Laos country
also: Laos
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Related entities (most co-mentioned)
Vietnamcountry · 155CIAintelligence service · 132Thailandcountry · 100United Statescountry · 80Air Americaorganization · 52Cambodiacountry · 51Chinacountry · 44Burmacountry · 32Hmong peopleorganization · 26Kuomintangorganization · 25Chiang Kai-shekperson · 21Ted Shackleyperson · 21Communist Party of Chinaorganization · 19Dwight D. Eisenhowerperson · 19Francecountry · 17Souvanna Phoumaperson · 17Richard Nixonperson · 16Golden Triangleplace · 16Vang Paoperson · 16Afghanistancountry · 14John F. Kennedyperson · 14South Vietnamplace · 13Koreacountry · 11U.S. Air Forceorganization · 11
Claims (65)
Sheldon Whitehouse carried_out_attack
Laos host_asserted
“there's a guy named zorthian who was actually the ambassador and the press officer in saigon at a really interesting time period 1960s at the same time there's a guy named white house and we will dig into him because he was the ambassador t…”
▶ The Shadow State #18 Secret Societies Pt. 2; Skull & Bones @ 47:04
CIA carried_out_attack
Laos host_asserted
“during that time to the public? No, a large part of them, you know, like I said, was operating actually in Thailand, especially the air component. But a lot of the SF guys were in Thailand doing missions in Laos and then eventually moved up…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Presidents’ Secret Wars, chapter 15 @ 1:10:59
CIA funded
Laos book_quoted
“The Laotian Air Force averaged 400 tons a month in 66 through Air America. The CIA was moving 6,000 tons a month plus 16,000 passengers. That year, the Air Force flew 7,000 strike missions in a place they're not even supposed to be. The cam…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 31:29
William H. Godley removed_from_power
Laos documented
“Even then, it doesn't matter because they buy the president and Congress. In any case, despite the denials, drugs were moving everywhere. Ambassador Godley arranged for one of the senior Laotian officers to be fired. No more. Breckinridge r…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 31 (32) @ 47:13
CIA trafficked
Laos documented
“Li Mi Band, bought some of the poppies and moved them across the border in caravans. Lo Lan Lau and Tai bought more. So when the airplanes came, they introduced the efficiency of transportation. By the mid-60s, CIA officers were reporting i…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 31 (32) @ 40:56
Communist Party of China carried_out_attack
Laos book_quoted
“When both Sullivan and Westmoreland had returned to Washington for a meeting, the Vietnamese army went ahead with an invasion of the Panhandle using the code name Lam Sung 719. The operation turned into a major military debacle. Warfare on …”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 29:33
Pentagon funded
Laos book_quoted
“and given to the Pentagon. The old Directorate of Plans disappeared. It became the Directorate of Operations, which is obviously more appropriate. Tom Casamacenas went into retirement, quote-unquote retirement, with his colleague and friend…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Safe for Democracy Part 34 (36) @ 4:12
CIA subverted
Laos book_quoted
“that they themselves largely helped to create. It is important to see that it was not North Vietnam, but the United States, and more particularly its apparatus of civil and military intelligence agencies that were consistently guilty of the…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 11 @ 31:38
Communist Party of China member_of
Laos documented
“In this election, the Peotian Lao and their allies obtained 32% of the votes in 13 of the 21 contested seats, showing that they had grown considerably in popularity in four years since the 1954 Geneva Agreements. The leader of the Peotian L…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 11 @ 34:05
Sisavang Vong headed
Laos documented
“In this election, the Peotian Lao and their allies obtained 32% of the votes in 13 of the 21 contested seats, showing that they had grown considerably in popularity in four years since the 1954 Geneva Agreements. The leader of the Peotian L…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 11 @ 34:05
CIA carried_out_attack
Laos host_asserted
“Set C-130s that flew in the Far East belonged to the Air Force's 315th Air Division based in Korea and Okinawa. Their use was controlled by General Erskine's office in Washington. Clandestine work did consume Air Force resources, but not on…”
▶ The Colonel’s corner president‘s secret wars chapter 8 cont @ 52:55
CIA carried_out_attack
Laos host_asserted
“action, the CIA, with their plausible deniability, sitting back and watching all of this happen, is either going to get a venue into China or they're not. And if they don't, they don't give a shit. They just go to the next country along the…”
▶ The Colonel’s corner president‘s secret wars chapter 8 cont @ 1:07:01
CIA spied_on
Laos documented
“He remembers the events as ruining not only the Christmas season for me, but nearly all of the next year as well. Aw, too bad. Colby arrived on the seventh floor of Langley just in time to face the explosion. The ground had been well prepar…”
▶ The Colonel's Safe for Democracy Part 37 (39) @ 32:52
Sheldon Whitehouse member_of
Laos documented
“And Sheldon Whitehouse classifies, but his father, Sheldon, just a reminder, joined the CIA in 1947, served in the Congo, Turkey, Belgium, Cambodia, then joins the State Department. So he's still in the CIA. He was the Congo's desk officer …”
▶ The Shadow State 38Secret Societies 22; Grooming Technocrats @ 44:27
Sheldon Whitehouse appointed
Laos documented
“Yeah, he's a deputy for civil operations and the deputy ambassador in 1972. From there, he went to Laos. I came across him when we did the Phoenix program and the whole, yeah, he's bad news, bad news. Yeah, for the umpteenth time, I know mo…”
▶ Shadow State 30 Secret Societies 14; Rhode Island Rats @ 40:55
Air America carried_out_attack
Laos book_quoted
“And pilots were involved since Air America officials have admitted to extensive defoliation programs having been flown, you know, in every other country but this one during this one time. They flew them in Thailand. They flew them in Taiwan…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs,Oil and War Part 12 @ 28:15
G. McMurtry Godley carried_out_attack
Laos documented
“Nixon's nomination of Ambassador G. McMurphy Godley for the post of Assistant Secretary of State in Far East Affairs. Godley's role in running the Laos secret war was an important factor in gathering the opposition for his new nomination. A…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner president’s secret wars chapter 16 @ 21:20
