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Author: James Louis Gardner Publisher: ISBN: 9781879222052 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 190
Book Description
Lt. Face advised the CIA on the Secret War in Laos, and when the program collapsed, he became a roving intelligence officer. After being wounded while assaulting a village, he was transferred stateside to a fake mental hospital where he was told he had never been to Southeast Asia, and that the government could prove it.
Author: James Louis Gardner Publisher: ISBN: 9781879222052 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 190
Book Description
Lt. Face advised the CIA on the Secret War in Laos, and when the program collapsed, he became a roving intelligence officer. After being wounded while assaulting a village, he was transferred stateside to a fake mental hospital where he was told he had never been to Southeast Asia, and that the government could prove it.
Author: Roger Warner Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 428
Book Description
From 1960 to 1973, the United States and the communist powers waged a hidden war in Laos, which led ultimately to the catastrophe of the Vietnam War. Warner's groundbreaking book offers the first full account of this secret war, based on his access to previously closed files and to interviews with intelligence players, military officers and government officials who have not spoken out before.
Author: James E. Parker Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1504060156 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
“An incredibly powerful account of a little-known chapter in the Vietnam War saga” written by a CIA veteran who fought in the Secret War (Booklist, starred review). In the 1960s and ’70s, the Laotian Civil War became a covert theater for the conflict in Vietnam, with the US paramilitary backing the Royal Lao government in what came to be known among the CIA as the Secret War. In late 1971, the North Vietnamese Army launched Campaign Z, invading northern Laos on a mission to defeat the Royal Lao Army. General Giap had specifically ordered the NVA troops to kill the CIA army and occupy its field headquarters in the Long Tieng valley. The NVA faced the small rag-tag army of Vang Pao, mostly Thai irregulars recruited to fight for the CIA. But thousands more were quickly recruited, trained, and rushed into position in Laos to defend against the impending NVA invasion. Despite overwhelming odds in the NVA’s favor, the battle raged for more than one hundred days—the longest battle in the Vietnam War. In the end, it all came down to Skyline Ridge. Whoever won Skyline, won Laos. Historian James E. Parker Jr. served as a CIA paramilitary officer in Laos. In this authoritative and personal account, Parker draws from his own firsthand experience as well as extensive research into CIA files and North Vietnamese after-action reports in order to tell the full story of the battle of Skyline Ridge.
Author: Billy G. Webb Publisher: Xlibris Corporation ISBN: 9781453564851 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 473
Book Description
If war really is an extension of politics by other means, as Carl von Clausewitz declared back in 1827, then few wars have served as better examples than the Secret War in Laos from 1961-1975. A clandestine conflict fought in parallel with the Vietnam War, the Laotian Secret War ostensibly set the United States, Thailand, and various Laotian factions against Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnamese Army (NVA). In practice, the conflict was as much a civil war as an invasion; and ultimately, it devolved into a slow-motion act of suicide on the part of the Lao nation itself. The U.S. military and its Laotian Hmong allies, led by the resourceful General Vang Pao, made a disciplined effort to prosecute the war though from beginning to end, that effort was steeped in self-serving politics, and hamstrung by factional infighting, irrational decision-making, and self-imposed constraints that ultimately hurt more than they helped. Micromanagement by officers and clueless politicians far from the front was bad enough; far worse was the corruption of the head-butting Lao factions, who seemed unable to see beyond their own immediate needs and certainly had no vision for a strong, united Laos. The so-called Rightists, Leftists, and Neutralist factions simply could not wrap their heads around the concept that their only hope of survival lay in coming together against the relentless, well-equipped NVA. In fact, one faction, the Pathet Lao, repeatedly allied with the NVA against their own countrymen. But the Americans and Vang Pao's Hmong, those who repeatedly found themselves on the sharp end of the spear in the face of waffling, lack of discipline, and, occasionally, sheer cowardice on the part of their allies, refused to give up until, finally, their political leadership turned their backs on them. This is the story of those brave men, and the civilians who helped them fight an increasingly painful and mismanaged war. It was a war in which the political leaders involved proved conclusively that they had learned nothing from history or simply didn't care. Through ineptitude and back-room politicking, the leadership of both Laos and the United States eventually gave Laos to the Communists who proceeded to crush the Lao people into the dust, in the name of a morally bankrupt ideology that they themselves neither practiced nor truly believed in. Billy G. Webb lays out their story with both great precision and compassion in this lively, well-researched book, outlining the events that led