Secret War in Laos (1961-1975): The CIA and the Hmong

The Secret War in Laos was a covert American campaign fought in the Kingdom of Laos from 1961 to 1975, alongside the Vietnam War. The CIA armed and directed an army drawn largely from the Hmong people against the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese forces, while the US Air Force waged one of the heaviest bombing campaigns in history. Its legacy includes millions of unexploded bombs that still kill and injure people today.

Background

Laos became fully independent from France in 1953–1954. It was soon divided between royalist, neutralist and communist factions. The communist Pathet Lao movement was closely allied with North Vietnam, which used eastern Laos for the supply routes known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

In early 1961, fearing a communist takeover, the US government authorised the CIA to arm Hmong fighters in the northern mountains; the programme was approved in the last days of the Eisenhower administration and expanded under Kennedy. The 1962 Geneva agreement then declared Laos neutral and required all foreign troops to leave. North Vietnam kept thousands of soldiers in the country, and the United States responded by continuing its own involvement in secret rather than openly.

The CIA and the Hmong army

The key figure on the Lao side was Vang Pao, a Hmong officer in the Royal Lao Army who became a general. Working with CIA officers such as James William “Bill” Lair, he built a guerrilla force that grew to tens of thousands of fighters. Many recruits were teenagers, and whole villages became dependent on American supplies.

The headquarters was at Long Tieng, a remote valley airstrip known as Lima Site 20A, which at its height was among the busiest airfields in the world. Supplies, troops and refugees were moved by Air America, an airline secretly owned by the CIA, and by other contract carriers. US Air Force pilots known as “Ravens” flew small spotter planes to direct air strikes.

Fighting centred on the Plain of Jars in the north, which changed hands repeatedly in seasonal offensives. Hmong forces suffered very heavy losses, and estimates of Hmong deaths during the war run into the tens of thousands. In 1968 North Vietnamese forces overran Lima Site 85, a secret US radar station, killing 11 American personnel.

The bombing campaign

From 1964 the United States bombed Laos on a vast scale. Operation Barrel Roll targeted communist forces in the north, and Operation Steel Tiger, from 1965, targeted the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the south-east. Between 1964 and 1973 the US flew an estimated 580,000 bombing missions and dropped more than two million tons of ordnance. That is often summarised as one planeload of bombs every eight minutes, around the clock, for nine years.

Large parts of the bombing used cluster munitions, which scatter hundreds of small bomblets. Laotian villagers in bombed areas often lived in caves and farmed at night. Many fled their homes or were relocated.

The war’s scale became public gradually. Press reports and hearings by a US Senate subcommittee led by Stuart Symington in 1969 and 1970 revealed much of the covert effort to Congress and the American public.

End of the war

A ceasefire was agreed in Vientiane in February 1973, after the Paris Peace Accords on Vietnam. As communist forces advanced across Indochina in 1975, Vang Pao was evacuated from Long Tieng on 14 May 1975. On 2 December 1975 the Pathet Lao abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.

Many Hmong who had fought for the CIA faced reprisals and imprisonment in “re-education” camps. Tens of thousands crossed the Mekong into refugee camps in Thailand. Large numbers later resettled in the United States, especially in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as in France and other countries.

Unexploded ordnance

Of an estimated 270 million cluster bomblets dropped on Laos, up to about 30 percent may have failed to explode. These, along with larger bombs and other munitions, contaminate farmland, forests and villages in many provinces. Since the war ended, unexploded ordnance has killed or injured more than 20,000 people, many of them children.

Clearance work by the Lao government and international organisations has continued for decades, but only a small fraction of contaminated land has been cleared. In 2016 Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Laos and pledged 90 million dollars over three years for clearance.

Timeline

• 1961: The CIA begins arming Hmong fighters under Vang Pao.
• 1962, 23 July: The Geneva agreement declares Laos neutral and orders foreign troops out.
• 1964, December: The US bombing campaign Operation Barrel Roll begins in northern Laos.
• 1968, 11 March: North Vietnamese forces overrun the US radar site at Lima Site 85.
• 1969–1970: US Senate hearings reveal the scale of American involvement.
• 1973, 21 February: A ceasefire agreement is signed in Vientiane.
• 1975, 14 May: Vang Pao is evacuated from Long Tieng.
• 1975, 2 December: The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is proclaimed.

Why it matters

The Secret War showed how a superpower could fight a large war without open declaration or full public knowledge. For the Hmong it brought heavy losses, exile and a diaspora that shaped communities far from Laos. The bombs left behind still affect daily life in Laos half a century later.