The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 30 (31)

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0:00 colonel how are you well i'm here bridget i don't know if the colonel can hear us or not there you go how are you doing sr oh there she is she's playing the song so i want to say something before we get started on our lesson i've been talking to a few people and if

3:05 There was a time when someone would want to do something in the United States with the anticipation of what's going to be happening this evening. It would provide ample opportunity to do something. So I just say that because I want everybody during this next several days.

3:36 to be very conscious of when they're out of their surroundings. Just be alert. Not that we are not all that way already, but definitely be vigilant. So just saying. Okay. Head on a swivel more than normal. Yes, yes.

4:08 There's just, as far as timing goes, there are more sensitive times than others. So just be aware of that. Okay, to our lesson. We are in Southeast Asia. We were talking about the coup of Diem at the end yesterday. So that's where we're going to pick up.

4:40 Soon after the Diem coup, William Colby arrived in Saigon. He had John Richardson to dinner the night before leaving Washington, D.C. on his way to Saigon. His priority was to replace the station chief. Colby called on Pierre de Silva, recently sent to Hong Kong.

5:10 after a long tour as the CIA chief in Korea, where he too had seen a coup up close. Now, this is very, very important setting this up because as we've found out in our years-long study, Hong Kong was a pivot point for drug trafficking and money laundering, key to the whole thing.

5:40 Okay, so you've got the guy that was at Hong Kong. Korea, as we know, especially in the aftermath of the Korean War, was led by one dictator after another. We don't think of South Korea as being a dictatorship, but it was a dictatorship for a very long time. That is where Reverend Moon started.

6:06 the Unification Church, which was basically a front for planting stay-behind capabilities all over with the quote-unquote Moonies. And remember, it was the Unification Church that basically owned an entire array of munition production capability. So you've got that apparatus set up in South Korea.

6:36 You have another piece of it in Hong Kong. And you have William Colby meeting with these guys on his way to Vietnam to basically set up the Phoenix program. So that's kind of the context of those few sentences. Da Silva had a background in espionage against denied areas and had ran security for the atomic bomb.

7:07 He and Colby had overlapped for a year at Columbia University. Director McComb approved Da Silva's appointment at the end of 1963, then made the suggestion to LBJ and recalled Da Silva to Washington, D.C. He took Da Silva to meet LBJ.

7:39 Da Silva became the first of a secession of CIA chieftains drawn into the top agency ranks. The CIA had been ordered basically by JFK to get out of the paramilitary business, although we know that after his assassination, that didn't happen. There's an operation called Operation Switchback, which...

8:15 turned over the agency's CIDGSs to the military command in Vietnam, but the prohibition lasted less than a year. A directive already in draft by LBJ provided for the unilateral U.S. pressure against North Vietnam, a program of covert military action called O-Plan 34-A.

8:46 Langley's Far East Chief William Colby went to Honolulu within weeks of Diem's fall to discuss this with U.S. military commanders. Colby now opposed missions of the sort that he had carried out in Project Tiger, but the CIA's view was overridden. That's garbage, by the way. It wasn't overridden, and they're a big proponent of all of this.

9:15 President Johnson approved O-Plan 34A. The CIA was going to be based in Da Nang and handed over pieces of switchback to the military in 1964. It would be expanded. Quite soon, the military's study and observation group, SOG,

9:44 With orders for commando attacks along the North Vietnamese coast as part of 34A, added its own version to an infiltration program. The CIA supplied intelligence and specialized support to these activities. The 34A operation led to the next escalation of U.S. forces in Vietnam. On the last night of July 1964,

10:11 A raid by fast, heavily armed swift boats attacking North Vietnamese facilities on the islands of Han My and Han Nhu in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Han My raid coincided with another U.S. intelligence activity, a De Soto patrol in the Gulf. De Soto patrols were U.S. Navy collection efforts for communication intercepts.

10:40 operations carried enhanced radio equipment. De Soto patrols had been pursued off the coast of China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea. When the first patrol had been conducted in 1962, the second De Soto mission took place in 63, and the destroyer Craig made an intercept cruise in the Gulf in March of 64.

11:12 The destroyer Maddox was on a DeSoto patrol when swift boats passed her, the 34A Raiders returning to base. That evening, the Maddox steamed past the recently shelled islands. The North Vietnamese sent out torpedo boats, which attacked the Maddox in international waters the next afternoon. They were driven off.

11:36 with one sunk and the other damaged. President Johnson then deliberately ordered the Maddox back to the Gulf of Tonkin, accompanied by another destroyer, C. Turner Joy. Two nights later, the two destroyers mistook, this is the infamous Gulf of Tonkin, they mistook instrument readings for another attack. President Johnson retaliated with carrier airstrikes on the North Vietnam. In other words,

12:08 You can buy the story that it was a mistake or it was a false flag in order to justify us getting more involved in Vietnam. There's an argument to be made on both sides of that that I have read a lot about. I come down on the side of false flags. You can form your own opinion. He then went to Congress for a resolution. And on August 7th, 1964,

12:37 the legislature approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Johnson then relied on that for a declaration of war. McGeorge Bundy immediately got involved with DeSoto. As a reconnaissance project, DeSoto patrols were approved by the special group, which Bundy chaired. Because LBJ's...

13:04 sensitivity to Vietnam developments, the president took up this question directly. Both DeSoto and 34A operations were put on a pause temporarily. The Joint Chiefs argued for action bombing North Vietnam and relaxing restrictions on American forces. Maxwell Taylor, ambassador to South Vietnam since July, odd.

13:34 favored waiting to see if Vietnam's political situation stabilized. Johnson selected less than the maximum option, a resuming of DeSoto patrols and 34A. Reinforce farm gate with heavier jet bombers. Thus operations like DeSoto and 34A, which were provocative, were approved not on their merits, but as alternatives to greater provocation.

14:06 Meanwhile, on the ground, the CIA recovered its earlier momentum. In search of some means to counter the National Liberation Front in the villages, several agency officers innovated armed bands of villagers within months that accounted for killing the National Liberation Front, using the terminology of guerrillas. Da Silva's deputy, Gordon Jorgensen.

14:36 soon called the units People's Action Teams. The variant of the same idea took place in the Mekong Delta. That was oversaw by Stuart Methvin, who was reassigned there from Laos. The paramilitary specialist Rip Robertson presently materialized in Vietnam to work on these programs.