United States funded
Laos book_quoted
“to ensure that they were not neutral. By 1960, the United States had provided Laos with more than $250 million. You just buy your friends with our tax dollars. The CIA station played a critical role in political action, showing a new predes…”
▶ The Colonel’s corner President’s secret wars Chap 14 @ 15:51
Kong Le attempted_coup_against
Laos book_quoted
“It wasn't the CIA who was causing all the problems that was fired. It was the ambassador. Only three weeks after Brown's arrival, the pro-American government in the Capitol was overthrown in a coup by a paratrooper by the name of Captain Ko…”
▶ The Colonel’s corner President’s secret wars Chap 14 @ 22:55
Phoumi Nosavan attempted_coup_against
Laos book_quoted
“The reports of the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos, which grew from a trumped-up border incident, which was used to justify all of the military aid. Again, another false flag in order to fake the intel in order to get more money for the d…”
▶ The Colonel’s corner President’s secret wars Chap 14 @ 26:40
Kuomintang trafficked
Laos host_asserted
“and the exile of the KMT army to Taiwan. The U.S. drug proxies in Laos, including the Hmong, the Laotians, and former KMT armies were all major drug traffickers. The KMT army were also principal agents in building up the Laotian drug produc…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner- Drugs,Oil, and War Part 3 @ 38:49
Dwight D. Eisenhower funded
Laos book_quoted
“Quote, our stolen holiday was interrupted the following morning, meaning September 5th, by the bad news from Laos, Eisenhower said. He added, quote, my action on return to the U.S. was to approve increased aid to the pro-U.S. government, un…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 10 @ 32:18
Mark Felt supplied_arms_to
Laos documented
“FELT, F-E-L-T, moved U.S. Ground, Sea, and Air Forces into a more forward posture for possible action in Laos. A Signal Corps unit is supposed to have been put in Laos at the time, the first U.S. field unit that had deployed to Laos. Third,…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 10 @ 30:24
Phoumi Nosavan carried_out_attack
Laos documented
“After pausing for many weeks in their drive up the Mekong River, bestirred themselves in December and finally entered the capital at the equivalent of 5 a.m. Eastern Time, December 16th. Meanwhile, Eisenhower's authorization of a U.S. airli…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 10 @ 53:13
Udon Sanakawi headed
Laos host_asserted
“The Taiwan Asian People Anti-Communist League received in Taiwan the mysterious but influential Colonel Udon Sanakawi, a member of what was then the ruling Laotian family and nephew of the premier Sanakawi. In August 1959 in Washington, the…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 13 @ 1:09:37
United States carried_out_attack
Laos host_asserted
“Then and now, Pentagon's strategic position requires the maintenance of contractual ties to private air transport lines that can switch from civilian to military air freight when needed. An otherwise foolish escalation in Laos by the CIA an…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 8 @ 38:54
Air America trafficked
Laos host_asserted
“there's this huge interrogation center that they set up in Udorn at the base where the military operations was going on and the home base of Air America that was flying all the missions into Laos and then bringing the drugs back. So we took…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Vietnam Part 7 @ 36:13
Lyndon B. Johnson ordered_assassination_of
Laos host_asserted
“And LBJ also ordered the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, which, again, were supposed to be completely neutral. They weren't even in it. But we had already infiltrated them as well and set up these stupid interrogation places. SOG launched a s…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Vietnam Part 7 @ 51:38
Air America supplied_arms_to
Laos book_quoted
“used for this mission than most people realize. In South Vietnam alone, by late 1965, Air America had moved 1,600 tons of cargo a month. They had over 50 planes, and dozens of them were C-45s, 46s, and 47s.…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 6:12
Air America supplied_arms_to
Laos book_quoted
“And they would fly at the height of the missions in the mid-1960s approximately 2,500 tons of cargo a month. So the importance for Laos was Thailand, where, of course, all of the Air America maintenance facilities were set up. And they were…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 6:41
Air America supplied_arms_to
Laos book_quoted
“Udorn, which we talked about yesterday, Bangkok, and Thale. The maintenance was available within the Laos capital as well. And there was a major base for the proprietary airlines inside of Laos. It was there that the transfer of 16 Air Forc…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 7:13
Air America supplied_arms_to
Laos book_quoted
“In mid-1966, the proprietary aircraft based in Thailand included 21 helicopters, 12 Hilo U-10 light planes, and 20 medium transports. The helicopters were vital for air rescue missions. During the first two years the U.S. was bombing from L…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 7:44
USAID funded
Laos book_quoted
“at the White House. By the end of 1965, USAID was reporting that on its $1.6 million investment in the village health program. It was funding 140 hospitals and dispensaries, serving 150 patients a month, and had trained 268 medics in the la…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 19:22
United States carried_out_attack
Laos book_quoted
“into the regular air effort over Laos. The air campaign began in December 1964 when the U.S. aircraft were authorized to add armed reconnaissance strike missions, which basically is just, hey, I'm going to take a few pictures, but I'm going…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 21:46
United States carried_out_attack
Laos book_quoted
“This is at the height of everything being managed out of Washington, and you weren't allowed to do anything to actually accomplish a mission. You were only allowed to do what they told you to do. There were strikes that they nicknamed Steel…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 22:14
United States carried_out_attack
Laos book_quoted
“Between 65 and 71, it is estimated that 1 million tons of bombs was dropped in steel tiger operation alone. Another half million tons of bombs were dropped in the exercise called barrel roll. That's a shit ton of bombs. By the time a peace …”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 22:47
United States supplied_arms_to
