[8pliag]

Time Magazine 1964

Springtime on the Plain
Friday, May. 29, 1964

For three years now, Laos has marked the advance of spring by nearly falling into the hands of the Communists. Last week was no exception.

Heavy fighting suddenly erupted on the Plain of Jars, and, as usual, the Communist Pathet Lao severely punished the neutralist army commanded by plucky little General Kong Le. Once again, it seemed like the end of what ever remained of Laotian neutrality, supposedly guaranteed by the Geneva agreement, which in 1962 had been solemnly signed by 14 nations, including Soviet Russia. And, once again, the Laotian government of neutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma seemed on the verge of toppling.

Actually, Souvanna's regime topples more often than it governs. It last fell last month when two rightist generals staged a bloodless coup in Vientiane.

After considerable palaver and eager intercession by the U.S., Russian and British ambassadors, Souvanna agreed to resume his premiership, backed by the rightists and his own neutralist battalions. The men of the Communist Pathet Lao, who hold the central and northern portions of the country, remained outside the government and were nourished by lengthy truck convoys lurching down dusty Route 7 from the North Viet Nam frontier.

Slashed Necklaces. There, several rightist battalions, known as Mobile Group 13, moved into position on the steep hillsides above Route 7. They stalled convoys with land mines and raked the trucks with bazooka fire. The Communist Pathet Lao, who have controlled a large part of the Plain of Jars since last year, decided to fight their way through. Moving behind a mortar barrage, the Pathet Lao swept through the mountain villages of the anti-Communist Meo tribesmen and closed in on the rightist roadblocks, driving before them hundreds of hapless Meo refugees. Meo men and women carry their wealth with them in the form of silver necklaces; as the Pathet Lao shot them down, soldiers would whip out knives and slash free the silver necklaces from the dead and dying Meos.

Neutralist General Kong Le launched a counterattack against the Pathet Lao but was unable to dislodge them from the hills above Mobile Group 13's escape route. With the help of several defecting neutralist battalions, the Reds smashed their way through Kong Le's headquarters at Muong Phanh, and turned to head for the Mekong River. A courageous but often inept commander, Kong Le fell back with his battered troops to Ban Na, on the southwestern edge of the plain. He managed to salvage ten tanks, but lost nine armored cars and four antiaircraft guns. All week long, small parties of neutralist troops made their way back through the hills to rejoin their commander. They reported that the Pathet Lao were aided by up to five battalions of North Vietnamese regulars. Kong Le announced: "From now on, I will support all who are against Communism." The fact that Kong Le and his men were still fighting at all seemed remarkable to U.S. observers, since they have sometimes gone for as long as a year without pay.

Pointed Cameras. Prince Souvanna sent a telegram to his half brother, Prince Souphanouvong, leader of the Pathet Lao, warning him that the Communists "must accept full responsibility for these violations of the Geneva accord." U.S. Ambassador Leonard Unger said, "This is worse than the piecemeal nibbling process that the Communists have been engaged in for the past ten years—it is a substantial bite." The first U.S. reaction was odd and somewhat embarrassing: Washington asked Britain and France, which maintain diplomatic relations with Peking, to try to persuade Red China to halt the Communist attacks in Laos. It was a clear indication that it is Red China, and no longer the Soviet Union, which controls Red moves in the area, but predictably the U.S. plea got nowhere.

Next there was talk of sending U.S. Marines to Thailand (which itself moved troops to the Laotian border) as a sobering threat to the Reds. This had worked once before when President Kennedy tried it in 1962, but that gesture had little permanent effect because the U.S. pulled the troops out again after six weeks. Washington still considered repeating the Marine maneuver and possibly leaving the force in Thailand more or less permanently this time. But for the present the only tangible U.S. reaction came in the form of jets that whooshed low over the Plain of Jars; they aimed only cameras at the Red positions, but the U.S. was obviously trying to make the point that if it really wanted to get tough, it could just as easily kuv phem bombs. The U.S. has reportedly been flying such reconnaissance missions on and off for two years. The beleaguered Meo refugees cheered as they saw the planes, and Pathet Lao gunners blazed away, scoring a few hits but more misses.

Invitation to Talk. Possibly because of the warning overflight, or because of the need to regroup—or simply because Laos is Laos—the Red advance toward the Mekong slowed to a halt. Just like last year and the year before, the Communists had grabbed more ground in Laos and inflicted more defeats on their opponents. Now they were probably willing to talk for a while before resuming the battle.

There were certainly plenty of invitations to talk. France proposed another international conference to guarantee the neutrality of Laos. The U.S. rejected the suggestion because, as Dean Rusk pointed out, guarantees for Laotian neutrality already exist—they simply need to be kept. More important, the U.S. is sure that such a conference would quickly branch out from Laos to a proposal for neutrality throughout all of Indo-China, notably including Viet Nam. The French consider this the only solution, since they have decided that the U.S. cannot win the Vietnamese war. Quite a few Americans are beginning to agree. Washington no longer objects to neutrality in Southeast Asia (or elsewhere) on principle, but believes that it cannot work. With Red China looming over the horizon, an attempt to neutralize the area regardless of international guarantees might simply turn the entire region into one big Laos. As government propaganda in Saigon posters puts it: "Red Plan—First Neutralize, Then Communize."


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[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1964

Escalation in the Air
Friday, Jun. 19, 1964

The U.S. last week became involved in a minor but significant air war with the Communists in Laos.
When the Red Pathet Lao overran Laos' embattled Plain of Jars last month, the U.S. replied by sending unarmed jets swooping low over Pathet Lao territory. The purpose was partly to photograph troop movements, partly to demonstrate U.S. resolve to stand firm in the Red-threatened little kingdom. But last week, after Communist gunners shot down two American planes in two days, the U.S. decided that shooting back with cameras was not enough—and in a small way Southeast Asia's crisis began to "escalate."

Hitting the Road. The recon sweeps were made by Navy jets from the U.S. 7th Fleet aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, lying off South Viet Nam in the South China Sea. Prime target for the planes high-speed, still-photo lenses was Route 7, a ribbon of dirt snaking out of Communist North Viet Nam into Laos. Known by Laotians as Thang Nay, or the Big Road, Route 7 has long been used by North Viet Nam's Reds to truck men and guns to the Pathet Lao (up to 400 vehicles a day), in open violation of Laos' neutrality accords. To get closeups of the latest influx, the supersonic reconnaissance craft flat-hatted in at virtually treetop level, at slowpoke speeds of perhaps 450 m.p.h., and often from the same predictable angles.
The Communists fired on the jets from the start, and with practice soon found the range. One day at noon, while maneuvering his RF-8A over the vicinity of Ban Ban, a collection of 300 thatch-roofed huts on Route 7, Navy Lieut. Charles F. Klusmann, 30, of San Diego felt ground fire thumping through his craft, ejected himself seconds before the plane tumbled to earth. An American search helicopter out of Vientiane spotted the downed pilot at the edge of a clearing, but it was driven off by Communist fire that wounded the chopper's copilot. The Pathet Lao radio later announced that Klusmann had been taken prisoner.

Punitive Punch. For the first time, Washington then ordered armed jet fighters to escort the recons, but disaster nearly repeated itself. Again over Ban Ban, a Navy F-8A Crusader escort, flown by Commander Doyle W. Lynn, 37, of La Mesa, Calif., was shot down by the Reds. Lynn likewise bailed out, but after a harrowing night in the tiger-inhabited jungle, he was rescued by a U.S. helicopter.

Back in the Pentagon, flustered brass described the Red gunners as lucky, hastened to explain that jets are terribly vulnerable anyway. "Hell," said one Navy man, "a kid standing at the end of the runway with a baseball bat can knock down a jet if he gets the ball into those turbine blades." But the Reds weren't using baseballs. Western military experts guessed that the U.S. planes had been hit by Soviet-designed ZPU2s—twin, 14.5 mm., heavy machine guns mounted on an armored car and operated from a fast-turning swivel seat. U.S. officials suspected that the guns were operated by North Vietnamese crews, but the Laotian Reds may well have been trained to operate them.

In Washington, the Administration decided on a little more escalation. From a base in the Philippines, eight F-100 U.S. Air Force jet fighter-bombers took off, headed over the northern sector of South Viet Nam, then veered up the Laotian corridor. Their mission: to deliver a punitive punch to the harassing antiaircraft guns.

Power Demonstration. The attackers' arrival around breakfast time, shortly after sunrise, must have come as a distinct surprise to the Communist gunners. Instead of taking evasive action, as the reconnaissance craft had always done, these jets bore down, dropped rockets and bombs, then whisked away. Behind, they left a Communist antiaircraft emplacement demolished in smoking ruins.

The demonstration of U.S. power brought shocked outcries from the Communists. Red Chinese Premier Chou En-lai warned that "Laos is a close neighbor of China." Declared Jenmin Jih Pao, Peking's Communist Party organ: "The United States will meet with an even more powerful rebuff." In Vientiane, Neutralist Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma, who had requested the reconnaissance flights originally, claimed that he had not asked for armed jet escorts, called for a "temporary suspension" of all overflights. The U.S. went along for the moment but announced that it had a "clear understanding" with Souvanna that the flights would be resumed whenever necessary. After a session with the U.S. ambassador (see following story), Souvanna agreed.

At week's end the flights were again under way after Souvanna Phouma reported "important movements of Pathet Lao and Viet Minh troops." The Neutralist Premier told a press conference that the aerial reconnaissance had produced some "interesting photos" proving the presence of North Vietnamese troops in Laos. One photograph shows a Communist truck convoy entering Laos only a short distance from the North Viet Nam border.

Call for Aid. The government, meanwhile, scored a blow of its own. According to Pathet Lao broadcasts, six U.S.-supplied, converted trainer planes of the Laotian air force bombed and strafed the Pathet Lao headquarters village of Khang Khay, destroying the offices of Pathet Lao Chief Prince Sou-phanouvong and Red China's "economic and cultural mission," killing one Chinese and injuring five. It was the first time that the Chinese Reds had admitted having a delegation with the Pathet Lao.

In the Laotian ground war, the Communists renewed their pressure on Neutralist positions west of the Plain of Jars. Under the command of game little General Kong Le, the Neutralists fought back as best they could. From his ramshackle, mountainside headquarters southwest of the Plain, Kong Le directs an army reduced to some 3,000 troops, but has been reinforced by thousands of anti-Communist Meo tribesmen who have fled Pathet Lao areas. Last week, during a visit to Vientiane, Kong appealed to the nations of the non-Communist world to help Laos remain neutral, urged the U.S. "to help us more and send more jet bombers and fighters to destroy all enemy positions." Not that Souvanna's coalition government is requesting such aid. "We have asked the Premier many times for foreign troops," said Kong Le, "but there was no answer."

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[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1964

The Awakening
Friday, Jun. 26, 1964

(See Cover)
The silvery Cessna Wren scudded high above the Plain of Jars, and the tiny man in rumpled fatigues peered down through eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion. Below him the wind moved casually over apple-green downs, setting the jade-colored rice fields to shivering. A few pagodas, their tiled roofs torn by howitzer shells, yawned at the sun. On the barren hilltops, orange-colored lines of slit trenches spread like ringworm across the Plain of Jars, which had been fought over for three years by Communist Pathet Lao troops and neutralist forces. The tired little passenger in the Wren was neutralist General Kong Le, whom the Communists had just pushed off the Plain. But he vowed to get back on it—with American help.
Kong Le was on his way to inspect one of his outposts at the edge of the Plain. As his aircraft slewed to a halt near the village of Vang Vieng, he jumped down and stared around at the straggly cluster of palm-thatched huts and muddy walkways that would be his headquarters for the next fight, for it was here that he expected the Communists to resume the attack. Kong Le and his headquarters looked worn, scruffy, far from impressive. But he stood almost alone in Laos last week as the West's only effective battler against Communism. With only 3,000 ill-paid, ill-trained troops supplied only infrequently by airdrops, Kong Le's prospects seemed poor. His spirit did not. "Whether we win or lose," he said, "I'm afraid there is not much choice except to fight until we can fight no longer."

Behind Kong Le loomed an elaborate, half-hidden U.S. operation designed to maintain the fiction of Laotian neutrality and keep both Kong Le and Premier Souvanna Phouma's government from falling completely to the Communists. For the first time outside South Viet Nam, the U.S. had used direct if limited military intervention in its attempt to hold Southeast Asia from the Red Chinese and North Vietnamese. From Washington to Vientiane, the operation was punctuated by denials that obviously could not be kept up much longer. After all, it was an election year, and even as Lyndon Johnson preached "the pursuit of peace," other Government officials were taking pains to tell Washington journalists that Southeast Asia was as crucial to Western interests as Berlin. But the U.S. had made a move, and, for the moment at least, it seemed to have produced an effect.

Hawks & Doves. The neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma, shaken severely by a right-wing coup last April, had been jolted further by a series of sharp Pathet Lao attacks that forced Kong Le off the Plain. If the precariously balanced Laotian coalition was to hold, outside help was needed. A month ago, unarmed U.S. jets began flying reconnaissance missions over Red territory in hopes of intimidating the Pathet Lao. When one of the slow-flying Navy recon planes was downed by Russian-made antiaircraft guns, the U.S. decided to send armed jet fighters to escort the reconnaissance craft. When one of the escorts was shot down, too, the U.S. obviously had to do something—or give up the whole game.

The aviary of official Washington was, as usual, divided between "hawks" and "doves." Foremost among the hawks was Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who urged strong retaliatory action. Leaning heavily on the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, McNamara pointed out that in a normal combat situation the reconnaissance targets would have been clobbered by fighter strikes before the recon planes were sent out. But since the "Mickey Mouse game" of diplomacy had to be satisfied, such sound military tactics had been precluded, and two planes lost. Now, said McNamara, was the time to hit those targets.

The doves contended that any U.S. strike would jeopardize Souvanna's neutralist position, make him appear an American stooge and thus play into Pathet Lao hands. Besides, there was the danger of "escalation." At the same time, interservice rivalry reared its head in the discussion: the Air Force argued that it could best carry out any Laotian retaliatory mission, while the Navy, whose planes after all were the ones shot down, demanded the privilege of striking back. And the Strategic Air Command, hoping to refocus its image in an era of minuscule rather than massive retaliation, asked for a chance to show "how gentle" its big bombers could be on a delicate mission.

Turn of the Screw. President Johnson himself finally sided with the hawks. It was decided to turn the screw just slightly, by applying the smallest amount of pressure available, and then sit back to see what happened. Philippines-based Air Force jets were picked to carry out the mission. Out of Clark Air Force Base near Manila swept a flight of eight F-100s, stopping en route in already committed South Viet Nam to take the onus off the Republic of the Philippines. After refueling, the jets hit the guilty gun emplacements with rockets and machine-gun fire.

At about the same time, the small Royal Laotian Air Force was also busy. Flying out of Vientiane's Wattay Airport and another strip near Savanna-khet in the south, stubby, old-fashioned U.S.-built T-28 trainers hung with 500-Ib. bombs, rockets and machine guns roared in on Pathet Lao bases and troops on the Plain of Jars and near the South Vietnamese border. The 25 planes had been supplied by the U.S., but were ordered into action for the first time by a reluctant Souvanna only in the current crisis. The Royal Laotian Air Force has only twelve pilots, and the other planes were reportedly piloted by U.S. civilian soldiers of fortune and by U.S.-trained Thai aviators.

Protest Before Poetry. In 36 sorties during one week, the T-28s knocked out Communist posts, wiped out a truck convoy on the fringe of the Plain of Jars, and left tanks, trucks and Pathet Lao Leader Prince Souphanouvong smoldering. When a group of Control Commission diplomats—nominally the overseers of Laotian neutrality—arrived at Souphanouvong's headquarters at Khang Khay, they found his tidy, white-walled villa pocked by bullets and ripped by bombs, while the pink-roofed Chinese mission near by lay in ruins. One Chinese attaché had been killed in the raid, which was carried out by three Laotian Air Force T-28s—though Souphanouvong insisted U.S. jets had done the deed.

Dapper as usual in a linen suit, pearl stickpin and black rubbers to fend off the monsoon mud, Souphanouvong was in a well-tailored snit. He greeted his guests with indignant demands for an immediate full-dress conference of the 14 Geneva agreement signatories who had guaranteed Laotian neutrality two years ago. Such a meeting could only confirm the status quo for the Pathet Lao, who have grabbed a lot of territory in recent weeks, and Neutralist Souvanna at U.S. urging had refused any new Geneva-level conference unless the Pathet Lao first withdrew from the Plain of Jars. As Souphanouvong argued his case, the thump of antiaircraft guns sounded in the distance, followed by the whine of aircraft engines. Diplomats ducked nervously as Laotian T-28s laid bombs on target near by, then wheeled back toward Vientiane.
"Now America has entered the war by sending planes," shrilled Souphanouvong's information minister. Having made his protest, Souphanouvong returned, at least for the present, to his favorite hobby—writing poetry.

With Souvanna's agreement, the U.S. meanwhile announced that it would continue to fly reconnaissance missions when necessary for Kong Le's army, and would retaliate against any guns that fire at its planes. To that end, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Constellation was cruising in the South China Sea off South Viet Nam, some 250 miles from the Plain of Jars. The question that remained in everyone's mind was whether the U.S. would intervene with airpower only when provoked, or whether the jet strikes presaged a willingness to carry the air war in Laos further.

Not that the U.S. particularly wants to be in Laos, any more than it wants to be in the rest of what used to be Indo-China. But the vacuum left by the French collapse a decade ago forced the U.S. to assume responsibility for the area. Laos is less important strategically than its Vietnamese neighbor; the country could fall to the Communists without necessarily making the situation in South Viet Nam much worse, while the fall of South Viet Nam inevitably would also mean the fall of Laos. But if the U.S. could deny the implausible little kingdom to the Communists, it would have important effects in the area. It would not only demonstrate firmness against Chinese expansion, but it would also make some important points about neutralism, a concept so often and so loosely offered as a solution in Southeast Asia.
The U.S. has moved a long way from the time when it automatically backed the rightists in Laos and elsewhere and assumed neutralism was immoral. But the neutralists have come a long way, too, and no one embodies this fact better than Kong Le. The gritty, grinning captain of paratroopers had fought for almost a decade in jungle and mountains, while fat cats in the cities grew fatter on U.S. and Communist aid; yet never had he known whom or what he was fighting or defending. "You have to give a man something to live for," he said, "before you can ask him to die." To the tough paratrooper, as to most Southeast Asians, the cold war was a puzzlement. Neutrality seemed the answer, and Kong Le gladly included the Pathet Lao within his amiable embrace. But, battle by battle and defection by defection, Kong Le and Laos learned that not even a neutral could stand safely beside the Pathet Lao.

Lotus Land. Kong Le's awakening to the realities was a painful process. Of all the people involved in the struggle between Communism and the West, none were more reluctant to enter it than the Laotians. Delighted inhabitants of a warm, green land, where all a man needed was "a small knife to peel bananas and a large one to kill pigs," the Laotians had built their culture on singing, silk weaving and kuv phem. Scarcely a week goes by without the celebration of a boun—the Laotian festival at which men play the khene, a many-barreled bamboo flute, while the lissome women dance the Jamvong, swinging their long, embroidered skirts while their delicate hands tell tales of love. The skirts are called sinhs, but the deeds that follow the dance are not.

The 2,000,000 Laotians earn a scant $90 a year on the average, but it scarcely bothers them. They have a taste for fried bricks of green river moss and charcoal-broiled toad stew, and the ingredients for both are abundantly available in Laos. A steep, river-rent land of limestone cliffs and rich alluvial plains, Laos can grow enough rice, bamboo, flowers and toads to keep its people happy forever. French attempts to impose European ways on Laos from 1893 to 1954 failed for the most part—in fact, Frenchmen who served in Laos usually returned as dreamy-eyed, wistful victims of the malaise Laotien.

At Vientiane's Wattay Airport, where the Laotian air raids originate, the clocks that are supposed to tell the time in other world capitals are inevitably out of joint. A Westerner can buy a week of perfumed Elysium for the price of a pair of gold-mounted tiger-claw cuff links ($20), drive his sports car right into the Hotel Constellation bar and play endless rounds of Cameroon, a dice game nearly as complicated as Laotian politics. All these qualities of Laos—its fey charm, its naivete, its innocent lechery, its refusal to see the world as an interlocking whole—are reflected in Kong Le himself. To a large extent they keep him from being a really major leader. But he may be closer to it than anyone else in Laos.
Taste of Defeat. He was born 33 years ago in the village of Phalane in southern Laos, the son of a Lao mother and a Kha father. Of all the country's many ethnic groups, the Kha are socially the lowliest (the word Kha means slave). Kong Le himself came out even lower—physically. He stands just 5 ft. 1 in. tall in his paratrooper's beret, weighs 115 Ibs., and even in a nation of small people that is diminutive. "He has a runt complex," says one American friend. Combined with his backwoods, ethnically inferior background, this provided him with all the motivation, if not the genius, to become a Southeast Asian Napoleon.

Though he studied briefly at the lycee in Savannakhet, he never graduated, joined the French army in 1952 to fight the losing battle against the Red Viet Minh. As a sergeant, he quickly learned the taste of defeat. After the French withdrawal, he transferred to the Royal Laotian Army as a paratroop lieutenant only to taste more of it. Kong Le's was a battalion of troubleshooters. Whenever the Pathet Lao got particularly obnoxious, he and his men were sent out from Vientiane over jungle villages to float down silently and kill. Often they dropped without supplies, fought their way back on a bullet a day, gratifying their taste for toads and bamboo shoots along the route. Kong Le perfected an instinct for infantry leadership. He made the right moves, and U.S. military men credited him with a fine field officer's instinct for combat. In 1957, the army sent him to the Philippines for Ranger training. At Camp Vicente Lim in southern Luzon, he won honors in ambush and guerrilla operations, gained bloody battle experience against the Communist Huks in the snake-haunted highlands back of Olongapo. At the same time, Kong Le kept wondering why he was fighting.

Waiting for Neutralism. Back home, Captain Kong Le was promoted to command of the 1st Parachute Battalion of the Royal Army. But the promotion did little to ease his growing dislike of conditions in Laos. The 1954 Indo-China armistice had handed the Pathet Lao two sections of the country—Sam-nueua and Phongsaly—bordering Communist China and North Viet Nam. The International Control Commission, made up of Polish, Indian and Canadian delegations, was theoretically responsible for keeping any faction from bringing in more troops and arms, but the Pathet Lao ignored the ban; Viet Minh cadres poured across the border to train Pathet Lao troops in guerrilla and conventional warfare. In 1957 the U.S. grew alarmed, began casting about for a rightist leader to counter the Communists. It found him in General Phoumi Nosavan, a tubby but talented field commander whose cousin, the late Strongman Sarit Thanarat of Thailand, was a firm supporter of the U.S.