15:05 In the Central Highlands, the DIDG effort continued to expand. In June of 64, Mac Bundy asked Director McComb to turn back the clock to before switchback to have the CIA re-enter Vietnam, as it were. Of course, they're already there. Lots of them. In March of 65, McComb presented a consolidated program with dozens of projects the CIA proposed to conduct.

15:36 The secret war on the western flank of South Vietnam, among the rugged mountains in the high plains of Laos, represented an effort to isolate the battlefield in the south. Paramilitary action and political manipulation in Laos attained heights never before achieved. In previous efforts, the CIA had always been hampered in one way or the other. Actions were impeded by U.S. reluctance to show its hands, like in Cuba or Albania.

16:06 or a lack of truly popular indigenous groups, as in Indonesia or Taiwan. But none of those prevailed in Vietnam. Laos was different. There was no difficulty in defining the mission for the secret warriors. Insurgency was increasing in South Vietnam, and the North used Laos to move the battle area.

16:36 Thus, Laos became the front line in the struggle. Beases were plentiful both there and in neighboring Thailand, another American ally. At the same time, the American military was excluded from Laos by the 1954 Geneva Accords, which they ignored completely. That had allowed only the French to advise the royal Laotian government. In Laos, the CIA had the field all to itself.

17:08 with the military supporting its action. After the 1954 agreement, Laos had had a chance for independence and stability. A little country with a small political elite, leaders of all persuasions were well known to each other, mostly related to each other. Prime examples were two princes of royal blood. And I'm not going to try to say their names. The first one is

17:42 So I'll try. So Feng Gong Vong, he was the leader of what the CIA referred to as their communist movement. His half-brother, Sovana Foma, was a neutralist, a nationalist. The French had influence in Laos, while the American presence established after Geneva.

18:11 was slow growing. The Eisenhower administration had no mind to accept a neutralist solution. So neither one of these guys is going to work out for them. Much as he had done with Sukarno, Nehru, and Nasser, Eisenhower insisted that Laos side with the West. You weren't going to be given a choice. He demanded Eisenhower.

18:42 that they have a coalition government that was controlled and favored the West. America began pumping in millions of dollars of aid in 1955. By 1960, the U.S. had provided Laos over $250 million. They were basically paying for the entire military and half the country.

19:15 The CIA station played a critical role in political action inside of Laos. They wanted, the author literally uses this phrase, the third option. The secret warriors backed a pro-American committee for defense of national interest, CDNI, Committee for Defense of National Interest. It was formed.

19:47 with the money that we gave them in 1958. It achieved a quote-unquote electoral upset over the Seol Fun Vung Yang party, while the prince himself was elected by the largest margin of the country. So, kind of a mixed bag result after all of those millions of dollars to affect the election.

20:20 The young people who formed the CDNI were called Les Jeannes. In the Laotian political capital, many of them represented and were members of a U.S. created junior chamber of commerce. Not even kidding. They were dead set anti-communist.

20:52 It quickly became an open secret that American special services were paying all of their expenses. In the 1958 elections, they were supposed to complete reintegrating the nation, which was under military control by different factions. The Socialist Party Front

21:22 And especially its parent organization, the Pei Ocean Lao, dominated two large provinces. In November of 1958, the neutralist prince accepted the king's authority. The Pei Ocean Lao's troops in those provinces joined the Royal Lao Armed Forces, while the other group was to be represented.

21:54 as a coalition under Souvana Foma. But the accord disintegrated when Souvana's cabinet fell in 1958. Suddenly, the CIA-supported group took center stage, gaining seats in the cabinet, formed in August, even though some ministers had lost their elections. It didn't matter. Just go sit in the seat. The Pei Ocean Laos ministers

22:24 were all dismissed. Trouble quickly followed when the Pei Ocean Lao revolted, rekindling a civil war. The Eisenhower administration increased aid when fighting resumed and increased it again as the conflict widened throughout the entire country. The CIA station, the American conduit to the CDNI, grew.

22:56 exponentially, as did the U.S. Embassy. All was not well there. The ambassador favored Suvanna's neutralist solution and considered his policy to have been sabotaged by the CIA, because it was. Station Chief Henry Hexler refused to tell his boss about some agency activities, his boss being the ambassador. Ambassador Horace Smith took his grievance to Alan Dulles.

23:28 In 1959, demanding that Hexter be transferred out of Laos because he was doing shit he wasn't supposed to do. Dulles knew of what Hexter was doing. Dulles backed the station chief and at the end of his tour, even assigned him to Northeast Thailand, which bordered Laos and where we were conducting operations into Laos.

24:02 out of Thailand. Taking that into consideration, Heckscher outlasted the ambassador. Smith was replaced in the summer of 1960 by Winthrop Brown, a former Wall Street lawyer and ambassador to India. You know, where we were doing the whole Tibet thing. Yeah, that guy. Buddies with Alan Dulles.

24:33 If you have an ambassador that doesn't want to go along with what the CIA is going to do, regardless of what the ambassador says, you just fire the ambassador, get a new one that's in bed with the CIA, and the problem's solved. Only three weeks after Brown's arrival, the pro-US government was overthrown by a paratrooper named Captain Kong Lee. He had been a veteran of the French campaign.

25:03 at Dien Bien Phu. Kong Lee remained belligerent against Americans as well as the French. Americans' perceptions aside, Kong Lee became the strongman and asked Silvana Fumar to join his new cabinet. Warthrop Brown counseled Washington to cooperate with Silvana.

25:37 the most pro-Western leader suitable in Laos. Brown believed the CIA station chief, Gordon Jorgensen, agreed. In fact, the Eisenhower administration was pursuing its own game in Laos with the CIA at the center of it and Jorgensen squarely on board. Eisenhower had sent a covert military advisory group called Program Evaluation Office.

26:03 Beginning in the summer of 59, Eisenhower added more than 100 special forces, codenamed White Star. And guess who shows up? Grayston Lynch. Yeah, the boat guy that landed in Cuba. That guy. The guy that wasn't supposed to go ashore, but did anyway. Yeah, that guy's in Laos.

26:34 He first connected with the agency while in Laos in this unit called White Star. White Star worked for the RLAF strongman, General Fumi Nosovan. He had denounced neutralism and launched a coup to topple Suvana. So he's in bed with the CIA. The CIA had a case officer.

