BATTERED LAOTIAN TRIBE FEARS U.S. WILL ABANDON IT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001000020001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2001
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: October 11, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/030
~TF~'IIQ~I'
Battered Laotian Tribe Fears U.S. Will Abandon I
Vientiane 1
h
P am t
at the Meos,
I
By FOX BUTTERFIELD accustomed to living at heights
" r sped.l to zee xew York Times above 3,000 feet, find unin-
SITE 288, Laos, Oct. 5-Years Ihabitable.
ago, before the North Vietna- Chief Yong and other Meo
mese first shelled this village leaders interviewed in a tour)
with their big guns, Yong Dua of refugee villages near Ban Son! guns into our homes" withoutI
warning
thi
Mua was a great chief among
s week believe that their) I ch
.ld not tell the Meo He had rich you the rent
People. plight is inevitable, as in a son why they did d it, I do not
rice fields on the high moun- classical tragedy, know much," he added, holding
tains, pigs, chickens and a doz- "When I was young my certain words for emphasis in
en water buffalo. !grandparents used to tell me the beautiful, lilting Meo tonal
'Eve thing that the Chinese and Viet- language. "I cannot read or
rY a man needs to ?t
d ------ . I wn.e.
h
a
Since then many of the ,taken our land for generations,"
chief's family and friends have said the chief, a tall, heavyset
'died fighting in the Meo irregu. man much bigger than the av-
Ur army. that is supported by erage short, wiry Meo, "Even
Jthe United States Central in. if I had known 10 years ago
what I know now, I would have
itelligence Agency. A quarter of Imade
.his own people have been lost,
-and the survivors, encamped in
this place that does not even
have a name, are refugees de-
pendent on American aid
dropped from the air.
'll ~ accept the Vietnamese.
There was no choice."
As he spoke a flight of Unit-
ed States Air Force F-4 Phan-
tom jet fighters flew over on
their way to bomb North Viet
-
narri. In the distance a t.,,.n
It Is a fate shared by nearly forrtI
t
t
me
n
ernat onal
Develop
ent
200,000 Meos remnants of a circled lazily over a nearby vil-
proud race of mountain war- lage, dropping large burlap
riors, because since they took sacks of rice.
e agency is feeding most
up; arms-American arms-to T
h
fight the North Vietnamese, the the people in this area from
they have been driven out of doling lieoourentriceat cornmeal,
their homeland i
can
d
ne
n Northern
beef and cooking oil.
Laos and into their series of Whenever the Meos can settle
crowded valleys and ridge tops in one place long enough, they
around Ban Son, about 70e bjy to grow their own vegeta-
e
for Vietnamese' 'and for 'en-
emy" ' are one and the same.
The Hanoi radio feeds their
fear with daily broadcasts
,
Unit d antiwar feeling in the fuel anave d aibuildi depended States. mater al.
l
slash and bimost no land to
"If the Vietnamese attack us
,once more this year rice. Traditiurn to pland
onally pthey ume s-
Americans do not help us, I
help ofd distances by the number
will
d
just have to stay here and ne
r ays it took to walk to the
village
,
y
die," said Mr. Yong, who has ca
h
n
ear
their
neighbor
talk.
been a refugee from his home ing.
north of the Plaine des Jarres) One of the few signs of
since 1960. "We cannot move progress at Site 238 is the six-
e
ar village school, but there
again. y
JBetween the North Vietna- are only half as many pupils
as there were three years ago,
mere and the refugee settle. before the last big North Viet.
na
mese drive.
meets lies only the irregular
army's red
Eac se oubt at Long Tieng, small hdispensary lement
supplied sby
which was partly breached last A.I.D. Thousands of llleos have
spring and is considered highly caught malaria during their
mi
ti
gra
vulnerable.
ons because they had
South of Sit ?r yQ s qt R*W JZ901;/O.3I
no lm-
no
more mountains into which munity.
to flee, only the hot and humid Chief Yong's village original.
e a
rand that the United Jammed together near Ban Son
States will abandon them toi are still in the mountains,
thino d
north of Vientiane.
