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Title: A Visit to Laos
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: July 23, 1970
Language: en
Topics: Laos, travel
Source: Retrieved on 30th October 2020 from https://chomsky.info/19700723/
Notes: The New York Review of Books, July 23, 1970

Noam Chomsky

A Visit to Laos

I

I arrived in Vientiane in late March, 1970, with two friends, Douglas

Dowd and Richard Fernandez, expecting to take the International Control

Commission plane to Hanoi the following day. The Indian bureaucrat in

charge of the weekly ICC flight immediately informed us, however, that

this was not to be. The DRV delegation had returned from Pnompenh to

Hanoi on the previous flight after the sacking of the Embassy by

Cambodian troops (disguised as civilians), and the flight we intended to

take was completely occupied by passengers scheduled for the preceding

week. Efforts by the DRV and American embassies were unavailing, and,

after exploring various farfetched schemes, we decided, at first without

much enthusiasm, to stay in Vientiane and try our luck a week later.

Vientiane is a small town, and within hours we had met quite a few

members of the Western community—journalists, former IVS workers in Laos

and South Vietnam, and other residents. Through these contacts, we were

able to meet urban Laotians of various sympathies and opinions, and with

interesting personal histories on both sides of the civil war. We were

also able to spend several days in the countryside near Vientiane,

visiting a traditional Lao village and, several times, a refugee camp,

in the company of a Lao-speaking American who is a leading specialist on

contemporary Laos. Officials of the Lao, American, North Vietnamese, and

other governments were also helpful with information, and I was

fortunate to obtain access to a large collection of documentary material

accumulated by residents of Vientiane over the past few years. Many of

the correspondents, both French and American, had much to say, not only

about Laos but also about their experiences in other parts of Southeast

Asia. Unfortunately, most of the people with whom I spoke (most

forcefully, the Laotians) do not wish to be identified, and asked me to

be especially discreet in citing sources of information.

It doesn’t take long to become aware of the presence of the CIA in Laos.

The taxi from the airport to our hotel on the Mekong passed by the

airfield of Air America, a theoretically private company that has an

exclusive contract with the CIA.[1] Many of its pilots, said to be

largely former Air Force personnel, were living in our hotel. If you

happen to be up at 6 A.M., you can see them setting off for their day’s

work, presumably, flying supplies to the guerrilla forces of the CIA’s

army in Laos, the Clandestine Army led by the Meo General Vang Pao.

These forces were at one time scattered throughout Northern Laos, but

many of their bases are reported to have been overrun. These bases were

used not only for guerrilla actions in the Pathet Lao-controlled

territory, but also as advanced navigational posts for the bombardment

of North Vietnam and for rescue of downed American pilots. There are

said to be hundreds of small dirt strips in Northern Laos for Air

America and other CIA operations.

After watching Air America parade by on my first morning in Vientiane, I

decided to try to find out something about the town. Behind the hotel I

came across the ramshackle building that houses the Lao Ministry of

Information, where one office was identified as the Bureau of Tourism.

No one there spoke English or even French. In another office of the

Ministry, however, I did find someone who could understand my bad

French. I explained that I wanted a map of Vientiane, but was told that

I was in the wrong place—the American Embassy might have such things. I

left by way of the reading room of the Ministry, where several people

sat in the already intense heat, waving away the flies and looking

through the several Lao and French newspapers scattered on the tables.

Across the street stands the modern seven-story building of the French

Cultural Center, whose air-conditioned reading room is well stocked with

current newspapers and magazines from Paris. French plays and lectures

are advertised on posters. On another corner is Vientiane’s best

bookstore, which sells French books and journals.

The contrast between the Lao Ministry of Information and the French

Cultural Center gives a certain insight into the nature of Laotian

society. For a European resident or a member of the tiny Lao elite,

Vientiane has many attractions: plenty of commodities, a variety of good

restaurants, some cultural activities (in our hotel a placard announced

a reading of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), the resources of

the French Cultural Center. An American can live in the suburbs,

complete with well-tended lawns, or in a pleasant villa rented from a

rich Laotian, and can commute to the huge USAID compound with its PX and

other facilities.

For the Lao, however, there is nothing. Virtually everything is owned by

outsiders, by the Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese. Apart from several

cigarette factories (Chinese-owned), lumber, and tin mines, one of which

is owned by the right-wing Prince Boun Oum, there seems to be little

that is productive in the country. After decades of French colonialism

and years of extensive American aid, “in 1960 the country had no

railways, two doctors, three engineers and 700 telephones.”[2] In 1963

the value of the country’s imports was forty times that of its exports:

Economic development has been virtually non-existent and the attempts by

the Americans to stabilise a right-wing and pro-Western regime by lavish

aid programmes led merely to corruption, inflation and new gradients of

wealth within the country and so played into the hands of the extreme

left, the Pathet Lao.[3]

In 1968, 93 percent of the exports were tin, wood, and coffee, while 71

percent of the imports (by value) were food, gasoline and vehicles. [4]

The Lao educational system presents a similar picture. It is estimated

that only about half of the children ever reach school. Of about 185,000

children in school in 1966–7, 95 percent were in the first six grades,

70 percent in the first three grades. In 1969, only 6,669 students were

enrolled in secondary schools. The American aid program has helped, but

it too tends to perpetuate the distorted pattern of education for the

elite. Secondary education has about the same funds as primary

education:

The school is still training a minority of the youth, particularly at

secondary levels, to take their place in administration. The biggest and

best schools are still located in the cities. The values and attitudes

communicated to children are still those of an urban-thinking,

technocratic West. The curriculum is still a catch all of often

unrelated pieces of information. And the concept of responsibility to

the nation is still not being taught forcefully anywhere in Laotian

society.[5]

The sensible Education Reform Act of 1962 remains largely a paper

program. Branfman concludes that “the school system is training a class

of consumers, not producers of wealth,” a Western-oriented elite that

might, at best, administer Lao society in the interest of the domestic

elite and its American backers.

Political life as well is limited to a tiny elite. The State Department

Background Notes, March, 1969, contends that “only a few thousand

individuals, many of them French-educated, participate in government and

politics; the bulk of the population is illiterate and politically

passive.” Surely this is true of the Government-controlled areas. I

shall return to the areas under Pathet Lao control later on.

The Lao elite do not seem popular among foreign observers in Vientiane,

who comment repeatedly on their venality and corruption. Typical is a

report by two French journalists who were at the site of a short but

brutal battle near Paksane, southeast of the Plain of Jars. They

describe the arrival by helicopter of “the strongman of Vientiane,

General Kouprasith,…the most powerful of the Lao generals,” well after

the battle was over:

A person with an enormous face and body, wearing heavily camouflaged

clothing, he approaches one of the 7 wounded soldiers waiting to be

evacuated, taps him on the shoulder, and cries coming toward us: “You

don’t see any Americans here, nothing but Laos.” Behind him, someone

brings over a case of pepsi cola and ammunition. The general has himself

photographed, arms akimbo, behind a cadaver presumed to be North

Vietnamese. It has been searched for an identity card by a soldier, but

in vain…. At the Paksane airport, we come across the American pilot who

guided the T28 bombing. He is dressed like a sheriff with sunglasses, a

cartridge box, and a pistol in his belt. He says to General Kouprasith:

“We have done a good job today, General.” He adds: “Don’t forget to go

see the colonel”—and he says an Anglo-Saxon name—”he is waiting for

you.” Kouprasith makes an impatient gesture.[6]

A well-informed observer describes the Royal Lao Government in the

following way:

Its corruption, lethargy and indifference is as great if not greater

than it ever was. Few people living under its rule actively support it.

American officials have been unable to push for basic reforms due to the

political necessity of getting on with the Lao civilian and military

elite so that continued American bombing will be permitted.[7]

I discussed these matters with a middle-aged Lao intellectual,

non-Communist and rather left-wing in outlook, a man who has had much

experience with the Royal Lao Government and who also lived for some

time in a Pathet Lao area. He seemed to feel that the only hope for Laos

was a Pathet Lao victory, though he himself, as a Lao bourgeois, did not

look forward to this with much enthusiasm. He felt, however, that

nationalistic and uncorrupted bourgeois elements would find a place in a

society organized by the Pathet Lao.

For the RLG he felt only contempt, and he expressed his belief that even

younger men, though less dedicated to total corruption, would be able to

do very little. He recalled that while the Government of National Union

was functioning, Prince Souphanouvong, the leading figure of the Pathet

Lao, was widely regarded as its most capable and efficient member, and

one of the few honest men in Laotian public life. He saw no sign that a

productive economy could be developed or that control by foreigners

could be overcome, in view of the nature of existing programs. He

mentioned efforts to develop a “neutralist” organization based on

younger, more nationalistic, and less corrupt segments of the elite, but

he had little hope of their success.

With some bitterness he gestured to the street outside the room where we

were talking, observing that every one of the stores that lined the

street was owned by a non-Lao. The Lao elite is busy building bowling

alleys, running the prostitution and opium rackets,[8] renting villas to

Americans, living at the exorbitant level permitted by the flow of

American commodities and the pervasive corruption. He felt that the

American aid program was essentially destructive in having perpetuated a

consumer-oriented society which benefited, while corrupting, the elite,

and in not having even begun to lay the basis for development or

modernization that would involve the Lao masses or create a productive

society.

Other knowledgeable observers agreed in a general way with this

analysis. One of them pointed to a large monument in the center of

Vientiane referred to as the “vertical runway” because it was built by

dictator Phoumi Nosavan with materials that were meant to be used for

improving the Vientiane airport.[9]

A young Lao teacher, openly sympathetic to the Pathet Lao, gave a

similar (though more vehement) account. Asked whether the Pathet Lao

were attempting to build a clandestine organization within Vientiane to

exploit such grievances and plan for an ultimate take-over, he said that

to his knowledge they were not, but that there was also no necessity to

do so. Many people, he reported, listen regularly to the Pathet Lao

radio, and have considerable, though hidden, sympathy for the Pathet

Lao. He referred to the elections of 1958, the only real elections ever

held in Laos, in which the NLHS, the political party of the Pathet Lao,

had done very well in Vientiane, and he asserted that these sympathies

would once again be revealed if honest elections could be held. He

claimed that similar sentiments are widely held among young urban

intellectuals, though they are rarely expressed in Vientiane, where the

atmosphere is that of a police state—albeit a rather lax and inefficient

one.