27:05 with Fumi, the general, by the name of John Hasey, H-A-S-E-Y. He lived next door and shared his aspirations. Another word, General Fumi Nocevan is a CIA asset with a handler. Okay, at the same time that we've got General Nocevan,

27:39 with a handler. Suvanna, the guy that they're overthrowing, also had a CIA handler. His name was Campbell James. So they're going to try to control both sides of this, like they do in all of these things. Not merely playing both sides, the agency took steps to recruit the Hmong tribe in the mountains. Stuart Methvin

28:08 who had arrived from Japan in the summer of 59, met the Hmong military commander, Van Pao, at a hut of Filipino medical staff. Over a series of visits, Methvin convinced the Hmong leader to ally with the CIA. This became Project Momentum. On the surface, Washington supported the capital, but secretly it had backed everybody around it.

28:39 They were also recruiting Hmong secret armies. Desmond Fitzgerald dropped in to survey the scene. Toward the end of 1960, John Irwin, representing the Pentagon and the 5412 group, visited South Laos and talked to Fumi. A second Irwin trip occurred before Kennedy took office.

29:07 the Americans began channeling aid to Fumi, bypassing the capital altogether. The CIA induced Fumi to pass supplies to the Hmongs, whose allegiance were to the general. Reports of the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos following a trumped-up border incident were used to justify increases in aid. Yes, we did a fake border incursion.

29:36 and then claimed that it was at the fault of the North so that we could expand an already expanding presence in Laos. Fleeing the capital after Fumi's coup, Sovana and Kong Li made an alliance with the Pei Ocean Laos. A little over two weeks later, on December 4th, 1960, the Soviet Union began airlifting military supplies to

30:05 the Peocean Laos forces. They started an offensive of their own. Political intrigue had turned Laos, the land of a million elephants, into a Cold War battleground, their favorite kind. The effects of the U.S. actions would be to undercut the political balance in the country, hardly conducive to a democracy. Sovana Foma.

30:36 Falma, said of a senior U.S. official and by the extension of American policy that he, quote, understood nothing about Asia and nothing about Laos, unquote. They knew how to destroy a country and that's all they're aiming for because Laos is going to be the thoroughfare for the opium. President Eisenhower's decision clearly indicated his concept of Laos as a secret war.

31:07 Aside from White Star and the Hmong, he approved the movement of B-26 bombers into Thailand. They were going to be used in Laos. And they were going to assemble non-American crews to fly them. Ten lighter T-6 strike aircraft were also moved there. They were going to train Laotian pilots to fly them. The aircraft was funneled through.

31:42 the Thai government, and then we started doing it direct. By January 4th of 1961, Air America had plans to have mechanics in the capital of Laos and form a Laotian Air Force. Air America also flew White Star troopers around Laos and enabled CIA officers to shuttle between Fumi and the Hmong.

32:13 15 Air America aircraft at Bangkok were flying 1,000 tons of supplies a month into Laos. Eisenhower ordered a naval task force bearing Marines into position for intervention in Laos and placed them on high alert. Again, this is two weeks before this asshole is out of office. He's setting this entire operation up and then leaving.

32:46 Laos figured among the topics during the transition. Eisenhower had warned Khrushchev that the U.S. intended to ensure that the quote-unquote legitimate government of Laos stayed in power. It wasn't a legitimate government. It was a government of the U.S.'s choosing.

33:10 At a morning meeting on Laos on December 31st, 1960, Eisenhower joked that perhaps the time had come to use existing plans for airborne alert for strategic air command. In parting, he told the group, which included Alan Dulles and Gordon Gray, quote, we must not allow Laos to fall to the communists, even if it requires us to go to the war. Again.

33:40 It has literally nothing to do with the communist. They had a neutralist government that didn't even like the communist. That wasn't good enough. President Kennedy thought Laos no place for a major conflict. Well, there goes the use of those tactical nuclear weapons again. In office, he would use diplomacy, threatening the use of U.S. force.

34:14 and briefly converting the program evaluation office into an advisory group. But he wanted to stay within the international guidelines of how to deal with that. With the help of Avril Harriman, Roger Hilsman, and Dean Russ, Kennedy achieved his aim. When Fumi Nozavan stood in the way, his American assistance evaporated.

34:41 His CIA handler, Jack Hasey, disappeared. He got sent to the Congo. Oh gosh, that's interesting because we already fucked them up. Sorry. But his reassignment was much to the chagrin of Desmond Fitzgerald and William Colby. They didn't want him to leave. It was Harriman who engineered the cutoff of Fumi.

35:10 A loyal Democrat and senior statesman, Harriman carried weight with JFK, and he tried for a credible Laotian neutralization agreement. Harriman also knew that he wanted, when CIA officers in the capital of Laos briefed him on Laotian politics and claimed popular support for Fumi, the president's envoy.

35:38 turned off his hearing aid in the middle of the meeting because he knew he was being lied to by the CIA. Diplomacy led Harriman to Geneva, where an international conference reached an agreement in 62, though the end neither side observed it. What also flowed from the accord, the installation of a coalition government in Laos under Prime Minister Sovana Foma, proved to be one

36:08 lasting achievement of the negotiations. But keep in mind, he already has a CIA handler. Washington laughed with scorn at North Vietnamese assertions that all their forces had withdrawn from Laos. Over 40 enemy soldiers passed the International Commission's border checkpoint, but the U.S. violated the agreement too, continuing to supply the Hmong

36:37 and command the Hmong secret armies. Two agency officers, Anthony Paschepi and Vinton Lawrence, established a CIA base in the Hmong center of Long Tien. In the spring of 1963, the assassination of neutralist Laotian officials led to a fresh outbreak of fighting.

37:07 Now the Pathan Lau attacked the neutralist forces who eventually joined the RLAF. The war resumed. Suvana Foma secretly asked the U.S. for help and Kennedy agreed. In late 63, Kennedy designated the CIA as executive agent for the Laotian paramilitary effort.

37:34 tribal mobilization of all. The very foundation of the CIA's secret war in Laos was the Hmong. They were also known as the Miao, M-E-O. This word was a bastardization of the Chinese name Miao used for mountain people, but it was a pejorative. The tribes respect no borders and were found in Laos, China, North Vietnam.