The Meos are tired, and they, hundred Although other then 288 and settlements
ar s
f
o not look right to the
their enemy-in Meo the word! Meos.
An Unfamiliar Environment
With all the crowding, there
is little left of the luxuriant
land halfway between -thej marriage of convenience and
Plaine des Jarres and the North I we made no promises," a high-
Vietnamese border. One nightiranking official who requested
in December, 1960, he recalls,
the Communists "fired their bigi
, Volunteers Without Pay
After that, the chief related,!
almost all the young men in his
village went to join the army.
"There was no pay in those
days, they all just volunteered,"
h
e said
The force he referred to was
being put together by a young,
tough and ambitious major in
the regular Laotian Army, Vang
Pao, himself a Meo. Now a
major general, Vang Pao went
u~'ir~ll
The New York Times/Oct. 11, 1972
Meo refugees are camped
in the Ban Son area.
into hiding south of the Plaine anonymity said, "I personally
'des Jarr
es early in 1961 and
began recruiting the mountain
tribesmen to battle the Viet-
namese invaders.
As his force grew General
Vang Pao also began receiving
arms and training from a small
group of Americans known as
a "white star team," prede-
cessors of the Special Forces,
who landed clandestinely at his
headquarters at Padong. Simul-
taneously, American planes
started dropping food to Meo
villagers who had been forced
to flee.
Meo leaders interviewed this
week and the Americans who
helped organize General Vang
Pao's force deny, as has some-
times been charged, that the
United States made a secret
"There was no deal, the Meo
as the Americans' first contact
Policy Developed 'Gradually'
"At first no one thought the
war would last more than six
only gradually as the fighting
went
1L -
_
t
on
the need to drop food to them
and then to start paying the
s
ldi
__ T,_ _ .
o
e
American officials here, many
of who
h
-
m
ave
10
as
years in Laos, feel a deep
sense of
responsibility fV11
A
'
? 1
nr~ 4
t z
f
feel in my heart a deep moral
commitment. The problem is,
these people are just too pure
for the filthy world we so-
called developed countries have
created for them."
There are no accurate statis-
tics on the number of Meos,
'civilian and military, who have
!lost their lives in the war. Es-
timates of the original number
in this country, whose popula-
tion is thought to be about
(three million, run from 200,000
Ito 350,000. Of these 80,000 to
100,000 are believed to be in
areas under Communist control,
according to Mr. Buell, who has
spent more time working with
the Meos than any other Amer-
ican.
Hospital Has Been Full
One of the few reliable esti-
mates of military casualties is
based on the relief rolls at Ban
Son, which, informed sources
say, list 4,500 widows of Meo
soldiers and 5,000 to 6,000 dis-
abled veterans.
This fall the 260-bed hospital
at Ban Son has been full of
001000020001-1
 Approved For Release
TO SOUND
E. B. del Rosario
Wash: Alas'. Regional Coordinator - VN.A.W.
Part One
On any given weekend night at the
Constellation Bar and Restaurant, even the
most casual tourist may find himself rubbing
elbows with agents of half a dozen countries.
These agents go under various official titles
and, capacities, such as "information
specialists," "rural development technician,"
or "embassy official," but most all of thckp_.
can . be placed into one occupational
category - espionage. The main attraction
of the Constellation is the agents, and not
the' music or the. food; for at Suzanne's
down the road, one can get better, especially
food. But since there's not much happening
in Vientiane, and there's few places to go to
hide, the Constellation becomes the center
of activity on weekends. After official
-working hours, this little city by the
Mektiong River tries to become a miniature
Saigon but without the wartime conditions
of its bigger sister.