Vientiane is a place of rumor and suspicion. Direct access to news is

limited. Most of what appears in the press is simply based on American

Government handouts. Little of the country is firmly under Royal Lao

Government control. We were warned not to travel too far from Vientiane,

and taxi drivers made much of the dangers of going more than a few miles

from the city (partly, no doubt, because they could demand higher

fares). In a refugee camp about 35 miles from Vientiane along one of the

few roads that can be freely traveled, inhabitants refused to take us

out to the forest where, they said, men were working; they claimed that

the Pathet Lao were there and the danger was too great. One man finally

agreed to take us, but after leading us on a rather aimless path, said

that the trip was impossible. Again, there may have been other reasons.

Parts of the nominally Government-controlled areas are actually run by

the CIA, and no one seems sure where the CIA ends and the civilian aid

program, USAID, begins.[10] The CIA bases of Sam Thong and Long Cheng,

north of Vientiane, are in an area that is designated as uninhabited on

the detailed map that I bought at the Service Géographique National du

Laos, dated 1968 (supplied, I was told, by the US). There are reported

to be over 50,000 people in or near the two bases, and perhaps several

hundred thousand in the vicinity, almost all of them refugees. According

to the spokesman for the Pathet Lao Information Office in Hanoi,[11]

since 1964 these areas have been turned into “a second capital of Laos.”

They serve as the headquarters for Vang Pao’s Clandestine Army.

Correspondents and congressmen have been to Sam Thong. Long Cheng is off

limits. However, T. D. Allman made his way there on his own several

months ago, and last February in a TV interview with Bernard Kalb he

reported what he had found before he was picked up and shipped out after

a two-hour stay.[12] He describes Long Cheng as an immense intelligence

gathering and administrative logistics base, with a 3000-foot runway,

many planes, and rescue helicopters (one in the air constantly) to pick

up American pilots shot down by Communist anti-aircraft. He estimates

that ten to twelve Americans a month are lost in crashes of jets bombing

in that area from their Thai bases. The Forward Air Control planes,

which mark targets for the American jets, are also based in Long Cheng

and flown by American pilots. He reports that there are CIA houses

everywhere, which can be readily identified by their lack of windows and

their abundance of antennas and air conditioners.

Sam Thong has been reported captured several times, most recently in

mid-May, 1970.[13] It was abandoned by the Vang Pao army in mid-March

and occupied about two weeks later.

Allied sources said looting and vandalism by Laotian troops had reduced

the base to “a shambles.” The sources said looting had been going on

since government forces retook the base earlier this week. [14]

Most observers feel that the Communist forces can take these bases if

they are willing to pay the price, and that if they do the Vang Pao

army, largely composed of Meo mountaineers, may disintegrate, and may

make an accommodation with the Pathet Lao, or may be moved to Thailand.

This would be a major blow to the American effort since the Clandestine

Army is a more serious fighting force than the Royal Lao Army. While we

were in Vientiane there were almost daily rumors of an attack on the

bases, and North Vietnamese tanks were reported in the

vicinity��surprising, it seemed to me, in view of the intense bombardment

of Northern Laos, though it was pointed out that jet bombing is

ineffective against military targets in the jungle and mountainous

terrain.

II

The recent history of Laos contributes to the atmosphere of suspicion.

The first Government of National Union of 1958 was overthrown by

American subversion. As Ambassador Graham Parsons candidly remarked in

Congressional Hearings of 1959, “I struggled for sixteen months to

prevent a coalition.” An American military mission was operating at the

time, headed by a US Army general in civilian guise. In the 1958

elections, of twenty-one seats contested for the National Assembly, nine

were won by the Neo Lao Hak Sat (NLHS) and four by the candidates of the

Committee for Peace and Neutrality of Quinim Pholsena, a “left-leaning

neutralist” allied with the NLHS. Five right-wing and three non-party

delegates were elected. The NLHS had put up only thirteen candidates.

Its leader, Souphanouvong, got the largest vote and was elected chairman

of the National Assembly. The United States withheld funds, thus

impelling the Lao elite to introduce a new government headed by

“pro-Western neutralist” Phoui Sananikone. Shortly after, Phoui declared

his intention to disband the NLHS as being subversive, thus scrapping

the earlier successful agreements that had established the coalition. US

aid soon resumed and Phoui pledged “to coexist with the Free World

only.”

In December, 1959, he was overthrown by the CIA favorite, Phoumi

Nosavan, a Lao equivalent to the military dictator of Thailand (his

cousin, as it happens), who was also receiving substantial US support.

Although the coup government did not last, Phoumi retained his powerful

position as Minister of National Defense, thus controlling most of the

budget; and the extreme right won the ridiculous 1960 elections which

were so crudely rigged by the CIA and its favorites that even

conservative pro-US observers were appalled.

A coup by paratroop captain Kong Le restored Prince Souvanna Phouma, and

civil war broke out, with the Souvanna Phouma government, supported by

Russia and China, opposing the American-backed General Phoumi Nosavan

and the government of the reactionary prince Boun Oum. Recognizing that

its policies were failing disastrously,[15] the American Government

agreed to participate in a new Geneva Conference, which took place in

1961–2.

The settlement reached at Geneva, however, did not last long. After a

series of assassinations in early 1963, the two most prominent Pathet

Lao leaders, Prince Souphanouvong and Phoumi Vongvichit, departed from

Vientiane. As a RAND Corporation study by P. F. Langer and J. J. Zasloff

describes this incident, they left “contending, not entirely without

justification, that their security was threatened in the capital.”[16]

The other two NLHS cabinet members left soon after. The civil war

resumed with somewhat different alignments. This time the Americans were

supporting Souvanna Phouma and Kong Le, who joined forces with the Lao

right (Kong Le presently departed for France, where he now lives in

exile), against the Pathet Lao and the “left-leaning neutralists” under

Colonel Deuane.

According to the Geneva agreements of 1962, foreign troops were to

depart, along with all advisers, instructors, and foreign civilians

“connected with the supply…of war materials.” The United States claims

that North Vietnam never adhered to this agreement, leaving 6,000

soldiers in Laos. The Chinese claimed at the time that hundreds of

American soldiers simply changed into civilian clothes, as in the late

1950s. The Pathet Lao maintain that “after the signing of the 1962

Geneva Agreements on Laos, the missions of military ‘advisers’—PEO,

MAAG, PAG, USOM—put on a common civilian cloak: USAID.” They claim that

there were 3,500 such military “advisers” in civilian camouflage by 1968

and that “the whole system is directly under the US ‘special forces’

command, code-named H.Q.333 and based in Oudone (northeast

Thailand).”[17] In their RAND study published in September 1969, Langer

and Zasloff estimate that there are about 700 North Vietnamese military

advisers with the Pathet Lao.

Chinese nationalist troops supported by the United States remained after

Geneva, 1962, although some may have been evacuated. They were reported

at one time to number in the thousands, and are said to be a fairly

effective fighting force—the only Chinese fighting in Laos,

incidentally. Vongvichit estimates that there were 600 by 1968, and

reports that their activities were confirmed by an ICC investigation in

December, 1962.

American-supported Thai and South Vietnamese troops are also reported to

have remained.[18] Vongvichit asserts that “thousands of Thai soldiers

and agents, especially those of Lao stock and coming from northeastern

Thailand, have wormed their way into the royal army, police and

administration, or have mingled with the population in strategic areas

and economic centres.” Similar reports of Thai soldiers in Laotian

uniform are common, and generally believed, in Vientiane. No one has any

idea how many CIA operatives remained, or what in detail they were up

to, or to what extent they operate under civilian cover.[19]

Obviously USAID tries to implement American Government policy in Laos

and to build domestic support for the American-sponsored Royal Lao

Government. A more interesting example of the difficulty of determining

just how the United States is intervening in the internal affairs of

Laos is the case of the International Voluntary Services (IVS). This is

a private volunteer group that has attracted many idealistic young

people who are eager to help with modernization and development in

traditional societies, without mixing in local politics. IVS has

operated in Laos for about fifteen years. In 1962, the group was offered

a large USAID contract for work in Laos, and its membership grew to

about one hundred. The reasons for this sudden American interest seem

clear. Before 1962, most American aid had gone to the urban areas. In

fact, less than half of 1 percent of the extensive American aid

funds[20] were spent on agriculture, the livelihood of over 90 percent

of the population.

This was, of course, a factor in the support for the Pathet Lao revealed

by the 1958 elections and subsequently. As Dommen points out in his book

Conflict in Laos, the Pathet Lao needed no propaganda to turn the rural

population against the townspeople; indeed the enormous corruption and

graft associated with the aid program sickened many city dwellers as

well. In 1962 the US therefore decided to channel more funds to the

countryside and to do this through an American-controlled apparatus so

as to reduce corruption. The plan required the presence of Americans in

the villages, and IVS filled the breach. As one volunteer puts it, “IVS

became a private agency recruiting young, relatively idealistic

Americans to engage in politically motivated counter-insurgency programs

in Laos.”

Many of the volunteers worked in the Forward Areas Program, which is

described as follows in an IVS bulletin:

Forward Area Team operations…[are] composed of one or two IVS men. They

move into areas recently secured from the Pathet Lao with basic tools

and housing supplies and proceed with the “impact program.” The idea is

to help the people in these areas build what they need, whether it be a

well, school or dispensary; giving them a concrete example of the Royal

Lao Government’s and USAID’s interest in their welfare.

Since there are no USAID personnel in Forward Area field stations, the

IVSer, as a representative of USAID, works closely with the Chao Moung

[village leader] and the local military commandant.

In later years IVS workers were the only Americans in many rural areas.

Some were disturbed at the American Government connection. They felt

that they were serving in effect as propaganda agents for the US and the

RLG by virtue of their control of USAID commodities, and that they were

inadvertently giving military information to the American Government.

