The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War (17 page)

French Foreign Legion battalions scrambled to build fortifications around the royal capital, helped by the Lao, but they were bewildered when one day their allies simply disappeared at the height of the danger. The French sector commander questioned the city’s governor and was told that there was no need for fortification, as the fabled Blind Bonze, an old monk renowned for his predictions, had announced that the Vietnamese would not take the city. ‘So we are preparing a festivity to thank Buddha for having saved our city once more from invasion.’
[38]

The Blind Bonze was detailed and precise in his prognostications. He stated that the Vietminh forces of the 304th Division and of Regiment 98 would be halted and retreat northward. This proved to be the case. Six days later, after going into a trance, the bonze predicted there were no Communist troops on the road to Vientiane - a fact confirmed by French intelligence a few days later.

As rationalists, the French decided to investigate the Blind Bonze, one Pho Satheu, who never left the pagoda in which he lived. His uncannily accurate predictions were duly verified by scholars, down to the smallest details. Indeed, so accurate were the bonze’s announcements that intelligence officers felt he must have connections with the Communists. This theory collapsed when he was able to tell an anthropologist, in front of witnesses, about a military countermove as it was being planned several miles away in French military headquarters.

The same anthropologist reported that the Blind Bonze had also successfully predicted - ‘merely for fun’ - the winning number in Thailand’s national lottery. In the face of such evidence one can only wonder at the folly of academics when the anthropologist in question ignored a direct warning from the Blind Bonze himself not to take a certain plane trip. The plane crashed, killing all occupants.
[39]

Perhaps nothing illustrates the gap between the later American approach to things and that of the Lao than the Blind Bonze, a holy man whose reputation was such that no one in Laos would dream of questioning his authority in a time of crisis. One can imagine the hoots of derision from analysts at CIA HQ, or the hard men in the Pentagon, had some luckless American intelligence agent been foolish enough to forward a report based on the soothsaying of the Blind Bonze, however accurate the sage’s predictions.
[40]

The courageous decision of the king to remain in his capital forced the French into the defense of northern Laos, a political decision which had far-reaching military consequences. France signed a treaty of friendship and association with the royal government on October 22, 1953, in which France promised to come to Laos’s aid if attacked. On November 20, 1953, Gen. Henri Navarre, the new French commander, sent a telegram to his government: ‘I have decided on a thrust upon Dien Bien Phu, whose reoccupation will cover the approach to Luang Prabang, which, without it, would be in grave danger within a few weeks.
[41]

Dien Bien Phu was to be the battle that marked the end of the French in Indochina. Lt. Vang Pao was leading a force of
maquisards
marching to relieve the garrison when the fortress fell after a hellish fifty-six-day siege. Too late to be of help, Vang Pao’s men stayed behind enemy lines to pick up the very few escapees from the bloody battle. (Out of an original force of sixteen thousand men, while most marched eastward only seventy-eight escaped through the jungle to Laos, and only nineteen of them were Europeans.) Meo villagers helped some to find rafts to navigate the rivers and provided armed escorts and guides.
[42]
Most histories ignore the fact that the French were finally defeated in Indochina defending Laos once more from an invasion by the Communist Vietnamese.

The settlement in Geneva in 1954 resulted in the loss of all Vietnam north of the 17th parallel to the Communist government of Ho Chi Mirth. The intention, to keep Laos as an independent and neutral buffer between Communist China and pro-western Siam, soon proved a failure. The repeated invasions of Laos’ northern provinces by Communist Vietminh proved politically beneficial to the enemy when two provinces, Phong-Saly and Sam Neua, were put under the administration of Vietminh-backed Laotian rebels who had proclaimed themselves Pathet Lao - the ‘Lao State’ (although no Pathet Lao representatives were present at the conference, and a Vietminh general signed the ceasefire with the French on their behalf). Attempts by Prince Souvanna Phouma to build national unity had given the Communist Pathet Lao - never more than a front for the Vietnamese Communists who had sponsored them since 1949 - undue political influence.
[43]

The Meo were cruelly rewarded for their loyalty to the French. Even after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, and as the Geneva conference was underway, the French continued to field their
maquis
units against the better judgment of their officers on the spot. ‘I hesitated to throw the
maquis
against the North Vietnamese,’ Trinquier said, ‘because I knew the war was lost.’

In an attempt to save them he organized the scattered
maquisards
into three regiments so they could be inspected by the commission of armistice and their numbers included in the negotiations, but the French negotiators in Geneva chose to ignore their existence as an unnecessary complication. ‘Everybody wanted to sign the agreement - they didn’t want to lose time on those “details”,’ Trinquier said.

Although the first Indochina war ended on July 21, 1954, after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the French continued to supply the
maquisards
with parachuted ammo and supplies until July 27. A Vietnamese division that was sent against them was destroyed, but at the end of the battle the Meo had no ammunition. Trinquier appealed to his American CIA advisers for help, but was refused. ‘So, as the people had no ammunition, they were defeated.’