38:07 They kind of just were like nomadic in that area. Generations of French and American secret warriors knew them as Miao. They were a proud but friendly people who practiced slash and burn farming and raised opium, which is why the CIA loved them. It was probably inevitable that the Hmong would be dragged into American's war. Their poppy,

38:40 had hidden effects on the conflict in Indochina since the French War when both sides had used opium money, though the Hmong mostly sided with the French under the leadership of Taobi Lai Fong, a pro-French notable and the first of his tribe to graduate from college. Taobi's Hmong fought for the French, comprising the bulk of a partisan force that vainly attempted to save Dien Bien Phu.

39:08 Vang Pao, a veteran of that debacle, led a French commando unit on the expedition. When Taobi Lai Phong functioned as a tribal politician, Vang remained the military commander. When Stuart Methvin met him in 1959, Vang held the allegiance of many, though not all, clans and promised to deliver fresh recruits.

39:38 Feeling too old for another war, Toby left the main leadership role to Feng Pao. While some Hmong sided with the Pei Ocean Lao clan leader, Fei Dang, becoming a member of the Pei Ocean Lao Central Committee, Toby and Feng Pao made their alliance with the CIA, not directly supporting Fo Mi, but waging a parallel war.

40:09 Before Kennedy took office, there were approximately 2,500 Hmong in the secret army being trained by the CIA. Within months, the number had quadrupled. Vang drew his cadre from half a dozen ethnic Hmong battalions. Kung Lee's forces soon attacked. Vang Pao lost his own village, forced to retreat into the surrounding mountains. Worst of all, the Plain of Jars airfield

40:40 also fell, endangering supply. The Pei Ocean Laos joined Kung Lee's offensive and threatened the entire Hmong tribal area. The spring and summer of 1961 witnessed a Hmong mass exodus. Whole villages moved. More than 70,000 people trekked into the mountains and made new homes. Without a crop already in the ground, the Hmong were threatened with starvation in their new homes.

41:11 Several Americans were vitally important to the Hmong future. When CIA's Methvin left for South Vietnam, Fitzgerald had promised him his choice of post, but reneged at the last moment. Methvin handed the Hmong account over to Bill Lair, a 35-year-old officer who spent much of the 1950s in Thailand. As a case officer,

41:40 with the Thai police aerial recovery unit. Oh, well, what would he have been doing in Thailand in the 1950s, setting up Chiang Kai-shek's airlift of drugs from that entire area, thanks to the CIA and Flying Tigers, Claire Chennault, the China lobby, and all of them? Because, of course, the Thai police, we already talked about, and their National Guard and intelligence was bought and paid for.

42:11 with the CIA in Thailand. Bill Lehrer was in Thailand during the Ben Ven Phu fiasco. Lehrer ran Project Momentum for almost a decade and had the contacts in Thailand that were crucial to the assistance of the Hmong people, the link between the secret armies in the field and their CIA case managers.

42:44 was critical and Bill Layer had been part of it. Known as his codename Cigar in agency cable traffic, Layer ran the entire secret army with eight other CIA officers, a White Star team soon withdrawn, and a hundred of the paramilitary in Thailand that he recruited. A second American organized

43:14 the system that would help with the secret army for the next 11 years. That would be Major Harry Adderholt, commander of the Air Force's small unconventional warfare detachment in Okinawa from 59 to 60. And by the way, Henry Adderholt is like a hero in Air Force special operations. If you say anything about him, people will scream at you.

43:47 But he was like the right hand of the CIA in this whole operation. He helped the CIA on air operations in Tibet. All of those stayed behind. He was directly involved in that. And basically all over Southeast Asia. Aderholt went to the capital of Laos in early 1960 to set up a light plane service for the Laotian capital.

44:19 with a tiny landing strip that was carved in the side of a mountain. Working with Vang Pao, Aderholt surveyed North Laos for a network of similar small airstrips called Lima sites, Lima, Lima sites, and stayed for two years to oversee their construction. Aderholt also helped the CIA find suitable aircraft.

44:50 such as a Hilo U-10 in U.S. service that could be used at these sites. A third American, Edgar Bruel, B-U-E-L-L, who worked where? Oh, U-S-A-I-D, became a legend in Laos. Bruel initiated airdrops of rice into the mountains, indiscriminate blind drops at first.

45:21 Because they had no idea where the people were, Bruel left his embassy desk to parachute into the mountains. You know, because that's what USAID does. He spent two months walking around in the forest, personally meeting all of the Hmong villagers. Those that agreed to follow Ving Pao, he enlisted with...

45:47 rice drops, and supplies of seeds and tools. That's how they bribed the people to become secret warriors. After they had driven them out of their house by creating a civil war, then they bribed them with food because they're starving to be secret warriors. In December of 1961, the Hmong opened two new bases farther west at Long Tien and Sam Thong.

46:17 which became the main centers of the secret army. Long Tien served as Vang Pao's headquarters, a major mountain commercial center with Hmong population of about 40,000 people, which is huge as far as villages go. The CIA created a base there initially staffed by Anthony Pasveni and Vent Lawrence.

46:43 who remained after the 1962 Geneva Convention, Geneva Agreement, but was told to stay out of sight. Known by his radio handle, Sky, Long Tian became the nerve center of the Laotian Secret War. Sam Thong became the administrative, medical, and educational center director.

47:11 He consolidated things throughout the mid-60s. A modern hospital and the first high school was built there. The Geneva Agreement had little effect on the CIA's support. Air America continued their flights. Even before fighting resumed in the spring of 63, the agency had directed Air America to make almost a dozen flights, specifically to deliver weapons.

47:39 That was labeled dirty rice. The CIA met requirements for quote unquote withdrawal of foreign troops by pulling people back to Thailand, from which it would simply fly into Laos and continue the operation. You just can't make this shit up. For the CIA, mountain momentum became a model of quote unquote nation building.

48:14 The political action approached civic institutions in hopes of creating a grateful clientele that would do what the Americans wanted them to do. This nation building occurred among the Hmong. As with the Montegards in South Vietnam, it brought political problems. The CIA effectively created nations within nations.

48:43 Activities were possible only to the degree that the central government extended autonomy to the tribal people. Saigon triggered a Montegard political crisis in 64 and 65 precisely by reducing the autonomy accorded to the central islands. The IAEA's success with being powerful resulted from the Laotian's capital being too weak to exert similar authority.