Even in some urban centers there has been dissatisfaction among

volunteers with USAID policy, which is administered in some cases by

“retired” military officers.

Since late 1969, IVS workers have been withdrawn to provincial capitals

for security reasons (several had been killed), and the scale of the

operation was also reduced. Many of the volunteers then joined USAID. In

many areas where IVSers formerly worked there is now no American or RLG

presence.

It is difficult to avoid concluding that IVS is acting on behalf of the

American Government and the RLG in the midst of a civil war. According

to an IVS handbook:

IVS…in Laos…is working by virtue of government contracts and its

activities must harmonize with US government policies in the broad

sense. There is, therefore, an obligation on the part of IVS team

members to endeavor to understand the nature of US policy and to avoid

actions or statements to outsiders that might impair US policy

objectives.

Whether IVS efforts actually help the RLG is open to question; some feel

that IVS activities simply reinforce the RLG’s image of incompetence and

corruption by showing that the rural assistance program must be

implemented by Americans. Nevertheless, the IVS can hardly serve as

anything other than an instrument of American foreign policy in

Laos.[21]

Pathet Lao spokesmen have no illusions about the role of IVS. Phoumi

Vongvichit writes:

At present Americans of the “Rural Development Service” [of IVS] go to

scores of provincial capitals and district centres, towns and villages,

in eleven out of a total of sixteen provinces in Laos to supervise the

implementation of that program, collect intelligence data and establish

political bases in the countryside.[22]

It would appear that these suspicions are justified.

What is true of IVS applies, far more clearly, to the American aid

program and, of course, to the direct involvement of the US through the

CIA and the military. From the information available, one must conclude

that there has been vast American intervention in the internal affairs

of Laos in an effort to defeat the Pathet Lao insurgents and establish

the rule of the RLG. This intervention includes heavy bombardment,

support for guerrilla activity in Pathet Lao-controlled areas (by the

CIA and its civilian air arm, Air America), the operations of the CIA

Clandestine Army, military operations of the US-supported and advised

RLG army, direct support to RLG administration and other programs, and

aid and development programs administered by the Americans sometimes by

way of purportedly neutral organizations. To a significant extent, these

activities are in violation of the Geneva agreements of 1962.

The American involvement is enormous. The Gross National Product of Laos

is estimated at about $150 million a year. In the fiscal year ending in

June, 1969, USAID spent about $52 million. In addition, $92 million was

spent on direct military assistance. The former US Ambassador, William

Sullivan, said this was “much less” than the cost of the American

participation in the air war over the northern part of Laos, which is

classified.[23] The costs of the air war in Southern Laos and the funds

expended in CIA operations are also unknown. In addition, there is the

matter of support for the Thai troops in Laos. On this the Symington

Subcommittee Hearings offer the following clarification:

Mr. Paul [of the Committee staff]: There have been reports in the press

that have ranged as high as 5000 new Thai troops in Laos. Is this

apocryphal?

Mr. Sullivan: Apocryphal?

Mr. Paul: Are there new Thais?

Mr. Sullivan: [Deleted.]

Mr. Paul: Do you know of any quid pro quo that was given by the

Americans in return for the Thai contribution to the Laotian effort?

Mr. Sullivan: Well, I think, as we mentioned earlier, the question of

these aircraft that were turned over to the Lao by the Thai, I believe I

am correct [deleted] that the United States then replaced those aircraft

in the Thai inventory. [Deleted.][24]

There is no available information on the cost of the American

intervention since 1962, but the following censored excerpt from the

Symington Sub-committee Hearings, p. 553, gives some indication of its

scale:

Senator Fulbright: As I understand it, the military assistance to Laos

has been [deleted] from 1962 to 1970, according to our figures.

Nonmilitary, economic assistance to Laos from 1946 through 1968…was $591

million. This is over a billion dollars.

Note that the reference is to the narrowest category of military

assistance, which cost only about $90 million in 1969.

The US has penetrated every phase of the existence (as well as the

destruction) of Laos. To cite just one relatively innocuous case,

consider the role of the US Information Service, the USIS, in

“information dissemination” in Laos.[25] About half of the programming

on the Laotian radio is music. Of the other half, USIS, according to

Administration testimony, “prepared or participated in the preparation”

of about two-thirds. USIS also participates in the publication of a

bimonthly magazine with a circulation of 43,000 (the largest Lao

newspaper has a circulation of 3,300). In addition there are films and

other printed material, pamphlets and posters, wall newspapers, leaflets

for air drops. In most of this “there is not US Government

attribution”—i.e., the impression is conveyed that these appear as

documents or programs sponsored by the RLG. But the Government witness

denied that any of this is done “covertly.” When asked to explain, he

answered as follows:

We do not hide our participation. It is not done secretly, and I believe

that many people, I think that most people, in the Lao Government, for

instance, or in the Lao bureaucracy are very aware of American

participation in the preparation of these things.

Thus one could not accuse the US Government of any covert attempt to

extend RLG influence over the population (or, as the more skeptical

would say, to pretend that the RLG exists).

The official justification for US involvement is that it is necessary to

defend Laos against North Vietnamese aggression. I will return to the

details of the charges and such facts as have been presented to support

them. A certain degree of skepticism, however, arises at once, deriving

in part from the record prior to 1962. There is no doubt that during

this period outside intervention in Laos was overwhelmingly American.

All sources agree that the Americans attempted to subvert the

accommodation of 1958 (and succeeded, as noted earlier), and that the

North Vietnamese played practically no part in Laotian affairs, nor did

the Chinese or Russians, prior to the events of 1960 described earlier.

During the 1960s, of course, the Vietnam war complicated matters. The

return of South Vietnamese cadres to South Vietnam from the North is

said to have begun in 1959, and involved sections of Southern Laos (the

so-called “Ho Chi Minh trail”). The American use of Thailand as a base

for the bombardment of Northern Laos and later North Vietnam dates from

early 1964, according to American Government sources (American troops

were sent to Thailand at the time of the Nam Tha incident of 1962[26]

and have remained there under the US Military Assistance

Command-Thailand, established at the time of the landing).

A second source of skepticism was expressed, in a different connection,

by Senator Symington in the sub-committee hearings:

We have an over $800 billion gross national product; the Vietnamese

[DRV] have practically none. We have 200 million people; the Vietnamese

some 17 million. We have been escalating the fighting out there for over

4 years. We have had nearly 300,000 casualties, but are now in the

process of acknowledging a stalemate, or a passing over, or some kind of

defeat. (p. 591.)

To accept the official American Government position, one must believe

that the Vietnamese are supermen, able to overthrow other governments

with a flick of the wrist, carrying out aggression throughout Indochina,

successfully countering enormous American military and economic

power—instead of a small, poor nation that has been subjected to

devastating bombardment in which virtually all of its meager industrial

resources, not to speak of most of its cities, towns, and

communications, have been destroyed.

It is perhaps surprising that these ludicrous charges are so widely

believed by Americans. Even self-styled “doves” continually refer to the

American war in Indochina as a war against Hanoi. I think it is fair to

say that the propaganda achievement of the American Government, in this

regard, is probably greater than that of any other use of the Big Lie

since the technique was perfected a generation ago.

III

Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American

participation has been veiled in secrecy. The veil was lifted slightly

by the Symington Subcommittee Hearings, but these still contain many

lies that are not challenged in the published record. To select just the

ugliest, William Sullivan, who presented the bulk of the

Administration’s case, stated that”it was the policy not to attack

populated areas,”[27] referring to the period 1968–9 (p. 500). He also

testified that as ambassador (until 1969) he approved each air strike.

Thus he must surely have known that the policy was precisely to attack

and destroy populated areas in the territory controlled by the Pathet

Lao. The evidence that the bombing has been directed against farms,

villages, and towns, most of which have been totally destroyed in these

territories, is incontrovertible.

Government deceit has been so great that virtually no Government

statement can be, or should be, believed. Consider, for example,

President Nixon’s speech on Laos on March 6.[28] The key paragraph is

this:

Hanoi’s most recent military buildup in Laos has been particularly

escalatory. They have poured over 13,000 additional troops into Laos

during the past few months, raising their total in Laos to over 67,000.

Thirty North Vietnamese battalions from regular division units

participated in the current campaign in the Plain of Jars with tanks,

armored cars and long-range artillery. The indigenous Laotian

communists, the Pathet Lao, are playing an insignificant role.

These claims are presumably intended to justify the American escalation

of the air war, for example, the first B-52 raids in Northern Laos in

early 1970.

When I arrived in Vientiane a few weeks after Nixon’s speech, I

discovered that it was a favorite topic of conversation and ridicule.

Every reporter in Vientiane was aware that only a few days before the

President’s speech, the US military attaché in Vientiane had given the

figure of 50,000 North Vietnamese, approximately the same figure that

had been reported by the US for the preceding year. This interesting

fact was reported by D.S. Greenway, head of the Time-Life Bureau in

Bangkok, who wrote that “the President’s estimate of North Vietnamese

troop strength was at least 17,000 higher than the highest reliable

estimates of the Americans themselves.”[29]

Furthermore, all were aware of how misleading these figures are. The

North Vietnamese invasion that Nixon attempted to conjure up was in the

Plain of Jars area, recaptured by Communist forces in February in a

five-day battle that reconstituted the territorial division that existed

between 1964 and August 1969, when the Clandestine Army of the CIA swept

through the area. Nixon’s figure of 67,000 North Vietnamese does not

distinguish between those in Southern Laos—really an extension of the

Vietnamese war—and those with the Pathet Lao in Northern Laos where the

“invasion” had taken place. It also does not distinguish combat troops

from support and communications units, which, according to military

observers in Vientiane, comprise about three-fourths of the North

Vietnamese forces, hardly a surprise when one realizes that they bring

all of their supplies, including food, through a heavily bombed area.