Two years later, Phoumi led the first of five coups that have kept Laos in turmoil ever since. In April 1960 Phoumi's slate of candidates won handily in a rigged election, but the Pathet Lao were back in business as guerrillas, and the prospect of another long, bloody civil war faced the country. Then, in August 1960, Kong Le acted. Under cover of darkness, his 300 paratroopers moved in from Camp Chinaimo outside Vientiane, picked up some 2,700 like-minded soldiers from other units and in less than two hours held all the key points in the city. Kong Le deposed the right-wing government, although Phoumi had been his mentor in the army. Installing Prince Souvanna Phouma as Premier, Kong Le sat back hopefully and waited for neutralism to develop. But furious at what he considered a betrayal by his protege, Phoumi pulled his 60,000-man army down to southern Laos and set up his own revolutionary committee. Sporadic fighting between Phoumi's army and the Pathet Lao broke out. The neutralists were drawn ever closer to the Pathet Lao.

Is He Setthathirath? In Kong Le, the Communists thought they had an invaluable tool. Politically unformed, the little captain was immensely popular with his troops and the Laotian people. In superstition-ridden Laos, Kong Le was believed invulnerable to gunfire. The bad, or cotton strings, he wore tied around his wrists and a stone amulet he carried in a pouch at his waist kept his 32 souls (one for each major part of the body) from fleeing. The phi or demon who guarded him was undoubtedly among the underworld's most powerful, for Kong Le had never been wounded. The myth of his invulnerability took on a new dimension during a festival in Vientiane, where an old woman fell into a trance on seeing Kong Le's photograph. "Setthathirath is returned!" she screamed. Setthathirath is a legendary king of Laos who disappeared in the 16th century while on a jungle expedition. The Lao believe that when Vientiane is in great danger, this hero—like Britain's King Arthur—will return to save them. To this day many Laotians believe Kong Le is Setthathirath. And although Kong Le embarrassedly shrugs the matter off himself, he is not so sure either.
Kong Le's magical properties failed him late in 1960 when Phoumi's rightists—led by a rising young colonel named Kouprasith Abhay—defeated the neutralists in the Battle of Vientiane and forced Kong Le and his men north to the Plain of Jars. There, Kong Le's alliance with the Pathet Lao was cemented, and when the neutralist-led troika headed by Souvanna was established at another Geneva conference in July 1962, Kong Le was still firmly allied with the Communists.

Then came the betrayals. The Pathet Lao began wooing Kong Le's men, mounting quick, vicious infantry actions against his positions on the Plain of Jars in hopes of grabbing territory. When a Pathet Lao gunman shot down Kong Le's top deputy, the idealistic neutralist was well on his way to becoming a fervent antiCommunist. The Reds pulled out of the coalition government when a left-leaning minister was assassinated by a neutralist soldier.

Roses & Red Ants. Unfortunately, Premier Souvanna did not share Kong Le's new-found anti-Red sentiments, refused repeated requests to counterattack against the Pathet Lao. During the days of alliance with the Pathet Lao, Kong Le's men had been equipped with Russian tanks and guns. Now he was out of ammunition, and with U.S. military aid cut off under the terms of the latest Geneva agreement, he had to rely for supplies on jealous Rightist Phoumi, Deputy Premier in the coalition government. Kong Le got precious few supplies. His men, unpaid in nearly two years, still remained loyal, and thanks to his legendary status among the Lao, new volunteers appeared daily to fight at the side of Setthathirath.

As a result, his is a young army, its soldiers averaging about 19. "Young boys like that," says Kong Le, "they come to me, and they want to join the fight against the Communists. But first I have to tell them that we do not have enough equipment or uniforms or money for them. Then, when there is a spot, they must be handed a rifle and sent right into combat." Still they come to join up, largely because Kong Le has chai di—the "gentle heart," a quality that makes for intense loyalty on the part of his men, but also leaves him a prey to politicians who want to use him.

Casual Kong Le sleeps and eats with his men in the field, never returns salutes (he just waves back). He raises roses and keeps pets. Two white hamsters had the run of his old, tin-roofed headquarters on the Plain of Jars. Many Laotians keep giant red and black ants in jam jars, feed them with bread, then suffocate them in alcohol to create a supposedly aphrodisiac tonic. But Kong Le is so fond of his ants that he never has been known to drink them.

Phing Sad Lao. He probably needs no aphrodisiacs. Married four times, his latest wife, a slim, pretty Chinese girl whom he met three years ago at the market in Xiengkhouang, occasionally sheds her sarong, leaves her sons in Vientiane and follows him on campaigns dressed in skin-tight field pants, diminutive leather combat boots and a U.S. Navy foul-weather jacket. When the tides of war turn against him, Kong Le develops a psychosomatic sinus headache, takes to munching pills, and mournfully wishes aloud that he were in London or Paris "or anywhere that has pretty girls." But when things are going well, and he is sitting outside his shack at sundown with a deer roasting over the fire and his men dancing the lamvong or playing the flute, he would not give up soldiering. His thoughts turn always to his troops. "My boys, they are trained only by being in wars," Kong Le explains sadly. "We have no money or no time to train them properly. They join my army and must begin to fight then. What a difference it would make if my boys could be trained in Thailand by Americans so that they could know how to fight before they are really fighting." Kong Le still considers himself a neutralist, says he is fighting merely to see his country left alone by all sides. His simple hope is to reunite faction-torn Laos, and thus to remove the sadness from the opening bars of the national anthem, Phing Sad Lao:
Our Lao race had once known in Asia a great renown,
The Lao then were united and loved each other . . .

Price for Prisoners. One of Kong Le's big difficulties is the help the Pathet Lao gets from the Viet Minh, who have an almost legendary reputation in Laos. Neutralist and rightist battalions have been known to flee the field at the mere hint of Viet Minh troops in the vicinity. The Pathet Lao take advantage of this by broadcasting orders in Vietnamese over their radios. Kong Le, himself an inveterate radio listener, believes fully half the 75,000 Pathet Lao forces that oppose him are Vietnamese. Actually, there are between 8,000 to 10,000 Viet Minh fighting with the Laotian Reds, mostly in training and administrative posts. Though the Laotian government has offered a reward, consisting of an expense-paid weekend in Bangkok, to any soldier who can produce a Viet Minh prisoner, none has shown up.

Thanks to intimidation and a skillful infiltration, the Pathet Lao control fully two-thirds of Laos, though no more than one Lao in ten is a Communist. The Reds succeed by chipping away at the authority of village headmen, by threatening murder and killing the cattle of villagers who do not contribute aid and comfort. Though loose-lipped Laotians are notoriously bad conspirators, Pathet Lao agents have turned many back-country hamlets into what the French-speaking officials call pourri, or rotten, villages. Most Laotians have no use for the Pathet Lao, which they call "the party of slaves," find their incessant Marxist preachments boring, and countryfolk warn strangers away from villages pourris with typical Laotian indirection: "Don't go there; the mosquitoes are biting very hard."

On the Road. Last week Kong Le's ragtag army was surrounded by Red mosquitoes. His position astride the Ngun River—deep and swift in the rainy season—dominated the high ground west of the Plain of Jars. His force was bolstered by thousands of bitterly anti-Communist Meo tribesmen armed with knives, spears and homemade flintlocks, who had fled their hilly homes in the north when the Pathet Lao began slaughtering them. Anchored on both flanks by steep, jungle-grown mountains, Kong Le's 30-mile-long defense line presents the Pathet Lao with a strong front. He is sending scores of infantrymen up the slopes of Phou Koutt, a strategically located peak near the edge of the Plain. If he could secure the knob, which has changed hands three times in the past week, he hopes he could then mount an offensive into the Plain itself. But he will do well if he merely stalls further Red advances. With his well-worn howitzers and half a dozen Russian-built tanks left over from the good old days, Kong Le controls crucial Route 7, thus keeping two Pathet Lao armies from joining forces. If the Communist troops opposing Kong Le were to break through and join up behind him at the juncture of Routes 7 and 13, the Pathet Lao would have a clear, unopposed path to Vientiane. That would mean the end of the war in Laos.

What Will It Take? Tenuously supplied by low-flying C46 transports, Kong Le holds on. Last week he looked longingly at the spot on his crinkled battle map that indicated the primary Pathet Lao supply point: Muong Sen, just over the border in Communist North Viet Nam, on Route 7. "The supply dumps there would make fine targets for bombs," he said wistfully, protesting, like so many other commanders in the age of limited war, against constricting "ground rules." Since the U.S. is obviously not yet willing to hit North Vietnamese targets, Kong Le hopes at least for U.S. air strikes to cut Route 7 behind the Pathet Lao. "If the bridges on Route 7 were cut for even a little while," he says, "the Pathet Lao could not hold their positions. That road provides everything they need—food, ammo, men, even the Viet Minh."

Chances are that the tough, ingenious Pathet Lao would find ways to fight on anyway. But the questions remain: Can the U.S. afford to intervene further in the little Laotian war? On the other hand, having gone this far, can it afford not to intervene? By committing itself to a sustained air offensive on Kong Le's side, the U.S. would at best be backing a long shot. Even if the disruption of the Pathet Lao supply lines permitted Kong Le to regain the Plain, it would only buy time and return the whole Laotian equation to where it was before—admittedly with the significant difference that the U.S. would have demonstrated its readiness to take a firm stand.

But there is a growing feeling in Washington that the only way to ease the chaos in Laos must come as part of an area-wide, rather than a country-by-country, solution. This would inevitably test American willingness to carry the war to North Viet Nam. Just in case that becomes necessary, five U.S. Navy cargo ships steamed toward Thailand last week loaded with tanks, trucks, armored personnel carriers and ammunition. The troops to use them could always be airlifted in.
As Kong Le mused about the long-range prospects in his thatch-roofed headquarters at Vang Vieng, guns boomed hollowly beyond the blue volcanic peaks around him. What will it take to win his war? "More soldiers," he said, "more money to pay them with, specially that, more artillery, more rifles and machine guns and mortars, more land mines—everything, should the U.S. be willing to provide that again." He shrugged. "I suppose that depends on what the U.S. wants to do in Southeast Asia. And only the U.S. can answer that question."

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1964

A Long Walk Home
Friday, Sep. 11, 1964

Every day for more than two months, five soldiers in the black-and-khaki uniform of the Pathet Lao stood guard at a large mud hut in a Red-held village near the Plain of Jars. Inside, Lieut. Charles Klusmann, 30, whose Navy RF-8A jet had been shot down on a photo-reconnaissance mission June 6, paced the 20 feet from wall to wall exactly 264 times a day — just enough to make the mile he had allotted himself as exercise. Although he limped painfully on a badly wrenched knee, War Prisoner Klusmann was in remarkably good spirits. "Just think of it as an extended tour," he wrote his wife, Sara. "I will be back."

It was not an idle promise. Chuck Klusmann, a graduate of the Navy's tough course on survival and escape in Southeast Asia, was already plotting his escape. According to officers of the anti-Communist Meo tribe, who live in the Pathet Lao stronghold. Klusmann's first step was to cultivate the friendship of his Communist guards. Using sign language and charades, he slowly won them over, at last persuaded them to help him escape.

Together they slipped out of the village, headed for the forested hills bordering the Plain of Jars. Well aware that the Pathet Lao would soon be on their trail, the six walked as quickly as Klusmann's injured knee would permit. It was a long, hard haul to reach the purple plain. On the third night, Klusmann and a guard named Bonn Mi stopped to rest in an abandoned hut; the others, foraging for food, ran into Pathet Lao pursuers instead.

Alarmed by the resulting commotion, Klusmann and Boun Mi fled at full speed, finally stumbled into a Meo village north of the Plain of Jars. There word was flashed to the U.S. Air Force at Udon base in neighboring Thailand. Within hours, a helicopter was flying Klusmann to safety; and last week, 30 Ibs. lighter, but in excellent health, Chuck was reunited with his wife and two children in San Diego. He arrived scarcely two weeks after his letter.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1965

One Man's War
Friday, Jun. 25, 1965

"Wear the beret proudly," John F. Kennedy enjoined the U.S. Army's Special Forces in 1962. "It will be a mark of distinction and a badge of courage in the fight for freedom." It was Kennedy who gave the elite corps back its jaunty green berets, after the brasshats had removed them and reduced the highly trained counterinsurgency fighters to a less independent role. And despite their distinguished record in Viet Nam, controversy over the Special Forces still sputters in the Pentagon.

Their cause will not be helped by Green Berets, which purports to tell in fictional form "the previously untold stories of a group of true-life heroes." Its author, a Sheraton Hotel executive who had previously written a book about gunrunning in the Caribbean, was allowed to take the Special Forces guerrilla warfare course at Fort Bragg and then went to South Viet Nam as an accredited correspondent. He was unusually privileged, and saw the war at uncommonly close quarters. Though newsmen are noncombatants, Moore carried a Special Forces M-16 automatic rifle, dressed in regulation jungle fatigues, fought in more than a dozen actions, was credited with several kills.

Cloak & Boudoir. After four months, Author Moore returned to the U.S., offered to submit what he claimed was a novel to the Pentagon for clearance, and was told—according to his version of the story—that "they don't read fiction." They should. For when Pentagon officials did get to read the book, they charged that Moore had not only distorted the role of the Special Forces but had also succeeded in conveying the impression that Green Berets is based solidly on fact. What is more, said Defense Department officials, the book contains 16 security violations. At their insistence, the dust jacket now carries a yellow band announcing lamely: FICTION STRANGER THAN FACT.

Anyway, Green Berets should be good for recruiting. Moore's Special Forces men seem to spend little time on the humdrum public health and education programs and antiguerrilla training that are among the SF's major responsibilities. Instead, they recruit pretty girls to lure Viet Cong officers to their bedrooms—to be captured, naked and panting, by the SF. They hire Cambodian bandits to ambush Viet Cong units in Cambodia, train Meo tribesmen to fight against the Communist Pathet Lao in neutral Laos.

Infiltration Training. The most sensational section deals with a Special Forces raid deep into North Viet Nam to destroy bridges and to kidnap or assassinate Communist leaders. The Pentagon insists that the SF has never gone into North Viet Nam. Moore explains that he "projected" the episode after being forced down in a shot-up plane at a top-secret base where SF units were training in what he took to be infiltration techniques. Moore also said that he visited a warehouse in Saigon where the SF collected foreign-made weapons for use by infiltrators, so that the equipment could not be traced to the U.S.

The author clearly intended to show that the Special Forces are largely made up of brave and dedicated men who have the right formula for victory in Viet Nam. It seems likely, as he says, that the book reveals "not a single thing that the Communists didn't already know." But it certainly seems to reveal many things the ordinary American didn't know. That is the trouble. Though Moore's novel is well-paced and passably written, its sly commingling of fact and fiction becomes in the end an insult to the intelligence of the reader.


Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1966

Rice in the Sky
Friday, Jun. 03, 1966

The world's shyest airline may well be Air America, which calls itself ";a private air carrier" and underlines its privacy by often flying unmarked air craft, by never advertising, and by refusing to discuss its operations. It has only one major customer: the U.S. Government. And, as anyone who has seen its silver planes around Viet Nam, Laos and Thailand might surmise, Air America is a special kind of enterprise. It is so special, in fact, that virtually everyone in Asia assumes it to be the child — or first cousin — of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Whoever thought the head man of so secretive an outfit would stand up and accept an award for running an airline under "extremely sensitive political conditions"? Yet there was George Doole Jr., Air America's managing director, smiling like a Rotarian and receiving a citation for the line's achievements from Washington's Aero Club at a luncheon in the capital last week. After the luncheon, Doole, a former Pan American Airways pilot, shrugged off newsmen's questions about his company's activities. "One wouldn't know," he said, if any particular contract was actually for the CIA. "If that were the case, they wouldn't tell me, would they?"

Admiral on Board. On paper, the airline, which was founded in China in 1946, belongs to the Pacific Corp., a Delaware holding company, whose board chairman is retired Admiral Felix Stump, former U.S. commander in chief in the Pacific. Air America's home office is in a Washington, D.C., building which is suspected of housing companies that operate with CIA backing.

Air America's field headquarters remains on Taiwan, where the company also runs a huge repair facility, which currently collects about $20 million yearly for repairs on U.S. aircraft from Viet Nam. Air America's total fleet numbers about 150, including little single-engined Helio Couriers and Pilatus Porters, which can land in 250 feet or less, a Super Constellation with peculiar humps on its fuselage, and Huey helicopters. Most of the repairs and ground work are handled by Air America's 9,000 Nationalist Chinese and Philippine employees. The line's 400-odd pilots are nearly all recruited from the U.S. military services, draw an average $18,000 in base pay, plus bonuses for hazardous flying conditions, which can raise the annual total to $25,000 or more. The flyers wear plain airline-type grey uniforms, stay mostly to themselves in special Air America clubs, and are tight-lipped about their missions. Says one Air America man: "So long as we get paid, we don't care what the customer puts in the back."

Decorations in Private. In some respects, Air America operates like a regular airline, providing scheduled service for the U.S. military between Okinawa. Japan and South Korea. But much of its work is strictly irregular. It was Air America pilots who dropped supplies to the French defenders of Dienbienphu before the stronghold fell in 1954. The company's next big assignment came two years later, when the U.S. moved to support the Laotian royalists in the Communist-inspired civil war. Thirty or so Air America planes dropped the rice and weapons that enabled royalist troops and Meo tribesmen to fight the Communist Pathet Lao to a standstill.

Though Laos has been relatively peaceful for the past two years, Air America has continued to drop hundreds of tons of rice to the displaced Meo tribesmen. Says one pilot: "There is a whole generation of Meos who are going to be damn surprised when someone tells them that rice doesn't grow in the sky."

Part of Air America's functions in Laos and Thailand have now been taken over by Continental Airlines, but Air America has stepped up its activities in Thailand, where it ferries supplies and ammunition to remote government outposts in the troublesome northeast. From Thailand, Air America also operates a helicopter rescue service that plucks downed U.S. flyers out of North Viet Nam and whisks them to safety. In South Viet Nam, Air America has become the aerial backbone of both the U.S. AID mission and the Vietnamese rural reconstruction program, ferrying as much as 6.2 million tons of cargo into isolated areas within a single month. At least 50 Air America air craft are regularly based at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport.

So far, Air America has lost to enemy action more than 20 aircraft and 50 flyers, including a pilot and copilot who were shot down last January in the Mekong Delta and then were executed by the Viet Cong. For Air America's men there still are no public awards. But for their heroism a number of Air America flyers have been awarded U.S. decorations in private ceremonies.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1966

Arms & Men at Continental
Friday, Jul 01, 1966

Four years ago Continental Airlines, a carrier winging westward from Chicago, ruffled some bigger birds in the industry by introducing jet "economy" air fares 20% below coach rates. That blue-yonder experiment helped to attract so many customers that Continental increased its revenues from $63 million in 1961 to last year's $117 million, and other lines quickly followed with an odd lot of special rates. Last week Continental was trying to pare fares again. It asked Civil Aeronautics Board permission to introduce nighttime "adult stand-by fares" one-third cheaper than the economy fare. For any passenger willing to wait for a seat on a space-available basis starting at 9:35 p.m., a one-way Chicago-Los Angeles ticket, for example, would cost $60 instead of $90.

Lately the line has been advancing in several other directions. Last month a CAB examiner recommended that Continental and two other lines be granted the Pacific Northwest-to-Southwest routes, the last major runs in the U.S. still without through air service. Last week the Pentagon announced that Continental's minimum-guarantee contract to airlift troops to Viet Nam would be increased fourfold, to $30 million in 1967. And Los Angeles-based Continental announced a $64 million order for ten more jets. In all, Continental is investing $196 million to add 30 planes by 1968, doubling the size of its jet fleet.

Stealing Second Base. Continental's celerity is largely the work of its longtime (since 1938) President Robert Forman Six, a onetime merchant seaman who built the airline up from a puddle jumper. Six, 58, is a theatrical sort whose three marriages—to a California socialite, Actresses Ethel Merman and Audrey Meadows, his present wife—created a standard gag at Continental: "Bob is batting .500. Three for Six." With a flair for gaudy promotion, he has equipped his golden-tailed jets with golden toilet seats. His public-relations men once hired two dozen dwarfs, dressed them in golden space suits and sent them romping through hotel lobbies in a promotion stunt; another time, the p.r. men tried to "kidnap" a Chicago White Sox second baseman from a helicopter.

Six is also an audacious salesman whose knack for stretching a dollar impresses the investment bankers and makes him worth his annual salary of $132,000, second highest in the industry (after Pan Am Chairman Juan Trippe). Under Six, Continental has adopted "perpetual maintenance," a system that substitutes frequent brief overhauls for long layovers in the shop, helping to raise daily operating time of its aircraft to as much as 17 hours, well above the industry's norms. Six has been able to recruit outstanding executives. For seven years his No. 2 man was Harding Lawrence, now the successful president of Braniff. Last year Six hired Pierre Salinger, the former presidential press secretary who, as Continental's vice president for international affairs, certainly has not hurt its drive for U.S. Government business.

Knock Wood. Because Continental eagerly chased such business when some other lines were hesitant, its wholly owned subsidiary, Continental Air Services, has built a considerable enterprise in South Viet Nam, Laos and Thailand, where it is second in activity only to Air America (TIME, June 3). Its motley of 42 planes airlifts rice to Meo tribesmen beleaguered by Red rebels and might just be flying arms and men for the CIA and the Pentagon. Says Salinger dryly: "In Viet Nam we fly personnel and supplies around the country. Some of the landing strips aren't very far from the Viet Cong operations, but so far—knock wood—we haven't had any planes involved in military operations."

Bob Six obviously wants his line to get all the experience it can in the Pacific—and to impress the U.S. Government favorably—in hopes of capturing a piece of the promising civilian business there. Figuring that nonmilitary traffic across the Pacific will continue to boom, Continental has applied for several routes from the U.S. fanning across the ocean to New Zealand and Korea. The awards will be decided, probably not before 1968, by the one man most concerned with performance in Viet Nam: the President of the U.S.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1966

"Where We're a Little Ahead"
Friday, Aug. 12, 1966

Fluttering high above the craggy mountains and lush rolling hills in northern Thailand, the tiny, single-engine aircraft picked its way through the mist, in search of a village airstrip. "I think that's it," the pilot shouted to a companion over the whine of the engine. Dipping down through the clouds, the plane came in at treetop level, then bounced into a 700-ft. clearing. Eager tribeswomen in turbans and blue-striped frocks rushed toward the visitors, smiling through betel-stained teeth. Their menfolk set about happily unloading medicine, food, seed and other supplies. "This is the one place in Southeast Asia," the pilot beamed, "where we're a little ahead of the Communists."

Far ahead, in fact. Only three years ago, northern Thailand was considered one of the country's most vulnerable areas for Communist subversion. Inhabited by 250,000 primitive, fiercely independent tribesmen, the area lived almost completely outside the law of Bangkok, haunted by superstition, disease and ignorance and sustained only by its bumper crops of illegal opium. Today, Red terrorists are active both in the country's northeast and in the Moslem provinces of the south. But thanks to a civic-action program that is nipping Red subversion in its earlier stages, the north is relatively free of trouble. "Nation building is what we're doing," says one official in Mae Rim, 107 miles from the Laos border. "We're extending government influence to all within Thai borders."

Schools & Fruit Trees. A joint operation of Thailand, which contributes $500,000 a year, and of the U.S., which kicks in another $500,000 a year (mostly in planes and technical assistance), Thailand's counterinsurgency effort is handled by the country's 6,500-man Border Police Patrol. In 2½ years, the patrol has helped build 66 village schools, 60 small airstrips for communication and supplies and scores of medical-aid stations and has dispensed friendly advice on everything from crops and animal husbandry to personal hygiene. In the process, the border patrol has welded 44 key border villages more securely to the country and has made them the eyes and ears of northern Thailand's anti-Communist defense system.