49:13 keeping the Laotian government weak and it would enable their secret army to flourish. In recognition of Hmong autonomy, Vang Pao received repeated RLAF promotions and was treated as a commander because he was basically under the control of the CIA.

49:42 and Tu Bi Leng Fong became a minister of the Royal Laotian government. Vang Pao struck his greatest blow to date in 1963 in a raid that destroyed the Pao Ocean Lao supply road, dynamiting a kilometer and sending sections tumbling down the mountainside.

50:07 Cable traffic suggests that Ving Pao moved without CIA approval and ahead of any Pei Ocean Lao attacks. There is a lot of contradictory information about how that whole thing happened as well. It was not the first time the CIA troops were acting as secret warriors.

50:34 The clandestine force grew to 30,000 troops. Vang Pao and the CIA worked out a program to increase striking power. A third of the Hmong formed special guerrilla units, partisan battalions supported by bazookas and heavy mortars. These became the regular forces of Vang Pao's army. They were later supplied with 75 and 105 millimeter guns.

51:04 They were lifted from mountaintop to mountaintop by Air America helicopters and were going to be used to destroy the Pei Ocean Lao. Now, what's interesting about this is the State Department cables can say, hey, we didn't have anything to do with that. We just supplied the training on how to use the explosives. We supplied the explosives and we're in the general area.

51:37 Air America provided airlift under contract to USAID. Now you know why I always say that the CIA is USAID. They are one in the same. The Lima site techniques were perfected to the point that the C-130s could offload entire palletized cargo in a quick flyby.

52:07 Smaller Air America planes relayed cargo to outlying sites. Each morning, Sky handed out assignments to the fleet as the aircraft entered Laotian airspace. Sometimes Air America hauled passengers, often fuel for the stocks at the Lima sites, or additional cargo for distribution. Sky frequently assigned as many as four or five successive missions a day for the lighter aircraft.

52:35 Secret warfare in Laos assumed a dynamic, freewheeling style of sky air operations. The epitome was embodied by Tony Poe, who attained legendary stature in the war, identified by his CIA acronym PIN, P-I-N. Poe, P-O-E, which is his real name, went everywhere with a boxer's mouth guard in his pocket, always ready for a fight.

53:05 Tony came from the big CIA Thailand base and had been a senior advisor to Vang Pao. Pao transferred up from the Cambodian border where he had been working with the anti-government rebels. He had also been at Camp Perry, class of 53, and a veteran of Indonesia, Saipan, Camp Hau, which is the Tibetan.

53:38 So he is a stay-behind trainer of the same accord that Otto Skorzeny was at the beginning. Poe had an extensive paramilitary resume. At Long Tien, he presided over the intensification of the struggle. Bent Loris manned the base while Poe ran out among the Hmong, and the Leotian operation went hot.

54:10 So we're going to stop there for today. That sets basically the stage and all the goings on up to the point when it actually does go hot. So now you know the whole background. You have gathered in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, the entire cadre that we've been following through this entire

54:38 gladio operation of setting up these stay behind units and they just move from one hot spot to another doing exactly the same thing you know Desmond Fitzgerald shows up at all of these different places and that's not a coincidence William Colby all of these guys they move around in these this guy here

55:05 Poe, Tony Poe has been in many of these stories as well. And again, now that we've got this book and it names all of those people, it provides a critical link for us to be able to kind of track these operations around the world. They just move these people around once they decide, set their sights on overthrowing a government.

55:31 And by the way, this is not anything that is not currently done by the CIA because you find the same people involved in these operations, you know, within the last 20 or 30 years as well in the CIA. So it's a pattern. So that's it for today. Bridget, nothing? SR, go ahead.

56:10 Thank you, Colonel, and thank everyone for attending here in Spaces and on Rumble. I'm sitting here listening to all of this and thinking as we keep going by rattling these names off, some of these people, like Hasey, who was in the Foreign Legion to begin with when all of this started, then he winds up in the CIA. That just sort of floored me there for a minute.

56:41 But I was looking at some of the others as well in their military careers to get into or associated with the CIA. It just blows my mind. The other thing that I heard you talk about was Air America. And the first thing that came to my mind, is this the same Air America that brought all the drugs here into the U.S.? Yes. Thank you, Colonel. Same one.

57:13 Um, yeah. Um, and, you know, civil air transport before Air America, um, that set up Chiang Kai-shek and moving all of the KMT around, um, Southeast Asia, um, into, um, uh, Indonesia in the late fifties and that failed coup attempt. Yeah. Same people. Um, all they do, same aircraft, actually, they just changed the name of the proprietary.

57:43 Um, so yeah, it's, it's crazy. Um, who else do we have? Bridget, did you have anything? Nope. Um, I did want to, um, I had looked up this Bruel guy, um, Edgar B-U-E-L-L. Um, very interesting guy.

58:20 with the USAID slash CIA. He was originally from Indiana. It's weird how many of these people start out in Indiana in this story. He first volunteered, the predecessor, so before USAID officially got that name, it was called AID. We ran across that.

58:50 It was also kind of a precursor to that was International Voluntary Service, IBS. And it basically was a quote unquote nonprofit contractor that functioned as a front for intelligence before the CIA even existed. And it was used in

59:19 insurgency operations. And of course, he ends up in not just the USAID infrastructure. He specifically was in the Office of Transition Initiatives, OTI, which again, I've talked extensively about because it's as nefarious as the OPS, the Office of Public Safety.

59:49 Office of Transition Initiatives, in a nutshell, was an operational arm of USAID for rule pacification. It basically went in to neutralize any potential resistance, either by buying off leaders.

1:00:14 providing food if they're starving to death, that type of thing. It was to keep the locals placated and out of the way of a CIA operation. That's basically the long and short of the transition initiative. And that's basically what his role in Laos was, is

1:00:41 The CIA using their paramilitary basically moves all of the people from their homes, in some cases, burns entire villages so they can't return there. So now you have a vulnerable population of people on the move. And then you basically, by these destabilization efforts, keep them dependent on you for food. That's pacification. That's how they do it.

1:01:11 And they make examples out of anybody that tries to stand up and step out of line. That's part of their motif as well. So, Sean, did you have something? Yeah, I just wanted to ask you, I mean, about the CIA. Where do they stand on religion? You know, because are they believers or unbelievers or are they atheists?