In fact, it is likely that this ratio is now too low. The effect and

presumably the purpose of the American bombardment in Northern Laos have

been to destroy the civil society administered by the Pathet Lao and to

drive as much of the population as possible into Government-controlled

areas. As Tammy Arbuckle reports:

Well-informed sources said the United States is pursuing a “scorched

earth” policy to force the people to move into government areas—and thus

deprive the Reds of information, recruits and porters.[30]

When the population is forced into Government areas or driven into caves

and tunnels, it can no longer provide support for the Pathet Lao and

North Vietnamese troops, who are therefore forced to rely increasingly

on supplies from North Vietnam. Hence the proportion of combat troops

must have decreased. Furthermore, the support and communications

“troops” are said to include a large percentage of women and old men.

There have been widespread reports, confirmed by American military

sources, that the largest attacks in the recent “invasion”—namely the

attack on Moung Soui and the Xieng Khouang airfield—involved about 400

Communist troops, apparently shock troops. As to prisoners, eight North

Vietnamese were reported captured in the “invasion” which recaptured the

Plain of Jars. In fact, since 1964 about eighty North Vietnamese have

been captured, a figure which may be compared to the 200 Americans

listed as missing in action or prisoners of war, in addition to

“something under 200” listed as killed in military actions in Laos.[31]

All of these statistics must be taken with a grain of salt. According to

every observer, the Pathet Lao and particularly the North Vietnamese

keep to isolated, heavily forested, and often mountainous areas. Few

refugees report contacts with Vietnamese. Despite the vast intelligence

gathering effort of the US, it is doubtful that any significant

information on the number of NVA troops is available.

Consider Nixon’s claim that in the recent offensive the Pathet Lao

played only an insignificant role. In support of this claim, American

military sources in Vientiane cite only one bit of evidence, namely,

captured prisoners. As noted, eight North Vietnamese were reported

captured (according to the Lao officers in charge of prisoners). The

American military claims that no Pathet Lao prisoners were taken.

However, Americans in Sam Thong have spoken to soldiers of the RLG army,

who do report that Pathet Lao prisoners were taken. There is also a

report, attributed to a source within the US Embassy, that between

twenty and thirty Pathet Lao prisoners were taken but were inducted at

once into the CIA Clandestine Army. From such statistics (eight, twenty

to thirty) one can conclude very little.

Informed observers who have attempted to sift through the available

information speculate that at most there may be 5,000 North Vietnamese

combat troops involved in the fighting in Laos—a figure which may be

compared with the 5,000 Thai combat troops reported, the unknown

thousands of Americans involved directly in bombing and ground

operations, and the other forces reported to be involved in the American

operations.

The Pathet Lao claims that there are 1,200 American Green Berets

fighting in Laos. This is denied by the Americans. The Pathet Lao also

claims that the CIA Clandestine Army includes tribesmen brought in from

Burma and Thailand as well as the Chinese Nationalist troops who remain

in Northern Laos.[32] Such reports are taken seriously by informed

observers in Laos, some of whom note that the multi-ethnic character of

the Vang Pao Clandestine Army must require American coordination and

control down to the field level.

American Government sources, though naturally antagonistic, also give

some idea of life in Pathet Lao areas, as interpreted by hostile

observers. The Embassy in Vientiane supplies two documents by Edwin T.

McKeithen, whom they describe as one of their outstanding specialists on

the Pathet Lao.[33] He writes that:

One of the most fundamental alterations [the Pathet Lao] seek in the Lao

personality is the addition of persuasion and guilt to traditional

authority as means of social control. P.L. cadres are urged to reason,

to question and to discuss with villagers until the villagers agree with

the P.L. viewpoint. Direct orders are not enough; people must be

“taught” until they genuinely believe in what they are doing. At the

same time, a villager who cheats or commits crimes against the state

must be enlightened until he feels guilty for his actions. This guilt

must arise from an internalized higher morality and not from a simple

feeling of shame or loss of face among fellows.

These techniques he describes as the introduction of “the rather foreign

concepts of persuasion and guilt…as mechanisms of social control.”

McKeithen does not explain what he would regard as more humane or

enlightened methods, nor does he explain wherein he objects to the goals

of the Pathet Lao effort to transform Lao society:

They have pressed for economic equality by introducing progressive

taxation and discouraging the conspicuous consumption that establishes a

wealthy villager’s status. They have almost eliminated the “wasted

resources” that are spent on bouns, marriages, funerals, and traditional

celebrations.[34] They have taken initial steps toward the

communalization of property by establishing “public” padi, by closely

controlling livestock sales and slaughter and by introducing public

ownership of livestock in the school system…. The status of women has

also been altered, as they have been given greater responsibility in

administrative affairs and have assumed jobs traditionally restricted to

men…. [They have set up] “youth organization[s]” devoted to lofty

principles and dedicated to the advancement of long-range goals.

Being fair-minded, McKeithen does not limit himself to these comments,

which he apparently regards as negative, to judge by the paragraph that

follows:

Finally, we should note the favorable aspects of P.L. rule as reported

by the refugees. They favored the ideas of adult literacy and

agricultural development but not the ways that the P.L. had been

carrying them out. They also spoke favorably of the virtual elimination

of official corruption.

Later on, he describes Pathet Lao measures to improve agriculture (use

of fertilizers and irrigation, directed by North Vietnamese

technicians); establishment of co-ops and local control of commerce,

displacing the former Chinese and Vietnamese merchants; progressive

taxation to support teachers and medics and a basic tax (15 percent

after exemptions) “to help the state”; educational reforms, including

primary schooling in virtually all villages and the introduction of

textbooks which “emphasize hygiene and better agricultural practices, as

well as self-denial, communal endeavor and solidarity against US

imperialism”; adult literacy programs; improved medical services; a ban

on polygamy and the practice of bride abduction in Meo areas; and so on.

In his study of the role of North Vietnamese cadres, McKeithen also

emphasizes their reliance on “patient counsel rather than direct

command,” their “softest of soft-sell approaches in dealing with their

Lao counterparts,” their “deep faith in the efficacy of endless

persuasion” and on “the spirit of brotherhood that should bond their

relationship.” He claims that “virtually all important policy decisions

are made by the NVN cadres, but in such a way that the decisions appear

to be the work of Lao officials.” However, he admits that he has very

little evidence since the refugees on whose testimony the report is

based had little contact with Vietnamese advisers.

The Vietnamese keep to themselves, even raising their own food. He

reports that Vietnamese served as political advisers at higher levels,

and that economic and other advisers work also at lower levels in giving

technical assistance and as teachers. North Vietnamese products are also

available at co-op stores, another way “in which their influence is

felt.” In listing government officials in Xieng Khouang province he

cites three North Vietnamese out of seventeen at the higher (Khoueng

Group) level (one a “group representative,” one an adviser, and one in

charge of irrigation) and none out of fourteen at the lower (Muong)

level.[35]

McKeithen claims that one of the goals of the North Vietnamese is “to

annex Laos and to till its underpopulated land.” Searching diligently

through his material, I can find three pieces of “confirmatory evidence”

for this judgment. One is a “brief entry” in a diary of a North

Vietnamese major found on the Plain of Jars, which states: “[We must]

help Laos without restriction, but we have to keep Laos with us to

realize permanent duty of [our] volunteer troops, [to] provide land,

[to] marry natives, and to be settled in Laos.” Second, “the North

Vietnamese have requested permission from the NLHS to move in 20,000

families—dependents of the NVA troops in Laos.” The request was turned

down by the NLHS, and the plan, apparently, was not implemented.

Finally, the North Vietnamese advisers were instrumental in instituting

a second rice harvest and extensive irrigation projects, and McKeithen

“cannot help but feel” that this is in anticipation of North Vietnamese

migration, since there is so much unused land. Since McKeithen’s papers

are obviously propaganda documents of the American Government, I assume

that he made as strong a case as he could for his conclusion, which,

clearly, must be regarded as lacking serious support.

The extensive RAND Corporation study by Langer and Zasloff also attempts

to demonstrate North Vietnamese domination of the Pathet Lao. [36]

According to the authors, the Vietnamese advisers

…provide experienced, disciplined personnel who add competence to the

operations of their Lao associates. We have found that these Vietnamese

advisers are widely respected by the Lao for their dedication to duty.

By their example, by on-the-job training, and by guidance, generally

tactful, they goad the less vigorous Lao into better performance. [p.

146.]

They also provide medical and technical aid, and have trained native

Lao, making “a beginning…in developing indigenous technical skills.”

Their “doctrine places great emphasis on winning over the population…one

would expect considerable tension between the Lao and their Vietnamese

mentors…but we were struck by how successful the Vietnamese were in

keeping such resentment at a minimum.”

When I discussed the social and economic programs of the Pathet Lao with

American Embassy officials they gave me the impression that they would

be favorably impressed with what the Pathet Lao had done and might

achieve were it not for the “North Vietnamese aggression,” which, they

argue, is the cause of the problems of Laos. One official agreed that

the Pathet Lao educational reforms were particularly good, but said that

the RLG was now imitating these programs, specifically the adult

literacy program. I tried to check this information with reporters and

with Lao residents of Vientiane who were familiar with government

activities. Their response ranged between skepticism and ridicule. I met

no one outside the Embassy who believed that the RLG was capable of

implementing such a program. Since I did not have the time to inquire

further, I must leave it at that.

The American Embassy was also helpful in providing me with data

supporting their claim that North Vietnamese aggression is the

fundamental problem of Laos. They directed me to reports of the RAND

Corporation and the ICC, in addition to the documents cited above.

Particularly conclusive, they argued, was an ICC investigation of a

complaint from the RLG on October 2, 1964, reporting the capture of

three North Vietnamese prisoners,[37] which was confirmed. The ICC

report concluded that these prisoners had entered Laos as members of

complete North Vietnamese army units from February to September, 1964,

in groups ranging from fifty to 650 soldiers. The report also stated:

The Commission notes with interest that this was the first time, since

the Commission’s reconvening in 1961, that it had been brought to the

attention of the Commission that prisoners, alleged to have been North

Vietnamese, had been captured by the armed forces of the Royal Laotian

Government and were available for interrogation.

The report opens with the letter of October 2 from the RLG containing

the complaints which it later investigated, as well as a letter of

September 28 from Phoumi Vongvichit, Secretary of the NLHS at Vientiane,

alleging that American aircraft based in South Vietnam had attacked

Laotian territory and parachuted South Vietnamese military personnel

into Laos, three of whom were captured (two are identified by name). The

latter charge is discussed in “a separate message,” presumably Message

No. 36. On returning to the United States I tried to obtain Message No.

