seen to prevail between Wall Street
and the CIA.
Professor Scott is with the English Department at the University
of California, Berkeley and is a co-author of The Politics of
Escalation in Vietnam (Beacon).
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4 JAN 1970
EXTRACT from the Government Contractors
C OMMUNIQUE
No. 69-26, Dec. 22, 1969 REU.J V;i3 JAN
POLITICAL RISK GUARANTEE COVERAGE will be given to United
States contractors who take equipment overseas. The
guarantee just announced by the Export-Import Bank of the
United States applies only to equipment that is needed
for contract performance and which companies intend to bring
back when work on contracts is completed.
Coverage includes losses sustained as 'a result of civil war,
revolution, expropriation or confiscation, by govt action
without adequate compensation, or imposition of a law or
order which prevents the return of equipment to the United
STates under circumstances not of the contractor's making.
But, before the coverage is extended, the Bank requires written
assurance from the govt of the host country that it will
allow the importation of the equipment and that return of
the equipment to the States will be permitted.
Recopied 3 Jan. 70 fori)GDR (via Pres ent)
President
TIC
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ROOM NO.
BUILDING I EXTENSION
"" ".241 REPLACES FORM 36-8
I FEB 55 WHICH MAY BE USED.
Approved for Release: 2022/10/26 C03142329
(b)(3)
On