1:01:44 Well, their actions would indicate they're Satanist. However, a large portion of the leadership that we've studied as part of Operation Gladio are Catholic. And they were very integrated into the operations of the Vatican, which they used as an extension of intelligence gathering, as well as...

1:02:10 part of their, they use the Vatican Church Bank for money laundering. And so you go back and you find a large portion, disproportionately large portion of the leadership of the CIA were Knights of Malta inducted via the Catholic Church. So you can take that for whatever you want, but their actions are that of a Satanist. Okay.

1:02:40 And the globalists, the global elite are Satanists, aren't they? Well, they kill millions of people. Supposedly. Yeah, well, and don't get into the religious part of that. I'm going based on their actions as opposed to, I mean, you'll listen to them. A lot of them, regardless of what they were born into as far as a church, they will tell you they're atheist.

1:03:08 If you go by the actions of killing, in the case of what we've talked about in the overthrowing of these governments, where they leave millions of people dead as a result of the civil wars that they create and the destabilization and the overthrowing of actual democracies under the name of democracy.

1:03:31 That categorizes them in my book as Satanists because they leave vast swaths of the population dead. And the only people that could do that and live with themselves have no soul and therefore.

1:03:46 I refer to as Satanists. I don't mean Satanists as in they're doing some ritualistic, you know, some kind of smoke and mirror brouhaha kind of thing. But they sacrifice the people on the altar of power and wealth. And in my book, that's the reason why I call them Satanists. I'm not talking about, you know, a ball worshiper or any of that type of thing.

1:04:13 I don't think you have to go to that extent to classify them as Satanist. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes total sense. But Satanist, the very word Satanist, I mean, that refers to Satan, who is a figure in the Bible, who is a part of Christianity. So that would suggest that they in some way believe that in some way of Christianity. No, no, no. I don't think they do.

1:04:45 I'm saying that's why I qualify to just saying they're soulless. I don't think they believe that there's a God, but I will tell you what we have learned in some cases. Some of the people, especially when you go back to the very origins of this, they believe in this kind of weird philosophy of reincarnation.

1:05:13 The way they justified killing people, they believe fundamentally, some of them, not all of them, that people themselves can ascend to being God-like. So there's not a big God in the sky. People can achieve God-like qualities. And the way they did it,

1:05:35 this is their belief, is that through reincarnation, every time you are reborn, you are closer to your godlike.

1:05:46 being. And that's the way they rationalized killing people. They rationalized eugenics, abortion, all of that stuff, is that it doesn't matter how many people they kill because they're actually doing you a favor. They're allowing you to reascend in your closer to God life self. And to me, that sounds like batshit crazy.

1:06:14 but they actually believed that. And they had all kinds of weird things like these sexual rituals of producing a moon child and by having sex on some crazy altar. And a lot of those beliefs, Gnosticism and that type of thing fed into the mysticism that was practiced by a lot of the Nazis around Hitler.

1:06:44 And so I've just come across that material. I've not done any real deep diving in it, but that kind of allows you to make sense of why you can walk through a country like what happened in Indonesia after we overthrew Soekarno and a million people get killed and even more in Cambodia and they not care. They don't even bat an eye. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. I was sitting here looking at

1:07:17 James William Lair Bill Lair and I don't recall hearing his name early on with Alan Dulles yet Bill Lair supposedly was trained at the farm in one of its earliest training classes now he does get mentioned with Alan Dulles a few times in a little bit of the research that I've looked at but

1:07:52 I don't recall anything with him and Alan Dulles cooking stuff up. Although Alan Dulles regarded him rather highly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've come across his name a couple of different times. But he was one of the kind of brainiacs of regime change.

1:08:26 Yeah, yeah, very interesting guy. He left his mark. He was one of the guys that kind of bridged USAID and CIA operations and leveraged them as a package in the little bit that I came across him in previous research projects. He's one of those little hidden gems. Why are you so mad? Go ahead. Okay.

1:09:02 i don't know if you can hear me because i don't um my whole thing with this space has been going kind of crazy i can't see anybody and i can't even see myself on here so i'm glad that i was able to put my hand up but i unfortunately i kind of have a personal connection to this part um my uncle was a pilot for air america um he didn't speak much about it

1:09:29 um and i'm not going to speak ill of the dead because he has passed away but um he said quite a few times not only did he fly into laos but he also flew in and out of thailand oh and that's actually where he met his wife and um my my three cousins so we're born from that so um

1:09:56 Some good did come out of it. He did, I think, towards the end of his life, regret what he was doing and didn't really see it at the time as doing something bad. Of course, he probably fell under the spell that he was helping the indigenous people out by providing arms or, well, you can't say that about drugs, but he did.

1:10:26 Well, again. He tried to justify it. A lot of, again, all of the cargo is mislabeled. Yes. You are only read in on a need to know. The intelligence that was provided to both the special forces people and the lower people on down was like the pilots, the operators were that.

1:10:52 They were all communists in Laos and they're fighting the communists. And they had psyopsed the entire world that this communist menace was everywhere. And so if you're a pilot and you're making bank because they were paid very well and you are flying in, even if you know their weapons and not dirty rice, you are committed to arming people.

1:11:21 to fight for their freedom. That's the way it was couched to all of these people. It was not until much later, decades later, that the real truth came out in that the CIA was playing both sides of every one of these operations and that the majority of the people literally had nothing to do with communism. And so I don't know.

1:11:50 It's been a while since I've even talked about it. But the fact that Laos, I went to Laos in 2003 as part of my class trip at Air War College. And it was the first time I'd ever been on an elephant. Talk about land of the elephants. The elephants are everywhere in Laos. They actually use elephants as a mode of transportation.

1:12:18 Hotel that we stayed in, which was just outside, it was in the Capitol. And in 2003, the ambassador had just arrived. It was the first ambassador that had been in Laos for the U.S. since this time. As you will see that we eventually pull out the ambassador. Another ambassador does not go in until 2003. He was still unpacking his household goods when we had dinner with him.

1:12:46 I think there was like 15 of us on that trip. We arrived, we stayed several days. We went to Udorn, which was one of the Thailand bases. We actually were flown into Northern Thailand and walked across the Friendship Bridge that goes from Thailand into Laos. And a lot of the restaurants there that were...