us into the morass of the Secret War, and then detailing each bloody campaign of each bloody year. In addition to following the key characters on the U.S./Laotian side, especially the charismatic Vang Pao, he peppers the story with tales of courageous individuals who fell victim to the NVA and the Pathet Lao and, occasionally, the stupidity, incompetence, and gutlessness of people they trusted. Some survived to fight again; but many of these men, military and otherwise, paid the ultimate sacrifice in their fight to keep Laos free. Webb takes special care to showcase two organizations: the brave Forward Air Controllers who called themselves "the Ravens," and Air America, a civilian company (run by the CIA) that supported the military effort and aided the Lao populace whenever they were called upon. Few people have ever heard of the Ravens, those USAF and Army airmen who risked life and limb in tiny Cessna aircraft to locate targets for bombers and fighters to strike. Air America is more famous, due to the 1990 movie of the same name a film that unfairly maligned Air America as a parcel service for Laotian powerbrokers moving drugs and gold out of the country. Webb sets the record emphatically straight. That's not to say that such things weren't happening in Laos; they were. In hindsight, it's easy to condemn the CIA and the U.S. military leadership for allowing the corruption to spread; but as Nietzsche has pointed out, when you look long in
Author: James E. Parker Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 9780312963408 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 284
Book Description
At the same time the Vietnam War was being broadcast into the living rooms of Americans across the country the CIA was conducting a large-scale secret war in northeastern Laos that few heard about. Agency case officer Jim Parker's five years of combat and immersion in Southeast Asian culture had a lasting influence on him and his family. His dramatic, provocative reminiscence of those years is the first account by a participant to portray America's involvement in Laos.
Author: Steven Schofield Publisher: ISBN: 9781694374110 Category : Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
The tale of a young Green Beret medic, Vietnam combat veteran with the top secret Studies and Observations Group (SOG) who was recruited by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).Schofield worked 51/2 years providing medical support for the Hmong and other Hill Tribes who fought the CIA's secret war in Northern Laos, and was among the last Americans to leave SE Asia in May 1975.It was a surreal time and place that would be impossible to even imagine today."Schofiled's book reflects a genuine love for the Hmong and their culture, as well as a vast knowledge of their efforts during our 'secret war' in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s. Read and learn some actual facts; not overblown rhetoric from another barstool hero." -Stephen R. Leopold is Colonel, SF, USA (Ret)"Schofield's book will be a welcome, informative addition to recent books released on the early days of Green Beret history in Southeast Asia. De Oppresso Liber." -John Stryker Meyer is author of SOG Chronicles, Across the Fence and On the Ground
Author: Joshua Kurlantzick Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451667892 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
The untold story of how America’s secret war in Laos in the 1960s transformed the CIA from a loose collection of spies into a military operation and a key player in American foreign policy. January, 1961: Laos, a tiny nation few Americans have heard of, is at risk of falling to communism and triggering a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. This is what President Eisenhower believed when he approved the CIA’s Operation Momentum, creating an army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces there. Largely hidden from the American public—and most of Congress—Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war lasted more than a decade, left the ground littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, and changed the nature of the CIA forever. With “revelatory reporting” and “lucid prose” (The Economist), Kurlantzick provides the definitive account of the Laos war, focusing on the four key people who led the operation: the CIA operative whose idea it was, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong forces, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew. Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, Kurlantzick shows for the first time how the CIA’s clandestine adventures in one small, Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since—all the way to today’s war on terrorism.
Author: James E. Parker Publisher: Naval Inst Press ISBN: 9781557506689 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
At the same time the Vietnam War was being broadcast into the living rooms of Americans across the country the CIA was conducting a large-scale secret war in northeastern Laos that few heard about. Agency case officer Jim Parker's five years of combat and immersion in Southeast Asian culture had a lasting influence on him and his family. His dramatic, provocative reminiscence of those years is the first account by a participant to portray America's involvement in Laos and the people who served there.
Author: James Louis Gardner
Author: James Louis Gardner
Author: Roger Warner
Author: James E. Parker
Author: Billy G. Webb
Author: James E. Parker
Author: Steven Schofield
Author: Joshua Kurlantzick
Author: Ken Conboy
Author: John Willheim
Author: James E. Parker