36, but without success. I have been informed that it has not been

declassified (by the British Government, which is co-chairman of the

Control Commission). Though this fact naturally arouses suspicions,

nevertheless it is likely that the Message is perfunctory.

A second ICC document reports the investigation of a complaint that the

Officers School of the Royal Army at Dong Hene in Southern Laos was

attacked on March 8–9, 1965, by a combined Pathet Lao and North

Vietnamese force. The investigation confirmed the allegation. Most of

the captured prisoners testified that they were on their way to South

Vietnam.[38]

The final supporting document is a report of interviews with a North

Vietnamese adviser to a Pathet Lao battalion, Mai Dai Hap, who defected

in December, 1966.[39] The informant was a captain in the NVA and a

member of the Lao Dong (Workers) Party of North Vietnam. He claims to

have been one of thirty North Vietnamese assigned to Laos in February,

1964, to serve as advisers. He trained the personnel of a Lao battalion

and directed its operations. He served in the vicinity of Nam Tha near

the Chinese and Burmese borders. In February, 1966, his unit was sent to

Muong Long in the area of the Co, a highland tribal minority, near

Burma, in Northwest Laos, to defend a Pathet Lao base that was under

attack by RLG forces.

This was, according to Langer and Zasloff, a region in which “the

Vietnamese and Pathet Lao had built resistance bases against the French,

so that the Co people welcomed them heartily, especially after seeing

the Vietnamese with the unit.” Discouraged by the hardships of combat,

the feeling that he had failed in his leadership, and concern that the

enemy, now supplied with artillery and bombers, was growing in strength

and receiving support from the lowlanders, as well as by a number of

personal problems including his remarriage, he defected in December,

1966.

Captain Hap reports that in addition to military tasks he had a

political program containing the following topics:

1. Objectives and tasks of the Laotian revolution

2. The land of Laos is beautiful and rich, the population of Laos is

industrious; why are the Laotian people suffering?

3. Who is the enemy of the Laotian people?

4. The tasks and nature of the Laotian Liberation Army

One comment of Hap’s that is frequently quoted by American sources is

this:

Generally speaking, everything is initiated by the North Vietnamese

advisers, be it important or unimportant. If the North Vietnamese

advisory machinery were to get stuck, the Pathet Lao machinery would be

paralyzed.

This exhausts the documentary evidence of North Vietnamese control over

the Pathet Lao that I was able to obtain. In reading these materials,

one is struck by the low-keyed and generally constructive approach of

the North Vietnamese, the limited evidence for actual North Vietnamese

control over the Pathet Lao, and the gulf between the evidence and the

claims which it is meant to support.

It is, after all, hardly surprising that there were North Vietnamese

troops in Southern Laos a month after the regular bombing of North

Vietnam was initiated (the Dong Hene incident). Nor is it surprising

that North Vietnamese advisers should have arrived in Northern Laos in

early 1964 (note that the first complaint to the ICC was in October,

1964), in view of the events outlined above. Recall that regular

bombardment of Northern Laos from Thai sanctuaries began in May, 1964.

Recall as well that the CIA established bases along the North Vietnamese

frontier for sabotage and guerrilla action, as well as to guide the

all-weather bombardment of North Vietnam.[40] It is interesting to

compare the North Vietnamese involvement with the American program,

aspects of which were discussed earlier. Also remarkable is the barely

suppressed outrage over the North Vietnamese activities. How dare they

assist on their border friendly forces which the United States is

determined to destroy!

Suppose that the Pathet Lao were to take over Laos completely. What

would be the North Vietnamese role? When asked this question, a Lao

defector said that he expects them to leave when they finish their

mission of helping the Pathet Lao:

It is just like when the Chinese went to help the Koreans. After they

had won the war, they left.

The urban intellectual whose remarks I have reported earlier was less

sure. He thought that Laotian independence would always be threatened by

North Vietnam, Thailand, and China, though he felt that there was a fair

chance that all might agree that Laos should be left as a neutral

buffer. Prince Souvanna Phouma, in an interview with us, had no doubts

about the North Vietnamese intention to conquer Laos. He explained:

North Vietnam wants to colonize Laos with Vietnamese because their

country is too overpopulated. It’s obvious. Look at their flag with its

five-pointed star. One is for Tonkin, one for Annam, one for Cochin

China,[41] one for Laos, and one for Cambodia.[42]

(If we were to apply this reasoning to the American flag….) He offered

no other argument, apparently regarding this as conclusive.

A North Vietnamese spokesman described the interest of his country in

Laos as purely strategic:

It is on our Western border. For our own security, we cannot allow Laos

to turn into a base for the Americans to threaten us. You know that the

Americans have been using Laos as a forward base both for themselves and

the Thais, and have guided their planes for bombing us from Laos…. Laos

has been a historic invasion route into North Vietnam. The French took

Laos first, originally, before setting out to colonize us. At the end of

World War II they went back in and took Laos first, then used route 9 to

transport men and materials to take Hue, and also route 7. Our only

concern for Laos is that it remain strictly neutral. We cannot allow

Laos to be a base for the Americans, with their planes, their soldiers,

their special forces, their CIA, their Thais and other mercenaries.

Naturally, North Vietnam regards “the Lao territory bordering on North

Vietnam, particularly in the provinces of Phong Saly, Luang Prabang, Sam

Neua, and Xieng Khouang, as essential to its security and will strive to

ensure that these areas are not controlled by hostile forces.”[43] China

also has an obvious security interest in these areas. So long as these

areas are under attack by American forces or by forces which North

Vietnam and China can regard, with justification, as American puppet

forces, one can expect a continuing North Vietnamese involvement. It is

difficult to see why North Vietnam should attempt to conquer Laos, thus

being forced to control a hostile population and coming face to face

with the Thai. Nor can I find any serious evidence for such an intent.

According to American Embassy sources, over a million people in this

nation of some three million remain in Pathet Lao-controlled areas.

Harrison Salisbury, in his report from North Vietnam[44] quoted a

foreign Communist visitor to these areas:

You cannot imagine what it is like in the headquarters of these people.

Never is there any halt in the bombing. Not at night. Not by day. One

day we were in the cave. The bombing went on and on. The toilet was in

another cave only 20 yards away. We could not leave. We could not even

run the 20 yards. It was too dangerous.

According to this visitor, the Pathet Lao had set up a hospital, a

printing press, a small textile mill, a bakery, and a shop for making

arms and ammunition in the caves. The bombardment was said to include

guided missiles that can dive into a cave, as well as high explosives

and anti-personnel weapons. The people come out only at dusk and dawn to

try to farm, but the planes attack any visible target, even trails and

cultivated fields. These reports attracted little attention, presumably

because the source was not believed. In June, 1968, Jacques Decornoy of

Le Monde traveled to Sam Neua province and confirmed these reports.[45]

His harrowing account of life under perhaps the most intensive

bombardment in history received little attention in the United States.

According to Souvanna Phouma and the American Embassy, some 700,000

refugees are said to have fled to Government-controlled areas. The most

recent arrivals are from the Plain of Jars area. As noted earlier, this

area was under Pathet Lao control from 1964 until 1969. During the

offensive in the fall of 1969, the CIA Clandestine Army conquered the

plain after heavy bombardment—the first large shift in territorial

boundaries since the outbreak of the civil war. When Communist forces

were about to retake the Plain of Jars in February, 1970, the population

was evacuated and the area turned into a zone of devastation. It is

estimated that about 15,000 refugees were taken, mostly by air, to

Vientiane, where they are now scattered in refugee camps.

Just prior to the Communist recapture of the Plain of Jars in February,

1970, Henry Kamm reported that the Lao peasants were not informed that

they were to be evacuated, though those who wished to stay (in what

would become a free fire zone, in fact) would be permitted to do so.[46]

Reports in Vientiane indicate that a large part of the population went

over to the Pathet Lao despite the abysmal conditions.

IV

I spent several days visiting a refugee camp near Vientiane. The camp

consists of five long sheds with an aisle between two raised floors.

Each family has about fifteen square feet of space, without partitions

and marked off only by posts. There are perhaps 100 people housed in

each shed—many children, old men and women, a few young mothers, some

young men who were wounded in the fighting, and a few other young

adults. Many observers believe, and have reported, that most of the

young people joined the Pathet Lao before the evacuation. These refugees

had been in the village for about two months.

The refugees give the impression of being severely demoralized. Only

rarely do any of them work. There has apparently been little attempt to

clear land for cultivation, though it is likely that they will stay in

this area. They themselves do not know what will happen to them. The

government provides them with a rice ration, but little further care and

no information. Promises to reimburse them for lost property or to

change their Pathet Lao money for RLG currency have not been fulfilled.

The refugees asked me—some begged me—to help them to have their money

exchanged. Some said that they would starve otherwise, and this is

possible, since apparently they have no food except for the rice ration

and what they can find in the forest.

But these people are not mendicants. They were, in fact, probably the

most well-to-do of the Lao peasantry. Some had careful records of their

possessions. One sixty-year-old man who had owned forty cows and nine

buffaloes estimated that the value of his belongings was about $3,600.

Another showed us detailed records written up for the RLG but never

honored which calculated his possessions as worth $5,000 before the

bombing. Such reports were not unique, though some of the refugees had

been very poor. Some had brought with them good clothes, occasionally a

sewing machine or other possessions. All spoke with great longing of

their wish to return to their homes in the Plain of Jars, with its

fertile and abundant land, its cool climate, distant hills, rivers, and

streams.

The refugees were acquainted with our interpreter from previous visits,

and were superficially friendly, though wary. They naturally assumed

that we were connected with the American Government, and they obviously

were not going to tell us anything that might lead to some new

catastrophe. Conducting extensive interviews makes one feel

uncomfortable. The refugees have good reason to dissimulate, and at the

same time they do not wish to be uncooperative. With repeated

questioning, it is easy to discover inconsistencies and even absurdities

in their answers, but it is not pleasant to take on the role of a police

agent. Apart from this, it is heart-rending to see their demoralization

and despair, to watch an old woman crouching down in unaccustomed

supplication, or to see the children sitting quietly hour after hour in

the oppressive heat and dust of the camp.