Working mainly with the more numerous Meo, Yao, Lisu, Lahu and Akha tribesmen, the border patrol has built two major "development centers" and three more are under way, complete with dispensaries, trading centers and schools. In the village of Huai Fuang near the Laos border, last week about 50 students sat in crisp regulation white shirts and khaki shorts in an open, thatched-roof classroom, learning to read and count from a border policeman whose platoon had supplied the class uniforms and haircuts. On the wall behind the teacher were three objects that symbolized the new presence: a Thai flag, a picture of Thailand's King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit and a picture of the Lord Buddha. The police had even directed the building of a network of bamboo pipes to carry fresh water into every household in the village.

"Our biggest problem," says one U.S. adviser, "is trying to get the villagers off opium growing." Opium is their big cash crop and pays for such luxuries as watches, air mattresses and transistor radios, as well as such staples as embroidered pantaloons and silver bangles for wives and daughters. Rather than simply forbid opium growing—and risk alienating the villagers—the border patrol is promoting wheat, corn and other substitute crops, and flying in planeloads of fruit trees, as well as bulls for cattle breeding. Outside the city of Chiang Mai, the police set up a 2,500-acre experimental farm.

A Timely Arrival. Successful though the campaign may be, it is far from over. Every day, Red China bombards northern Thailand with hate broadcasts, and the Communists have spider-webbed southern China and Laos with roads leading to the Thai and Burmese borders. A few months ago, several Red tribesmen from Laos persuaded the village of Bao Klua Tai that a new god was coming who would provide all their wants, and therefore they could dispense with a rice crop. The result was a severe food scarcity that only the timely arrival of the border patrol prevented from becoming a village disaster. Last week the villagers were laying out a new 700-ft. airstrip with the help of the patrol. In a few weeks, planes will bring in agricultural advice, medical aid and a schoolteacher, and Bao Klua Tai will become the 45th key border village to join northern Thailand's defense system and the Thailand family.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1967

A Fragile Web
Friday, Jan. 13, 1967

Since the Geneva accords of 1962 established its tripartite "neutrality," the landlocked, Lilliputian kingdom of Laos has teetered continually on the cliff-edge of chaos. Torn between the demands of the rightist Royal Laotian Army and the intransigent Communist Pathet Lao, which controls nearly half of the country, Neutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma maintains a facade of government simply because he is the only Premier acceptable to both the West and the Communist powers. Last week, when Laotians went to the polls to elect a new National Assembly in the first countrywide elections since 1960, foreign observers from a dozen capitals from Moscow to Washington waited nervously for the outcome in the sleepy capital of Vientiane. They had good reason to be nervous: a defeat for the courtly, autocratic Souvanna would almost certainly precipitate another major Southeast Asian crisis to complicate the war in Viet Nam.

Battle Refuge. Sparsely populated Laos (2,500,000 people) has little of value to fight over. But it is strategically situated at the axis of six other nations with which it shares common borders: Red China, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and North and South Viet Nam. Through the eastern half of Laos, controlled by the Pathet Lao, stretches the Ho Chi Minh trail, over which the North Vietnamese regularly infiltrate South Viet Nam. More than 75,000 North Vietnamese troops are now on Laotian soil, between 20,000 and 30,000 of them combat troops and the rest antiaircraft units, engineers and construction workers. North Vietnamese troops operating in South Viet Nam frequently use Laos as a refuge to escape from attack, and some of them mix with the Pathet Lao during periodic attacks on the Royal Laotian Army.

Bad as this situation is, the U.S. prefers it to resumption of the open conflict that rent the country before the 1962 Geneva settlement; the Communists also prefer the status quo to any upset that would enlarge the Southeast Asian war and perhaps bring U.S. troops into Laos. If Souvanna Phouma were to fall, both sides would find it extremely difficult to agree on a successor. An impasse might cause the Red bloc to recognize Pathet Lao Leader Prince Souphanouvong, Souvanna's half brother, as the ruler of Laos—thus almost certainly thrusting Laos directly into open war.

Caught in a Vise. Souvanna Phouma did not have to fear the Communists in the elections: the Pathet Lao boycotted them. His strongest opposition came from the rightist south, where portly Prince Boun Oum—his predecessor as Premier until 1962—was attempting a comeback with the aid of southern army commanders and Deputy Premier Leuam Insisiengmay. Souvanna also faced trouble in the north, where Guerrilla Leader Vang Pao had picked his own candidates, afraid that the military rightists led by General Kouprasith Abhay, Souvanna's chief backer, would become too powerful and attempt to bring his anti-Communist Meo tribesmen under Royal Army control.

Caught in a regional vise, Souvanna first attempted to create a National United Front Party embracing all ideological elements, but was blocked by Deputy Premier Leuam, who feared that the party would fall into leftist control. "There was no platform, no common ideology," said Leuam. "I could not possibly join it." Thwarted from both left and right, Souvanna was forced to allow more than 150 candidates for 59 National Assembly seats to run as independents—who might or might not back him if elected. He hedged the danger by weaving a complex web of alliances and patronage promises, then sat back to await the results. The night before the election, he invited 1,500 guests to a white-tie party at which the deadliest enemies ate and drank and gave each other the long Lao handshake that can last through an entire conversation.

More Magnanimous. Into the polling places—Buddhist temples, tin-roofed schools, thatched jungle huts—swarmed 420,000 of the electorate. Somehow, Souvanna's web held. By week's end more than 30 of his supporters were elected, giving him a clear majority. In dismissing the previous Assembly for refusing to approve his budget, Souvanna had declared: "If the next Assembly is no better than the last, then I shall get rid of it." After the elections, though, he felt magnanimous. At a Vientiane news conference that included Russians, Americans and Red Chinese, he said: "I believe the new Deputies will work with me. If so, we can hope that the relative peace we have enjoyed for the past three years will continue and we will not be dragged into total war."

Still, loyalties are never long-lived in Laos, and Souvanna's fragile web of alliances—of groups loyal to the top ten ruling families, to the military and to other regional powers besides himself—could easily rip. Fiery Neutralist General Kong Le, who fled Laos after a dustup over dragons' eggs (TIME, Oct. 21), was in Indonesia and uneasily noncommittal. Army Commander Kouprasith, who has his own ambitions for Laos, was enigmatically silent. A lot would depend on how Souvanna Phouma and the new Assembly get along together after it convenes in early February.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1967

Flower Power Struggle
Friday, Sep. 08, 1967

The wild country where the borders of Burma, Laos and Thailand meet is infested with virulent snakes. Rogue elephants roam its valleys, tigers and panthers patrol its hillsides. It hardly seems a fit place for man. Yet that inhospitable area has attracted as motley an assortment of tribesmen, fugitives, thieves, freebooters and smugglers as exists anywhere on earth. They come and they stay on for only one reason: because of certain distinctions of climate and soil, Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, finds the place unusually congenial. Each spring the hillsides blossom into white and purple waves of flowers. The annual harvest produces 1,000 tons of raw opium — 90% of the world's supply.

For years, all the participants in the long, clandestine process from poppy field to market have worked together in comparative peace. Even renegade soldiers who support themselves by exacting tribute from every passing opium caravan have been accepted as part of the action. No more. Of late, the jungle has resounded to the crack of rifle fire, the roar of mortars, recoilless rifles and even fighter-bombers. An ugly, internecine little opium war is under way, and it rivals in complexity, if not in fire power, the struggle in nearby Viet Nam.

A Modern Warlord. The squabble is not concerned with the growing or gathering of opium; that job belongs for the most part to such primitive tribesmen as the Meo, Ekaw, Bolong, Wa and Yao, who slit the poppy-seed pods for their resin, boil it into sticky raw opium, and roll it into loaves of one to five pounds. The fight grows out of a jurisdictional dispute between tribute-collecting soldiers and smugglers who deliver the stuff into the hands of the two Chinese syndicates that control the opium export from Laos.

In the past, a large share of the smuggling traffic—most of which moves down through Laos—has bought immunity from trouble by paying off gangs of former Nationalist Chinese soldiers: the "Third Army" of General Lee Wun-huan, headquartered near the Thai city of Chiang Mai, and the "Fifth Army" of General Tuan Hsi-wan, with a base camp near Chiang Rai.

They are the outlaw remnants, some 3,000 strong, of Chiang Kai-shek detachments that fled China in 1949 when the Communists took over. They still wear uniforms and sport impressive arsenals of mortars and recoilless rifles, as well as rifles and machine guns. But lately they have been bugged by increasing independence on the part of smugglers, such as Chan Chi-foo, a slender half-Chinese, half-Shan tribesman in his 30s who speaks softly but carries the big stick of a modern warlord, commanding the services of perhaps 2,000 well-armed men.

Masterly Confusion. Two months ago, Chan set out from the Burma fields on his way to Laos with a caravan of 300 men and 200 pack horses carrying nine tons of opium. He had no intention of paying the $80,000 in tolls usually collected on a shipment of that size passing through the Chinese generals' territory. When the caravan reached the Mekong River and the Laotian border town of Ban Houei Sai, the Chinese irregulars were waiting.

Watching both antagonists from a hill were two companies of Royal Laotian infantry, ordered there by Laotian Commander in Chief Ouane Rathikoune, who depends heavily on his cut in the opium trade to buy the loyalty of his soldiers. When Chan tried to cross the Mekong in barges, the Chinese opened fire with everything in their armory. The Laotian commander tried to negotiate a truce and, failing, withdrew to watch the melee.

It soon became a masterpiece of confusion. Lao air force planes arrived and began bombing both sides; Lao river boats sprayed machine-gun bullets with a fine lack of discrimination. When it was all over, Chan's forces had 82 dead, the Chinese soldiers some 200. Two Thais who had stopped to watch the action from across the river were killed, and the Laotian infantry counted several wounded. A goodly portion of the opium mysteriously disappeared, and has yet to be found.

Worst of all, the fight seemed to settle nothing. Both sides went off to lick their wounds, buy fresh armaments and ammunition, and presumably have another go at the flower power struggle with all cannon blazing.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1967

A Very Special Tourist
Friday, Nov. 17, 1967

In the three days that Jacqueline Kennedy spent strolling through the ruins of the 600 temples at Angkor, the noblest remnants of Asia's past, she could almost be the private citizen she wished to be: the ordinary tourist looking, touching and marveling. It was a brief respite, however, on her tour of Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk's Khmer Kingdom (see color opposite). Flying from Pnompenh to the port city of Sihanoukville last week to dedicate a street named for John F. Kennedy, Jackie soon had to cope with her host's propensity for using her presence as a publicity platform to the world.
On a flag-festooned platform at the head of Avenue J. F. Kennedy, the Prince praised the late President without saying, as he had intended to, that if J.F.K. had lived the U.S. would not be involved in the war in Viet Nam on today's scale. Jackie had seen an advance copy of the speech and persuaded Sihanouk to leave the offensive paragraph out. In her reply, she said that "President Kennedy would have wished to visit Cambodia. He would have been attracted by the vitality of the Khmer people." Then she and the Prince rode down the avenue in a Lincoln convertible to Sihanouk's villa on the beach at the end of the street, where she and her party of four— Britain's Lord Harlech, New York Lawyer Michael Forrestal, Washington Journalist Charles Bartlett and his wife—joined Sihanouk's wife and daughter in a sumptuous lunch.

Apologetic Points. Next day it was back to Pnompenh for an audience with the Prince's mother, Queen Sisowath Kossomak. It took place in the Royal Throne Room, a fairy-tale chamber of nine-tiered parasols that shield a great gold throne beneath ceilings depicting ancient Asian tales incongruously set against French classical landscapes. After an exchange of gifts, Jackie was escorted outside under a purple parasol to feed the royal elephants, whose grasping trunks she approached gingerly. As she left Cambodia for Thailand, Jackie was visibly tired, as well she might be. Sihanouk was not only a demanding tour guide but also a difficult—and at times embarrassing—host. While Jackie was in Angkor, he had called a press conference to lecture the captive visiting newsmen on his pet peeve: references to "tiny" Cambodia in the foreign press. He said that "America did not come to Asia to help yellow people; it came to exploit Asia as a neocolonialist power." Later, he took time out from escorting Jackie to receive the new Czech Ambassador to Cambodia and condemn "the criminal American aggression against Viet Nam that menaces our country"—while his Foreign Affairs Ministry issued one of its frequent denunciations of America's "barbarous bombings" of civilians. Once he took Jackie's limousine past a display of a shot-down American plane, having justified himself in advance with an apology to newsmen: "Please excuse me. You Americans have killed many people." And everywhere he blithely referred to his love for President Kennedy, although it was his official government radio that, not long after the assassination, thanked "divine protection" for causing the "complete destruction of Cambodia's enemies."

A Little Walk. By contrast, Jackie's three days in Thailand were quiet and reasonably private, partly because, afflicted with a touch of the malaise that tourists frequently experience in Asia, she canceled several public appearances. She did manage some serious shopping, buying a 15th century bronze hand of Buddha, two gilt wooden hands (17th century), three porcelain cosmetic jars from the ruined ancient capital of Ayutthaya, and three solid silver bracelets made by Thailand's Meo hill tribesmen.

The high point of her Thai sojourn, an occasion that brought together two of the world's best-dressed women, was a royal dinner for 180 given by King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit. Jackie wore a long white evening gown elaborately stitched in gold, the beautiful queen a traditional gown of Thai embroidered silk in yellow with a matching sabai, or stole. After dinner, the King and Queen suggested that they take a little walk. Knowing that Jackie particularly wanted to see the temple of the Emerald Buddha, the King had ordered the whole palace and temple grounds illuminated. Lights shone on the golden spires and the gilded heads of the king cobras, on the fierce 25-ft.-high demons who guard the temple, on the white monkey king warrior and the life-size golden statue of Manohra, half human and half bird. Entranced by her walk, Jackie called the temple "the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." Then she flew off for a brief stopover in Rome before returning to the U.S.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1968

Spillover into Laos
Friday, Jan. 26, 1968

The neutralization and partition of the kingdom of Laos stipulated by the Geneva Accords of 1962 has served Hanoi's war against South Viet Nam admirably. Down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through the Communist-controlled portion of Laos have flowed the men and supplies enabling North Viet Nam to keep the war going, and Laotian rice has helped keep Ho's warriors fed. The U.S. regularly bombs the Trail to slow the flow. But unlike Hanoi, Washington has been unwilling to violate the ban on foreign troops in Laos and strike directly overland to interdict the enemy traffic southward.

The North Vietnamese and their Pathet Lao allies have, in turn, been careful not to succeed too well in their continual skirmishing with Royal Lao troops. Overdoing it on the Lao battlefields would upset the precarious balance between the two halves of Laos-and thus justify allied intervention under the Geneva treaty. But last week that balance was in danger of being tipped. In eastern Laos the Communists were creating a major staging area for an attack across the border at U.S. Marine positions south of the DMZ. In northern Laos, North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao soldiers inflicted a major defeat on Royal Laotian forces, overrunning the strategic valley of Nam Bac.

Bumper-to-Bumper. The upsurge of trouble in Laos came as the scarred battlefields of South Viet Nam fell relatively silent after two weeks of the fiercest fighting of the war in which a record 5,084 Communist soldiers were killed. Said U.S. Commander General Wil liam C. Westmoreland: "The Communists seem to have run temporarily out of steam." But probably not for long. Watching the North Vietnamese buildup across the border, Westmoreland expects a major enemy attack at Khe Sanh either shortly before or after the seven-day lunar new year celebration of Tet that starts Jan. 30.
Since Oct. 15, Red trucks have been streaming southward in bumper-to-bumper convoys. The Trail has been expanded in many stretches into a two-lane highway that is artfully camouflaged and heavily defended by dug-in and mobile antiaircraft batteries. So serious is the increase in traffic that the U.S. is now bombing more in Laos than in North Viet Nam. In December the U.S. flew 6,722 combat sorties over Laos, hitting fuel dumps, traffic and gun emplacements along the Trail, v. only 5,692 over North Viet Nam. Even so, roughly 80% of the trucks get through, and the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh were oiling their weapons in preparation for the worst. Other Marines at "The Rock Pile," the fallback base 16 miles northeast of Khe Sanh, hurried to complete an airstrip so that supplies and reinforcements can be flown in, and giant B-52s daily dumped tons of bombs on infiltration routes from Laos.

Crumbling Resolve. The Communist aims in northern Laos were less clear. The town of Nam Bac sits in a fertile valley astride communication routes from Dienbienphu in North Viet Nam to Communist areas of Laos, and was an important Royalist island in Pathet Lao territory. The Royalists had taken the town from the Reds two years ago, started a rural-development program, and promised the peasants that they would defend them.

That resolve crumbled as the Royalist troops at Nam Bac were hit by five battalions of Pathet Lao and an estimated 18 battalions of North Vietnamese, whose dedication to war dismays the amiable Laotians. After a two-day skirmish, the Royalists fled their fortifications, leaving behind seven howitzers, scores of mortars and even their laundry fluttering from clothes lines. Some 4,000 of the routed Royalists disappeared into the jungle. Though many will undoubtedly turn up for duty again some day, their absence at the moment reduces by 20% the strength of the Royal Laotian Army. In addition to the ground attack, the North Vietnamese also made their first bombing strikes on Laos, hitting the village of Muong Yut, whose inhabitants are fiercely anti-Communist Meo tribesmen. Two of the planes, 1947-vintage Soviet AN2 crop-duster biplanes rigged with bomb racks, were shot down.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1968

A Fishhook Hypothesis?
Friday, Feb. 23, 1968

SOUTHEAST ASIA A Fishhook Hypothesis? Hardly anyone talks about the domino theory any more. Would you believe the fishhook hypothesis? On the geographical fishhook formed by North and South Viet Nam, the neighboring countries of Southeast Asia keenly feel each tug and convulsion of the Vietnamese war. Increasingly, many of them consider their future to be linked directly to the war. "The eventual fate of South and Southeast Asia," Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said last week, "depends more and more on the decisions of America, China and Russia than on the decisions of the nations of the area." Even as Lee spoke, new troubles plagued Viet Nam's neighbors—and prompted their leaders to speak out in warning.

>In Laos, the major staging area for Communist forces moving into South Viet Nam, at least 2,500 North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops have surrounded the southern provincial capital, Saravane. The city is important because it sits astride Route 23, a main feeder to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and commands the whole southern region. Last week an outnumbered royalist force of 1,000 managed to turn back attacks on two outposts defending it, but lost a third. "Some say the fighting in Laos is a forgotten war," said Brigadier General Oudone Sananikone, the Royal Army chief of staff, "but how can we forget what's going on? We have a foreign invasion of some 40,000 North Vietnamese." Control of Saravane would give the Communists additional routes into South Viet Nam.

>In Cambodia, volatile Prince Norodom Sihanouk declared "civil war" on local Viet Minh and Communist infiltrators from Thailand, who are raising havoc in Battambang province, and accused the Communists of tying up with the subversive Thai Patriotic Front to cause trouble. Normally a soft-pedaler of anti-Communist alarm, Sihanouk finally seems to have, recognized the root of much of his trouble—at least until he changes his mind again. Already besieged by North Vietnamese troops who use his country as sanctuary, he now faces a second Communist threat. The Prince attacked the "global strategy of Asian Communism," crying: "We are being driven into war." Ruefully admitting that his soldiers "are not doing so well" against the guerrillas, he ordered reinforcements sent to the besieged province.

>In Thailand, where a Communist insurgency is raging in the northeast, new trouble came from rebel Meo tribes men in the remote hills of northwest ern Nan province. Though only 100 to 200 strong, the Communist-led tribesmen have consistently bushwacked government patrols, killing more than 30 men. Last week in nearby Chiang Rai province, another Meo band shot down a government helicopter. The increased guerrilla activity may provide the power holder in Thailand's military regime, General Praphas Charusathien, with an excuse for postponing elections due this fall. Ordering Thai newspapers to print the grisliest photographs taken during the Tet offensive in Viet Nam, Praphas asked: "Is it not better for us to safe guard a normal situation than for these pictures to become facts in our own country?"

>In Malaysia and Singapore, which will lose 10,000 and 30,000 British troops respectively in Britain's pull-out from the Far East by 1971, there was anxious casting about for protective new alliances. So far, the only things that unite the onetime federation partners are joint air defenses built by Britain and a common fear of Indonesia, despite its friendlier attitude under General Suharto. Malaysia's Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman last week declared that the "Saigon situation" has made the question of mutual defense urgent, and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has called elections to gain momentum for his ambitious defense plans. Soon, leaders of both nations will meet with Britain, Australia and New Zealand to discuss the drawing up of a broad—though limited—five-power treaty, which no doubt would be of interest to other nations in jittery Southeast Asia too.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1968

Hanoi's Second Front
Friday, Mar. 22, 1968

Though South Viet Nam commands the headlines, it is not the only country that the North Vietnamese have invaded in force. Neighboring Laos shares that unhappy distinction, despite the fact that, under the Geneva accords of 1962, no foreign forces are permitted in the neutralist Elephant Kingdom of 3,000,000 people. From the very beginning, Hanoi broke that agreement by routing the main part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos. Now the North is stepping up its attacks on the Royal Lao government itself, hitting with force up and down the length of the narrow nation.

In northern Laos, two Communist battalions struck last week at government positions north of the royal capital of Luangprabang, having taken the strategic valley of Nam Bac in January. In central Laos, two battalions of mixed North Vietnamese and local Communist Pathet Lao forces were thrown back just outside Thakhek on the border of northeast Thailand—a threat so close to home that Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman warned Hanoi that the Thais might have to take direct action to aid Laos. Worst of all is the situation in southern Laos, where North Vietnamese forces have cut road links, launched mortar attacks and surrounded the provincial towns of Lao Ngam, Saravane and Attopeu.

The Quiet Americans. No one knows for certain why Hanoi has taken the offensive in Laos. North Vietnamese taken prisoner seldom seem to know what their overall kuv phem is in Laos, though they make good propaganda exhibits to rally villagers against the Communists. The best guess is that the Laos offensive is all part of General Giap's wider offensive in South Viet Nam.

Part of the massive North Vietnamese force surrounding the U.S. Marines at Khe Sanh sits in Laos. The North Viet namese may also be moving the Ho Chi Minh Trail westward and protecting its flanks against possible allied ground interdiction from South Viet Nam. And Giap might use a major attack in Laos as a diversion to accompany a second round of countrywide assaults in South Viet Nam. Whatever his reasons, he now has some 40,000 North Vietnamese positioned throughout Laos, along with 30,000 indigenous Pathet Lao comrades in arms.

As a result of this growing Communist menace, the U.S. is gradually increasing its carefully unadvertised presence in Laos. The U.S. ambassador in the capital of Vientiane, William Sullivan, has quietly spent his time directing little bits of crucial help to the right places, leaving Prince Souvanna Phouma free to run the government in his own way. Officially, the U.S. has no combat troops in Laos, but it does have 72 military attaches in Vientiane, more than are assigned to any other U.S. embassy in the world. Six months ago, an American in the capital was a rarity; now husky, crewcut young Americans in civilian clothes are common in the streets and often fill the few hotels. They are there as civilian pilots, air-traffic controllers, radarmen, advisers, engineers and cartographers. The U.S. officially admits to just 1,752 men in Laos, but there are probably a good many more.