1:13:12 frequented by the special forces guys are all still there just across the border in Laos. And we had lunch and dinner at two of those locations. And like a normal fighter bar, they had their names carved in wood in the restaurants there. You can't really call them restaurants. They were places to eat. They were right on the water there. And so,

1:13:42 We were then flown to the capital. We were flown over the Plain of Jars. We actually saw that area up in the mountains. And so they arranged for the elephants. They have these big people.

1:14:01 things on their back where like four people can sit in them and they brought them to the hotel. They sit down, you get on them, they get up and they take you into the market area. And then we took them back to the hotel. It's the only hotel that when you check in, they tell you to make sure that when you check into your room, you close the shutters.

1:14:29 Because the monkeys will come into your room and take your shit out of your suitcases and put them in the trees. And if you look out in the courtyard of this hotel, you see people's clothes hanging in the trees. The monkeys think that's really a funny thing to do is take your shit out of the hotel and hang it in the trees in the courtyard. So Laos is a very interesting place.

1:14:57 And it's exotic looking. It's gorgeous. The architecture there is beautiful. Very French looking. The Bougainvillea was in full bloom when we were there. It's an amazing place, but it's very mountainous, very rural when you get outside of the city. But the people are very, very nice.

1:15:26 Yeah, my aunt moves back there right when she found out that Biden was going to be president. So she took off. She she felt like she needed to escape, which I completely understand. I would have went with her if I could. But I'm staying here. This is my country. So, yep, it's nice. It was it's she tells me it's beautiful. She tells me that it was.

1:15:52 it's really nice. And my uncle lives there towards the end of his, his life too. So, um, though he, you're right. He did not know what he, he thought he was doing something admirable and honorable and he didn't find out until later on what he was actually doing. Yeah. Yeah. Most of the people did not know, um, that were lower down in the food chain, um, until much later, um, when things began being declassified. So,

1:16:21 Yeah. And, you know, it's like most of us that's been in the military. You don't know what's going on until you're outside of it. Go ahead, all along. Colonel, I just want to partly agree with the Laotian monkeys. It could have been a funny thing to do, provided it wasn't my stuff.

1:16:52 Yeah, I kept my shutters pulled the whole time. You know, when we'd get home in the evening, we would open them while we were in the room, but you did not dare to leave them shutters open when you were not in the room. I don't know. I had a different...

1:17:12 perception of what Laos was going to be like, I was pleasantly surprised. We spent probably three days in Bangkok, in Thailand. We had taken a whole chest of school supplies for a school that was just outside of Udorn.

1:17:31 And a very, very rural school, like one of those one room classrooms that you imagine back in the early 1900s here. We also went out and spent the day with the Marines that did all of the EOD because they're still in Thailand and in Laos, a lot of unexploded ordnance in the country.

1:17:55 And so we went out on a mission with one of them for what they, they have a network there, a communication system that when the rural areas find, and there's a whole education system of what the unexploded ordinance look like because it has injured people.

1:18:18 by them being out in the fields and finding them. And they communicate with these Marine detachments over there, and then they go out and secure the unexploded ordnance in the field. There's still wreckage over there. We went and saw a few of those. There's still lots of humongous craters.

1:18:44 over there that have just been left. And I mean like humongous that we visited. But flying into Udorn Air Base, we were in this, it wasn't a C-130, but it was kind of of the same model. It was, I didn't want to get on the airplane, but we made it safely, obviously. But when we landed at Udorn, there was one helicopter.

1:19:13 that was supposedly operational. And the Thai military guy wanted to take us up in this helicopter. Now you guys know that I spent eight years in aircraft maintenance. It was sitting in a pool of hydraulic fluid.

1:19:35 And I looked and we had a helicopter, a special forces helicopter guy with us, an Air Force AFSOC guy. And him and I are looking at each other because he was in my class back at Air War College as well in my seminar. And so I knew him really well. I'm looking at him. I'm like, I'm not getting on that helicopter. There's no way in hell that I'm getting on that helicopter. But anyway, it looked like a rust bucket.

1:20:02 But they were so excited. They wanted to take us on a tour of the area. I looked at them and I'm like, I'm not getting on that helicopter. So we didn't take him up on his offer. But it was really weird at Udorn because there were the barracks that the enlisted people, the maintainers, because it was kind of like a depot maintenance area for that.

1:20:27 area for flying all of Air America stuff and all of the CIA ops out of Udorn. As a matter of fact, two of the, my first maintenance squadron, two of the guys that I worked with had been, I enlisted in 79. They had been at Udorn. I'd heard lots of stories about Udorn Air Base.

1:20:51 And so it was weird and kind of freaky walking through the barracks areas and the maintenance hangars there, just imagining the stories that they had told me of being there. And then actually, you know, several years later, getting to walk around those facilities, it was spooky. Just because you can imagine the chaos that was going on during.

1:21:15 those periods of time during the Vietnam War with all of those people, because they launched, you know, in some of their recollection, they would launch as many as 100 to 150 aircraft out of there in a day. That's how ops tempo crazy it was at that airbase. So very interesting. We also got to go.

1:21:46 to a jewelry store in Bangkok that the embassy military attache that was escorting us around, it was a CIA drop location. I actually have two brown...

1:22:04 I don't know what the stone is called, but it's the tiger eyes, a necklace and earrings from this jewelry store in downtown Bangkok that was infamous for being a CIA drop location of secret messages. So we also ate at the Hard Rock Cafe there in Bangkok. And again,

1:22:32 I didn't know what to expect, but you fly into Bangkok and it's like flying into New York City. It is one of the craziest. There's just millions of people everywhere. It is a crazy city. Anyway, okay, I don't see any more hands. We're gonna close up shop and just wanna say, stay safe out there, everybody, because things are crazy right now.

1:23:10 Anyway, I will talk to you guys soon. I will be back tomorrow at four o'clock. And I think tomorrow, let's see. Nope, tomorrow's just four o'clock and then Alpha at nine o'clock. Okay. Is he feeling better or have you heard? He is. He is going to be on his way. I don't know. He may be.

1:23:39 In Nashville, I think GART is this weekend, which is why we didn't have the book club yesterday. So, or tonight, is today Tuesday? Yeah, we're not having the book club tonight at six because this weekend is the Great American Restoration for all of the Badland crew. So I don't know if...