With the French out of the picture, the United States now took on the backing of the Laotian economy. U.S. policy toward Laos since the original agreement of 1954 had exacerbated an already difficult situation: a large amount of money had been thrown at the problem, which resulted in bloating the army to a force fifty thousand strong - the only army in the world completely paid for by the United States - and creating a new class of corrupt and opportunistic officers. Instead of containing Communist strength, U.S. efforts - costing $300 million, which came to $150 a head, or twice the national per capita income - actually helped the Pathet Lao extend their control over the country and forced many neutralists into the Communist camp. In a deliberate policy aimed at wrecking attempts to create a nonaligned regime, the CIA backed Phoui Sananikone, an anticommunist, pro-western politician, to replace neutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma. The new prime minister was in turn replaced by Gen. Phoumi Nosavan when the army occupied the principal buildings in the capital. (The replacement of Phoui by Phoumi led George Ball to remark that it ‘could have been a significant event or a typographical error.’)
[44]

Direct U.S. military involvement, albeit clandestine, grew incrementally. The State Department set up a disguised military mission in Vientiane in 1959 called the Program Evaluation Office (PEO), where members wore civilian clothes and were described as ‘technicians.’ In reality they were infantry officers, led by a distinguished U.S. Army general, whose task was no less than forming and training a serviceable army completely staffed and officered by Lao.

In April 1960 a rigged election, masterminded by the CIA, legitimized Phoumi Nosavan, whom the agency saw as an anticommunist military strongman. The military strongman proved something of a disappointment, however, when he refused to go to the capital for his swearing-in, fearful he would meet with a violent death as predicted by a soothsayer.

It was during this period that the CIA remembered the
maquisards
. A CIA officer made contact with Vang Pao, now a major in the Royal Lao Army, and agreed to support him. ‘I got notice on Christmas Day to send 1,000 weapons up to Vang Pao, in Laos,’ said Brig. Gen. Harry ‘Heinie’ Aderholt, then a USAF major whose responsibility was to support CIA operations throughout the Far East.
[45]
‘I’ll be frank - I didn’t even know where Laos was and I was one of their planners.’ The weapons, including hand grenades, 40mm mortars, and all the equipment needed to supply a thousand men, were stored at the secret U.S. base of Tahkli in Thailand and then flown up to Padong - Vang Pao’s HQ before the founding of Long Tieng - by C-46.

Aderholt’s next task was to open a series of landing strips - Lima Sites - throughout the country, and find a plane that could land in them. He would fly over Laos together with Vang Pao and a CIA officer and drop a message to a village asking them to clear ground. ‘And if it looked all right we landed on it. There were strips that were just unbelievable - one off the PDJ was just four hundred and fifty feet long, while the thermals were so bad on another we called Agony that a landing could only be attempted in the early morning or late afternoon when they had died down.’
[46]

During this period the covert infantrymen of the PEO were replaced by four hundred clandestine Special Forces personnel from Okinawa, called White Star Mobile Training Teams. The White Star teams were particularly effective, it was noted, when working in conjunction with Gen. Vang Pao’s Meo.

The problem of feeding and caring medically for non-combatant Meo, which had so taxed the French, was handed over to Pop Buell, the Indiana farmer, who had come to Laos with International Voluntary Services, a Bible-belt version of the Peace Corps. But Buell was effective because he was able to draw upon the resources of the CIA’s Air America, rather than IVS.

At the same time that the Americans were increasing their military presence in Laos, the Soviet Union was also increasing its support of the Pathet Lao. Foreign meddling, especially the heavy-handed machinations of the United States, angered a young, idealistic army officer, Capt. Kong Le, who led his parachute battalion in an unexpected and successful coup on August 8, 1960. The ‘military strongman’s’ soldiers had broken and run when sent against him (perhaps intimidated by the young captain’s reputation that he had personally vanquished the bad
phi
that ranged over the PDJ at night, and also that one of his officers had seen Nquoc, the legendary monster of the Mekong that appears in times of crisis and on this occasion had prophesied a Kong Le victory). The captain seized power in the capital and turned the government over once more to Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma, who again attempted to create a neutralist government representing all political factions. But the plan failed, and Laos was plunged into a three-way civil war between rightists, neutralists, and the Communist Pathet Lao. A political situation of the utmost danger had developed. The superpowers backed opposing factions, and suddenly the United States found itself in a head-on confrontation with the Soviet Union.
[47]

Throughout all this the country had not changed much. The only modern thing about the place seemed to be the war. There was only a single stoplight in the capital (a second would not be installed until 1970), and there were only 470 miles of paved roads throughout the country. Legal exports never exceeded an annual three million dollars (although illegal opium transactions swelled the coffers). The population probably amounted to no more than three million, although statistics were vague, as befitted such a dreamy place. It was absurd, but this sleepy backwater kingdom had become a theater of the cold war, and was about to become the setting for a possible nuclear conflict between the superpowers.

President Eisenhower had drawn a bleak picture of the situation in Laos when he briefed young President-elect Kennedy on the world’s hotspots.
[48]
Laos was the worst. Ike became emotional as he told Kennedy that the country was the key to Southeast Asia. If Laos fell the United States would have to write off the whole area. Years earlier he had outlined what had become known as the domino theory - ‘You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly’ - and now he was saying that Laos was the first domino and it was about to go.
[49]
It was imperative that Laos should be defended - with the United States going it alone if necessary.

It is difficult to remember today that in the spring of 1961 the world’s attention focused upon Laos. (Vietnam was of only minor interest - the
New York Times Index
for the year has twenty-six columns on Laos, only eight on Vietnam.) The trouble in Laos struck the new Kennedy administration as a serious crisis in the guise of a farce - a ‘Kung Fu movie’ is how George Ball described it.
[50]
At the first meeting on the crisis, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara inadvertently exposed his unrealistic view of the situation when he suggested arming a half-dozen AT-6s (old World War II fighters) with bombs and sending them against the Communists; the joint chiefs, on the other hand, said it would take 250,000 U.S. servicemen to control events in the distant jungle kingdom. The young president found himself hoist on the petard of his inaugural rhetoric - ‘to pay any price, bear any burden... to assure the survival and success of liberty’ - which he was now obliged to honor.