Laos book_quoted
“from special forces camps into Vietnamese border region. The patrols identified the Ho Chi Minh Trail routes and marked them for bombing by Steel Tiger. This effort was supplemented by a road watch program in which the patrols scouted for s…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 27:43
Special Operations Group carried_out_attack
Laos book_quoted
“To help move the road watch teams, Prairie Fire executed over 250 missions in 67 alone, including patrols penetrating as far as 12 miles into Laos, where they're not supposed to be. But in 68, in addition to the Green Berets serving in the …”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 28:13
Hugh Tovar parachuted_into
Laos documented
“Yay, more coups there. The OSS veteran Tovar had been parachuted into Laos once already at the end of World War II. The kind of activists the CIA seemed to prefer in Laos. Tovar had been a chief of station in Indonesia in 1965, which would …”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 1:19:45
U.S. Air Force ceased_support
Laos documented
“It said, quote, as we discussed previously, U.S. Air Force support would cease at noon, 22 February. I confirmed this today by talking with Cricket, the airborne command plane in this area. U.S. Air Force was under instructions to clear Lao…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 1:23:12
G. McMurtry Godley appointed
Laos host_asserted
“They assassinated Luwamba on January 17th, 1961. They installed the dictator, Mubatu, and they were basically stealing everything from the Congo during the time he was the ambassador. Nice job if you can get it. So we leave the Congo. Oh, w…”
▶ Operation Gladio meets Secret Societies with WarHamster Bady 2025-05-22 @ 17:23
Charles Yost appointed
Laos host_asserted
“During that time, like in Algiers and stuff like that. So that's a really big deal. Then he moves on. It looks like only to Syria for a month before he's moved on. He also was the ambassador to Laos in the 50s, which is when we were first g…”
▶ Operation Gladio meets Secret Societies with WarHamster Bady 2025-05-22 @ 26:21
CIA trafficked
Laos host_asserted
“And they never knew what they were fighting for. And you talk about Grenada. You and I have talked all the time about how most of these times we do our regime-shamed stuff, it's for the multinational corporations because we want to exploit …”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 36 (38) @ 1:10:25
Ted Shackley trafficked
Laos host_asserted
“Ted Shackley was a central figure in the American-controlled Laotian drug business. And yes, he was. And later had been considered as a candidate to be the CIA director. He was also later discovered to be a key player, of course, in the Ira…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner The Medusa File by Craig Roberts Part 9 @ 53:14
Communist Party of China member_of
Laos host_asserted
“Perot was immediately removed from the position. And in a heart-rending statement made to the POW and families in 1987, he said, I have been instructed to cease and assist. You saw too much. The Pei Ocean Lao continued to hold 308 American …”
▶ The Colonel's Corner The Medusa File by Craig Roberts Part 9 @ 56:14
20th Special Forces Group trained_in
Laos documented
“That has endured ever since. A permanent presence in the Far East began in 1956 when provisional teams went to Hawaii, then to Okinawa. In 1957, this became the first Special Forces group. Special Forces began missions in Laos as early as 1…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Chap 24 (25) @ 56:40
Lucien Conein trafficked
Laos caller_asserted
“And he was a very valuable intelligence partner during World War II, and at least according, I think, to the Kefauver committees, well after that, as well as Lucien Conine in his interview with Alfred McCoy in 71. Yeah, and Conine is the gu…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Corporation Coup (Venezuela) Part 3 @ 1:00:23
CIA trafficked
Laos host_asserted
“and had done so for decades. Processed into laboratories, those poppies turned into opium and heroin, morphine, along with other dangerous drugs. The drug trade was lucrative and as pervasive in northern Laos as it had been in Burma and Tha…”
▶ The Colonels corner president, secret wars chapter 14 continued @ 48:01
CIA carried_out_attack
Laos book_quoted
“We are on Chapter 14, where the author gets into the U.S. special operations and CIA's involvement in Laos. We spent the last couple of days covering Vietnam and many of the other Operation Gladio, although the author doesn't use those word…”
▶ The Colonel’s corner President’s secret wars Chap 14 @ 0:30
CIA carried_out_attack
Laos host_asserted
“Project 404, that's a very interesting operation. Project 404 sent agents into this countryside to locate targets for B-52. They would fly from Guam and bomb Laos and Cambodia, again, supposed to be neutral, and created basically hovels in …”
▶ Operation Gladio - Vietnam Part 7 @ 52:07
CIA supplied_arms_to
Laos documented
“Cambodia, and Laos, the bombing and secret army operations in Laos, and all of the rest, the North Vietnamese were poised for a major conventional offensive by 1972. Nixon responded with huge increases in air power, and they also mined High…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Presidents’ Secret Wars, chapter 15 @ 47:47
U.S. Air Force carried_out_attack
Laos guest_asserted
“There was an entire group of Air Force officers, though, that were checked in at Udorn, Thailand, changed in civilian clothes and then ferried up to Laos in order to fly those missions as well. And if they were ever caught, they had no U.S.…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 7 @ 1:47:31
CIA covered_up
Laos host_asserted
“Holy shit, these people are crazy. Carter had no way of knowing that Sullivan and Shackley shared a series of secrets that went back to include covering up all of their drug trafficking from Laos. According to William Corson, more than 100 …”
▶ Operation Gladio Prelude to Terror Chapter 20 @ 35:44
John F. Kennedy targeted_for_regime_change
Laos guest_asserted
“This was clear, Harriman confided, from looking at the policy maneuvers around Laos, the Southeast Asian sideshow in which Kennedy was determined not to get involved. JFK's policy of neutrality was being systematically sabotaged by both the…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner The Devil’s Chessboard Part 19 @ 50:51
CIA targeted_for_regime_change
Laos guest_asserted
“This was clear, Harriman confided, from looking at the policy maneuvers around Laos, the Southeast Asian sideshow in which Kennedy was determined not to get involved. JFK's policy of neutrality was being systematically sabotaged by both the…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner The Devil’s Chessboard Part 19 @ 50:51