The first story told by virtually every refugee is straightforward. They

came to the Government side because they hated the Pathet Lao, who were

oppressive. Why did the Pathet Lao oppress the people? “I don’t know; I

guess they are just crazy,” one man told us.

Another man who had been a rather poor farmer in his former village

spoke quite openly and favorably about the Pathet Lao. As he went on, a

small group collected and listened quietly. An alert young man began to

interrupt, correcting our informant and giving the negative, stereotyped

answers to which we had already become accustomed. Within moments, our

informant’s answers also shifted. When the same sequence was repeated in

other interviews, we realized that so long as this man was present,

there was no point in continuing the discussion. Who he was, of course,

I have no idea—perhaps a Pathet Lao cadre. Certainly the reasonable

approach, from their point of view, was to appear to be pro-Government

and antagonistic to the Pathet Lao.

We spoke to one young woman who had fled to the Government side some

years earlier, with several other young people. When asked why, she said

that it was because of porterage which they were forced to do for the

Pathet Lao. We asked whether she fled after her village was destroyed by

bombing. “No, before,” she answered. An older man interrupted, saying:

“No, after, you know, there were many people killed in the bombing.” She

then said: “Yes, we escaped after the bombing.” “Were you afraid of the

bombing or the porterage?” “Both,” she answered.

Every refugee with whom I spoke said that everything that he knew of—his

own village, and all dwellings within several days journey—had been

destroyed by bombardment before they were evacuated. Prior to 1968 the

bombing of the Plain of Jars was sporadic. In April of 1968 it became

more intense, and the villagers soon had to leave their villages and dig

trenches and tunnels in the surrounding forest. At first they were able

to farm sometimes, mainly at night, but this became impossible as the

bombing increased in intensity. One man told us that the people of his

village had been forced to move eight or nine times, deeper and deeper

into the forest into new systems of trenches as the bombing extended its

scope. He reported that by April, 1969, his village was destroyed by

bombs and napalm. The Pathet Lao showed them how to dig trenches and

tunnels, and identified the types of planes.

Another reported that in February, 1969, the bombing destroyed

everything in the village. The first bombing, of a village nearby, was

in June, 1967. Later, the bombing was constant, and the people lived in

tunnels in the hills, coming out only on days when the bombing stopped.

Our interpreter, who had interviewed about 300 refugees, informed us

that these stories were typical. Every refugee to whom he had spoken

reported that everything he knew of personally or had heard about was

destroyed by bombardment before the evacuation.

In September, 1969, the Vang Pao army conquered the Plain. The Meo

soldiers were undisciplined and killed many of the cows and buffaloes.

Many of the young men joined the Pathet Lao: others were taken into the

Vang Pao army. We asked why the Meo soldiers killed the cattle. One man

said the soldiers told the villagers that they didn’t want cattle left

to nourish the Pathet Lao. The refugees were concentrated in new

villages—strategic hamlets, apparently—when the Vang Pao army came.

Then, when it was clear that the Plain could not be held, they were

evacuated.

The primary complaint against the Pathet Lao had to do with the

compulsory porterage. Prior to the bombing, there was very little

porterage, but when the bombing began, the Pathet Lao soldiers moved to

remote areas and could no longer use trucks, as before. “The planes made

the soldiers disperse and they forced us to do porterage,” one refugee

said. One claimed that the porterage had begun as early as 1964. Others

gave later dates. All, when pressed, said that the porterage began when

the soldiers were forced by the bombing to move to inaccessible places.

Few of the refugees had ever seen any Vietnamese, though one informant,

when interrupted by the young man whom I mentioned earlier, agreed with

this man that the Pathet Lao were really Vietnamese who spoke Lao. A

moment before, in answer to the question, “What kind of people are

they?” he had said: “Oh, they are our own Lao people.” He was unwilling

to talk any longer at that point.

There were also other complaints about the Pathet Lao. One relatively

rich farmer said he could not live comfortably with the Pathet Lao even

if the bombing were to end, so that no more porterage would be

necessary:

They would take us to study all the time. There was no money, no

commerce. They only respect you if you have torn clothing so we have to

wear torn clothing all the time.

The poor farmer I mentioned earlier gave a more sympathetic account. He

described a mild land reform in 1965:

They told the people who had a lot of land to give some to the people

who had only a little. I didn’t get any, and none was taken away. I had

enough. They only took land to give to the really poor. The people from

whom they took the land away sometimes were angry. In this case, the

Pathet Lao would say: “Look, you have a lot of land and he doesn’t have

any. Do you want him to die?” They always explained. They rarely put

anyone in jail. Only if they explained for a long time and they still

didn’t give any land.

The people who were taken away were not put in prison. They were taken

to Phonesavan to study and work. If a person caused trouble they also

took him to study. Also lazy people. They would teach them not to steal

or your friends will kill you. Being lazy or not giving up your land is

stealing from your friends. The Pathet Lao never yelled. They really did

well. They really acted nicely. They never stole. Never took anyone or

beat anyone.

This informant had never been to school and was pleased with the Pathet

Lao educational reforms. He said that the teachers were taken to

Phonesavan to be taught and then returned to the village. Other boys

joined the Pathet Lao to be soldiers, and some went to the towns for

medical training or to join the civil administration. No Pathet Lao

lived permanently in the village, he reported.

He was not sure what the Pathet Lao taught the teachers, but when they

returned they taught only in Lao, no longer in French. Everyone was

taught to read, particularly the women.

The only people who didn’t study were those who were blind. I knew how

to read. I studied arithmetic. Before I didn’t know anything. Before,

the teacher didn’t work as much. Now he worked much more. The teacher

wasn’t happy because he was working all the time. [General laughter.]

We interviewed two of the village teachers. They said that when the

Pathet Lao came in 1964, after driving the Kong Le forces off of the

Plain, they took the teachers for ten days to Phonesavan. They

instructed them in teaching methods, and told them they must teach in

Lao, not French. “They explained that Lao is our own language and Laos

is our country and we don’t need foreign languages.” They also gave them

political education.

They taught us that under the French a French-style education was taught

because they wanted people to love France. But now they taught us that

our country was liberated and we have a liberated style of education and

education would teach people to love their country. Education was now

for everyone, not just for the rich. In the old days education was

mainly in the towns and cities. Many villages had no schools. When the

Pathet Lao came in they trained many teachers and many more people were

educated, though schooling was still not universal.

Language teaching and mathematics were made more demanding than before

and four grades were to be instituted for everyone. The teacher was

required to run an adult literacy program on Saturdays and Sundays.

Villagers who knew how to read also became literacy instructors. They

described the literacy campaign as very good, and virtually universal.

Before there had been just mechanical teaching of reading, with no

content. Under the Pathet Lao, the texts dealt with agriculture and

livestock and love of country. The political content was something like

this: “Before, under the French, we had to pay taxes and money was sent

to France. Now we’re building our own country and are not working for

foreign people.” The intention was to extend education to grades five to

seven, but this program could not be carried out, because of the war.

An older man, formerly quite well off, added that the Pathet Lao made

them study before work, and took some men from the village to study.

They taught us mainly agriculture. One must produce more. Build the

economy. One man should do the work of ten. If you produce more you can

exchange it for clothes and money. Then we can exchange the produce with

other countries.

In theory, he said, it was a good idea, but he wasn’t happy about it,

particularly because of the taxation. The Pathet Lao took 15 percent of

everything above subsistence. This was for the soldiers, teachers, and

medical personnel whom they trained and returned to the village.

Another refugee who had lived in Phonesavan gave us additional

information. The activists, in the early period, were intellectuals from

Vientiane and Sam Neua who had studied in France. The Pathet Lao tended

more to live among the people and recruited peasants from the area,

while the intellectuals were, for the most part, with Kong Le and the

neutralists. At first the Pathet Lao kept their identity secret. Later

they began speaking more openly to people whom they felt they could

trust. They always spoke nicely (this he reiterated over and over), and

gave long explanations before suggesting any action. They lived like the

poor peasants, for example refusing to ride in trucks as the Kong Le

soldiers did. They were very prudent.

The Pathet Lao cadres encouraged the people not to be afraid of

important men or to use honorific forms of address.

The Pathet Lao changed many things. They helped the villagers farm rice

and build houses, and gave rice to people who didn’t have enough. They

changed the status of women. Women became equal to men. They became

nurses and soldiers. Wives were not afraid of husbands any more.

At first some husbands got angry, but they were told that there was to

be no more oppression: “Look, she’s human, you don’t have special

rights.”

Before, everything was for hire. After the Pathet Lao came, money wasn’t

necessary. They tried to induce cooperation among the villagers and to

bring families to cooperate in agricultural work. They used no force,

but tried to shame people into helping if they refused, to encourage

them to see that all would benefit from cooperation.

They formed “Awakening groups” of cadres from the village that were

responsible for encouraging cooperation and collectivization. By 1967,

virtually everyone was involved in collective farming, though they also

kept private plots. The cadres never insulted anyone. They tried to make

you like them. They would never take out guns and money to impress

people. In 1967 they suddenly replaced all outsiders with local cadres

drawn from the Awakening groups, many of whom had been taken away for

training for a month or so.

Each village had a complicated system of organization: political,

administrative, defense (police), young boys, young girls, women,

cleanliness, education, cooperation, etc. Everyone belonged. They

elected their own leaders. There were also technical organizations

concerned with irrigation, livestock, agriculture, adult literacy,

forestry. Representatives of these groups would deal with experts from

the outside in matters such as irrigation.

The first bombing began in May, 1964. Phonesavan itself was bombed in

1965. Between November, 1968, and January, 1969, the town was completely

evacuated and destroyed. The Vang Pao army came through in September,

1969.

During 1964 and 1965 only very few North Vietnamese soldiers were in the

vicinity. By 1969 there were many North Vietnamese. The soldiers

maintained a very strict discipline and kept away from the villagers.