Cover & Forays. Thailand-based U.S. bombers are providing direct air support to the Royal Lao in their firefights with the North Vietnamese army. U.S. trained Thais sometimes fly Lao planes and man Lao artillery in order to bolster the anti-Communist defenses, dressing in Lao uniforms. Air America and Continental Air Services planes ferry ammunition, boots, radio gear and food to the Lao forces, as do unmarked helicopters piloted by Americans. Air America planes are dropping $3,500,000 worth of food a year to some 125,000 refugees at 86 remote sites—refugees who might otherwise have to turn to the Communists for survival. Among them are several thousand Meo tribes men who, freed from the necessity of tilling the rice fields, wage hit-and-run guerrilla warfare against the Communists in Pathet Lao-controlled areas of northern Laos. U.S. trained Lao serve as ground spotters along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, directing air strikes against infiltrators headed for South Viet Nam. During the past two months, American planes have dropped almost as many bombs over Laos as over North Viet Nam. Clandestine Laotian and South Viet namese commando teams led by U.S. Green Berets have stepped up the number of their covert forays into Laos. But the bulk of the U.S. presence in Laos, open and covert, is aimed at maintaining the uneasy balance of forces in Laos. To that end, the U.S. provides most of the money for the government's budget, and enough military aid to keep the 70,000-man Laotian forces equipped to fight.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1968

Tensions Between Partners
Friday, May. 03, 1968

"The present marriage between the U.S. and Thailand," says Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, "is a marriage of necessity, I think, for both sides." Like most such marriages, it has its strains, and they are beginning to show up with considerable frequency. The Thais face a dilemma: they want and need U.S. help in fighting off Communism in Southeast Asia, fearing that their country may be the next victim; yet they are disturbed by the effects of the American presence in Thailand on their traditional manners and morals.

Now that they see the U.S. moving toward peace talks in Viet Nam, they are also afraid that it may be preparing to reduce its commitment to them. The result is a widening rift in U.S.-Thai relationships that will be one of the principal topics of conversation when Thai Premier Thanom Kittikachorn visits Washington this week for talks with President Johnson.
Public Uproar. The frictions between the U.S. and Thailand range from the conduct of U.S. soldiers to the conduct of the war against the Communists in Thailand's North and North east. Permissive in private but somewhat puritanical in public, the Thais resent freewheeling, free-spending American ways with women; they even frown on G.I.s holding hands with Thai girls in public. In an increasingly bitter campaign, the state-guided press is attacking Americans for consorting with "hired wives," siring "redhaired babies" and "deceiving girls and making them become prostitutes." Reflecting the public uproar, the Thai Cabinet two weeks ago ordered that the clusters of bars, bordellos and massage parlors that have sprung up alongside U.S. military installations be removed to less conspicuous locations so that they will no longer bring "moral and social decline to the people."

American and Thai tensions have been increased by the fact that, although 45,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Thailand and another 6,000 visit Bangkok each month on leave from Viet Nam, there is still no status-of-forces agreement. U.S. and Thai diplomats have been haggling for more than a year over who should try misbehaving G.I.s, with the Thais pushing for an agreement that would limit the rights of U.S. soldiers in Thailand. Two weeks ago, in an effort to settle the dispute on their own terms, the Thais haled into court a U.S. Air Force sergeant who had been in an argument with a Thai taxi driver; they slapped him in jail for five days until he agreed to pay a $50 fine. Says General Pra-phas Charusathien, strongman of the Bangkok regime: "There is no question that foreign servicemen are under the jurisdiction of Thai courts of law. Of course they are."

Relations between the two allies have become so strained that Thai officials, in fact, seem increasingly to consider it a point of pride to refuse to heed U.S. advice. "Having governed themselves for more than 700 years," says U.S. Ambassador Leonard Unger, "the Thais feel no need to adjust their way of doing things to meet foreign concepts of how things should be done." Upset by continual U.S. prodding for faster social and economic reforms, the Thais have decided to cut down the number of U.S. advisers upcountry, have removed the Peace Corps from all future work in community development. After nine years of delays, the government has at last produced a draft of a new constitution that would provide a measure of representative government for the Thais, but no date has been set for the promulgation of the new law or for elections.

Massive Force. The Thais seem intent on ignoring U.S. advice about a new Communist-inspired insurrection that broke out a few months ago among the 12,000 Meo tribesmen in Thailand's rugged far north near the Laotian border. Though U.S. military men have maintained that an even-handed approach could win back the formerly loyal Meos, the Thai army, already plagued by Communist guerrilla warfare in the Northeast, has insisted on using massive force. It has indiscriminately bombed and strafed Meo villages and forced the hill people into refugee camps in the lowlands, treating the 50% who refuse resettlement as the enemy.

The result has been that, while only a few started the insurrection, many more are being forced onto the Communist side. Last week, in the most violent incident of the revolt, some 100 Meo tribesmen hit a government outpost in the northern province of Chain-grai, killing 14 police and wounding three. The attack was likely to bring harsh Thai reprisals that will probably lead to a new escalation in what began as only an insignificant outbreak of tribal unrest.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1969

The Unseen Presence
Friday, Oct. 17, 1969

It sometimes seems as if the U.S. Government would like to make the very existence of Laos classified information. Thus, when the country's Premier, Prince Souvanna Phouma, flew into Washington last week, the White House said as little as possible about his meeting with President Nixon. The U.S. these days is anxious to get out of Southeast Asia, not to get in deeper. Reflecting that mood, Senator Stuart Symington next week will begin hearings on the American involvement in Laos. To gauge the U.S. presence there, TIME Correspondents David Greenway and William Marmon visited the kingdom twice in recent weeks. Their report:
The depth of the U.S. involvement in Laos is not immediately apparent in the seedy, down-at-the-heels capital of Vientiane. There is none of the neon nightmare that Americans have brought to Bangkok, and the town does not creak under the weight of the U.S. military as does Saigon. One sees few Americans, and none in uniforms. In a few bars one may find the freewheeling, CIA-paid Air America pilots, the Lord Jims of Laos. But the main accent is French. The old ochre-colored colonial buildings with their big windows and high ceilings set the architectural style. Citron pressé outsells Coca-Cola, and hamburgers hardly exist. The pace is as slow-moving as the ceiling fans, and Vientiane exudes a decadent charm that is extinct where Americans have made a more obvious invasion.

But appearances are misleading. The U.S. Embassy telephone book is as thick as the one for all of Laos. Of the more than 2,100 Americans (including dependents) now stationed in Laos, most live in all-American compounds outside Vientiane and very much out of sight. The largest is KM6 (six kilometers from town), a U.S. suburb transplanted to Asian soil. There American families live in two-and four-bedroom ranch-style houses laid out with barbecue pits and with swings, ponies and bicycles on their grassy lawns. KM6 has its own electric power generators, water supply and sewage system, plus tennis courts and a 450-student school.

Though there are no U.S. ground troops fighting in Laos, the country has become even more of a client state than Viet Nam. Laos receives more U.S. aid per capita than any other country—over $250 million a year in a country of 2,825,000 people, one-third of whom live in Communist-held areas.

The Americans admit to the presence of 75 military personnel serving as advisers in the capital and the six military regions. There are also more than 200 CIA agents. "Laos is an agency country," a longtime Vientiane observer notes. The silver fleets of the CIA contract carriers, Air America and Continental Airlines, have for years provided tactical support for the most effective government force in Laos—General Vang Pao's Meo tribesmen. The CIA men and the military advisers train, equip, support and transport the entire Royal Laotian military effort. Americans have been known to advise on tactics on the battalion level.

The Americans justify their involvement in Laos on the ground that the North Vietnamese were there first. It is largely clandestine because, like the North Vietnamese presence, it violates the 1962 Geneva accords, which supposedly neutralized Laos. The military-aid program, for example, is not run by the military-assistance group (MAG) but by USAID through a euphemistically titled "requirements office."

Towns Flattened. The U.S. officially admits only to flying "armed reconnaissance" missions over Laos (i.e., firing only when fired upon). But in fact, besides bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail, Thai-based American planes provide considerable tactical air support for the Royal Laotian Army, flattening whole towns in the Communist Pathet Lao zone. In the last eleven months the bombing of Laos has increased fivefold. "We've creamed that place," allowed a U.S. Air Force pilot recently, "some places even worse than Viet Nam." Said one woman who escaped from Muong Phine, a town recently captured by government forces: "We were afraid of the airplanes that came all the time. We learned to stand still in the fields when the planes came because if we ran the planes would shoot."

The U.S. has obvious reasons for not admitting the extent to which American air power plays a role in Laos. "If we did," said an American official in Vientiane, "every dove in the U.S. would hit us over the head with it like they did with Johnson and the bombing of North Viet Nam. The North Vietnamese don't admit the presence of their 47,000 troops. Why should we give them the advantage of admitting the bombing?"

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

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Time Megazine 1969

The Chinese Highwaymen
Friday, Dec. 05, 1969

In the shadowy war between Laotian government forces and Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas, China has so far stayed clear of the actual fighting. Peking, however, has launched a different sort of invasion against its diminutive neighbor to the south—one that may prove to be every bit as troublesome. Last year some 3,000 Chinese road builders moved across the border of China's Yunnan province into northern Laos. By the time the monsoon rains began last spring, the Chinese had pushed a gravel-topped all-weather road 55 miles south as far as Muong Sai, a town on an important Mekong River tributary, then northeast toward North Viet Nam. Last September, as the rains ended, the coolies moved on—this time southwestward through the Beng Valley toward the Mekong River and the border of Thailand.

The presence of the Chinese highwaymen, along with two infantry battalions equipped with antiaircraft guns who came along to protect the work crews, has alarmed Laotian Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma, who has always treated his northern neighbor cautiously. Fearful of a violent reaction from Peking should he protest, the prince at first ignored the road builders, rationalizing that a fuzzy 1962 aid agreement with Peking may have authorized a route as far as Muong Sai after all. But the new spur into the Beng Valley (see map), he told TIME, was "another affair." When the government asked the Chinese to explain, Peking flatly denied that it was involved in Laos at all. Another sort of reply came recently when Souvanna Phouma's commander in chief flew over the Beng Valley road in a Royal Laotian plane—and was chased away by a burst of Chinese antiaircraft fire.

The Thais, who are nervous at the prospect of a U.S. stand-down in Southeast Asia, are as alarmed as Laos over the Chinese road work. Officials in Bangkok claim that China may be planning an armed invasion of northern Thailand, where government forces have been having recurring troubles with the Meo tribesmen since 1967. This is probably no more than a fanciful worry on the part of the Thais. A more likely explanation for the road may be that China is planning to step up aid to the Laotian rebels. During the National Day speeches in Peking last October, Laos was moved up several spots on China's list of "struggling peoples." Peking now rates it third in importance, after Albania and Viet Nam.

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[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1970

Battle for the Plain
Monday, Mar. 02, 1970

For the forlorn little Laotian government garrison defending the key Xieng Khouang airstrip on the strategic Plain of Jars, the end came at 3 a.m. Two hours earlier, an estimated six North Vietnamese battalions supported by outmoded but still effective Soviet PT-76 tanks had begun their final attack, smashing through the camp's barbed-wire perimeter and crushing all resistance. In his last message, a wounded Laotian radio operator called in air strikes on his own position. The surviving defenders fled west, but were unable to regroup. By noon, the entire plain and its important road network were in the hands of the North Vietnamese.

Last fall, after the area had been under Communist control for five years, government troops under the command of General Vang Pao recaptured it. There was little hope, however, that the plain could be held in the face of a determined Communist counterattack, and over the past few weeks a U.S.-organized airlift had removed some 15,000 civilians from the area (TIME, Feb. 23). A day after the airlift ended, the North Vietnamese struck in strength. For ten days the 6,000 government defenders on the plain held off the 10,000-man enemy force. They were aided considerably by massive U.S. air strikes—including, reportedly, the first use of B-52s on the plain. Airpower, however, was not enough.

Despite U.S. denials, it is common knowledge that the Central Intelligence Agency has for years supported Vang Pao's Meo guerrilla forces, and that Thailand-based American jets fly daily strikes against Communist positions in Laos. The net effect, however, has been simply to maintain the status quo; at week's end, in fact, both sides held positions similar to what they held a year ago. In Vientiane, more than 100 miles from the battlefield, news of the defeat had little impact. The capital was absorbed in celebrating an important Buddhist holiday—and high-ranking officials concentrated on their tennis.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1970

Laos: Deeper Into the Other War
Monday, Mar. 09, 1970

RELENTLESSLY, almost at will, Communist North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops advanced last week against Laotian government forces. As they swept forward, concern mounted among U.S. officials. On Capitol Hill, critics of the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia protested that Washington seemed to be plunging deeper into Laos just as it was pulling back from Viet Nam—though of course the U.S. commitment in Viet Nam is incomparably larger. The Administration denied the charges, but the evidence appeared to confirm them (see box following page).

Familiar Pattern. U.S. support, however, proved inadequate last week. Fresh from their easy victories on the Plain of Jars, the Communists took Xieng Khouang, then moved south and east toward the government position at Muong Soui. When Communist guns neutralized Muong Soui's airstrip, making reinforcement impossible, the 100-man government garrison pulled out under cover of darkness.

Few observers in the sleepy little government capital of Vientiane had expected the Plain, which has changed hands repeatedly for years, to be held in the face of a determined Communist attack. There was good reason for their pessimism. Hanoi has 50,000 troops in Laos, some 16,000 around the Plain, and the Pathet Lao have another 50,000: the government, by contrast, has a total of 63,000 regulars and another 10,000 Meo guerrillas under General Vang Pao. What alarmed U.S. officials was the possibility that this time the Communist forces might not be satisfied with the usual gains. In the past, the war has had a special, almost ritualistic quality, with Communist and government forces swapping occupancy of the Plain of Jars and refraining from probing deeper into territory generally conceded to the foe. Now, however, there is concern that the Communists might change the nature of the war by changing the old seesaw pattern. They could do so by moving west and cutting the road link between Vientiane and the royal capital of Luangprabang, or by driving south against a pair of other targets.

A Look at Long Cheng. These were Sam Thong, headquarters for the U.S. aid operation in northern Laos, and Long Cheng, a top-secret, CIA-supported base for guerrilla operations against the Communists. Sam Thong, which serves as a center for refugee assistance as well as standard aid programs, has occasionally been opened to newsmen. Long Cheng, however, remained sealed until last week, when TIME Stringer Timothy Allman, a LIFE correspondent, and a French reporter paid an unauthorized visit. Allman's report:
After strolling 15 kilometers along the U.S.-built dirt road that links Sam Thong and Long Cheng, the three of us were picked up by a Jeepload of Meo troopers and driven the rest of the way to CIA-land. They assumed, of course, that we were agency men—no one else is allowed in. The first sight in Long Cheng was encouraging: a barbershop with a sign reading "Welcome."

Five years ago, the valley was deserted; now American money and officials have created a town of 40,000 people dedicated to war. We saw Americans in civilian clothes working on aircraft engines, taxiing unmarked T-28 fighter-bombers up and down the runway and teaching Asians the art of engine maintenance. Although Asians—presumably Laotians and Thais—fly the T-28s, Americans fly rescue helicopters bearing U.S. markings, one of which always has its rotors turning in readiness for a rescue mission. As we watched, U.S. aircraft took off and landed at 60-second intervals.
At last we were discovered. An angry Laotian colonel ordered us into his Jeep. Soon afterward a khaki-clad CIA man appeared, seized the French correspondent's notebooks, then left to make arrangements for our departure.
Finally, a light aircraft arrived bearing a USIS man who was crimson with rage. He told us the ride back was going to cost us $450—a method chosen by the U.S. embassy to fine journalists who stray from the official path.

Fallback Base. Would there be an all-out attack on Long Cheng? No one really knew—but Americans were preparing a fallback position farther south. There are at least three months of the dry season left, and in previous years the Communists have waited until early spring to mount their offensives.

Tactical considerations aside, the basic question seemed to be one of Hanoi's intentions. The reconquest of the Plain was expected, partly because it gives the North Vietnamese a greater buffer around their own frontier, partly to protect the Ho Chi Minh Trail complex, which fuels the war in South Viet Nam. Official Saigon sources say, in fact, that there is more North Vietnamese traffic along those trails now than at any time during the war. To counter it, the U.S. has launched the most concentrated B-52 raids ever directed against the area. The raids, together with the unprecedented use of B-52s near the Plain of Jars and the influx of U.S. advisers and CIA agents, prompted a warning from Hanoi last week. Complaining of the use of "bombardiers stratégiques B-52" and the introduction "des spooky," the North Vietnamese said: "The American imperialists and their valets in Laos must be held responsible for the consequences following their intensification of the war."

Less Than Candid. One reason for the increased interest in Laos was the relative quiet in South Viet Nam. Officials called it a lull, even though 666 Americans and 2,461 South Vietnamese troops have died in Viet Nam in the first eight weeks of the year (compared with 1,380 Americans and 1,725 South Vietnamese in the same period last year). While those figures reflected a far hotter war than the current skirmishing across the border, what worried U.S. politicians most deeply was the growing scope and secrecy of the American involvement in Laos.

It was the Administration's secrecy on Laos that particularly rankled the critics and stirred disturbing memories of the steady, clandestine buildup of the U.S. presence in South Viet Nam. Washington's doves, however, might be accused of overstating their case. Compared with the U.S. presence in Viet Nam today, the Laos effort is minuscule. Moreover, it can be argued that the continued U.S. effort in Laos is a logical consequence of the Nixon program in Viet Nam; if a gradual, orderly withdrawal from Viet Nam is to proceed, it is obviously important to keep neighboring Laos from collapsing. Besides, some U.S. officials maintain that the U.S. effort in Laos represents precisely what the U.S. should have stuck to in Viet Nam: an American training and logistics operation combined with air support, but without ground troops.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1970

Laos: Old War, New Dispute
Monday, Mar. 23, 1970

EXCEPT for occasional Communist patrols that stole to within a few tantalizing miles of Luangprabang and Vientiane, there was little military movement in Laos last week. Exhausted after their defeat by Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops on the Plain of Jars, General Vang Pao's U.S.-supported Meo guerrillas retired into their mountains to rest and regroup. Almost nothing stirred on the ground in northern Laos, except for some 20,000 Meo, many of them families of Pao's warriors, who began "walking out" of their hillside enclaves towards the Thai border and relative safety from the new Communist push that they fear will come. Edgar "Pop" Buell, U.S. aid coordinator in Laos, estimates that disease or enemy action will take 20% of the Meo refugees during their 15-day march-by-night, hide-by-day trek west. Despite the lull, the conflict was still the object of fascination and controversy, not because of the agonies of the Laotians but because of new diplomatic maneuvering and the discomfort of the Nixon Administration. Instead of quashing congressional criticism of the U.S. role in the war, the White House's explanation of the extent and nature of the U.S. involvement in Laos has only brought on a new dispute.

The Administration's troubles began weeks ago, with news of the military reversal on the Plain of Jars. The reports provided an opening for war critics like Senator George McGovern, who seized on B-52 raids on the Plain to charge that "we are going down the same road in Laos [as in Viet Nam], and we are doing it in secret." Richard Nixon's response was swift and apparently candid. On March 6 in Key Biscayne, he outlined the U.S. role in Laos—never before admitted in detail by any Administration—as "supportive and defensive." To emphasize the "limited" nature of the U.S. role, he stated flatly that "no American stationed in Laos has ever been killed in ground combat operations." At a "backgrounder" after the Nixon speech, a White House aide said that all of some 400 Americans killed, missing or captured in six years of war in Laos had been airmen. As for "advisers," he asserted, their casualty rate "is zero."

Case closed—or so the Administration thought. It was, however, immediately and forcibly reopened. No "ground combat deaths"? The Los Angeles Times last week ran Freelance Journalist Don Schanche's eyewitness account of the death of one U.S. military adviser, Captain Joseph K. Bush Jr., during an enemy attack on a Laotian army compound in February 1969. Confronted with Schanche's story, White House aides sought safety in semantics. Nixon had been accurate, protested White House Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Warren. Bush was "behind the lines," and therefore a victim only of "hostile enemy action"; most assuredly, Warren said, he was not on a "combat operation," or in a "combat situation," or "even in combat." Somehow, of course, Bush had won several decorations, including a posthumous Silver Star, for "gallantry in action," and, as his letters to his wife indicate (see box, page 12), he would have been the last to say that he had not been in a "combat situation."

In its eagerness to recoup the situation, the White House hurriedly revealed that at least 26 American civilians had died one way or another in the Laotian war. They included three members of the International Voluntary Service, a Peace Corps-style group supported in part by the State Department. The others worked for Air America, the CIA's Asian airline. Moving further, the President ordered U.S. commanders to report air and ground casualties incurred from hostile enemy action in the Laotian war separately from the Viet Nam totals, in which they had always been included.

Had the Administration been caught in a deception? Nixon had been genuinely unaware of the killing of Captain Bush, whose death had been lost in the intricacies of casualty bookkeeping. Nonetheless, it has long been common knowledge that Americans, military advisers and specialists, as well as civilians, have died in Laos under enemy fire. The credibility flap provided a new, irresistible opportunity for congressional critics of U.S. Asian policy. The major challenge came from J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Last week, in an effort to maintain congressional control over the Laotian war, the Arkansas Democrat introduced a "sense of the Senate" resolution that the President could not employ ground—or air—forces in Laos without "affirmative action" by Congress.

A Hard Choice. A popular and congressional argument over Laos is precisely what the White House wanted to avoid. Nixon promised at Key Biscayne that there would be no commitment of U.S. ground troops to that country, but airpower is something else. A major reason that the U.S. is in Laos is to carry out bombing raids on North Vietnamese troops and supplies heading south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Trouble on Capitol Hill could seriously crimp the Administration's already narrow room for maneuver in Laos—a fact that Hanoi and the Pathet Lao seem to appreciate thoroughly. In an intriguing and unexpected diplomatic move, Prince Souphanouvong, the Pathet Lao leader, last week offered his half brother Prince Souvanna Phouma, head of the neutralist government, a peace proposal. It suggested talks about a standstill cease-fire and a conference of all Lao factions aimed at restoring a new coalition government in Vientiane. There was, of course, one precondition: a U.S. withdrawal from Laos. Premier Souvanna Phouma said that he was "ready for a cease-fire," but, much to Washington's relief, he refused to discuss even a U.S. bombing cessation until Hanoi agreed to withdraw its still unacknowledged force of 67,000 troops (by White House accounting) in Laos. These troops, of course, were ignored in the Pathet Lao proposal.

The prince's public line comforted Washington, but one high Administration official confesses that "we still don't know what Souphanouvong may be telling his half brother." Eventually, the Laotian government could bend to Communist pressure and ask the U.S. to stop the bombing. In that case, Washington would face a hard choice. It could either risk a political outcry by continuing the raids, or it could stop the raids and risk giving the North Vietnamese the opportunity for still greater mischief in the big war next door.