While the resident agents are pursuing the
music, lights and slenderly built Lao
"puying;' another -group of men are busy
under bright flood lights at Wattay Airport,
working hurriedly, but competently, to
rpepare silver unmarked airplanes for early
morning flights. At the ramps of Air
America and Continental Air Services,
Filipino; Chinese and Thai mechanics are
checking, adjusting, 'tuning and
reassemblying every functional part of the
aircraft which must carry people and cargo
over the entire length of Laos. One by one,
the DC-3's, C-46's, C-123's, CAribous,
Pilatus, Porters and Helix Couriers are
checked and double checked, for these
planes must fly over some of the most
primitive terrain and under primitive
conditions for four to ten hours daily. As.
each aircraft is released by the flight
mechanics, other 'men take over the
preparation of the plane. Lao laborers hump
hundred-pount sacks of rice or cornmeal up
the inclined belly of the C-46's or cargo of
military wares into the ' Caribous and
C-123's.
Before the first rays of sunlight break on the
chcois of Buddhist monasteris, pilots are
receiving their briefings and assignments
from the operations sections. "Captina,
you're on Sixty Zulu this morning. Your
DZ's are Sixty-three, Eleven, Five and
One-Seven-Three. Weather is overcast at four
thousand, broken at twenty-five hundred.
Double-check your recognition signal at Site
Five . . . the Pathet Lao took Site Thirteen
last night." "Jim, take Fourteen Tango to
Lima Two-five and pick up'customer cargo."
Take off is at Zero-Six-Thirty."
STATINTL
The tone of the voice of the briefer is as
casual as the night life' of the espionage
agents and as casual as a bus drive. The pilots
of the aircraft fly cargos that would horrify.
the average United States citizen, the person
who' must pay for tile.- operations of tell
CIA's airlines. In the seemingly innocent
briefing given to pilot Jim are Words which
may open congressiorial investigations which
will make all other investigations into the
U.S. overseas operations seem trivial. Broken
down into layman's language, the briefing
means, "Jim, fly the C-46 cargo plane to Ban
Houic Sai and bring back a load of opium."
On a flight between Ban Houic Sai, a town
in the center of tell "Golden Triangle," the
world's richest opium growing region, a C-46
aircraft can carry between 12,000 to 14,000
pounds of opium. On some days, three or
four aircraft make such flights out of Ban
Houie Sai.
Note About the Author: Del Rosario was an
employee of Continental Air Services in
1967. As an "operations assistant " based out
of Vientiane, Laos, lie was responsible for
the monitoring of all flights in Laos for that /
CIA-financed transport corporation and for t/
the loading and unloading of all cargo. As an
associate to a British citizen studying the
languages of teh dleo and Yao hill tribes in
the Golden Triangle, del Rosario. was able to
learn niuch about the opium culture of the
region. On February 4, 1972, he testified in
San Francisco before representatives of the
national press and television networks about . .
his observations in Laos. Parts of his
testimony will be appearing in the next
issue.
.Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 R001000020001-1
 STATINTL
UNIVERSITY 'OF M-DTMOTA
Approved For Release 2001/03/04 1 P82 1601 R001
9 Feb 1972
eaiu~r~~is
Eye on high
With the electronic battlefield fast becoming a real
and the Navy planning to wire the northern quarte
Wisconsin to make the world's largest radio antenna
should come as no surprise to good citizens that fed
technocrats have devised the ultimate weapon in the
against illegal drug trafficking: "Space Narc."
Space Narc is the nickname for a planned orbiting
satellite capable of detecting fields of marijuana and
opium poppies from 100 miles above the earth. Ian'
Fleming couldn't have done better.
. The U.S. Treasury Department's bureau of narcotics
and dangerous drugs is currently spending $2 million on
the project to determine methods by which the plants can
be identified by the satellite.
The Department of Agriculture is cooperating with the
bureau by growing three large fields of marijuana in
Texas, Arizona and Florida to serve as test targets for
Space Narc's eye.
Should the satellite prove to be effective it might also
prove embarrassing for another governmental agency, the
Central Intelligence Agency(CIA), if there is and 6, :tr'u ~4 A
.tk.~ hares., made lzsttivep,13e editor r1,~;azi
a...gsi~1. ie that the agency is involved in the smuggling of
millions of dollars worth of heroin into the United States,
each year.