The Invisible Government exposed
Laos book_quoted
“It talks about Burma. Most books do not cover Burma at all. Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Guatemala. And then it talks about the NSA, DIA. You find very few books that actually address the DIA. Then it spends a couple of chapters talking about …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Book Club Overview @ 1:49:24
CIA covered_up
Laos book_quoted
“A final indication of constitutional chicanery about the authorization of Air America's airlift is the energy expended by the CIA elements in rewriting Laotian history for the December 1960 period. We can see this in a CIA inspired attack b…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 10 @ 54:01
Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered_assassination_of
Laos host_asserted
“in a Laos discussion that perhaps the time had come to use the plans that had been drawn up for airborne alert for strategic air command, which basically meant a nuclear strike. In parting, he insisted to the group, which included Alan Dull…”
▶ The Colonel’s corner President’s secret wars Chap 14 @ 38:08
CIA carried_out_attack
Laos book_quoted
“in Vietnam and Laos. John Kenneth Knott, who trained Tibetan agents and later headed the Tibetan Task Force in the early 1960s, went on to hold senior positions at Langley. Roger McCarthy, the head of the Tibetan Task Force at the height of…”
▶ Operation Gladio - State of the GOP and Tibet @ 36:31
CIA trafficked
Laos host_asserted
“Symington was the thinly disguised villain. Agency officials had a deaf ear for the corrosive effects of secrecy on public support for their endeavor. Drug trafficking in Laos constituted an element that helps our key figures in Washington.…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 31 (32) @ 39:53
CIA trafficked
Laos host_asserted
“The lucrative drug trade became pervasive in northern Laos. It's the whole reason they were there. It matched Upper Burma, CIA, and Thailand, CIA. Indeed, the area became known as the Golden Triangle for this very reason. When the CIA decid…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 31 (32) @ 40:23
United States targeted_for_regime_change
Laos book_quoted
“Many more, including most of the Joint Chiefs, believed that America's first priority in Laos was international to maintain a forward strategy against the imagined Chinese expansionism. Thus, the actual thrust of American policy, if not its…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 10 @ 44:00
Operation White Star carried_out_attack
Laos guest_asserted
“to include the Phoenix program, was part of a Gladio operation. Does that help? Yeah, I was, I met a, and Miles will tell you this, I met a CIA officer that was in Laos, and that's where they ran Igloo White out of. And I didn't know if Gla…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 7 @ 1:44:33
United States carried_out_attack
Laos host_asserted
“I have a master's degree in it. No, no documentation inside of the Air Force talks about Curtis LeMay as this gung ho nuclear. Everything is a tactical nuclear weapon that's going to be used. It didn't matter whether it was in Vietnam or La…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Drugs, Oil and War Part 10 @ 1:06:38
Colonel J.R. Newman member_of
Laos guest_asserted
“One of them is CIA and the other one is military. So people say we weren't in Laos. I've got documents to say that my dad was in Laos. Oh, yeah. We have plenty of proof that we were in Laos. I mean, the whole Raven program was ran out. Yeah…”
▶ Operation Gladio-Vietnam and the Catholic Church @ 1:07:47
Mentions (120)
▶ 18:44
was in Laos, they were in Cambodia, they were in Vietnam and Thailand, and they were ferrying out all of the opium from the north into the Corsican Mafia, who read whatever you do, jigger it into heroin number four, which is like the highes…
▶ 19:09
And so they were basically they had a drug operation going. Well, during World War Two, Paul Helliwell, who was a colonel in the military, is watching Chiang Kai-shek, who is the supplier in China. And of course, I told you he got kicked ou…
▶ 23:28
During Horn's tour of duty, the ruling junta of Burma did not control various areas of the country because of financial and military limitations. This was true of the Golden Triangle region that borders Laos, Thailand, and China, which is e…
▶ 1:36:43
pandemic type events or these overthrowing of governments and like in Laos where they had, you know, depending on whose numbers you use, two to six million people that were murdered. These are people that are literally Satanist and the more…
▶ 12:59
what Shackley and Clines and Edwin Wilson was doing as it relates to setting up the network. We left it off in Laos and that they were setting up that whole network. We also talked briefly about Eric von Marbog, M-A-R-B-O-D.…
▶ 16:43
The colorful special operations expert, General John Sengleb, who shows up in all of these stories, worked in Laos and Cambodia with Shackley. Under Sengleb, during this period, were Secord and a young Marine named Lieutenant Oliver North. …
▶ 17:42
and with the opium warlock, warlord, Vang Pao. In 66, Secord had already flown more than 200 secret combat missions, mostly into Cambodia, and won four air medals. When he appealed to General Aderholt for his chance to join the secret war i…
▶ 22:15
Houghton would play a key role in money laundering for the American Private Intelligence Network through 1980, and that is with Nugent Hand, even though this author doesn't mention that. Another man who assisted Shackley in the secret war i…
▶ 25:03
Hand, with the assistance of Houghton, developed a knack for handling the profits of the opium crops. Eventually, both Houghton and Hand became key players at Nugent Hand Bank and the CIA's successor to Paul Helliwell's offshore banks and t…
▶ 25:32
Victory was on the horizon, and for all its efforts, the CIA chief accomplishment in Laos seemed to have been destroying the ancient civilizations and increasing the world's heroin output, which is exactly what they meant to do all along. I…
▶ 26:29
And that was the code designation for the CIA agent that hired us. Keep an eye on the plane from Ban Howe side. We're sending some goods and someone's going to take care of it. Nobody's allowed to touch anything. Nothing can be unloaded, wa…
▶ 26:59
Although the war was lost, Ted Shackley's boss, William Colby, considered his performance in Laos excellent. And it was because their entire purpose of being there and slaughtering tens of thousands of Americans and almost a million Vietnam…
▶ 27:26