Yog koj ho xav muab cov ntawv Askiv no nyeem ua lwm haiv neeg lus, ces koj muab cov ntawv no COPY es ho mus nias qhov LINK nod: http://translate.goo...om/translate_t# Thaum qhov LINK coj koj mus txog Google qhov chaw txhais lus lawm, koj li mam xaiv hom lus uas koj xav nyeem thiab muab koj qhov COPY los PASTE rau.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1970

Danger and Opportunity in Indochina
Monday, Mar. 30, 1970

Through the anguished years of the Viet Nam War, Cambodia and Laos have been strictly sideshows. Cambodia has almost entirely escaped the storm of steel that so far has cost the lives of an estimated 610,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, 175,000 South Vietnamese troops, and more than 42,000 Americans—not to mention some 300,000 Vietnamese civilians. The conflict in Laos, though bloody enough, has not approached the scale of the war in Viet Nam. Now the situation is suddenly changing. Events in Laos and Cambodia last week may well prove to be a watershed in the protracted Viet Nam War. Indeed, they could change the whole thrust of the war.

For the first time since the Geneva accords of 1962 brought an equivocal peace to Laos, Communist troops moved south in force from the Plain of Jars. They seized one key base that had been held by the Laotians with U.S. support and menaced another that serves as the center of CIA operations in the country. The onslaught made it clear that the North Vietnamese could overrun all of Laos at will; what was agonizingly unclear was just how far they intended to go.

Developments in neighboring Cambodia were equally unsettling. In Phnom-Penh, anti-Communists led by Premier General Lon Nol and Deputy Premier Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk as chief of state and ordered North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops out of Cambodia. In a number of border clashes with Communist troops, the Cambodian army called for — and got — help from U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. With the war continuing in South Viet Nam and with the North wrestling with the grave problems that have grown out of the conflict, all four states of Indochina were on the boil at the same time (see map).

Privileged Sanctuaries
For some time, Laos and Cambodia have served as massive conduits for the flow of men and supplies from North Viet Nam to the southern battlegrounds. There is, of course, the spidery Ho Chi Minh Trail, threading into South Viet Nam from more than half a dozen points in Laos and Cambodia. There is also the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville, through which, according to some estimates, the Communists get fully 80% of their supplies for the war in the lower half of South Viet Nam. Much of the matériel is brought in aboard Chinese and Soviet freighters and moved north over first-class roads (including one built with U.S. aid) by a fleet of some 500 canvas-covered lorries operated by the Chinese firm of Hak Ly.
Even more important is the use of Cambodia and Laos as privileged base areas for Communist troops. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong hospitals, supply dumps, rest camps and training areas are scattered throughout eastern Cambodia. A 2,300-man headquarters for the joint North Vietnamese-Viet Cong effort in the South lies in a complex of huts beneath a triple canopy of jungle. Some of the sanctuaries bear picturesque names, chosen mostly because of their geographic contours. In southeastern Cambodia are the "Parrot's Beak" and the "Angel's Wing," where five Communist regiments operating in the Mekong Delta "float in and out," as a U.S. source puts it. Farther north in Cambodia is the "Fishhook," only 70 miles from Saigon, which is the haven for two full divisions as well as Viet Cong headquarters. It is no exaggeration to say that the existence of these sanctuaries has virtually precluded a military solution to the Viet Nam War. In fact, General Creighton Abrams, the U.S. commander in South Viet Nam, has said that if they were eliminated the war would be over within a year. In recent months, increasing allied successes in South Viet Nam have forced the Communists to lean more than ever on the Cambodian and Laotian sanctuaries. Cambodia in particular noted an upsurge in activity as the allies pressed toward the western frontiers of South Viet Nam. Phnom-Penh, for example, reported 200 attacks by Communist troops on Cambodian outposts in the past few months. In Laos, U.S. intelligence sources note that Hanoi has sent in one fresh 9,000-man division and fully reinforced another in recent months for its current offensive.

Promise and Peril
To policymakers in the U.S., the Cambodian and Laotian crises present a tantalizing mixture of promise and peril. Should the U.S. go to Cambodia's aid if asked, providing supplies or men in the hope of wiping out the sanctuaries once and for all? If the U.S. were to do so, Hanoi might reply by pouring in more troops and opening yet another front, or by intensifying its thrust in Laos. This, coming at a point when the U.S. is attempting to disengage from the Indochinese quagmire, could prove politically as well as militarily disastrous. The U.S. effort to disengage, in fact, may well have contributed to much of the current turmoil. If Washington faces difficult decisions over the next several weeks, however, so does Hanoi. Can North Viet Nam stand calmly by and see its supply lines to the South endangered? Should the Communists seize all of Laos, and risk massive U.S. bombing as well as attack by a Thai army that is unlikely to feel comfortable with Communist forces just across the Mekong River? With problems of these dimensions suddenly looming, the next few months are bound to be crucial for Southeast Asia. The common denominator in the current turmoil is the North Vietnamese infantryman, and his presence in sizable numbers in supposedly neutral lands. Hanoi's forces long ago took on the burden of the Laos campaign from the ineffectual, home-grown Pathet Lao. Neither the frangible Laotian regulars nor the lightly armed, CIA-backed Meo guerrillas of Laotian General Vang Pao have been able to withstand them. In Cambodia, it was North Viet Nam's freewheeling use of Cambodian territory that finally precipitated Sihanouk's ouster. With the U.S. withdrawal under way, Sihanouk grew increasingly alarmed that the presence of so many North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers would encourage Cambodia's own Communists, the Khmer Rouge, to act more boldly. For all his diplomatic dexterity, however, the ebullient prince had found it impossible to persuade his unwelcome guests to leave, and power was seized by men who may try harder. Of course, many observers familiar with the Byzantine workings of Sihanouk's mind suspect that he may have engineered the whole thing as a way of pressuring Moscow and Peking to talk the intruders into leaving. But most analysts suspect that this time no dissembling was involved.

In the Spotlight
Dissatisfaction with Sihanouk has sprung from several sources. Foreign policy intrigues the mercurial prince and so does education, but economic policy, which is vital to Cambodia's welfare, simply bores him. There were rumors that the prince's relatives had profited enormously from government contacts. After Sihanouk was deposed, his wife, attractive Princess Monique, was attacked for alleged profiteering. Even Queen Kossomak, Sihanouk's mother, was the subject of ugly speculation on the same count. "The pretext was that Sihanouk was not doing enough against the Vietnamese," said a young Cambodian businessman. "The real reason was that we were all tired of him." It was Sihanouk's foreign policy that kept him in the spotlight both at home and abroad. In the early '60s, the prince concluded that the U.S. would never be able to defeat the Vietnamese Communists. Accordingly, he began disengaging from the U.S. and ingratiating himself with the Soviet Union and, more important, China. In late 1963, Sihanouk ordered U.S. aid officials out of the country, and 18 months later he broke off relations completely. After Lyndon Johnson's decision to halt the bombing of North Viet Nam, Sihanouk began swinging back toward the U.S. "The American presence helps Cambodia indirectly by maintaining the balance of power in the area," he said. "If the U.S. pulls out of the region, the weight of China will be too great for the small countries of Southeast Asia to bear. They will all become Maoized." A year ago, during a tour of Cambodia's northeast provinces, Sihanouk saw for himself the extent of Communist occupation. Subsequently, the prince said that he had had enough of the Communist intruders. So had many of his countrymen. Inevitably, American and South Vietnamese troops were guilty of incursions as well, though not for protracted periods. Last December, Cambodia's United Nations Ambassador, Huot Sampoth, appealed for an end to "this war of extermination" in which, he said, more than 300 Cambodians had been killed and 700 wounded by U.S. and South Vietnamese forces. There was little, however, that Cambodia could do except complain: its scantily equipped 40,000-man armed forces could not adequately patrol Cambodia's ill-defined, 575-mile frontier with Viet Nam. A typical technique was to send a single Cambodian trooper, mounted on a motorcycle, to the site of a border violation. The soldier would race up to the invading troops, wave a Cambodian flag at them and try to persuade them to leave. It is a tribute to Cambodian bravado that the tactic sometimes worked.

Energizing the Economy
Last summer Sihanouk made the two men who eventually overthrew him the principal figures in a "movement of salvation" designed to energize Cambodia's stagnant economy. Both had been key officials for some time. Lon Nol is a quiet, pragmatic 56-year-old general who has been Cambodia's best-known anti-Communist for many years. He became head of the national police in 1951 and entered the army in 1952, taking part in operations against the Viet Minh invaders until the end of the French war in Indochina. Three years after joining the army, he became its chief of staff, and in 1966 was elected Premier. He resigned the following year after suffering injuries in an auto accident, but returned to the government in 1968 as Defense Minister. In mid-'69, when Lon Nol was again elected Premier, he demanded — and got — substantial powers from Sihanouk. Prince Sirik Matak, 56, who helped Lon Nol depose Sihanouk, is the scion of the Sisowath branch of the royal family (Sihanouk is of the Norodom branch). A more colorful figure than Lon Nol, he could emerge as Cambodia's real new leader. Though he has practically made a career out of publicly opposing Sihanouk on major issues, his unquestioned ability has all but guaranteed him a succession of important government posts. With Lon Nol, he has long fought Sihanouk's policy of tolerating the Communist border presence, but he has struggled hardest to free the economy of oppressive government controls and corruption.

Familiar Gambit
Last January, with domestic conflicts developing over economic reforms and the issue of the Vietnamese troops, Sihanouk decided to depart for France. It was a familiar gambit — leave at a time when trouble is brewing, come back after the situation has worsened, point out how inefficient the temporary chieftains have been and then create a flurry of activity that resembles a solution. This time, however, Sihanouk's absence simply gave Lon Nol and Sirik Matak time to plot.
In February, the governors of Cambodia's 19 provinces met in Phnom-Penh. As they reported, one by one, on their problems, it slowly became apparent that unrest extended over most of the nation — and that the chief source of the trouble was the North Vietnamese presence. Lon Nol and Sirik Matak decided that something had to be done to drive home the seriousness of the situation to both the wandering Sihanouk and the North Vietnamese. To this end, they organized mass demonstrations, first in Svay Rieng province, site of the Fishhook sanctuary, then three days later in the capital. Thousands of civil servants, students and soldiers in civilian clothes joined in. Many of the placards they carried had been printed on government presses. The North Vietnamese and N.L.F. embassies were sacked. Though the demonstrations were sparked by the army, there was enough spontaneous participation to indicate a high level of popular hatred for the North Vietnamese. It was then that the anti-Sihanouk forces seriously began to consider ousting the prince.

Object Lesson
Other factors helped crystallize their feelings. The continuing disintegration in Laos, for instance, was an object lesson in the perils of a large North Vietnamese troop presence. In addition, exploratory post-riot talks with the affronted North Vietnamese in Phnom-Penh got nowhere. The Communist diplomats brushed aside the rights or wrongs of their military presence; they were only interested in reparations and a public apology for their ruined embassies. At that point Sihanouk weighed in with a cable warning of Soviet unhappiness with the demonstrations and indicating that he had no plans to get tough with Hanoi's representatives. Lon Nol and Sirik Matak decided that the time had come to shut the door on the returning prince. The National Assembly and the Council of the Kingdom removed Sihanouk as head of state and named Assembly Speaker Cheng Heng as his acting successor. The first sign that Sihanouk might have lost control came when air controllers at Phnom-Penh's Pochentong Airport began to turn away incoming airliners. A Burma Airways plane, whose passengers included a U.S. Coast Guard officer en route to Cambodia to negotiate the return of the hijacked Columbia Eagle (see THE NATION), was in its approach pattern when it was waved off. A few hours later, a government communiqué announced: "In view of the political crisis created in recent days by the chief of state, Prince Sihanouk, and in conformity with the constitution, the National Assembly and the Council of the Kingdom have unanimously agreed to withdraw confidence in Prince Sihanouk." The coup had a distinctive Cambodian flavor. Some of the tanks drawn up around public buildings in the capital had white kerchiefs over their gun muzzles, and scores of soldiers were seen snoozing on the grass, many without shoes.

Impossible Ultimatum
Sihanouk heard of his overthrow from Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in Moscow. At first he took the news calmly. A few hours later, just before flying off to Peking for talks with Premier Chou Enlai, he told Cambodian students at Vnukovo II Airport that he might establish an exile government in Moscow or Peking. Earlier, he had sent off a cable to his mother quoting Kosygin as having said: "If the extreme right continues to strike foul blows on our allies, war is inevitable between Cambodia and Viet Nam." Back in Phnom-Penh, Lon Nol and Sirik Matak had been doing their best to make Kosygin's allies uncomfortable. They sent pro forma notes of apology to the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong for the damage to their embassies but at the same time handed the Communists an ultimatum: all of their troops must be out within three days.
It was an impossible demand, and Cambodia's new leaders made no move to enforce it. In fact, they made a point of announcing that Cambodia would maintain its traditional policy of neutrality and nonalignment. U.S. sources in Saigon reported some increase in the number of enemy troops crossing into South Viet Nam about the time the ultimatum expired, but the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese are still estimated to have close to 40,000 men in Cambodia.

Coming Unstuck
While Cambodia's new leadership moved to consolidate its hold, the military situation in Laos continued to disintegrate. That was not altogether startling; ever since the establishment of a neutralist tripartite government in Laos as a result of the Geneva accords of 1962, news from there had generally been gloomy. Under the accords, the country's three major parties—the Neo Lao Hak Xat (Communist), the Neutralists under Souvanna Phouma, and the right wing under General Phoumi Nosavan—were to work together in a single government. Souvanna held the balance of power as Premier, and Cabinet posts were shared by all three groups. This solution began to come unstuck almost as soon as it was pieced together. Souvanna's Neutralist army immediately split in two, half staying with the Premier and the balance joining the Pathet Lao. Pathet Lao ministers in Vientiane, rightfully fearing assassination, fled to the Plain of Jars in 1963 and formed a rump government. The right wing made a bid to seize full power in 1964. At that time, the U.S. dropped its backing of the rightists and swung its support to Souvanna. The idea of tripartite rule was dead.

Unsettling Element
For the next five years, the strategically located Plain of Jars remained in Communist hands; most of the fighting in that period occurred around the periphery of the plain, and the Communists went no farther south. Last fall Vang Pao's CIA-backed army, aided by heavy U.S. air support, succeeded in driving the Communist forces from the plain. Five weeks ago, reinforced North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops reoccupied the plain—and this time they decided to go farther. After pausing to resupply, the Communists moved southeast. Late last week government forces abandoned Sam Thong to the Communists, and North Vietnamese troops were reported on the verge of attacking the CIA center at Long Cheng. With the government forces in serious trouble, Vientiane sent in reinforcements, including a number of extremely young conscripts. Unexpectedly, several hundred Thai mercenaries were airlifted into Long Cheng by Air America, the CIA's Asian airline. This marked the first time that Thai participation in the Laos war had been officially acknowledged by the U.S.—though Thai artillery units and pilots are known to have fought in Laos on several previous occasions. It was a turn of events that intensely displeased doves in Washington. "It's too bad," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J.W. Fulbright. "It's a very unsettling element." As the Communist pressure mounted, a Pathet Lao emissary flew into Vientiane, bearing a message for Souvanna Phouma. It was assumed that the message included a proposal calling for a conference of Laotian political factions on the question of a settlement, and for an end to U.S. bombing in Laos. In the past, Souvanna has countered such proposals by insisting that North Vietnamese troops first be withdrawn from his country; this time, in the face of the North Vietnamese advance toward Long Cheng, there was a faint chance that Souvanna might agree to talks with the Pathet Lao (which is led by his half brother Prince Souphanouvong). Despite the increased pressure, Vientiane remained characteristically tranquil. Even the news of Sihanouk's overthrow failed to stir much of a reaction. Most attention was focused on the flamboyant wedding of Souvanna Phouma's son to a Thai model, an event attended by smiling representatives of Western and Communist powers.

A Smile from Thieu
The parallel crises in Indochina evoked strikingly cautious comments. Where Cambodia was concerned, officials were wary of pronouncements because no one could firmly count Sihanouk out for good. Given his popular support and his penchant for the surprise initiative, Sihanouk may well remain an important factor in Cambodian politics for some time to come. To be sure, he was not giving up without a fight. In Peking, he charged that his removal had been "absolutely illegal" and demanded a referendum under neutral supervision. Both Moscow and Peking emphasized that they still considered Sihanouk to be Cambodia's chief of state. In Washington, Cambodia's stability is considered essential to peace in Southeast Asia. For that reason, a ranking White House official said: "We're not going to take any action that could foul us up. We're playing it cool." In Saigon, where Sihanouk has long been considered a Communist dupe, there was undisguised pleasure. South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu had just finished telling a group of Asian newsmen, "We can be friendly with a neutral country, but 'neutral' does not mean being in complicity with the enemy," when an aide handed him the news of Sihanouk's downfall. Thieu broke into a broad grin. Hanoi's response was, naturally, less enthusiastic. North Vietnamese successes in Laos seemed to be offset by the uncertain situation in Cambodia. Without a guaranteed border sanctuary, Communist forces could expect severe difficulties, particularly if Cambodian forces started acting in conjunction with allied troops. Would North Viet Nam fight to keep the sanctuary? That may not be necessary. In any case, for the time being Hanoi appears to be keeping the fighting in South Viet Nam at a low level. Ho Chi Minh's death last September may well be the reason. Sir Robert Scott, former British Commissioner General for Southeast Asia, notes in Foreign Affairs that the new leaders in Hanoi "do not now feel the same urgency to translate Ho's vision into reality in his lifetime." Adds Scott: "There is no purpose to be served by shedding too much blood to win what they expect to win anyway."

Plus and Minus
In terms of the Viet Nam conflict, last week's developments appear to leave Washington with one questionable plus —Cambodia—and one probable minus —Laos. Whatever may happen in Laos, the U.S. is extremely unlikely to use ground troops—as Senator Fulbright informed the world last week by releasing secret testimony by Secretary of State William Rogers. Rogers said that the Nixon Administration had "no present plans" to send G.I.s to Laos even if Communist troops threatened to overrun it. Nonetheless, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird indicated that the U.S. would probably continue to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Cambodia could be a plus —over the short run, at least—provided the situation does not degenerate into anarchy and prompt a panicky Hanoi to mount a full-scale invasion. (Sihanouk was useful in that he kept Cambodia stable. If the new regime swings violently antiCommunist, there could be serious trouble.) Hanoi, too, had a mixed week, with a definite plus in Laos all but outweighed by a possible minus in Cambodia. The survival of the sanctuary in Cambodia is now in question; supplies coming through Sihanoukville reportedly have been slowed, and some Communist troops may soon begin to feel the pinch of hunger. One positive factor for everybody would be a multinational peace conference whose kuv phem would be a settlement embracing all of Indochina. The Soviets have opposed reconvening the 14 nation Geneva parley until the U.S. stops its bombing in Laos; the dangers posed by Sihanouk's departure from the scene could persuade them to drop their opposition. Hanoi, with its lifeline in Cambodia endangered, now has more reason to come to the bargaining table. A more remote possibility is that the Communist Chinese, whose foreign policy is no longer distorted by the lunatic frenzies of the Cultural Revolution, might be persuaded to join. Last week's demonstration of Indochina's chronic instability may eventually prove persuasive enough to bring all the nations concerned to the bargaining table. Nothing, in all likelihood, could do more to please Norodom Sihanouk, or Souvanna Phouma, or Richard Nixon.

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Time Megazine 1970

Toward Talks?
Monday, Nov. 09, 1970

When war came in earnest to Cambodia last spring, the capital city of Phnom-Penh was transformed almost overnight into an armed camp. The neighboring kingdom of Laos has been ravaged by war for a quarter-century without letup; yet a visitor would never know it by looking at its capital. Vientiane is an easygoing city of 150,000 with no barbed wire, no bunkers and no nighttime mortar attacks. Chickens and geese cackle and honk in the main street during the day. It is still safe to walk the streets after dark. The primary sources of amusement are a few opium dens and sporting houses. Recently a wedding reception was held in an open-air café next door to one of the brothels, and the unoccupied girls came out to watch the proceedings with wistful smiles.

Out in the countryside, the picture is entirely different. Communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops hold roughly two-thirds of the country, including the Plain of Jars just 40 miles north of the capital and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the south. Some 270,000 people —out of Laos' total population of 2,500,-000—are jammed into chaotic refugee camps. Pro-government forces have been killed at the appalling rate of 4,000 per year. U.S. B-52s regularly bomb the Laotian section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. On the ground, the Pathet Lao are in constant conflict with tough, CIA-trained troops from the Meo mountain tribes, who last month seized two key positions on the edge of the Plain of Jars. Last week the Pathet Lao vowed that they would retake the two areas "very soon." Despite that promise, the diplomatic community in Vientiane is increasingly confident that peace talks will begin as early as next month, between representatives of Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma and his halfbrother, Prince Souphanouvong, head of the Pathet Lao.
The last time the country's contending factions formally got together was in 1962, when the Geneva accords placed Laos in the hands of a clumsy, three-headed regime composed of rightists, neutralists and leftists. That arrangement soon broke down, and since then the three factions have struggled with almost ritualistic regularity, advancing and retreating like choreographed troops in a lethal ballet.

A significant break came in June when Souphanouvong suggested that the time had come for "an urgent peace settlement." One of the strings dangling from that offer, however, was a demand for immediate cessation of U.S. bombing, particularly along the Laotian portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Souvanna Phouma rejected his half-brother's bid. In August, Souphanouvong again called for talks, this time without mentioning a U.S. bombing halt as a precondition. On his return to Laos last week from a round-the-world swing, Souvanna Phouma again promised to get talks going. In view of President Nixon's five-point peace program involving all of Southeast Asia, the Prince insisted that the Laotian situation be considered separately from Viet Nam and Cambodia. Although Souvanna Phouma is recognized as the legitimate head of the government in Laos, the Pathet Lao refuse to negotiate with him as such. They insist on meeting him only as the leader of a warring faction. Last week there was promise of a breakthrough. With Souvanna's approval, a letter went out to the Communists referring to a possible meeting between "representatives of the two princes," precisely the wording used by the Pathet Lao.

Double Benefits. Few observers hold any hope that even if talks take place and a settlement is reached, a neutral state would long endure. Caught in the crosscurrents of international politics, the country has long been plagued by feuding factions. Perhaps the greatest hope for some kind of settlement is that it would benefit both sides. An agreement would free Communist forces, particularly the North Vietnamese, for use in Cambodia and Viet Nam. Additionally, Laotian supply routes have become even more important for the Communists since the closing of the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville. The Communists hope that peace would bring a bombing halt along the Laotian portions of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It is extremely unlikely, however, that the U.S. will go along with any such call for a bombing halt.

For Souvanna, a reorganized Laotian government could begin at last to focus attention on the needs of its people. "The Laos are tired; they have been bled white," says a diplomat in Vientiane. Cause for optimism can also be found in the nature of the Laotian people, for whom the war has long been a crippling burden. In the airport at Vientiane hangs a poorly printed sign in English, Lao, Sanskrit and Hindi that touchingly sums up the Laotian view of how the world ought to behave—but rarely does. It says: HATRED NEVER CEASES BY HATRED. INDEED, HATRED CEASES BY LOVE. THIS IS THE ETERNAL LAW.

