CIA's Secret War in Laos

In January 1961 the CIA began arming Hmong hill tribesmen in northern Laos under their commander Vang Pao, the start of what became the largest paramilitary operation in the agency's history. Because the 1962 Geneva agreement declared Laos neutral and barred foreign troops, the United States fought there in secret. CIA officers ran the war from Long Tieng, a base that did not appear on maps, while the agency's airline, Air America, flew in supplies and the U.S. Air Force, directed partly by the American ambassador, bombed the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese forces and the Ho Chi Minh Trail.²³⁴

From 1964 to 1973 American planes flew about 580,000 bombing missions over Laos and dropped more than two million tons of ordnance, including some 270 million cluster bomblets, of which millions failed to explode. The Hmong army suffered terrible losses. Congress learned the outlines in closed hearings in 1969 and 1970, but the public knew little until later. When the communists took power in 1975, many Hmong fled to Thailand and then to the United States.¹⁴⁵