was to get the drugs out of there. It had nothing to do with national security, a domino effect, or anything else. Victor Marchetti, who was at the time an up-and-coming CIA executive, said, quote, we were officially spending $27 million a …
▶ 37:51
Diaz Serrano. Two years after Clines brought Wilson into the special activities area, it was obvious that Wilson was indispensable. Clines brought him into the secret war in Laos. Wilson traveled regularly to Laos in his capacity as a CIA b…
▶ 38:21
They helped the smugglers. That's why they were in bed together, unquote, which is a bold-faced lie. We know that this business model went back to Paul Helliwell during World War II, being the military attache with Chiang Kai-shek. In Laos,…
▶ 38:51
unquote. No, you are a terrorist working for the CIA. Wilson was being very modest about his role. Another of the several thousand CIA officers supporting the secret war in Laos was James Cunningham. He was Wilson's old U2 boss. Cunningham …
▶ 39:22
airline in history, Air America. James Cunningham used Wilson through his front companies to make sure that Air America got what it needed for its friends. Wilson had nothing but admiration for Shackley and Cunningham. Wilson worked with th…
▶ 40:21
this is a quote, made him a general. But the guy who got him cleared through the Senate was me. I got Senator James Eastland to ask Senator John Stennis to do it, unquote. Eastland was the head of the Judiciary Committee and Stennis was the…
▶ 13:14
And the timing's perfect. So this is the late 1970s. And what had just happened was we lost Vietnam. So we lost control of much, not all, but much of our network for opium. It was completely disrupted by us having to leave Vietnam. And it's…
▶ 1:16:06
Like the bird? Project Raven or Operation Raven happened in Vietnam. That was the only one that I'm aware of. That was the CIA flying in. Basically, they had a bunch of military pilots that they brought into Thailand, told them to put all t…
▶ 1:16:33
up in the Plain of Jars with the Hmong people. And we were all told, at least I was, and that was my area of expertise when I went to Air War College, that they basically were going up there and then flying in and working on attacking the N…
▶ 35:33
Pol Pot coming to power was a direct result of a CIA instigated coup. We had people there training in Cambodia. We had people training in Laos. We had people training in. One of the most devastating parts of all of this is how much of our f…
▶ 53:20
Taiwan or recognize mainland China. So now we have another excuse. But you can't overstate the importance of this drug network that was ran out of the Golden Triangle with Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and that entire region, because t…
▶ 3:44
that had to do with the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And for those of you who are not geographically familiar with Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trail had the river that was basically a thoroughfare between North and South and went down along the Laos and…
▶ 6:13
the capability of the North in Vietnam from moving around supplies and creating landslides and all this other stuff and basically destroying villages. So those same weather modification programs were conducted over Thailand, Cambodia, and L…
▶ 12:27
Many of this particular squadron, the 54th, had been stationed in Thailand at Udorn Air Force Base. Now, I was actually there at Udorn when I went to that big, long trip to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. And it does say.…
▶ 1:22:06
Bangkok around, going down, you've got Vietnam, you've got Bangkok, you've got Laos, Cambodia. So this is the southern part of China. You've got Vietnam, Laos, Burma, which is now Miramar. That's the major opium growing breadbasket of the w…
▶ 2:07
And then you have, so to the northwest of Indonesia, you have Burma, Thailand, Laos. And due north, you have like Vietnam. And Malaysia is connected to, basically, there's a peninsula that comes down out of Thailand that's half Thailand and…
▶ 4:27
You can see on the one map Chiang Mai up at the very northern part of Thailand in between of Burma and Laos. That was one of their biggest, you know, cash areas. And then, of course, coming down to Malaysia, Indonesia and on into Australia.…
▶ 17:23
They assassinated Luwamba on January 17th, 1961. They installed the dictator, Mubatu, and they were basically stealing everything from the Congo during the time he was the ambassador. Nice job if you can get it. So we leave the Congo. Oh, w…
▶ 26:21
During that time, like in Algiers and stuff like that. So that's a really big deal. Then he moves on. It looks like only to Syria for a month before he's moved on. He also was the ambassador to Laos in the 50s, which is when we were first g…
▶ 53:39
I have done several. If you just type in the search bar Nugent Hand and Murdoch, you'll be able to come up with several of the threads that I've done on that. But Nugent Hand, if you guys don't know, was basically a fake bank that was set u…
▶ 45:59
And every single one of these incidents, there is equipment that is left over that supposedly just gets left. But if you realize that in all of these cases that there are still CIA operatives in the area, like we didn't just actually leave …
▶ 1:18:48
A mass discovery of all these dead bodies that were owned before they were murdered. And then, I mean, just like they did in Cambodia, just like they did in Laos and Vietnam, for that matter. So this is just like they did in the Nakba. So t…
▶ 34:42
And no one ever volunteered the information. No one told Carter that the U.S. ambassador to Iran, William Sullivan, who was publicly criticizing Carter's policy in Iran, had been the ambassador to Laos while Ted Shackler was running the sec…
▶ 35:44
Holy shit, these people are crazy. Carter had no way of knowing that Sullivan and Shackley shared a series of secrets that went back to include covering up all of their drug trafficking from Laos. According to William Corson, more than 100 …
▶ 3:34
This starts out with President Nixon's appointment of William Colby in September of 1973 as the new CIA director. And about him, let's see, and his relationship with Ted Shackley and all of the associates from Vietnam and Laos, which includ…
▶ 5:21
Shackley's job as head of the Far East Division included taking care of his friends from Vietnam and Laos. What made it possible was the collapse of Paul Helliwell's banking empire in the Bahamas, and that would be the Castle Bank. In 1973,…
▶ 6:18
So by the early 1970s, the CIA needed another bank. And we know that that ended up being Nugent Hand and BCCI. Shackley and Colby turned to two of their Laos colleagues, Houghton and Hand. Nugent Hand Bank was established in 1973 in Austral…