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Time Megazine 1971

THE PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW: HOW MUCH OR HOW LITTLE?
Monday, Jan. 11, 1971

A CONFLICT almost as old as democratic government itself is raging anew in Washington these days. The issue is the accessibility of information about Government operations. This conflict often pits the President and the Executive Branch against Congress, regulatory agencies against consumer interests, bureaucrats against environmentalists, Congress against the voter, the courts against the bar and, at times, the news media against all of them. At its highest levels, the pitch of the argument is tuned by public disquietude over the war in Southeast Asia, and by public concern lest new foreign undertakings, veiled in secrecy, lead to new military commitments, if not to new wars.

A current cliché from the political lexicon—"the people's right to know"—marks the battlefield but does not exactly illuminate it. This lofty phrase was first used a quarter of a century ago by the late Kent Cooper, then executive director of the Associated Press. "It means," he explained, "that the Government may not, and the newspapers and broadcasters should not, by any method whatever, curb delivery of any information essential to the public welfare and enlightenment." The Constitution, as it happens, does not provide for any such right. The courts, moreover, have never interpreted the First Amendment—which prohibits Congress from abridging freedom of speech or the press—as requiring the Government to make unlimited disclosures about its activities.

Delicate Activities. Indeed, an uncurbed "right to know" collides dramatically with what might be called "the right not to know." Ever since governments were first conceived by man, public officials have argued that certain delicate activities of the state were best conducted in secrecy—intelligence operations, for instance, or diplomatic dealings. In the U.S., specific provisions for secrecy have quite often been enacted by Congress, as in the acts establishing the Central Intelligence Agency and the Atomic Energy Commission. Congress has also allowed business enterprises the right to hold inviolate their trade secrets, processes and many other internal operations.

In addition, the courts have upheld the validity of legal strictures concerning the substantial privacy of federal income tax returns, the raw investigatory files of the FBI, testimony given to federal grand juries, the confidential nature of the doctor-patient relationship, and a host of other matters. More often than not, Presidents have been able to shield their personal subordinates and the internal papers of their Administrations from investigation by either Congress or the press on the grounds of "executive privilege."

Many historians, philosophers and journalists agree that there have to be certain checks on the unlimited right of the public to knowledge about its government. Clinton Rossiter, a leading historian of the presidency, counted executive secrecy in diplomacy an essential prerogative of a President. Columnist Walter Lippmann, in his classic The Public Philosophy, observed that only within an ideal society, where laws of rational order prevail, is there "sure and sufficient ground for the freedom to speak and to publish." Even James Russell Wiggins, former editor of the Washington Post and an articulate spokesman for press freedom, takes no unlimited view of "the right to know." While decrying the proliferation of governmental secrecy, he writes: "We can give up a little freedom without surrendering all of it. We can have a little secrecy without having a Government that is altogether secret. Each added measure of secrecy, however, measurably diminishes our freedom."

Secret Details. The question arises whether or not too many measures of secrecy have been imposed upon the conduct of public affairs in America. A case in point is the extraordinary number of military and diplomatic agreements the U.S. has made in recent years with an assortment of allies and satellites. Many of these treaties in disguise involve a vast expenditure of American money, and could commit the U.S. to aiding other countries if war broke out. More often than not, details of the commitments were kept secret from the American public until disclosed by inquisitive newsmen or equally inquisitive congressional investigators.

Consider Laos. It is no secret any longer that the U.S. is today deeply involved in an undeclared war there, allied with the supposedly neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma against the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao. Yet only after Senator Stuart Symington's Foreign Relations Subcommittee looked into the matter, against the wishes of the State Department, did the American public learn in detail how U.S. aircraft based in Thailand were bombing northern Laos, the CIA was guiding the operations of Meo tribesmen, and the U.S. was providing millions in military assistance to Souvanna Phouma—all clear violations of the 1962 Geneva accords on Laotian neutrality.
Among the reasons for secrecy about Laos advanced by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Sullivan was that the U.S. wanted to avoid forcing the Russians into taking "official" cognizance of activities about which they knew only unofficially. Plaintively, Senator Symington suggested that the U.S. public had a valid interest in knowing what was going on in Laos, since "we could run into the same kind of escalation as we did in Viet Nam."

Symington's subcommittee also uncovered, for the first time, details of secret agreements with Ethiopia dating back to 1960, under which the U.S. has armed a 40,000-man army at a cost to the American taxpayer of $159 million. Although the extent of U.S. arms assistance to Emperor Haile Selassie is still cloaked by security, State Department officials admit that U.S. bombs and ammunition have been used against insurgent rebels and that U.S. military advisers supervise the training of Ethiopian troops. In defense of this agreement, Assistant Secretary of State David Newsom told the subcommittee that disclosures about Ethiopia had not been made because of "the great sensitivity" of the Emperor. Presumably, in State Department thinking, the "sensitivity" of the American public and Congress to this major diplomatic undertaking was of lesser importance.

Too Much "Exdis." Occasionally, the Government's concern for secrecy affects not only the public's right to know but its own efficiency of operation. When officials of the Water Pollution Control Administration flew to New Orleans recently to investigate a fire on an offshore oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, they discovered that the relevant papers had been locked up by the Interior Department's Geological Survey, which was responsible for supervising the drilling. A recent study of the State Department's operations found that too many reports from the field were being marked "exclusive" or "no distribution" ("Exdis" and "Nodis" in State lingo). As a result, so much current information is restricted to senior officials that the judgment of their subordinates is often irrelevant or out of date.

Information gathered at the taxpayers' expense is often kept secret for no better reason than apathy or red tape. When Dr. J.B. Rhine of Duke University, the noted expert on parapsychology, was asked recently to undertake some research for the Department of Defense, he agreed—but at the same time inquired why an 18-year-old study of his on the training of dogs to detect land mines had never been made public. Apparently, no one had bothered to declassify the material. A more pressing case of bureaucratic ineptitude involves the Atomic Energy Commission, which holds literally thousands of research papers and reports in classified storage. The material cannot be released because the commission cannot hire the personnel needed to declassify it—even though the reports would be of significance for the peaceful development of atomic energy.

The Government's predilection to do as much as possible in secrecy also affects domestic issues of fairly direct concern to the taxpayer. Environmentalists opposed to development of the SST, for example, have had difficulty gaining access to the so-called Garwin report, which is critical of the supersonic transport; the Justice Department claims that the report is a "presidential document" and thus not subject to forced release. Preparation of a national inventory on industrial wastes discharged into public waterways was blocked for seven years by the Budget Bureau under terms of a 1942 law designed to protect business from harassment by the wartime Office of Price Administration.

On a smaller scale, air travelers have had their "right to know" needlessly impaired by a relatively unnoticed act of Congress. It recently voted an increase in the tax on airline tickets to help finance the campaign against aerial hijacking, but in so doing also prohibited disclosure of the amount of a fare that goes toward taxes, thereby effectively hiding the size of the increase from the person who pays it. The Civil Aeronautics Board has accused the Senate Finance Committee of responsibility for this curious use of secrecy, even though the CAB has been guilty of some public-be-damned pettifoggery of its own. It recently authorized airlines to "round off" fares upward to the next dollar, which means that passengers are now paying, say, $41 for a ticket that formerly cost $40.10. This may be a modest windfall for the hard-pressed airlines, but the CAB has nonetheless authorized a disguised overcharge for air passengers.
In Sealed Envelopes. A few members of Congress have protested vigorously against the spreading cloak of governmental secrecy, notably Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, who is concerned about national security affairs, and Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, who regards the proliferation of domestic intelligence activities as a serious threat to individual civil rights. It should be added, though, that the House and Senate are often less than candid about their own operations. The requirement that politicians report their campaign spending, for example, is honored more in the breach than the observance, since only a tiny fraction of funds actually spent in campaigns is noted for the public record. According to law, Senators are required to release public reports only on fees received for speeches, articles and television appearances. But detailed information on their business interests and outside income is kept secret, in sealed envelopes available only to a Select Committee on Ethics—made up of fellow Senators. Members of the House need not list publicly the amount or value of stock they hold in banks and savings and loan associations, or, if they are lawyers, the names of their clients. Though such activities potentially involve conflicts of interest, information about them is reported under seal and is available only to a House committee.

Congress has done relatively little to promote legislation aimed at information disclosure in the public interest. Inspired by an investigation of Government secrecy practices undertaken by California Democrat John Moss, Congress in 1966 did pass the Freedom of Information Act. This law attempted to liberalize and standardize public information and disclosure policies of Government agencies, and authorized citizen suits in federal court to enjoin such agencies from the improper withholding of records and procedures. At the same time, Congress specifically exempted a plethora of areas, such as national defense and foreign policy, where right-to-know arguments normally arise. So far, the effect of the law on the Government's information disclosure policies has been almost nil.

What can be done about the spread of secrecy in Government? For a start, Congress could investigate—as the Symington subcommittee recommends—the present use of the Espionage Act, various presidential directives and the "executive privilege," all invoked at times to justify unnecessary secrecy classification practices. Congress could beef up its pathetically weak investigatory and budget analysis staffs and strengthen the General Accounting Office—its agency for the policing of disbursement and use of appropriated funds. It could also cut back substantially on discretionary funds granted to the President for use abroad as he sees fit.

Colossal Mistake. It is unlikely, though, that legislation in and of itself would afford much of a cure to the ills of creeping secrecy. Considerably more important is a different approach by Government in all its branches and at all levels. The State Department could, and should, be far less bending to the secrecy pleas of allied and client governments in such matters as disclosing long-secret U.S. special bonuses and other payments for Thai, Korean and Philippine forces sent to Viet Nam.

The Defense Department should be ordered to stop penalizing employees who disclose facts of cost overruns and mismanagement to congressional committees in such matters as the F-111 and C-5A aircraft contracts. The White House could and should be more forthright in its disclosures of military operations and diplomatic agreements, such as those in Laos. The news media, moreover, could better serve the public interest by being less considerate of the sensibilities of Government officials who try to manage the news. Reporters might well remember President John Kennedy's comment to New York Times Editor Turner Catledge, whose paper had practiced a dutiful self-censorship in not reporting the imminence of the Bay of Pigs invasion: "If you had printed more about the operation," Kennedy said ruefully, "you would have saved us from a colossal mistake."

What is necessary, above all, is a redressed balance in the approach of Government to the public. Secrecy is all too often used as an easy cover for operational failures, as a mask for individual or collective mistakes in policymaking, as a shield for actual wrongdoing and as a cloak to hide the undertaking of new and often costly commitments. In part, the prevalence of covert dealings indicates that the different branches of Government simply do not trust one another very much these days. Can an atmosphere of greater confidence within the Government be achieved? Fortunately there is a pattern. It was little more than 20 years ago that a Democratic Administration under Harry Truman and key Senate Republicans led by Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan established a remarkable, non-partisan relationship of trust that permitted such historic undertakings as the Marshall Plan and the NATO treaty, and gained for them widespread public support. This kind of open policymaking can be done again, but only through more and continued emphasis on full, non-self-serving disclosures. Only thus can increased confidence and tranquillity between those who govern and those who are governed be found. Total and complete disclosure, particularly in dangerous times, represents an impossible dream. But excessive secrecy is a contagious disease that could be fatal to the practice of modern democracy itself.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1971

Indochina: A Cavalryman's Way Out
Monday, Feb. 15, 1971

For three years, the northwest corner of South Viet Nam had been a misty, mountainous no man's land. Khe Sanh, where 6,000 Marines had endured a bloody 77-day siege in 1968, was a moonscape of shell craters flecked by twisted steel runway sheets and discarded shell casings. A few miles to the south, the Rockpile was overrun by weeds. On a bluff overlooking the Laotian border, the hulks of battered Soviet tanks still lay rusting at the Lang Vei Special Forces camp, where ten Americans and 225 South Vietnamese died in a single night of hand-to-hand combat.

Last week the forbidding ruins, relics of an earlier and rougher stage in the war, were abruptly jolted from their silence. From jumping-off points 50 miles away, long columns of tanks, trucks and armored personnel carriers ground into the rugged western reaches of Quang Tri province, raising towering columns of dust. Overhead, gunships darted around in search of enemy troops. Giant Chinook helicopters flapped into long-abandoned bases, depositing men and massive earth-moving machines. At Lang Vei, a halftrack pulled up loaded with expectant-looking G.I.s. One soldier had a single word painted on his helmet: "Laos?"

Good question. All week, rumors of an invasion coursed through the world's major capitals, and frenzied speculation focused on what the U.S. was up to. By keeping everyone guessing—including the Communists—the Administration infuriated more than a few Congressmen, diplomats and newsmen. But it also pulled off a kind of psychological-warfare coup.

Ten months ago, Richard Nixon took the world by surprise when, pointer in hand, he went on nationwide TV to disclose, in too apocalyptic terms, the expansion of the war into Cambodia. Last week he said nothing at all about the vast operation under way in Military Region I, South Viet Nam's northernmost war area. When a six-day "embargo" on news from the area was lifted, more than 50,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops were involved in strikes that not only spanned the length of South Viet Nam but vitally affected its neighbors as well. Was the main object to sever the famed Ho Chi Minh Trail? Was it a feint to throw the Communists off balance? Was an invasion scheduled and then delayed because Nixon developed a case of cold feet—as some sources suggested but the Administration denied? Whatever the case, the operation suggested that in the process of retreating from South Viet Nam, the U.S. was churning up all of Indochina even more thoroughly than it did when the big American buildup began half a decade ago.

Pulling Up Short
By week's end, three separate operations had unfolded. In the coastal provinces on the Gulf of Siam, ARVN (for Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) troops prepared to slice into new infiltration routes that the Communists had been trying to extend from the Cambodian seaport of Kep into the southern part of South Viet Nam. Northwest of Saigon in Tay Ninh province, 18,000 ARVN armored cavalrymen surged over the border into the Parrot's Beak and the Fishhook. Both sanctuaries were cleared out last spring, but now Communist troops were beginning to drift back.

The main thrust—and the one shrouded in mystery—developed in rugged, sparsely populated and Communist-infested Military Region I (formerly known as I Corps). There the U.S. command massed a total of 20,000 ARVN and 9,000 U.S. troops, plus at least 600 choppers. The juggernaut advanced westward on, above and around Route 9, an all-weather dirt road running 40 miles across South Viet Nam into Laos. At Khe Sanh, road graders rolled across the red clay plateau as troops patched one shell-torn runway and built a second to handle up to 40 big C-130 transports a day. Long-disused combat bases with names like Vandergrift, Bastogne and Veghel, snaking south toward the A Shau Valley, were also reopened. Significantly, many of the U.S. troops involved in the operation were told that they could expect to remain for one to three months.

Farther west, Lang Vei was set up as an advance command post for the massive operation, code-named Dewey Canyon II.* Barely 200 yards from the border, a sign was erected: WARNING: NO U.S. PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT. The caveat reflected congressional prohibition of the use of American ground troops outside South Viet Nam. One shirtless G.I., bathing in a tributary of the Pone River, which, forms the border with Laos, said with a smile: "Don't worry, this is Vietnamese water." ARVN troops, too, pulled up short of the border.

Vaguely Orwellian
There was every indication that for the South Vietnamese, it was only a pause. At least one and perhaps two cross-border thrusts aimed at immobilizing the Ho Chi Minh Trail seemed imminent. One obvious target lay right down Route 9—Tchepone, a Communist staging area and a key control point for the Ho Chi Minh Trail 25 miles inside the Laotian panhandle. A second possibility was that ARVN troops would be helicoptered to the mountainous Bolovens Plateau, which forms the western flank of the trail. Their likely objective: Attopeu and Saravane, two Laotian river towns captured last spring by North Vietnamese troops, apparently in an effort to secure the trail's flanks and provide a starting point for a riverine route into Cambodia.

Last week's action. White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler advised, was only "the first phase of the operation." Until mid-April, when Nixon is due to announce a new U.S. troop withdrawal, a series of jabs at enemy stockpiles and supply lines can be expected. The object, the Administration insists, is to cover the U.S. retreat that has been under way since June 1969, when Nixon announced the beginning of a phased withdrawal of the 543,000 troops in Viet Nam. Since the manpower escalator stopped, the U.S. troop level has been reduced by more than 40% ; by May 1, fewer than 284,000 troops will remain. Among them, only 40,000 will be regularly assigned to combat duty.

In the process of covering the retreat, however, the Administration has raised the question: Has the U.S. got into the position of invading Cambodia to ease the pressure on South Viet Nam and then sponsoring an invasion of Laos to ease the pressure on Cambodia? Many Americans who believe that Nixon is serious about getting out of Viet Nam nonetheless are unsettled by the way in which the war has slopped over into previously neutral areas, and especially by the vaguely Orwellian-sounding argument that the U.S. must get deeper into the war in order to get out faster and safely.

Actually, up to a point, the Pentagon makes a logical case for this strategy: to keep the enemy off balance and off American backs as the exodus goes on. U.S. muscle in Viet Nam is shrinking by the month, and that is the operative fact. Thus, in a sense, the President is like the fellow backing out of the saloon with both guns blazing. Nixon's surrogate in this enterprise —and the man who must actually wield the guns on the way out of the bar—is General Creighton W. ("Abe") Abrams, 56, the U.S. commander in Viet Nam. A veteran tank commander with a jut-jawed, no-nonsense air, Abrams is pursuing a strategy of withdrawal that would be familiar to any student of cavalry operations: give way gradually but strike continually at the enemy, harass his troops, destroy his supplies and keep him off balance. Moreover, Abrams is trying to replace U.S. ground forces with U.S. planes and South Vietnamese soldiers. He means to use these like a cavalry troop, anywhere that the Communist forces are vulnerable.

Since the Cambodian port of Kompong Som (formerly Sihanoukville) was closed to them last spring, the Communists have had to rely solely on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to move men and supplies down to South Viet Nam and Cambodia. With the advent of the dry season, they have made fuller use of the trail than ever before (see box. page 28). American commanders have longed to cut the trail ever since the U.S. entered the war. Contingency plans providing for everything from hit-and-run attacks to a permanent troop barrier across the route were drawn up in 1965, but there were formidable arguments against such moves. Aside from the political consequences, there was the fact that at least two divisions might be needed to secure the trail for any length of time.

Mulling over the future prospects of Vietnamization, Nixon ordered a study last November of what kind of trouble the long quiescent Communists could be expected to stir up—and when. The answer: Viet Nam's hour of maximum danger would come late this year, with the onset of the 1971-72 dry season. According to White House thinking, the Communists would devote most of their energies in the current dry season to replenishing their men and supplies. Then, next year, Hanoi's General Vo Nguyen Giap would be able to rev up the war from Mao's Phase II (small-unit guerrilla war) to Phase III (large-unit warfare). One objective would be to hit the Saigon regime at a time when the U.S. was able to throw few troops to its support. The other objective, in this hypothesis, would be to inflict a mortal political wound on Nixon by means of Tet-style attacks, thus paving the way for the election of a new President inclined to a hastier exit from South Viet Nam.

Ranger Probes
To crimp the Communist prospects for 1972, the allies would have to stem the flow of men and supplies—especially supplies—in 1971. Shortly after the turn of the year, Nixon decided to take action. Just before Defense Secretary Melvin Laird left on his three-day trip to Saigon in early January, Nixon laid down his general objectives.

In Saigon, Laird discussed Nixon's worries with Abrams. The first signs that something big was afoot came in mid-January, soon after Laird departed. General Cao Van Vien, chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint Chiefs of Staff, told his subordinates that there would be no more talking to the press —particularly about operations in Military Region I. Soon after, Abrams met Vien and Major General Tran Van Minh, the South Vietnamese air force chief, to discuss strategy. The three met twice more in the next two days.

After his last session with Vien & Co., Abrams and white-haired U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker swept into President Thieu's Saigon Palace —brushing past a phalanx of startled Vietnamese officials who had been waiting to offer the President Tet holiday greetings. Not until four days later, when they were summoned to an urgent briefing at MACV headquarters in Saigon, did reporters have any idea that something was afoot.

Intelligence officers ticked off indications of a major Communist buildup, including a flood of supplies in the Laotian pipeline. According to the briefers, 90% of the materiel earmarked for South Viet Nam was being shunted into I Corps. The buildup obviously presaged trouble in the coastal cities of Hue and Danang. But MACV asserted that it also posed a "serious threat" to U.S. troop withdrawals and that a "preemptive offensive" was planned with "limited objectives." Few reporters in Saigon doubted that the jargon was a verbal screen for a direct ARVN assault on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
For weeks as many as 1,000 South Vietnamese rangers had been probing deep into the panhandle to size up the task of taking on the trail. Moreover, for some time, 3,500 mercenaries known as Jungle Tigers and trained in Laos by the CIA have been venturing occasionally into the trail area and Communist supply depots in northern Cambodia.

The U.S. command not only slapped an embargo on news of Dewey Canyon, it also imposed an embargo on reporting the fact that an embargo had been imposed. In Washington only a handful of top policymakers knew what was up anyway. This time, there was none of the hour-by-hour agonizing at Camp David that contributed to the tense atmosphere in Washington during the Cambodian foray. Nixon, in fact, left for a long weekend at Caneel Bay in the Virgin Islands.

Abroad, particularly in Communist capitals, speculation was presented as fact. In Moscow, Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin charged flatly that American and South Vietnamese troops were involved in "an outrageous invasion" of Laos. In the U.S., the response was remarkably temperate. About the angriest reaction came from Democratic Presidential Hopeful George McGovern, who blasted the Administration for imposing "the longest news blackout of the war."* Added he: "What a way to run a war! What a way to manage a free society!" The U.S. command in Saigon defended the embargo as essential to keeping the enemy guessing about allied intentions.

The mildest reaction of all came from the man whose country's sovereignty was violated by the supposed invasion. In Vientiane, Laotian Premier Souvanna Phouma was surprised by the invasion stories—he had to call U.S. Ambassador G. McMurtrie Godley to check them out. The Premier said he was opposed to any foreign intervention but added blandly: "We have no control over the Ho Chi Minh Trail area. That is an affair between the North Vietnamese and the Americans."
By the time Nixon returned from the Caribbean, the Dewey Canyon troops were poised at the Laotian border. In the Oval Office, the President met for more than an hour with his top National Security Council advisers—Laird, Secretary of State William Rogers, CIA Director Richard Helms, Foreign Policy Adviser Henry Kissinger and Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Ellsworth Bunker, in Washington for consultations, also sat in.

Without a thrust into Laos and a strike at the trail, Dewey Canyon II did not seem to make much sense. The expenditure of resources was enormous; by week's end helicopter pilots had logged 493 gunship attacks, 216 air cavalry missions, and 4,025 separate lifts of troops and supplies. But the initial results did not seem to justify the outlay. In the first five days, the operation's 29,000 troops destroyed two trucks, exploded one ammunition storage area and found one 57-mm. recoilless rifle, the mount for a mortar and a few dozen 105-mm. artillery shells.

Buying Time
Even so, U.S. commanders insisted that the very spookiness of the operation had achieved solid results simply by alarming the Communists. There were reports that enemy troops had concentrated at key positions along the trail to prepare defenses—and made tempting targets for extremely effective air attacks. Merely by moving up to the border, the Dewey Canyon II forces may have knocked the Communists off balance.