People felt sorry for them because of their enforced isolation. The

Pathet Lao taught them that the North Vietnamese were their friends who

had come to give them technical assistance and help them to survive.

They had enormous respect for the North Vietnamese. To illustrate, he

told a story of a North Vietnamese irrigation adviser who was condemned

to death by the Pathet Lao after he had killed a water buffalo. The

people objected and protested to the General, who affirmed the sentence.

The man then killed himself. In general, they regarded the North

Vietnamese with awe.

The Pathet Lao also taught them not to hate the American pilots, some of

whom were captured and led through the town, but “only their

leaders.”[47]

I asked one man about fifty years old, who looked strong and healthy,

why neither he nor anyone else seemed to be working, why they were just

sitting in the sheds when surely they should be preparing to farm. He

said:

Let the war end and we can return to our village. I don’t know how to

farm here. No one comes to explain or help or tell us how to do it. We

don’t have the strength to cut down the trees. The Government says

nothing. They don’t tell us whether we can ever go home. We don’t know.

All the land has trees or bushes. We are too tired to cut the bushes and

the trees. There are no hills or mountains here. It is all flat. When we

do Hai (upland farming) where we come from, the trees all fall in one

direction and it was easy to burn them. Here they just fall in all

directions. We do not know how to farm here.

In fact, these people know well how to farm in this area, and the work

would not be beyond their strength, at least if they had enough to eat.

But as the above account indicates, they are demoralized and without

hope. The only time that I saw work being done in the village or its

surroundings was during one visit, when I watched some men and women

constructing private huts with wood that they had cut in the forest.

Some women were sewing, and others were cooking or collecting food. The

rest sat quietly, their interest somewhat aroused by our presence, but

apparently with no plan or hope for the future.

V

A correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review has summarized the

situation which produced the refugees as follows:

…The area is a carpet of forest dotted by villages and a few towns.

Refugees report that the bombing was primarily directed against their

villages. Operating from Thai bases and from aircraft carriers, American

jets have destroyed the great majority of villages and towns in the

northeast. Severe casualties have been inflicted upon the inhabitants of

the region, rice fields have been burned, and roads torn up. Refugees

from the Plain of Jars report they were bombed almost daily by American

jets last year. They say they spent most of the past two years living in

caves or holes.[48]

It is doubtful that any military purpose, in the narrow sense, is served

by the destructive bombing. The civilian economy may have been destroyed

and thousands of refugees generated, but the Pathet Lao appear to be

stronger than ever. If anything, the bombing appears to have improved

Pathet Lao morale and increased support among the peasants, who no

longer have to be encouraged to hate the Americans. The situation is

exactly like that in Vietnam, where, in the first year of the intensive

American bombardment in the South (1965), local recruitment for the Viet

Cong tripled to about 150,000, according to American sources. And, as in

Vietnam, the indigenous guerrilla forces are now more dependent on

outside assistance as a result of the destruction of the civilian

society in which they had their roots. The correspondent quoted above

comments:

By depriving communist forces of indigenous food stores, the bombing has

caused them to rely on more dependable supplies from North Vietnam. For

all that it has undoubtedly demoralized civilians, refugees report that

the bombing has raised the morale of Pathet Lao fighting forces. Unlike

most other soldiers in Laos, they finally have a clear idea of what they

are fighting for. Refugees also say that volunteers for the Pathet Lao

army have doubled…in the last few years. Before, many village youths

were reluctant to leave their villages. Now the attitude has become,

“better to die as a soldier than to die hiding from the bombing in holes

in the ground.[49]

As in Vietnam, there is a military purpose to these tactics in a broader

sense. Here again we see the tactic of “forced-draft urbanization” at

work. To fight against a people’s war, it is necessary, here as in South

Vietnam, to eliminate the people, either by killing them, destroying

their society and forcing them into caves, or “urbanizing” them by

driving them into refugee camps or urban centers. Who can tell whether

this tactic may not succeed?

We discussed the bombardment with Prince Souvanna Phouma. He denied that

any destruction is taking place:

There is no destruction. We only bomb the North Vietnamese. We have

“teams” scattered throughout the country. When they see the North

Vietnamese convoys they call for bombing. Laos is not like the United

States. It is not densely populated, with many big cities. No cities or

villages are destroyed. 700,000 refugees have come to our side. There

are no people on the other side. Maybe a few huts destroyed, but no

settled areas. People flee when they hear that the North Vietnamese are

coming.[50]

We mentioned specifically that refugees have told us that their villages

were destroyed long before they left them. He replied:

No, no. Sometimes North Vietnamese mix in with the population and we

have to make a sacrifice of them and bomb the village, that’s true. For

example, recently in Paksane some North Vietnamese held a village and it

took us three days to dislodge them. In that case unfortunately the

villagers got bombed also.

He then showed us a large relief map of Indochina on the wall, and

repeated: “You see those mountainous areas controlled by the Pathet Lao

and the North Vietnamese. Nobody lives there.”

According to American figures, over a million people live there, well

over a third of the population.

Part of the population of Laos lives in urban centers, Vientiane being

the largest. Others live in the Pathet Lao-controlled areas under the

conditions I have described. Still others remain in refugee camps. In

addition, there are the Meo tribesmen who have been organized by the

CIA, and that part of traditional Lao peasant society that is still

untouched by the war.

Reports from the Vang Pao army of Meo indicate that they may be nearing

the end of their ability to continue fighting. Several years ago, Robert

Shaplen quoted Edgar “Pop” Buell, the American who is primarily

responsible for the Meo operations:

A few days ago I was with Vang Pao’s officers when they rounded up 300

fresh Meo recruits. Thirty percent of the kids were 14 years old or less

and about a dozen were only about 10 years old. Another 30 percent were

15 or 16. The rest were 35 or over. Where were the ones in between? I

will tell you, they are all dead. Here were these little kids in their

camouflage uniforms that were much too big for them, but they looked

real neat, and when the King of Laos talked to them they were proud and

cocky as could be…. They are too young and are not trained. In a few

weeks 90 percent of them will be killed.[51]

Since then, the Vang Pao forces have suffered serious losses, and all

credible reports indicate that their situation is far worse. By inciting

large numbers of Meo to fight against the Pathet Lao and North

Vietnamese, the United States may have brought about their destruction

as an organized group.

“Pop” Buell recently reported that “all his friends from his early days

in Laos have died in combat.”[52] He added:

The best are being killed off in this country and America will never be

able to repay them for what they’re doing.

The American policy of sacrificing the Meo to America’s anti-Communist

crusade must be regarded, in my opinion, as one of the most profoundly

cynical aspects of the American war in Indochina.

To try to get a sense of traditional Laos, we visited a village just a

few miles from Vientiane which—incredibly—seems virtually untouched by

the war, indeed by the modern age. We visited the home of an old peasant

couple where our guide had lived for several years as an IVS volunteer.

When we arrived, the old man was sitting on the large open porch outside

the sleeping quarters, carving Buddhist verses on long strips of bamboo.

He was so engrossed that he was unaware of our presence until our guide

tapped him on the shoulder in greeting. The man and his wife seated

themselves before us and wound knotted strings around our wrists,

wishing us health and good fortune. The old woman explained that she had

just received these particular strings from a Buddhist monk at a shrine

where she had spent several days.

Water buffaloes, gentle beasts, trudged slowly along the dirt paths,

past knots of people talking and laughing in the quiet of the early

evening. The villagers greeted our guide warmly, joking and chatting

with him as we walked through the village. Several were at least

half-stoned, contributing to the atmosphere of tranquility and abandon.

We had brought some meat for dinner, which the peasant woman cooked.

After a leisurely meal with the old couple, we returned, late that

evening, to Vientiane.

Superficially, such a village seems a haven of peace in the turmoil and

misery of Laos, but there is more to the story. Our guide, who had

studied the village with great care, estimated that infant mortality may

be as high as 50 percent. Dysentery is endemic, and much of the

population is always ill. In fact, as we strolled through the village we

saw ceremonies on several porches for those who were ill. There is no

sanitary water supply, and very little medical care.

The life of the village is less than delightful in many other ways. The

old man we visited told us that he walks a long distance to fetch water.

This seemed surprising, since there was a large pond nearby. When we

walked to the pond, we discovered that it was fenced off, as was a large

area surrounding it. Our guide explained that some years back a man had

come to the village and simply taken the pond and the surrounding land

for himself. When the villagers went to the village chief, they were

told that that is the way it was to be.

The older inhabitants now speak sadly of the days when they could sit

beneath the tall trees near the pond and they complain of the difficulty

and inconvenience and the loss of good land, but there is nothing that

they can do. When he arrived in the village and learned of the

situation, the IVS worker tried to convince them to go to the city,

barely five miles away, and begin a law suit. The man was quickly told

that this was impossible. The village chief had agreed, indicating that

higher officials were involved in blocking the pond. Complaints would

not be heeded and might even bring soldiers to the village. It is such

abuses as these, typical of a traditional society and, if anything,

given added harshness by colonialism, that the Pathet Lao seek to end.

Loring Waggoner, a community development area adviser who has worked in

Laos for a number of years in the USAID program, touched upon such

matters in his testimony before the Symington Subcommittee Hearings (pp.

574f.). He described the peasants as “village oriented,” and not

concerned with Laos as a nation. With regard to the RLG:

The villager looks at the Government officials in Vientiane as people

who have attained a position where they can ask and take things without

consultation with the villagers, with the local population. They rarely

make protests about this type of corruption or skimming off the top

unless, of course, it begins to pinch them fairly badly.

He went on to describe the corruption of the elite in their dealings

with the villagers, and observed that the villagers describe the Pathet

Lao as “honest with them” though “much more authoritarian than the Lao

Government seems to be.” The villagers tend to view the Pathet Lao as

traditionalists who emphasize “the old way of life, making it all Lao.”

When I arrived in Laos and found young Americans living there, out of

free choice, I was surprised. After only a week I began to have a sense

of the appeal of the country and its people—along with despair about its

future.