▶ 7:20
and were used to fund businesses as covers for intelligence operations. Nugent Ham was very much like the Heliwell Bank, just on a bigger scale. Bernie Houghton, who had provided similar services to the CIA during the Vietnam War, was the m…
▶ 49:24
They also trained Filipino paramilitary and police units and disseminated disinformation, tortured enemies, and employed hunter-killer teams to murder the Huk leaders and sympathizers, which is exactly what they were planning on doing in Ch…
▶ 30:58
doesn't even produce its own electricity. It buys most of its electricity from countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. They even buy energy from Laos, which is crazy to me. They are in the process of…
▶ 31:28
figuring out how to lay cables. It says Singapore started importing energy from Laos through Thailand and Malaysia after a two-year power purchase agreement was signed. And it says that under the agreement, the Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Sin…
▶ 36:31
in Vietnam and Laos. John Kenneth Knott, who trained Tibetan agents and later headed the Tibetan Task Force in the early 1960s, went on to hold senior positions at Langley. Roger McCarthy, the head of the Tibetan Task Force at the height of…
▶ 35:27
And they're working with these people. So you have a thing called Operation Passage to Freedom. Now, if I zoom out to the 30,000 foot look, we already know by this time that Chiang Kai-shek is doing his opium thing in China. He gets pushed …
▶ 57:00
also cast for the future of post-surrender Indochina by the terms of the Potsdam Conference, where it was decided to temporarily partition Vietnam and Laos at the 16th parallel. Under this agreement, the Allied chief of staff assigned Briti…
▶ 1:07:47
One of them is CIA and the other one is military. So people say we weren't in Laos. I've got documents to say that my dad was in Laos. Oh, yeah. We have plenty of proof that we were in Laos. I mean, the whole Raven program was ran out. Yeah…
▶ 38:34
like that's an okay number. But if you take in totality the numbers in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, you're probably upwards of over 6 million people. Some say it's closer to 8 million for all of this.…
▶ 39:04
Because we haven't even got into Laos and Cambodia or even Thailand at this point. This is just Vietnam and the numbers are staggering. But Laos and Cambodia, Cambodia was, you know, it's horrific. But you and you'll see when we get to thos…
▶ 43:03
them into his CIA endeavors while he's the director then. So in just a little teaser, if you will, in nearby Laos, much of the war centered around the opium, the plane of jars, and many of the coups were…
▶ 3:53
Basically, Japan occupying all of most of all of Asia, the Korean Peninsula, the Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and even most of China. And so when you look at that, those all.…
▶ 4:17
are very interrelated. We throw up a map and you can see the close proximity of the Philippines, Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. So they're all kind of in that area. And what was happening in addition to Japan be…
▶ 8:46
And Paul Helliwell of the CIA is his basically right-hand guy. And he watches Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT army pay for their warfare against Mao by selling opium. And he's selling opium through Thailand, through Vietnam, through Laos, throu…
▶ 19:37
This guy basically sprang up as like one of Chiang Kai-shek's deputies to reassert the opium trade inside of Burma. The term Golden Triangle was coined during this period because of the drug-producing region of Thailand, Burma, and Laos. An…
▶ 4:17
Again, these guys worked throughout the theater, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand. And it's hard when you go back and understand the breadth of what went on to isolate any one program to just one country because a lot of the same people worked in al…
▶ 1:00:09
Another goal was to deal with the enemy violations of the international accords. This is hilarious. That meant taking out command centers in Laos. They weren't supposed to be there at all. Manzoni was next assigned to Nam Dong in the Centra…
▶ 1:01:09
running over-the-fence missions as part of the SOG called Leaping Lena Program, which we mentioned before. Three-quarters of the missions were into Laos, not northern Vietnam, which was supposed to be a neutral country. And they also went i…
▶ 36:13
there's this huge interrogation center that they set up in Udorn at the base where the military operations was going on and the home base of Air America that was flying all the missions into Laos and then bringing the drugs back. So we took…
▶ 51:38
And LBJ also ordered the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, which, again, were supposed to be completely neutral. They weren't even in it. But we had already infiltrated them as well and set up these stupid interrogation places. SOG launched a s…
▶ 52:07
Project 404, that's a very interesting operation. Project 404 sent agents into this countryside to locate targets for B-52. They would fly from Guam and bomb Laos and Cambodia, again, supposed to be neutral, and created basically hovels in …
▶ 18:32
the Western-installed government. The nonviolence policy practiced by the Viet Cong changed abruptly in 1959 when, in response to the 1059 Law and CIA intrusions into the North, the Lao Dong Central Committee organized the 559 Transportatio…
▶ 26:33
regular soldiers from going. And therein lies the problem, because they're really acting under the hat of the CIA. And the example that's given was in Laos, there was a nickname called Sneaky Pete's that wore civilian clothes and worked in …
▶ 46:25
Um, and he was not only just in Vietnam, but he also did a whole bunch of stuff in Laos. Um, and shortly after Chiang Kai-shek had fled to Thailand with his nationalist army, um, the, uh, this Catholic priest went to Laos to get out of the …
▶ 1:23:42
Anything about him being connected to the intelligence, has there ever been any proof that he was connected to Chiang Kai-shek or was it these other guys in Laos instead of Taiwan? I don't know. I haven't come across any connection there. I…
▶ 13:38
He was involved in a thing called O-Plan 34. This was basically what they referred to as a Leaping Lena, L-E-N-A, infiltration program for long-range reconnaissance patrol that had been happening in Laos as well. And it was basically a well…
▶ 21:31
And let's see. All right. So one of the maps is a map like we've seen before that shows South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and where the DMZ is, the 17th parallel. It shows you in relationship to that where Laos is in the Plain of Jars, where Ch…