Just as all actions were rated in terms of body counts back in the war's Pleistocene era, they are now gauged in terms of buying time. Originally, it was figured that the Cambodian foray would "buy" no more than eight months of freedom from significant enemy activity. Now White House aides are saying that in Military Region III (the Saigon area) and IV (the Delta), where war has all but faded away, the buy may amount to 18 months. The massive operation that reopened Cambodia's vital Route 4 last month is judged to have bought a month to six weeks of time for Phnom-Penh. If ARVN troops were to stage periodic raids on the Ho Chi Minh Trail until the monsoon rains return in May, the flow of supplies and Communist operations in both South Viet Nam and Cambodia would be crippled for months. In round figures, says Abrams, the trail is worth a year, and some strategists insist it may be worth twice as much.

To many critics, Abrams' math does not add up. Getting involved in wars in Cambodia and Laos as well as South Viet Nam could make U.S. withdrawal more difficult, not easier. "By edging Cambodia closer to war than it had been," says TIME Saigon Bureau Chief Jon Larsen, "we inevitably moved it from a secondary concern to one almost as intertwined with our interests in Indochina as South Viet Nam. The same will be true of Laos." Another problem is that if ARVN is to be called upon regularly for cavalry duty in Cambodia, and possibly Laos as well, it might be spread perilously thin. U.S. air, artillery and logistic support will be needed to bolster ARVN's actions beyond its borders, even if no U.S. ground troops are sent in. Finally, Abrams' wider war almost certainly means that Laos and Cambodia will be torn apart. Quite aside from the human cost, it is unlikely that any neutralist political force —or neutralist government—will have much chance of surviving in these countries under these conditions. Yet some critics believe that just such neutralist governments offer the only long-range hope for a political settlement.

At present, Indochina's three main combat areas are in mixed condition: LAOS. As the struggle over the Ho Chi Minh Trail heated up, so did the "forgotten war" in Laos, where some 65,000 Royal Lao troops and Meo tribesmen have fought a seesaw seasonal struggle for almost a quarter of a century. Traditionally, the non-Communist forces have gained ground during the monsoons, when the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese regulars in Laos are unable to move supplies. With the arrival of the current dry season, it was the Communists' turn to advance, as usual. The 80,000 Communist troops in Laos made the most of it. Moving quickly, they captured Muong Phalane, routed government troops from Muong Suoi on the edge of the Plain of Jars, began to encircle Luang Prabang, the royal capital, then marched on Long Cheng, site of a large CIA base and headquarters of General Vang Pao's weary army of Meo Special Forces. In the south the Bolovens Plateau was under particular pressure. Communist troops, in the words of a U.S. official in Vientiane, have been "oozing westward" in recent weeks, increasing their force level from nine battalions to 13 or 14. A South Vietnamese drive into Laos might well cause the Communists to step up their own westward push.

There were several reasons for the vigorous Communist advance. On one level, it was a punitive jab at Souvanna Phouma. The Premier is anxious to end the Laotian fighting, which has forced an incredible number of refugees into U.S.-run camps: 700,000, or 30% of the population. But hard-liners on the right threaten real trouble if Souvanna should open serious peace talks with the Pathet Lao or if he should suffer another major defeat. "If Long Cheng or the Bolovens Plateau falls," said one Laotian general, "Souvanna is finished." The Communist advance was also a signal to Abrams that if the U.S. menaced the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese would take over most of the rest of Laos.

Vientiane, the administrative capital, is showing signs of nervousness. Last week there was the rare sight of Royal Lao troops ana-a pair of vintage American armored cars passing through the city on the way to the airport. Said one diplomat: "After that attack on Phnom-Penh, you can never be sure."

CAMBODIA. Last spring's drive on the Communist sanctuaries was a-short-term military success. But now Cambodia is beginning to look like a long-term liability, with 50,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops roaming over much of the country. Cambodian forces were taking another beating last week, this time in a battle with NVA regulars at Saang, 18 miles south of the capital.

North Vietnamese units have begun to return to the old Communist sanctuaries in Kompong Cham and Kratie provinces, hard by the South Vietnamese border. COSVN, the Communist command post that President Nixon held up as the Grail of last spring's Cambodian operation, is now said to be located in Kratie. South Viet Nam's President Thieu is worried enough about the return of the Communists to his own country to have set a limit of 20,000 or so ARVN troops in Cambodia at any one time. But that raises the question of whether Premier Lon Nol, even with his army swollen to 160,000 men, would be able to survive without more substantial assistance from Saigon and the U.S. Indeed, one of the objectives of an effort to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail would be to relieve Communist pressure on the Phnom-Penh regime.
Cambodia's students, intellectuals, businessmen and bonzes still back the "government of salvation," and the army, though poorly armed and undertrained, shows great spirit. Whether that will be enough to hold off Communist regulars is doubtful. As Cambodian Poet Makhali Phal writes of her 7,000,000 countrymen, they are:
A people who do not weigh heavy
In the hollow of the palm of the Mekong;
A people who do not have boats, but pirogues;
A people who have, as fortresses,
Only temples in ruins; A people who have, for an army, Only their Thought and Faith.

SOUTH VIET NAM. Since Tet 1968, South Viet Nam's armed forces have grown from 730,000 men to a well-equipped force of 1,100,000. All told, Saigon has more than 2,000,000 men under arms, or more than 11% of the population. Eventually, the South Vietnamese air force is to be expanded to 50 squadrons, which would rank it seventh in size in the world. How good is ARVN? Abrams likes to tell visiting firemen in Saigon that 70% of South Viet Nam's army is "on a fighting par with U.S. troops."

Saigon's troops have replaced U.S. units along the border areas and around the capital itself. Except in Military Region I, there has been little in the way of enemy activity. Nevertheless, a new cockiness prevails, and according to Sir Robert Thompson, Nixon's favorite consultant on counterinsurgency, ARVN is doing very well indeed. "The fact that you're able to keep withdrawing troops at the current rate [about 13,000 G.I.s a month], that U.S. casualties are down to well under 50 a week, that even South Vietnamese casualties are down —this is the measure of it," says Thompson. "The balance of power has shifted as between the enemy's capability and the South Vietnamese capability."

Still, real Communist' strength remains the big question. Over the past two years, say pacification experts, the Viet Cong "infrastructure" has been whittled down from 128,000 active cadres to 62,000. Nevertheless, the Viet Cong are still able to collect taxes, recruit troops, and cut practically any road in the country, at least temporarily. Knowledgeable observers smile at on-ward-and-upward statistics rating the security of South Viet Nam's towns and hamlets. Solid assessments of enemy strength are made difficult because the Communists in North Viet Nam may be deliberately lying low. Directives have been intercepted ordering Viet Cong to do nothing to make American commanders think twice about the wisdom of pulling out.

In view of such directives, and ARVN's growing strength, need the U.S. really fear that Hanoi would pounce as soon as the American forces were small enough? And even if it did, would the U.S. really be able to protect its forces? Obviously, the Pentagon insists that the risk would be too great. But couldn't the U.S. set a date for total withdrawal, say by Christmas 1911, and in return obtain from Hanoi a safe-conduct to the beaches? In Paris the Communists have hinted that they would arrange such a safe-conduct, but only if the U.S. sets a firm date for withdrawal of all troops, not just ground combat troops.

It can be argued that no safe-conduct from Hanoi could be trusted—even though it might be in Hanoi's interest to keep it. A more convincing objection to the idea is that complete U.S. withdrawal, including support forces, would seriously undermine if not destroy the Saigon regime. Thus it is likely that Abrams' "cavalry" actions are not necessary primarily to protect U.S. troops but to bolster the Saigon regime and assure its survival. If so, that could be an entirely legitimate goal of U.S. policy (though its cost might be subject to debate). But that is not the way the Administration presents the matter.

The Pentagon marshals massive statistics to prove that Hanoi is increasing its flow of supplies, and must be plotting a major offensive that would endanger U.S. lives. As a result, many longtime critics have come around to the view that perhaps the Nixon strategy is the only safe approach. As Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken said last week: "As long as the trend is downward in Viet Nam, as long as U.S. forces don't go into Cambodia or Laos, most of the people up here [in Congress] are saying: 'Let's give Nixon a chance.' I think the President is on safe ground now."
That remains to be seen. Next year's dry season may prove to be the most trying test of the Administration's strategy. The North Vietnamese have been quiet for long periods before, only to erupt in disruptive offensives such as Tet. U.S. analysts are convinced that General Giap is planning a replay of 1968 for 1972. They are equally convinced that General Abrams can head him off at the pass—somewhere in Laos, perhaps, or maybe Cambodia—or possibly even in South Viet Nam.

* Its predecessor, a 1969 search-and-destroy operation conducted in the same area, was to have been named Dewy Canyon for the heavy fog that enshrouds the craggy terrain, but somebody slipped up on the spelling. * Wrong on one count. Many news blackouts have lasted much longer, among them the 18-day embargo imposed during the massive A Shau Valley sweep of 1968.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1971

Indochina: The Soft-Sell Invasion
Monday, Feb. 22, 1971

FOR days, the biggest force assembled in South Viet Nam since Richard Nixon fell heir to the war was poised on the rugged Laotian frontier. When the signal came from Washington early last week, hundreds of American helicopters lifted into the dust-choked sky at Khe Sanh, then darted off to landing zones, where South Vietnamese troops awaited them. At the same time, South Vietnamese tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled westward on Route 9 and thrust across the border into the jungles of Laos. A new and possibly perilous phase was beginning in the long struggle for Indochina.
The Laos invasion may have been widely advertised, but no effort was spared to give it a soft-sell atmosphere. The announcement came not from Washington but from South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu. The American code name for the operation, Dewey Canyon II. was replaced by a Vietnamese name: Lam Son 719.* The switch was part of the coy effort to cast the invasion as an all-South Vietnamese effort, though it was initiated, planned and given the go-ahead in the White House, and was overseen by General Creighton W. Abrams. U.S. commander in South Viet Nam. The shift in code names also underscored the extent to which Indochina's long war has changed. As French Journalist and Guerrilla Historian Jean Larteguy (The Centurions) put it last week: "First you had Asians fighting the French. Then you had Asians fighting the Americans. Now you have Asians fighting Asians." That is increasingly the case, though there are still 335,000 Americans in South Viet Nam.

Lam Son's initial objective was Tchepone, a small town 25 miles inside Laos (see map, page 26). Tchepone sits astride Route 9. where the Communist infiltration routes from North Viet Nam converge before fanning out again into South Viet Nam and Cambodia. From Tchepone, a large ARVN force could be ferried out for attacks on surrounding Communist facilities such as Base Area 604.

The ARVN advance was almost glacial —slowed by twisting terrain, mud that sucked at tank treads, and fears of rushing headlong into what Vice Premier Nguyen Cao Ky described last week as "our Dien Bien Phu." Instead of a lightning strike, the ARVN invasion commander, Lieut. General Hoang Xuan Lam, employed a cautious leapfrogging technique designed to keep his troops within range of friendly artillery.

Getting Kicked. The ARVN troops had every reason to move carefully. In all, there are some 30,000 North Vietnamese troops in the southern Laotian panhandle—more than enough to make life unpleasant for 14,000 ARVN troops that have been sent in. TIME'S Saigon bureau chief, Jonathan Larsen, followed part of the advance in an ARVN helicopter. "Weaving this way and that to avoid possible enemy fire," Larsen reported, "we swept past American fire bases and ARVN armored units, whirring over a repaired Route 9 and the beautiful Pone River, which marks the border. After ten or 15 minutes in the air, we hovered down in the middle of an expanse of brushwood alongside Route 9. Several ARVN troopers were having their midday dish of rice under the shade of a tank. One of them gestured at the ground and smiled: 'Laos.' "
It was clear that ARVN was finding the going tough. Newsmen saw enough truckloads of ARVN corpses returning from Laos for them to discount official totals of 31 killed and 113 wounded in the first six days. One American Cobra gunship pilot at Khe Sanh said flatly of the South Vietnamese: "They're getting their asses kicked!" That also seemed to apply to South Vietnamese and American flyers, who were encountering some of the most savage antiaircraft fire of the war (see box).

Reporters also saw some American bodies being brought back from Laos. Was somebody fudging on the congressional curbs on the use of ground troops outside South Viet Nam? White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler insisted that the reports probably involved Special Forces intelligence teams that have operated in Laos for years. Still, the impression remained that some American advisers had crossed the border.

The early returns from Lam Son seemed favorable enough. By week's end, Saigon was claiming a total of 269 Communists killed, as against only 36 dead and 239 wounded on the allied side. Far to the south in Cambodia, where some 18,000 troops have been digging out new enemy sanctuaries for two weeks, the South Vietnamese claimed to have killed 491 Communists (v. 74 ARVN and Cambodian government dead) in a series of battles that included sharp fighting amid the rubber trees of the Chup Plantation, 35 miles inside Cambodian territory.

The Administration refuses to gauge Lam Son's success by the yardstick of captured enemy supplies. "We won't be able to show rice and bullets in this operation," says a White House adviser. "You'll have to judge it by what doesn't happen." What the White House is eager to prevent is: 1) a 1971 offensive aimed at upsetting Thieu's chances in October's presidential elections, and 2) a Tet-style explosion in 1972, when the Saigon government will not be able to call on U.S. ground-combat forces and Richard Nixon will be facing an election of his own.

How will the Communists respond? U.S. analysts see five possibilities:
INFILTRATE small guerrilla units that could create havoc behind the ARVN advance. Last week an ARVN Marine contingent was pulled back from the Route 9 advance and reassigned to security duty along the wide-open border.

SIT BACK AND WAIT for weak points to develop. Some of the Communist troops on the trail seemed to be drawing back from Route 9 with just that in mind.

CROSS THE DMZ into South Viet Nam. To discourage the three North Vietnamese divisions above the demilitarized zone from trying a counterinvasion, a U.S. Naval task force carrying 1,500 Marines was dispatched to the waters off the DMZ, and two ARVN divisions were rushed to Dong Ha.

HARASS CAMBODIA to create a diversion. The Communists never followed up their raid on Phnom-Penh's airport, however, which suggests that they may be short of supplies. Though hard-working Premier Lon Nol suffered a mild stroke last week and was flown to Hawaii for what may be a long recuperation, his idealistic "government of salvation" has achieved a strong following.

SQUEEZE LAOS in its more populous western provinces. Communist forces mounted an offensive on the Plain of Jars more than two weeks ago, began to surround Luangprabang, the royal capital, and maintained pressure on Sam Thong and Long Cheng, headquarters of the CIA-backed army of Meo tribesmen.

There was very little that Laos' politically astute Premier, Prince Souvanna Phouma, could do about last week's events. Largely as a morale-boosting gesture, he declared a state of emergency. He also issued a pro-forma demand that all foreign troops be withdrawn from Laotian soil—while taking care to blame Hanoi for having pioneered the "illegal route of access and infiltration known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail" years ago. So as not to trigger a Communist stampede into western Laos—an event that would surely shatter Souvanna's already fragile relations with powerful Laotian rightists—the allies seemed ready to set some undeclared limits on Lam Son operations. There would be no strikes north of the 17th parallel, which forms the border between the two Viet Nams, or west of Route 23, which runs north-south halfway across the Laotian panhandle. It also seemed likely that the ARVN would be pulled out before the April monsoons.

In general, however, the great ARVN invasion was greeted with yawns in the war-weary capital of Vientiane. On assault day, the North Vietnamese embassy closed its gates at 5 p.m. as usual. When the Buddhist festival of Makhabovxa came up three days later, the entire city of 150,000 shut down—including Vientiane's three newspapers, none of which had yet got around to reporting news of the invasion.

New Yalu? Among Hanoi's backers, Lam Son stirred a predictable frenzy but no definite response. The operation also stirred grave fears on Souvanna Phouma's part. What if the invasion, like MacArthur's drive to the Yalu in Korea, alarmed Peking enough to send Chinese troops into the war? Last week Nixon sought to salve Peking by emphasizing that the Laotian thrust posed "no threat" to China.

In Saigon, however, Vice Premier Ky addressed a group of South Vietnamese pilots and suggested that ARVN might "have to cross to the other side of the Ben Hai River" and hit the North Vietnamese on their own ground. Ky's offhanded talk, one Washington official shrugged, "keeps the enemy worried, and that's what we want."

All along, Nixon had been far less concerned with foreign reaction to the Laos venture than with the response at home. Five days before the invasion, when the President and half a dozen top advisers met to discuss the go/no-go decision, the domestic impact was uppermost in Nixon's thoughts. The State Department was particularly concerned about rousing dormant peace groups.

At one point during his deliberations, the President said: "There are 18 reasons not to do it and two reasons to do it." But the two positive reasons were too compelling to ignore, he decided. "I might make the wrong decision for the right reasons, but I'll be damned if I'm going to make the wrong decision for the wrong reasons." All that mattered, Nixon continued, was the future of the war. He would simply have to take his chances with the home front.

Strident Protests. By and large, the Administration's public relations strategy proved a success. There were criticisms, to be sure. Averell Harriman, who negotiated the 1962 Geneva agreement providing for a neutral Laos, told a University of Chicago audience last week that "expanding the war to Cambodia and Laos with our unlimited air support is not the way to end the war." Though there is genuine room for debate on whether it is necessary to fight a war in two countries just to be able to pull out of a third, Harriman's point went all but unnoticed.

So did strident protests from Mme. Nguyen Thi Binh, head of the South Vietnamese Communist delegation at the Paris peace talks, who fired off telegrams to antiwar groups in the U.S. and elsewhere with the appeal: EARNESTLY CALL YOU MOBILIZE PEACE FORCES YOUR COUNTRY. CHECK U.S. DANGEROUS VENTURES INDOCHINA. The response was hardly electrifying, further proof of the shrewdness of the Administration's calculation that it is difficult, after all, to argue with a policy that is steadily reducing the U.S. troop level in Viet Nam.

* After a mountain range in what is now North Viet Nam where Emperor Nguyen Hué trounced a Chinese invasion force during Tet 1788.

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1971

The Twilight Zone
Monday, Aug. 16, 1971

The total budget for the Kingdom of Laos this year is a paltry $36.6 million. To fight a war there, the U.S. in fiscal 1971 spent $284.2 million—or $141 for every one of the approximately 2,000,000 men, women and children under government control. (The gross national product totals only $66 per capita.)

These bizarre statistics are contained in a once secret staff report released last week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after five weeks of haggling with the Administration over declassifying its salient points. The figures become even more bizarre when the cost of air operations—one of the figures still classified, but reliably estimated at $1.4 billion—is included, bringing per capita expenditure up to an incredible $900. The report was compiled after a visit to Laos last spring by Richard Moose and James Lowenstein, both former Foreign Service officers, who are the committee's staff experts on Southeast Asia. Their findings at least partially lifted what Committee Member Stuart Symington called "the veil of secrecy, which has long kept this 'secret war' in Laos officially hidden from the American people." The study also came to the discouraging conclusion that despite vast expenditures by the U.S., the military situation in Laos "is growing steadily worse, and the initiative seems clearly to be in the hands of the enemy."

War by Proxy. Though the 23-page document focuses on the clandestine nature of U.S. operations in Laos, the fact is that quite a few nations are involved in the same way. The reason for the secrecy is that none of the nations want to be accused of violating Laotian neutrality, which is guaranteed by the Geneva accords of 1962.

The North Vietnamese have always considered Laos vital in their struggle to unify Viet Nam. As early as 1953, an NVA division invaded Laos and slashed all the way to the Mekong. The Chinese have been working on an extensive road project in northern Laos since 1962, with a sizable military presence for protection. According to the Moose-Lowenstein report, that presence has increased from 6,000 two years ago to as many as 20,000 today, and carries with it a concentration of antiaircraft and radar installations, which makes the area one of the most heavily defended in the world.
There is little doubt that the North Vietnamese were the first to violate the territorial integrity and neutrality of Laos. But for a variety of reasons, including domestic politics, the U.S. never responded openly to this situation. Instead, Communist clandestine operations in Laos were matched—and often surpassed—by the U.S. and its allies.

Not all of the secret adventures are mentioned in the Foreign Relations Committee's report. But they include: American bombing missions in northern and southern Laos from Thai air force bases in Thailand; probes by U.S. Special Forces teams from South Viet Nam along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos; secret forays into China from northern Laos by specially trained CIA teams (now reportedly halted); the formation, funding and training by the CIA of an irregular army of up to 15,000 Meo tribesmen; large-scale operations throughout Laos by Air America, the CIA's unofficial flag line in Asia; and the recruitment, training and payment of at least 4,800 Thai volunteers to fight in Laos.

The result is a curious war by proxy whose protagonists are the North Vietnamese and the American-backed irregulars. The cost has been particularly heavy for the Meos. Says Edgar ("Pop") Buell, AID coordinator for northeastern Laos: "Back in 1960 we told the Meos they would only have to hold out for a year. They've held out for more than ten. They're tired and badly cut up, and still we're telling them to hold out. They think it's time for someone else to do the dying."

Heavy Cost. The main argument for this costly effort, as Symington pointed out last week, is that it "will buy more time for Vietnamization" by pinning down North Vietnamese troops in Laos. Without this effort, the North Vietnamese would have unrestricted use of Laotian supply lines to support their effort in South Viet Nam. "But what about Laos?" asked Symington. "The United States is using the people of Laos for its own purposes, at a startlingly heavy increased cost to our taxpayers in money, and to the Lao people in terms of destroyed hopes, destroyed territory, and destroyed lives."

[8pliag]

Time Megazine 1972

There's Still a War On
Monday, Jan. 24, 1972

WITH the next-to-final phase of the U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam in sight at last, the war suddenly appeared to be not dwindling down but rapidly building up again. Last week, even as President Nixon was announcing the pullout of 70,000 more G.I.s by May 1, the North Vietnamese were carrying out an ominous new offensive in each of Indochina's major battlegrounds.

> In Laos, Communist troops scored a stunning victory by forcing the evacuation of Long Cheng, the celebrated CIA base near the Plain of Jars. They also scattered the battered remnants of the U.S.-backed army of Meo tribesmen that was, until recently, the only force that could keep the Communists in check in Laos.

> In Cambodia, government troops continued to give ground to the North Vietnamese troops, who now control most of the northeastern countryside. At Krek, 2,500 Cambodian troops simply fled when the 10,000 South Vietnamese troops that had been operating with them in the former Communist "sanctuaries" were abruptly called home by Saigon. The Cambodians reportedly left so much equipment behind that U.S. aircraft were called upon to bomb it before it could be captured by the North Vietnamese.

> In South Viet Nam, Saigon forces took up defensive positions, primarily astride infiltration routes and around major cities and military bases, to await a sizable flare-up in Communist activity that is expected to peak at the time of the Tet holidays, which fall in mid-February. Meanwhile the North Vietnamese moved mobile missile launchers right up to South Viet Nam's northern frontiers, and the air war continued. The U.S. last week conducted its seventh "protective reaction" strike of the year against SAM sites in North Viet Nam.

Despite the poor results of the recent bombing, U.S. military officials insisted that the enemy was capable only of "cheap victories" in unimportant territory. Perhaps so, but the renewal of the ground war should dispel the notion, widespread in the U.S., that the fighting is over, at least for the American G.I. Technically, U.S. troops are indeed in a "defensive" posture, as the Administration calls it, because their main job is to protect American facilities. But for a good number of the 139,000 G.I.s still in Viet Nam, that job means endless patrols out in the boondocks under conditions that look very much like war.