Notes

McKeithen’s anti-Pathet Lao bias is so extreme that he cannot even

manage to be consistent. Thus he writes that Pathet Lao “minor officials

are chosen on the basis of their contributions to the state and their

reliability (strong back / weak mind)” (Life under the P.L.). A few

pages earlier we read that “Government officials [under the Pathet Lao]

are chosen almost entirely on the basis of merit, although there seems

to be a general preference for the economically deprived villager as

opposed to his wealthier counterpart.”

The five points of the star do have a symbolic significance: they stand

for intellectuals, workers, peasants, tradesmen, and soldiers working

together to defend and build the country.

[1] For a good account of its operations, see Peter Dale Scott, “Air

America: Flying the US into Laos,” Ramparts, February, 1970.

[2] Keith Buchanan, The Southeast Asian World, London, Bell and Sons,

1967, p. 140f. The present USAID administrator reports that as of today,

“Laos has virtually no indigenous medical capability and there are only

about a dozen foreign trained Lao doctors in-country.” (Hearings of the

Symington Subcommittee on United States Security Agreements and

Commitments Abroad of the Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate,

Oct. 20–28, 1969, p. 566, released with many deletions in April, 1970.

Government Printing Office.)

[3] Buchanan, op. cit.

[4] “Rapport sur la situation économique et financière, 1968–9.”

[5] Fred Branfman, “Education in Laos Today,” speech given at IVS annual

conference, February 10, 1968. The reference is to the part of Laotian

society administered by the RLG. The figure of 6,669 students in

secondary schools comes from the AID report in the Symington

Subcommittee Hearings, p. 570.

[6] Jacques Doyon and Guy Hannoteaux, “l’Ambiguïté de l’engagement

américain au Laos,” Figaro, March 11, 1970, Vientiane.

[7] “Laos: the labyrinthine war,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 16,

1970, correspondent.

[8] The CIA is also reported to be involved in the opium traffic. For

background and discussion, see the articles by David Feingold and Al

McCoy in Nina Adams and Alfred McCoy, eds., Laos: War and Revolution, to

be published by Harper & Row in November. See also Christian Science

Monitor, May 29, 1970, for a report of direct CIA involvement in opium

shipment.

[9] Embassy officials claim that this particular instance of corruption

is exaggerated, and that USAID simply diverted other funds to the

airport construction.

[10] That USAID serves as a CIA cover, as has long been reported, has

now been officially admitted by Foreign Aid Chief John A. Hannah, AP

Boston Globe, June 8, 1970.

[11] The Pathet Lao officially favors a return to the general lines of

the agreements of 1962 that established a Government of National Union,

and therefore has no embassy in Hanoi. There is a RLG Embassy in Hanoi,

staffed, I was informed, by Pathet Lao sympathizers. The Pathet Lao

Information Office is the highest official Pathet Lao representation in

Hanoi. There is also a Pathet Lao representative in Vientiane,

accessible, though blockaded by RLG troops, and, he asserts, harassed in

many ways by the Government. We were not able to penetrate the

bureaucratic maze in the time available, but we did manage to speak to

him at the airport, on the way to Hanoi. The interview from which the

remark in the text is taken appears in full in N. Adams and A. McCoy,

op. cit.

[12] See “Laos: the labyrinthine war,” Far Eastern Economic Review,

April 16, 1970, for some comments on Allman’s observations.

[13] The New York Times, May 25. AFP reports that Vang Pao “is trying to

retake five small forward posts of his base at Sam Thong…. The base was

captured by leftist forces in a surprise assault last week.”

[14] UPI, International Herald Tribune, April 4–5, 1970. There is some

suspicion that the report that Communist troops had occupied Sam Thong

was released in an effort to conceal the vandalism of the Clandestine

Army.

[15] In the words of the Department of State Background Notes, March

1969, “By the spring of 1961 the NLHS appeared to be in a position to

take over the entire country.”

[16]

P. F. Langer and J. J. Zasloff, Revolution in Laos: The North

Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao, RM-5935, RAND Corporation,

September 1969, p. 113; to be published this fall by Harvard

University Press as North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao: Partners

in the Struggle for Laos (175 pp., $5.95).

[17] Phoumi Vongvichit, Laos and the Victorious Struggle of the Lao

People Against U.S. Neo-colonialism, Neo Lao Haksat Editions, 1969, pp.

77–80. PEO is the Program Evaluation Office of the State Department,

claimed by Vongvichit to be “a US military command in Laos.” MAAG is the

Military Assistance Advisory Group: PAG the Police Advisory Group; and

USOM the United States Operations Mission.

[18] See Jonathan Mirsky and Stephen E. Stonefield, “The United States

in Laos,” in E. Friedman and Mark Selden (eds.), America’s Asia,

Pantheon, 1970.

[19] For background on events prior to the renewal of the civil war in

1963, see Arthur Dommen, Conflict in Laos, New York, 1964; Hugh Toye,

Laos: Buffer State or Battleground, Oxford, 1968; Mirsky and Stonefield,

op. cit.; Langer and Zasloff, op. cit.; Vongvichit, op. cit. See also

Peter Dale Scott, “Laos, Nixon and the CIA,” New York Review, April 9,

1970.

[20] “From 1946 to 1963 Laos received more American aid per capita than

any country in Southeast Asia. By 1958 the Royal Lao Army was the only

foreign army in the world wholly supported by the taxpayers of the

United States.” Mirsky and Stonefield, op. cit.

[21] This information comes from former IVS workers. I was not able to

check other sources or the documents themselves, but I believe it to be

fully accurate.

[22] Vongvichit, op. cit., p. 103.

[23] Interrogation of William Sullivan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of

State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and former Ambassador to Laos

by Mr. Paul of the Committee Staff, Hearings of the Symington

Subcommittee, pp. 532–33.

[24] Ibid., p. 516–7.

[25] Ibid., p. 585f.

[26] See P.D. Scott, “Laos, Nixon, and the CIA,” and Mirsky and

Stonefield, op. cit.

[27] He continues with this pretense in the Kennedy Subcommittee

hearings on refugees, May, 1970: “We established very clear rules

putting all villages out of range of American air activity. Before I

approved a strike, I insisted on photographic evidence to see the area

and the target.” He accepted the estimate of 700 sorties a day. See

Murray Kempton, “From the City of Lies.” New York Review, June 4. 1970.

[28] For detailed documentation of other falsehoods in this speech, see

Scott, “Laos, Nixon, and the CIA.”

[29] Life Magazine, April 3, 1970. Reprinted in an excellent selection

of articles on the current situation in Laos inserted by Senator Kennedy

in the Congressional Record, April 20, 1970, S5988-92. See also Carl

Strock, “Laotian Tragedy,” New Republic, May 9, 1970.

[30] Washington Star, April 19, 1970. Reprinted in the Congressional

Record collection cited above.

[31] See Symington Subcommittee Hearings, p. 380. The report adds that

“of those killed in Laos up to October 22, 1969, something around

one-quarter were killed with respect to operations in northern Laos.” A

UPI report from Geneva in the International Herald Tribune, April 4–5,

1970, gives the figure of 86 US Air Force Personnel held prisoner by the

Pathet Lao in Laos. The figure, given by two clergymen, is claimed to be

based on US sources “confirmed by private sources in Geneva.” The Pathet

Lao claims to have shot down over 1,200 American planes in Laos.

[32] A statement on this matter appears in the interview cited in note

11.

[33] Life under the P.L. in the Xieng Khouang Ville Area, undated; The

Role of North Vietnamese Cadres in the Pathet Lao Administration of

Xieng Khouang Province, April 1970. McKeithen is not further identified

in these documents. Presumably, he is associated with USAID, the CIA, or

both.

[34] Here McKeithen is a bit disingenuous. The virtual destruction of

civil society by aerial bombardment is obviously a major reason why

precious resources must be conserved. One refugee described his own

marriage ceremony: few people could attend because of the bombardment

and they had to dive into trenches during the ceremony because of a

nearby raid.

[35] Life under the P.L. He also notes that “the Khoueng offices were

located in a small cave” outside the city, but fails to mention the

reason.

[36] Langer and Zasloff, op. cit.

[37] Message No. 35, 16 September 1965. International Commission for

Supervision and Control in Laos, to the Cochairman of the Geneva

Conference.

[38] Report of an Investigation by the International Commission for

Supervision and Control in Laos of an attack on Dong Hene by North

Vietnamese Troops; this document, undated and unidentified, is a

reproduction of parts of the original ICC document submitted on June 14,

1966.

[39] Paul Langer and Joseph J. Zasloff, The North Vietnamese Military

Adviser in Laos, RAND Corporation, RM-5688, July, 1968.

[40] The details are difficult to document, of course, since the RAND

Corporation does not obligingly supply selected information to indicate

the scope and timing of these activities. Some details appear in the

Symington Subcommittee Hearings. It is hardly necessary to emphasize

that except for the ICC reports, documents of the sort reviewed here are

of dubious value. The source material is not available, and there is no

way of checking distortions, excisions, or omissions.

[41] The three regions of Vietnam, in Western terminology. In

Vietnamese: Bac-Bô, Trung-Bô, Nam-Bô.

[42] I did not take notes during the interview with Prince Souvanna

Phouma. These remarks and those quoted below were reconstructed

immediately after the interview and checked with other participants.

[43] Langer and Zasloff, Revolution in Laos, p. 212.

[44] Behind the Lines—Hanoi, Harper & Row, 1967, pp. 35–6. Salisbury

assumed that he was referring to Southern Laos, but the description is

remarkably similar to what has since been reported from the North. In

view of what we now know, the description is probably of Sam Neua

province.

[45] Decornoy’s reports are given in full, in translation, in Adams and

McCoy, op. cit. Also in the Bulletin of the Concerned Asian Scholars,

April-July 1970.

[46] The New York Times, February 5, 1970.

[47] This is a constant refrain among the Communists of Indochina.

[48] April 16, 1970. See note 7.

[49] This paragraph is taken from the original text, parts of which

appear in the Far Eastern Economic Review, April 16, 1970.

[50] See note 42.

[51] New Yorker, May, 1968, quoted in Symington Subcommittee Hearings,

p. 552.

[52] Henry Kamm, The New York Times, February 5, 1970.