▶ 32:08
forces, and you had the five colonels installed. Well, one colonel ended up being the leader, but the five colonels overthrew the Greece government. They came in from Korea, which we've already talked about. We know there's a whole bunch of…
▶ 37:58
Having been blown in Jakarta, Indonesia, he was then posted to Laos and assigned to a northern village bordering the China-North Vietnamese border. So he was working undercover for who? Oh, the AID. He's really a CIA agent, and he was embed…
▶ 39:26
Such as this arrangement enabled Johnson and the Vietnamese Army Captain Le Hon Mai to devise the Mountain Scouts, a political action program employing tactics and techniques that Johnson had copied from other assignments and perfected in L…
▶ 39:53
officers there, Stu Methven, M-E-T-H-V-E-N, who followed Johnson from Laos to Hu in early 1961. The Mountain Scouts were a unilateral CIA operation managed by CIA-funded province and district chiefs. The Scouts were composed of Hong tribesm…
▶ 1:02:59
So Vietnam, for the most part, was one of the more pleasant aspects of our trip. We will, when we move to Cambodia and Laos, get into some of the more gross parts of the trip. But that's going to do us for today. And that kind of rounds out…
▶ 58:11
Yeah. Even ABC News laughed at him. You know, Elliot Bernstein was laughing at him. He said, really, what about the American bombing in Laos? What about the bases in Thailand you never told us about? It's not an open war. All this hidden st…
▶ 40:55
Yeah, he's a deputy for civil operations and the deputy ambassador in 1972. From there, he went to Laos. I came across him when we did the Phoenix program and the whole, yeah, he's bad news, bad news. Yeah, for the umpteenth time, I know mo…
▶ 41:25
And there's White House where CIA central in Vietnam. And of course, he doesn't stop there. He then goes to Laos in 73. He's the guy who defunded the Hmong. And so they got overrun. A lot of them live here now. Laos would fall to the commun…
▶ 3:03
for covert operations off the books was generated by opium being trafficked out of that area, the Golden Triangle, spreading into Laos and all of that area and then into the Vietnam. That entire history, very well documented through Thailan…
▶ 3:32
national police, after just having discussed about the Sivak in Iran, all of these countries have that same setup. And they are largely created and funded by the CIA covert operations. So when you look at the network that they had set up or…
▶ 1:49:24
It talks about Burma. Most books do not cover Burma at all. Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, Guatemala. And then it talks about the NSA, DIA. You find very few books that actually address the DIA. Then it spends a couple of chapters talking about …
▶ 6:22
And it says that Eisenhower had authorized the Air Force C-130 supplies, special aid supplies of construction equipment to certain upland villages in Laos. They were carrying things like construction equipment, blah, blah, blah. Lansdell ma…
▶ 11:15
This is the worst one we've got, isn't it? Unquote. He also went on to say, you know, Eisenhower never mentioned this. We talked at length about Laos. He never mentioned the word Vietnam. Now think about that. Eisenhower had been doing cove…
▶ 17:25
The possibility arose in the context of the Laos situation, but it was desirable also from a Vietnamese standpoint. The American occupation of Laos might have had the effect of blocking Ho Chi Minh Trail, which the North Vietnamese had buil…
▶ 34:31
The directive also called for planning and conducting military operations into Laos and many measures in South Vietnam. The Pentagon planners came up with O-Plan 34-A, which Johnston immediately approved. The requirement for deniability imm…
▶ 1:01:31
There were other efforts such as air operations called Buttercup. It reportedly included at least one drop into China. China. We had C-130s registered in other countries that we were flying and dropping shit in China. So, maritime operation…
▶ 1:03:26
The lieutenant colonel, when I asked him if he was the river rat, that's where the name river rats come from. They basically had a success rate of 20 percent. The overall effort in the north consumed great resources for very little gain. Th…
▶ 18:51
Indeed, as John Evans pointed out, the government was aware the CIA for years had sanctioned heroin traffic from the Golden Triangle of Bermuda, Thailand and Laos into South Vietnam as a way of rewarding top foreign officials in advancing U…
▶ 24:11
case officer primarily selected officers whose career had been stalled due to gradual reduction in forces in Southeast Asia. Those hired were put through the BNDD's training course and assigned to spy on particular regional directors. No re…
▶ 29:58
foreign nationals to blow up contraband planes while they were refueling at clandestine airstrips. Another proposal called for ambushing traffickers in America and taking their drugs and money. The creation of the Strategic Intelligence Off…
▶ 1:20:28
But it takes us away from a little bit, but back to Barry Seale. I don't know if you want to go there yet. Go there. All right. I'm not sure if you saw. I think you liked one of my responses to this post about a David Goyet article from the…
▶ 30:17
continuation of the rule violence that preceded Plan Lazo in the 1960s. But a broader glance at how the U.S. has intervened in other countries would see Colombia as yet another example of how the U.S., with local drug proxy forces, to incre…
▶ 4:58
Hawk and the U.S. State Department argued that America should employ whatever means necessary. Arms here, opium there, bribery, propaganda, anything that it took. Rusk advice was thus implemented through strategies of propaganda and covert …
▶ 7:19
The KMT's drug connection in China was the Green Gate, and shipments of opium arrived in the U.S. through this route to include the CIA. Support for CIA activities in the Golden Triangle was based upon the preservation and restoration of th…
▶ 10:09
The CIA's airline, Civil Air Transport, later known as Air America, flew weapons and supplies from its base in Hong Kong to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and the mountain camps of Burma. 10,000 Chinese troops loyal to Chiang Kai-shek in Taiw…
▶ 10:35
The deployment of KMT troops was important for the transportation of opium. Civil Air Transport supplied the KMT with weapons and transportation for opium, and on return flights, they brought weapons, all arranged through the Thailand secre…
▶ 13:56
that the failure to invade China in the fight against communism forced the CIA to move its covert drug operations westward. The CIA's new focus on the fight against the Vietnamese, meaning Ho Chi Minh, as opium production in Burma, Thailand…