: The magazine cited a study conducted by a professor at
the University of California that traces the connections
between opium growers, CIA operatives, -flights of CIA-
controlled airlines and the eventual delivery of heroin to
the United States.
A former civilian aide to Continental Air Services (a CIA
organization) said in San Francisco Friday that he wit-
nessed opium being loaded aboard aircraft in Laos and
Thailand and that he had seen hundreds of acres of
cultivated opium fields planted by the CIA-supported Meo
tribesmen.
A former member of the U.S. Special Forces also said
this week he was assigned by the CIA to trade arms for v
opium grown by the Meo tribesmen, who would then fight
for the CIA against the revolutionary forces in the area.
The possibility that the bureau of narcotics will use
Space Hari, to uncover the double-handed dealings of the
C'IAy , ? evei , is obviously naive. Space Narc, if suc-
cessful, will undoubtedly circle the earth indicating field
after lush field of taboo weed in every. country graced with
a suitable climate. This information, however, is neither
new nor useful. The government knows already that
opium-growing and exporting is a major industry in many
Asian countries. Aside from general discouragement and
.threats of foreign aid stoppage, there is little the U.S. has
done, or for that matt ca ddo t
Approved For Release 200110344 elU'D 6 -n 1601 ROO 1000020001 -.1
oontinttod
 TIME STATINTL
Approved For Release 2QQtl/Q?fQ4 : CIA-RDP80-016
ter:.,
''7 F.
U.S. operations in Southeast Asia have often involved shadowy
figures, perhaps none more shadowy than the elusive, Jekyll-
'Hyde figure of Anthony A. Poshepny
MEN AT WAR/ BY DONALD KIRK
cheery man Poe is airplane pilot. He works for
TIE'S A ROUND-FACED
,
with a cherubic smile and a charming Continental Air Services." An assist-
family arid, it is said, a penchant for ant manager, also Japanese, showed me
preserving the heads of his victims in the -registration card Tony had signed
formaldehyde. Ile's a classic Jekyll- only a few days before my arrival at
and-Hyde who has been waging the the Amarin last June, in the middle of
most secret phase of America's secret my search for him. Tony, I learned,
war in southeast Asia for the past ten generally stayed at the Amarin, only
a few blocks from the modernesque
years
.
g
as ma
e on
s
To the boys at Napoleoii Cafe and American embassy. He was a familiar, a tribute both to his personality and
the Derby King on Bangkok's Patpong beloved character 'to the- staff at the his stealth. As I discovered while trac-
ima
e
bli
f hi
i
g
s pu
c
te o
Road, a watering ground for Air hotel-the oppos
ing him from the south of Thailand to
America pilots, CIA types, journalists as 'a sinister, secret killer and trainer northern -Laos, he already. had an
and. other assorted old Indochina of anti-Communist guerrilla warriors.
opulent home in Udorn for his wife, a
hands, he's just plain Tony Poe, but his Anthony A. Poshepny, ' read the tribal princess whom he had married a
real name is Anthony A. Poshepny. top line. "Air Ops Officer-Continental / year or so ago. Mrs. Poshepny, a tiny,
;He's a refugee from Ilungary, an ex- Air Services." So Tony, with a record) quick-smiting girl whom Tony had
Marine who fought on Iwo Jima and ,)f more combat jumps than any other
met while training members of the
a dedicated patriot of his adopted land, American civilian in Indochina, had met tribe for special missions i the
.
the United States of America, for used Continental as his "cover" while Yao liked for
come to Bangkok to
which he has risked his life on literally training mountain tribesmen to fight China,
shop while Tony conferred with his
hundreds of occasions while ranging against regular Communist troops guarded
"CIA
through the undulating velvet-green from both China and North Vietnam. CIA CIA," aile of the 'tcs on Amer the ican ggu ded
crags and valleys of Red China, Laos Tony's cover surprised me; I had as- at I should d have
and Thailand. sumed he would declare himself as It learned was that ironic Tony that
d at the ar[n.