1:24:09 Alpha's flying in Thursday morning and he's going to be at home tonight or tomorrow night or if he's going to do it on the road. I have no idea, but he's already communicated with me that we're definitely having a show tomorrow night. So anyway, that's it for today. You guys take care and I will see you tomorrow.

Entities here

CIA50 Vietnam32 United States25 Laos25 Thailand16 Vang Pao12 Air America11 Phoumi Nosavan9 Gulf of Tonkin incident9 Souvanna Phouma9 Dwight D. Eisenhower9 Secret War in Laos8 Communist Party of China7 France7 Lyndon B. Johnson7 Udorn Air Force Base6 Allen Dulles6 USAID6 Operation 406 Anthony Poshepny6 1954 Geneva Agreement6 John F. Kennedy6 Hmong people6 Washington, D.C.5 William Colby5 De Soto Patrols5 Korea5 Bill Lair5 Bangkok5 Desmond Fitzgerald4 Edgar Buell4 Pierre de Silva4 Long Tieng4 Gulf of Tonkin4 Royal Lao Armed Forces4 Committee for the Defense of National Interests4 Kong Le4 China4 White Star4 Dien Bien Phu3

Claims made here

Desmond Fitzgerald recruited Bill Lair host_asserted ▶ 41:11

“Several Americans were vitally important to the Hmong future. When CIA's Methvin left for South Vietnam, Fitzgerald had promised him his choice of post, but reneged at the last moment. Methvin handed …”

CIA trafficked Chiang Kai-shek host_asserted ▶ 41:40

“with the Thai police aerial recovery unit. Oh, well, what would he have been doing in Thailand in the 1950s, setting up Chiang Kai-shek's airlift of drugs from that entire area, thanks to the CIA and …”

Bill Lair headed Project Momentum host_asserted ▶ 42:11

“with the CIA in Thailand. Bill Lehrer was in Thailand during the Ben Ven Phu fiasco. Lehrer ran Project Momentum for almost a decade and had the contacts in Thailand that were crucial to the assistanc…”

Bill Lair recruited CIA host_asserted ▶ 42:44

“was critical and Bill Layer had been part of it. Known as his codename Cigar in agency cable traffic, Layer ran the entire secret army with eight other CIA officers, a White Star team soon withdrawn, …”

Harry Aderholt member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 43:47

“But he was like the right hand of the CIA in this whole operation. He helped the CIA on air operations in Tibet. All of those stayed behind. He was directly involved in that. And basically all over So…”

Harry Aderholt trained Vang Pao host_asserted ▶ 44:19

“with a tiny landing strip that was carved in the side of a mountain. Working with Vang Pao, Aderholt surveyed North Laos for a network of similar small airstrips called Lima sites, Lima, Lima sites, a…”

Edgar Buell member_of USAID host_asserted ▶ 44:50

“such as a Hilo U-10 in U.S. service that could be used at these sites. A third American, Edgar Bruel, B-U-E-L-L, who worked where? Oh, U-S-A-I-D, became a legend in Laos. Bruel initiated airdrops of r…”

Edgar Buell recruited Vang Pao host_asserted ▶ 45:21

“Because they had no idea where the people were, Bruel left his embassy desk to parachute into the mountains. You know, because that's what USAID does. He spent two months walking around in the forest,…”

Vang Pao headed Secret War in Laos host_asserted ▶ 46:17

“which became the main centers of the secret army. Long Tien served as Vang Pao's headquarters, a major mountain commercial center with Hmong population of about 40,000 people, which is huge as far as …”

CIA funded Secret War in Laos host_asserted ▶ 47:11

“He consolidated things throughout the mid-60s. A modern hospital and the first high school was built there. The Geneva Agreement had little effect on the CIA's support. Air America continued their fli…”

Air America supplied_arms_to Secret War in Laos host_asserted ▶ 47:11

CIA installed Vang Pao host_asserted ▶ 49:13

“keeping the Laotian government weak and it would enable their secret army to flourish. In recognition of Hmong autonomy, Vang Pao received repeated RLAF promotions and was treated as a commander becau…”

Vang Pao carried_out_attack Secret War in Laos host_asserted ▶ 49:42

“and Tu Bi Leng Fong became a minister of the Royal Laotian government. Vang Pao struck his greatest blow to date in 1963 in a raid that destroyed the Pao Ocean Lao supply road, dynamiting a kilometer …”

Anthony Poshepny member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 53:05

“Tony came from the big CIA Thailand base and had been a senior advisor to Vang Pao. Pao transferred up from the Cambodian border where he had been working with the anti-government rebels. He had also …”

Anthony Poshepny trained Otto Skorzeny host_asserted ▶ 53:38

“So he is a stay-behind trainer of the same accord that Otto Skorzeny was at the beginning. Poe had an extensive paramilitary resume. At Long Tien, he presided over the intensification of the struggle.…”

International Voluntary Service front_for CIA host_asserted ▶ 58:50

“It was also kind of a precursor to that was International Voluntary Service, IBS. And it basically was a quote unquote nonprofit contractor that functioned as a front for intelligence before the CIA e…”

Office of Transition Initiatives member_of USAID host_asserted ▶ 59:19

“insurgency operations. And of course, he ends up in not just the USAID infrastructure. He specifically was in the Office of Transition Initiatives, OTI, which again, I've talked extensively about beca…”

CIA laundered_money_for Catholic Church host_asserted ▶ 1:02:10

“part of their, they use the Vatican Church Bank for money laundering. And so you go back and you find a large portion, disproportionately large portion of the leadership of the CIA were Knights of Mal…”

Bill Lair trained Allen Dulles host_asserted ▶ 1:07:17

“James William Lair Bill Lair and I don't recall hearing his name early on with Alan Dulles yet Bill Lair supposedly was trained at the farm in one of its earliest training classes now he does get ment…”

Allen Dulles recruited Bill Lair host_asserted ▶ 1:07:52

“I don't recall anything with him and Alan Dulles cooking stuff up. Although Alan Dulles regarded him rather highly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've come across his name a couple of different times. But he …”

Air America operated_from Udorn Air Force Base host_asserted ▶ 1:20:02

“But they were so excited. They wanted to take us on a tour of the area. I looked at them and I'm like, I'm not getting on that helicopter. So we didn't take him up on his offer. But it was really weir…”