▶ 14:22
intelligence connections in Palermo and Marseille, meaning the Sicilian and Corsican mafia. The U.S. inherited the drug-smuggling contacts of the French in Laos and Vietnam, which had been used during the First Indochina War. Laos, and in p…
▶ 16:52
Who's trafficking drugs? You can guarantee it's not them. An internal CIA survey revealed that 60% of the world's opium came from the Golden Triangle under the control of the CIA. With the four largest heroin labs in Laos, Burma, and Thaila…
▶ 1:00:23
And he was a very valuable intelligence partner during World War II, and at least according, I think, to the Kefauver committees, well after that, as well as Lucien Conine in his interview with Alfred McCoy in 71. Yeah, and Conine is the gu…
▶ 8:24
H-A-S-E-N-F-U-S. He was the lone survivor of the plane crash. Hasenfus, who'd worked for the CIA's Air America airline during the agency's secret war in Laos, told the press that he was again working for the CIA at a time when the agency wa…
▶ 5:12
The U.S. Customs agent told federal investigators that Weakley's stint with the Navy SEALs gave him, quote, unquote, contacts in the intelligence community, including the CIA and NSA, unquote. In 1983, he and several other Americans were ar…
▶ 8:35
the ironic codename Operation Lazarus. Weakley's contributions, according to a 1983 Soldier of Fortune magazine story, included having silencers altered to fit a 9mm submachine gun to be used by the team. The first mission in November of 19…
▶ 9:05
As he prepared to make another stab at infiltrating Laos in early 1983, word of his mission was leaked to Soldier of Fortune magazine and picked up by the Los Angeles Time and Boston Globe. Exposed, Gritz and his squad were arrested by Thai…
▶ 9:34
anti-terrorism expert and the daughter of a missing U.S. pilot were jailed and held for trial. In a letter to the LA Times, Grits said that the CIA and DIA both knew of the mission and provided him with the gear. Both agencies disavowed any…
▶ 10:02
with powerful transmitters that had been used to send messages from Laos directly to Washington, unquote. UPI reported the disclosure of the radio type and purpose bolstered the credibility of Gritz's statement and that his first mission in…
▶ 1:09:36
Teach them how to kidnap people, blah, blah, blah. And they're doing drugs or selling drugs to fund all of this stuff because that's the whole Gladio model. You sell drugs to finance covert operations. So in every single time, after Vietnam…
▶ 1:10:06
The CIA, not we, the CIA brings because once they have to leave, they can't leave. Well, they could and they have in some cases, but they don't leave the best of the killers in the field. They become the quote unquote refugees. And so you h…
▶ 10:54
as if they're some sage. And I, quite frankly, from a historical perspective, they don't know shit. So take that for whatever it's worth. Anyway. Okay. So we are up to the part where we're going to talk about Air America and their role in L…
▶ 12:53
Some U.S. officials concluded that the U.S. had therefore risked confrontation with impunity below China's southern border, since any response by China would only have intensified a split between it and the Soviet Union. The fallacy of this…
▶ 13:20
though hardly because of any inherent aggressiveness in the Laotian people themselves, who basically were the victims of this whole sordid mess. In 1958, a non-aligned government that had been established in Laos under Prince Fuma appeared …
▶ 13:49
fearing that this would lead to the absorption of Laos into a communist bloc, which they actually, there was no indication that that was true because the actual people that were in charge were neutral. The U.S. decided to intervene. Suvana …
▶ 14:18
put a stranglehold on his government. Egged on by the American advisors, the succeeding government of Sanakoi declared itself no longer bound by the provisions of the 1954 Geneva Agreement. They recognized the KMT nationalist Chinese govern…
▶ 14:47
Non-uniformed advisors. So in other words, this is another CIA orchestrated coup to get rid of the neutral government, a non-aligned government, because you weren't allowed to be non-aligned. You either had to be with the United States or y…
▶ 16:18
for a marked increase in the number of American military personnel, even though this would entail scrapping the limits established by the 1954 Geneva Accords. But they haven't paid attention to the Geneva Accords in Vietnam or any place els…
▶ 16:47
That led to further destabilization in Laos, or I'm sorry, in Laos, the ambassador in Laos, and hastened the growth of the communist sympathetic Pei Ocean Lao. The CIA's plotting on behalf of General Fomi has therefore frequently been derid…
▶ 17:15
Just the internal politics of Laos, which, of course, we know is not true. They were very interested in the poppy. In December 1958, both North Vietnamese and Nunon province in southern China began to complain of overflights by Americans or…
▶ 19:38
i.e. Chiang Kai-shek's troops, were operating in Shan states of neighboring Burma, had crossed over into Laotian territory and were being supplied by an airlift of quote-unquote unknown planes, meaning CIA planes. Matters escalated in May w…
▶ 20:08
two military battalions to accept integration into the royal Laotian army. One accepted, and these two elements were sympathetic to the Pathan Lao, but the other comprised largely of tribal Black Thies, Hmong, and Kast minorities.…
▶ 20:36
with long-standing reasons to dislike the Lao government, did not. The latter simply withdrew into its home base in a northeastern province of Lao. This was the beginning of an expanded Laotian Lao influence in the lowlands of the prime opi…
▶ 21:00
eventually led to the construction of mountain airstrips for Air America and the Hmong in the same region. On March 31, 1959, Civil Air Transport, Inc., a CIA proprietary, had changed its name to Air America. It also led to outbreaks of spo…
▶ 21:30
labeled a North Vietnamese invasion. So in other words, the CIA is conducting operations in Laos and the Laos general tells the Laos people and international press that the North Vietnamese are invading Laos when they did no such thing. Not…
▶ 21:57
what they labeled as communist forces inside of Laos, which were people who didn't want Laos to be the opium trafficking capital that it became. The first allegations of cross-border fighting began July 30th at a small border post mainly co…
▶ 22:26
who was shot from under his house by fellow tribesmen, not North Vietnamese. Yet on July 30th, the day of the incident, Allen Dulles told the National Security Council, quote unquote, local communist forces aided by volunteers across the bo…