He, also shuns -publicity and hates some sort of U.S. government."official" while in Bangkok, for it was only by
reporters, as I discovered in a long -perhaps an adviser to border-patrol.' ked In there at
search for him, beginning in the Thai police units, the traditional cover un- /the chance beginni that I ng h had c c sehecke Ina h only
capital of Bangkok and extending to der which CIA operatives masquerad J during small talk with the desk clerks
the giant' American airbases in north- in both Thailand and Laos. Still, Con- that I found one of Tony's registration
eastern Thailand and to the mountains tinental was a logical choice. Like Air . cards'.
of northern Laos. The search for Tony America, Continental regularly ferries card day after I arrived in Bangkok,
Poe ended where it had begun, in the 'men and supplies to. distant outposts -
lobby of the Amarin Hotel on Bang- throughout Indochina. Financed at locof sonic of of the gave rumors me, in mors urs first ink-
kok's Ploenchit Road, a crowded, six- least in part by the CIA, Continental, ling al journalists
Tony Poe. One ru the s j urround-
lane-wide avenue that runs through a could hardly balk at providing cover. Lance Woodruff, formerly- the
a reporter.
residential and shopping district sup- for full-time CIA professionals. on one of Bangkok's two English-fan
ported largely by rich American The next two lines on Poe's registra- gunge newspapers and now with the
"farangs," the somewhat demeaning lion form were even more intriguing Asian Institute of Technology in Bang-
Thai term for "foreigners." There, be- than his link with Continental, at least Akok, sa said Poe not only hated reporters
fore leaving Bangkok for the last time, in terms of what he was doing at the but had been known to a"do te away with
;I picked up a note, signed simply present. After "going to," Tony had people he doesn't like." Woodruff
"Tony," stating that he had to 'de_ written, Udorn, the name of the base compared Poe to a figure from Terry
'cline' m request for an interview. "I town. in northeastern Thailand from
y which the United States not only flies and the Pirates and told me the story
beelieve (sic] that you can appreciate y of how Poe lined one wall of a house in
my reason for not seeking public com- bombing missions over all of Laos but northern Laos, near the Chinese bor-
mentary," -wrote Tony in the formal also coordinates the guerrilla war . on der, with heads of persons he had
"statement style" better befitting a pub- the ground. And where was Tony
killed. with None h of the contacts I met in
lie official and probably suggested, if "coming from," according to the form?
Bangkok had the slightest, clue as to
not dictated, by a superior in the His origin was Phitsanulok, a densely Tony's whereabouts--except that he
Central Intelligence Agency. - Jung[ed mountain province famed for ?up-country training
"C-I-A?" asked the cute little Ja a- incessant fighting 'between Commu was somewhere
p tribesmen to fight the Communists,
nose .girl Ary~ fJdd (J~ R~I,t ~ds ? --RDP8A-0100'~bi0 00ta1-1
Amarin, eni era rng enc o Donald Kirk has batted around the Far trl unaware a oc syed at the
tors, smiling slightly 'with glittering
East for years, is now based in Tokyo Amarin, I drove to a town named
white teeth- raisine her evebrows fiir- _f Thnn cnn,e 'A5 miles northeast of
nist-armed gu rtr as, most o tern
members of mountain tribes, and ill-
trained Thai army soldiers and police-
men. .Tony, it seemed, had vanished,
into the wilds of Phitsanulok (whcre
the jungle is so thick and the slopes so
steep as to discourage' the toughest
American advisers) on a mysterious
training venture not known even to
most American officials with top-secret
security clearances, much less to the
girls behind the desk of the Amarin.
"Oh, he's such a nice man," one of
the girls in the hotel assured me' when
I asked how she liked Tony=who, I'd
been warned by. other journalists,
might shoot on sight any reporter dis-
covered snooping too closely into his
life. "He has very. nice wife and three
lovely children," tEe girl burbled on,
pausing to giggle slightly between
phrases. "He comes here on vacation
from tip-country." The impression Poe STATI?NTL
at the Amarin is
irl
the
d
h