In all probability, the last U.S. Army combat unit in Viet Nam will be the 7,000-man 3rd Brigade of the First Cavalry Division (Airmobile), which is responsible for the security of a vast area of Vietnamese countryside surrounding the huge American installations at Bien Hoa, Long Binh and the Tan Son Nhut airbase outside Saigon. Recently, TIME Correspondent Rudolph Rauch joined one 3rd Brigade company as it pushed off from a fire base 35 miles east of Saigon to begin a patrol in search of North Vietnamese infiltrators. His report: Nobody in Charlie Company wanted to be where he was, and when we walked off Fire Base Hall and into the jungle, it was easy to sympathize. We marched as a company for an hour, then divided into three platoons. After two miles, the jungle gave way to incredibly thick undergrowth—not high enough to block out the sun and too dense to move through, either quickly or silently. Napalm strikes had killed all the tall trees whose shade once kept down the growth on the jungle floor.

Charlie Company was fresh from a weekend in the seaside resort of Vung Tau—a prized opportunity for revelry and relaxation that comes only once every 45 days. The company has no barracks, no dress uniforms (they are stored in boxes at Bien Hoa) and no personal possessions (letters are the only personal items allowed in the field). The Vung Tau weekend, which the men enjoy in fatigues, is the only break in an endless cycle of ten-to 15-day patrols and three-day rests on a fire base with no hot showers and few other amenities.

No Hammocks. We are supposed to patrol until 5 o'clock, when the rules say that the night defensive position should be set up. If a unit moves after 5, there is a danger that a contact might run on after darkness, making air support more difficult. But at 5 it is pouring rain, and we are still in scrub, which is not good for a night position because there are no trees big enough to stop enemy mortars. It is close to 6 when we find a few trees, and everybody starts putting up his hooch. I pull out my hammock. "No hammocks," says Sergeant Henry A. Johnson, a Virginian who has a master's degree in communications. "The C.O. doesn't allow them. Too vulnerable to mortars. The C.O. believes in being cautious."
"Line One." When we move out at dawn next morning, everyone is a bit more nimble, perhaps because the Vung Tau hangovers are gone. We walk all morning, stopping for a ten-minute break each hour. At the noon break, the radio sputters with orders from the battalion commander to a unit that has made contact with the enemy five miles away. There was an ambush; one American was killed when he walked into an NVA bunker complex. Another is wounded and a helicopter is down. The battalion commander, flying overhead in his helicopter, says he is going in to pick up the downed pilot. His chopper is loaded with electronic gear and it is too heavy for any task that requires acrobatics. "Jesus, Colonel, be careful," whispers the radio operator, Pfc. Erik Lewis, 21. The rescue is successful.

Lewis tells me that a "Line One" (meaning a G.I. combat death in army jargon) "happens just rare enough so that nobody at home knows about it. But if you're out here, your peace outlook goes straight to zero." And, he adds, "I'm going to kill as many of those mothers as I can."

Charlie Company's commander. Captain Thomas D. Smith, was a young lawyer about to open an office in Omaha when he was drafted in 1966. Since then Smith, who is about to turn 30, has seen a number of "Line Ones." In the first two weeks of the new year, the 3rd Brigade suffered two killed and 34 wounded in skirmishes with its chief opponent, the 33rd NVA regiment, which prowls the jungles east of Saigon. The only way to stay alive in the jungle. Smith believes, is to keep moving. "You stop pushing and they'll walk all over you," he says.

At 10 a.m. on the third day, we are crouched over a small stream refilling canteens when the radio crackles: we are going to be dropped by copter into the area where the G.I.s had been ambushed yesterday. We move to the nearest landing zone —and wait. Finally, at 1 p.m. the helicopters show up to ferry us in a flotilla of six-man groups to the assault landing zone. I ride in the third chopper (the fourth or fifth is thought to be the most desirable) with Sergeant Henry R. Campbell of Newington, Conn., who won a Bronze Star in a firefight last October. Campbell is modest about his star ("Hell, all I did was put out all the firepower I could"), but he is also wryly amused by the Stateside impression of the nature of the war.

"My mother can't believe I'm in danger," he says as he sits in the door of the chopper with a machine gun across his knees. "She says the President says it's all defensive now, so how could it be dangerous?"

We land in elephant grass in a clearing. The only thing to be heard besides the rotor blades is the feeble stutter of the door gunner's machine gun. The landing zone is "cold" —meaning that there are no enemy about—but the troops find fresh tracks almost immediately. We follow the trail until shortly after 5. when another night position is set up. The forward artillery observer calls in artillery strikes on an area that he thinks the enemy might have moved into. He orders the strikes for 10 p.m. —like booking a telephone call—and waits up for them. Everyone else sleeps.

Too Much Rain. At dawn we set off again. When we finally reach the ambush site, we find only some rice left behind by the NVA, a pair of bloody trousers, a B40 North Vietnamese rocket case and a document nobody can read. It is four days since we walked off Fire Base Hall. There has been no contact but several scares, a lot of heat, a surfeit of leeches, too much rain for the dry season, and a wearying round of days that begin at 7 and end twelve hours later, when the light fails. Charlie Company is one-third of the way through its patrol. Ten more days exactly like the four before, and Charlie will be taken back to a fire base, to stand in reserve in case another unit needs assistance. Three days on the base, and ten more in the field. When I get a helicopter to leave, I am handed letters to mail from more than half of the company. "If we're not here," asks Sergeant James Wiggins, "how come they're getting these?"

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Time Megazine 1972

The Sounds of Silence
By HP-Time.com;* Strobe Talbott Monday, Jul. 17, 1972
LIFE UNDER AN AIR WAR
compiled, with an Introduction and
Preface, by FRED BRANFMAN
160 pages. Harper Colophon Books.
$1.95.

The publisher of this modest-looking paperback recently explained its meager promotion budget by telling the author, "The war just isn't selling any more." Maybe not in the bookstores, but it's still going strong in Southeast Asia.
The war Fred Branfman writes about is the U.S. bombing campaign in Laos, hardly an overworked subject, and the "voices" he records have rarely been heard. They come from the ground beneath the air war, and they belong to peasants who lived on the Plain of Jars in Laos' verdant Xieng Khouang province, one of the secret battlefields of the war. Eight years ago, the U.S. Mission in Laos designated their farms and villages part of a new Communist "social and economic infrastructure"; in the years since, the Air Force has bombed them with increasing intensity.

In May 1964, the area fell under the control of the Pathet Lao and a small number of North Vietnamese army troops and advisers. For the next 5 ½years U.S. airpower bore down on the Plain of Jars, ostensibly to support the efforts of CIA-backed Meo tribesmen to recapture the province. Bombers flew daily and sometimes hourly attack sorties, a total of 25,000 missions, dropping an estimated 75,000 tons of napalm, white phosphorus, antipersonnel bombs and high explosives—more than a ton for every Pathet Lao guerrilla, NVA soldier and civilian in the area. The bombing was intended to harass the Communists and drive the local population out of the Plain of Jars into southern regions controlled by the Royal Laotian government. Throughout that period, the air war over the Plain of Jars remained an official secret on two of the sides involved. North Viet Nam has never admitted that its troops are operating in Laos; until October 1969, the U.S. repeatedly denied it was bombing in northern Laos; then it insisted that civilian targets were rarely if ever attacked.

Over the years some 60% of the population of the Plain of Jars has been evacuated to refugee camps elsewhere in Laos. Branfman, a former International Volunteer Services education adviser and Lao-speaking freelance journalist, visited more than a dozen camps around the capital of Vientiane between September 1969 and February 1971, when he was abruptly expelled from Laos, he believes at the request of the CIA. Before he left, Branfman was able to interview more than 1,000 refugees. He collected folk songs and poems about the air raids, as well as 30 handwritten eyewitness accounts, 16 of which are incorporated here and illustrated with the refugees' drawings of broken bodies, burned huts and attacking planes.

Peasants who previously had barely known what an airplane was quickly learned to distinguish a T-28 from an F-105: "In the eleventh month of 1968, two F-4H planes flew over and bombed my village for 45 minutes," writes a 16-year-old. "They dropped eight napalm bombs, the fire from which burned all my things, 16 buildings along with all our possessions inside, as well as maiming our animals. Some people who didn't reach the jungle in time were struck and fell, dying most pitifully."

A 69-year-old former monk describes the destruction of a pagoda he had helped build in 1916, and a young man testifies to how successful the bombing was in driving the population out of Pathet Lao territory: "We saw that it wouldn't end, and we fled to the side of the government of Prince Souvanna Phouma, the Prime Minister. Because the war was so severe, we had to flee from our homes, rice fields and paddies, cows and buffalo and come here in poverty."

Black Crows. Such testimony firmly establishes that of all the warring forces that raged around them — from al Pathet Laotian Lao to Army Meo regulars — tribesmen the and Roy peasants of the Plain of Jars most hated and feared the "black crows" of the U.S.

Air Force. Despite inevitable repetition, and the primitiveness of their writings and drawings, the peasants make that point far more vividly than Western antiwar critics with all their articulate and occasionally overwrought outrage — Author Branfman included.

The eyewitness accounts collected here also make shabby all official U.S. doubletalk intended to deny or obscure what has actually been inflicted on Laotian civilians by American airpower, especially since 1968. Branfman ends his book by quoting without comment a May 1971 letter to Michigan Senator Robert Griffin from David M. Abshire, Assistant Secretary of State for Con gressional Relations: "The rules do not permit attacks on nonmilitary targets and place out-of-bounds all inhabited villages . . . We deeply regret the fate of all victims of the war, both those killed by North Vietnamese action and those whose lives have been lost or dis rupted as a consequence of the defense of their country."

[8pliag]

Nov yog ib tug tubrog Nyab Laj piav txog nws txoj kev ua tsovrog tom tog communist. Peb ho saib seb lawv txom nyem li cas.

Time Megazine 1972

A Soldier's Life
Monday, Dec. 18, 1972

Laos was supposedly neutralized by the 1962 Geneva accords, but it is actually overrun by an antipasto of Asian troops. U.S.-supported mercenaries from Thailand and opium-growing Meo tribesmen from the northern hills help out the Royal Laotian Army. China has something like 20,000 troops in the country; they build roads while keeping a jealous eye on the North Vietnamese. Since 1952 Hanoi has had troops in Laos, which it used to describe as "deserters" and "volunteers." Now that it has the biggest single army in the country—65,000 troops—it does not acknowledge them at all.

To find out what life is like in the NVA, Simms interviewed one of only 158 NVA soldiers who have been taken prisoner in Laos. His report:
Tran Van Dai, 18, lost an eye during his few brief months of fighting in Laos. A rice farmer's son, he was drafted out of a small North Vietnamese hamlet about two years ago, even though he was so frail that he was allowed to carry only 80 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, rather than the usual 200. After hurried training—eight weeks instead of the usual six months—he was marched south and told that he was going to fight in a "great war." Last April his unit crossed into Laos on Route 559—the Ho Chi Minh trail—and moved down the trail from one numbered station to another for nearly three months. Strangely enough, they never encountered any U.S. bombers, but they did come across a unit from Haiphong that had lost about half of its 600 men in an air attack.

On the trail, Dai was issued rice and dried salted meat daily, plus two pounds of sugar and a pint of milk every 45 days. The officers were regularly issued ginseng root, the ancient Oriental aphrodisiac and cureall. On occasion, the troops would sell their clothing to buy chickens or a suckling pig.

By June Dai's unit began to move cross-country toward "Front 698" in south Laos, and life became tough. "We had nothing except 250 grams of rice and some salt. If we were lucky we found bamboo shoots and cooked them. There was no milk or sugar." Illness claimed 20% of the unit. Many of the wounded died en route to a field hospital, a seven-or eight-day stretcher trip. Surrounded, out of food and low on ammunition after hard fighting near Khong Sédong, Dai and some of his comrades surrendered.

Dai's gripes? Only officers were allowed to have radios. And then there were Dai's Laotian allies, the Pathet Lao. "All they wanted in life was a wristwatch, then a motor scooter and other luxury items," he complained. "They weren't serious. The ones I saw were just fooling about. All the old hands said that the NVA did all the fighting and the Pathet Lao just sat around."

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Time Megazine 1972

In Hanoi's Dark Shadow
Monday, Dec. 18, 1972

For a while, the small town of Keng Kok in southern Laos seemed relatively safe from war. There was a fluid "front line" ten or 12 miles away, patrolled by troops of the North Vietnamese Army's 29th Regiment. They were reckoned to pose no threat to a town with only a market, a hospital and barely 5,000 inhabitants. In the early morning hours of Oct. 28, Keng Kok's immunity suddenly came to an explosive end. Two North Vietnamese companies, aided by local Pathet Lao allies, slipped into the town. Two missionaries trying to escape in their pickup truck were stopped at an NVA roadblock; they were eventually marched away to an unknown fate. When Royal Laotian Army troops managed to retake the town four days later, they found the charred bodies of two other missionaries, both of them women, tied to posts in their burned-out house. Nearby, the body of a young Lao who had evidently tried to help the women was found stretched out on the ground, shot through the chest.

Keng Kok was not a random, eleventh-hour casualty in a fading war. Shortly before the attack, Hanoi had ordered North Vietnamese units in Laos, and the pro-Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas who fight alongside them, to be ready, in the event of a quick ceasefire, to seize a number of towns and cities still in government hands. Evidently the 29th jumped the gun; the early cease-fire that Hanoi had been planning on did not materialize, and the actual strike order was never given. Even so, Laotians worry that when "peace" does officially come to Viet Nam their country may face another and more agonizing stage of the war.

Path to Peace. Of all Indochina's savaged battlegrounds, dream-like Laos should have the easiest path to peace. Unlike Viet Nam, the country is not riven by irreconcilable rivalry between northerners and southerners, between Catholics, Buddhists and Communists or even—in a country with the acreage of Britain and the population of Brooklyn—between the landed and the landless. "If we could speak as one Laotian to another," Interior Minister Pheng Phongsavan told TIME's Peter Simms in Vientiane last week, "we could solve our problems without any great difficulty." That has not been possible, Phongsavan complains, because "the Pathet Lao are always looking over their shoulders to get their instructions from Hanoi."

After two months of fitful negotiations in Vientiane, there has been scant progress in the talks between the Pathet Lao and the U.S.-backed but nominally "neutralist" government of Premier Prince Souvanna Phouma. Souvanna wants the pro-Communist rebels to join in the tripartite government that was set up by the Geneva accords of 1962. The Pathet Lao demand a two-thirds share in the government, and they have a large but unacknowledged North Vietnamese military presence to back their claim. What is fundamentally at issue is whether Laos will emerge as a reasonably independent buffer state that might help to bring some stability to Indochina, or as an out-and-out fiefdom of Hanoi.

The answer will not begin to be apparent until Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris finally agree on an overall Indochina peace plan (see THE NATION). Even so, reports Simms after extensive interviews with government and Pathet Lao leaders in Vientiane, the odds seemed heavily weighted in the direction of a North Vietnamese fiefdom. Government leaders, says Simms, seemed "completely despairing" about the possibility of being left with North Vietnamese forces still entrenched on Laotian soil. The Communists, by contrast, eagerly welcomed a ceasefire. The Pathet Lao spokesman in Vientiane, Soth Pethrasy, said confidently, "We are the party of victory."

Despite lavish if clandestine American support of pro-government forces, the Communists today control roughly four-fifths of Laos' territory and one-third of its 2,800,000 people (see map). This has been achieved not by the feckless Pathet Lao but by the North Vietnamese, who have at least 65,000 soldiers in Laos—more proportionally than they have in South Viet Nam. Furnished with tanks, long-range Soviet-made 130-mm, guns and what Western observers describe as "some of the finest and most highly motivated infantry in the world" (see story, following page), Hanoi's forces in Laos are more than a match for the 80,000 Royal Laotian Army troops, Thai mercenaries and CIA-supported Meo tribesmen who oppose them.

No Lever. Experts agree that there is no road, airport, town or city in the country that the North Vietnamese could not capture and at least hold for a while. U.S. and Laotian officials worry that the Communists will try to make good on Pathet Lao claims of "victory" on the eve of a ceasefire, by seizing several important cities, perhaps even Vientiane or Luangprabang, the seat of the country's constitutional monarch, King Savang Vatthana.

Hanoi has never admitted the presence of its forces in Laos, where they are barred under the terms of the 1962 accords. Souvanna worries that "we have no lever to force them out," and he has some understandable doubts that Hanoi would honor a new great-power agreement requiring the withdrawal of "all foreign" troops from the country. In 1962 only 40 North Vietnamese troops marched out of Laos through the prescribed International Control Commission checkpoint—and 30 of them claimed that they had merely been building a house for Souvanna. Thousands of other NVA troops either slipped back to North Viet Nam in secret or stayed behind to help organize the Pathet Lao.

Souvanna told Simms that whatever happens, "we shall certainly survive." But time is not on his side. In dusty Vientiane, Simms found "no dearth of traffic, from expensive Mercedes, to ex-army Jeeps, to whole schools of motor scooters. It takes a little while to discover that something is not quite the same as in most cities. Then one gradually notices that the driver of the black Mercedes is a beautiful Laotian girl wearing the traditional skirt of glossy silk, heavily embroidered in gold, and that the driver in the Jeep behind her, wearing a pair of smart Levi's, is also a girl. Then one realizes that there are far more women drivers than one would normally see—except, that is, in a small country that is losing 500 to 600 soldiers a month, killed, wounded or missing in action."

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Time Megazine 1977

Insurgents: A New-Old Battle
Monday, Jul. 04, 1977

War still simmers on in Southeast Asia. It has been more than two years since Communist forces conquered South Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia, but Indochina's new regimes continue to face tenacious internal resistance. Some Indochinese resist by becoming refugees. The harsh economic conditions and political repression in their homelands are so unbearable that they will take extraordinary risks in hopes of finding refuge abroad (see following story).

Others resist more directly by heading for the hills and jungles to mount armed insurgencies. Emulating the tactics of the Pathet Lao, Khmer Rouge or the Viet Cong, supporters of the old regimes are carrying on a guerrilla war that the new Communist police states have so far been unable to bring under control.

In southern Viet Nam, the U Minh Forest, the Central Highlands and the area bordering Cambodia's Parrot's Beak, are proving as inhospitable to Hanoi's troops as they were to America's. Tattered groups of militant Hoa Hao Buddhists, disgruntled peasants and bitter former soldiers of the fallen Thieu regime in Saigon have established strongholds in these areas. Around Dalat, for instance, up to 2,000 veterans sporadically battle the forces of the new rulers. The fighting has been serious enough for circumspect Hanoi newspapers to admit that "veterans do not hesitate to open fire on security forces."

Hanoi has been unable to devote its full attention to these pockets of armed resistance because much of its army is tied down battling a onetime ally: Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, who are trying to annex Vietnamese districts contiguous to Cambodia in order to regain control over the tens of thousands of Cambodians who fled the new Phnom-Penh regime. Viet Nam's Quang Due province has been repeatedly attacked by the Khmer Rouge, while Hanoi's forces have made counterthrusts into Cambodia's Svay Rieng. Neither government seems to have clear control of Chau Doc province.
The most difficult situation for the Communists is in Laos. Most Laotians originally welcomed the Pathet Lao regime that replaced the monarchy in 1975, assuming that their new rulers would be as typically languid as the old ones. But the gray-uniformed Pathet Lao—backed by 15,000 Vietnamese troops and 500 Soviet advisers—immediately began building the country according to a socialist blueprint.

The easygoing Laotians were shocked by the imposition of a six-day work week, capped by mandatory political indoctrination on Sundays. Small family farm plots were merged into large communes. Peasants, who never before had paid taxes, suddenly found themselves forced to turn over 8% to 30% of their rice crop to state warehouses. A census was taken of barnyard stocks, and peasants were warned that they could not eat any chicken—even those dying of natural causes—without permission from a local Communist cadre.

The harvest of these policies has been widespread disillusion and anger. Some 90,000 Laotians have already fled across the Mekong River to Thailand, and an additional 1,000 leave each month. Thousands of others actively oppose the regime; as a result, nearly half of Laos, including much of the fertile Mekong Plain, is contested by insurgents. TIME Hong Kong Correspondent David DeVoss reports that in the north, some 4,500 fiercely independent Meo hill tribesmen operate out of the former CIA base in Long Cheng. Although they have only 3,000 rifles and a dwindling cache of ammunition, they have made most of the mountainous area uninhabitable for Communist troops. Blia Ya Moi, a former leader of the anti-Communist forces, explained to DeVoss that "we have to make every bullet useful; one bullet for one life." Blia closely watches events in Laos from the Nong Khai refugee camp in Thailand.

Hiding Rice. Pressure by the Meo insurgents has closed Highway 4 from Paksane to Xieng Khouang and Highway 7 across the Plain of Jars. Highway 13 between Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang is so unsafe that government traffic can move only in armed convoys. South of Vientiane, Pathet Lao patrols, supported by the air force's nine T-28 fighter-bombers, manage to keep Highway 13 and Route 8 open during the day, but the Meo have full control after dark. In the south, at least 1,500 Royal Laotian army veterans and disgruntled peasants are carrying on another guerrilla war. "Our rural population is almost completely behind the rebels," one Vientiane resident told DeVoss. "People hide rice from the government and offer it to the rebels. Villagers celebrate when one of their young heads for the hills to fight."

The morale of the Pathet Lao forces has been hurt by the failing Laotian economy. Some government troops are so desperately poor that they have sold their uniforms for money to buy food. In an implicit confession of weakness, the Pathet Lao leaders have sought outside help from what is grandly called the "International Liberation Army." The number of Soviet advisers in Laos has risen to 1,200 (Moscow is eager to maintain an influence in Laos to prevent it from falling into Peking's orbit) and Viet Nam's forces increased to about 40,000 troops. In early June, five battalions of Vietnamese regulars took up positions along the road from Vientiane to Thakhek. But as Hanoi's presence grows, so does the traditional Laotian hostility to the Vietnamese. In early spring, Vietnamese troops killed 20 Pathet Lao soldiers who had tried to inspect a convoy of wood heading for Viet Nam. Observes a Western diplomat in Bangkok: "Now even the Communists in Laos are grumbling about the Big Brother Vietnamese."

Diplomats and military experts agree that the scattered insurgencies have almost no chance of succeeding, in the long run. Without Western military supplies or even moral encouragement (and there is absolutely no evidence of either), even the aggressive rebels of Laos will eventually succumb to superior forces. Still, the Communists are discovering, as French colonialists and U.S. administrators learned to their sorrow, that it is a lot easier to proclaim a government in Indochina than to operate one successfully.

[8pliag]

Tsab no yog tsab kawg ntawm Time Megazine uas tham txog Hmoob hauv Tsovrog Vietnam lawm. Kuv paub hais tias tshuav ntau nyob tom New York Time, tab sis lawv muag kim heev ces yuav tsis taus los rau peb nyeem.

A Rescue Plan at Last
Monday, Jul. 30, 1979

But in the jungles the fighting continues

Moved by an overwhelming sense of pity and concern, representatives of 50 nations met last week in Geneva for a two-day United Nations conference on Indochina's refugees. To underline the importance that Washington gives to this ever growing tragedy, the U.S. delegation was led by Vice President Walter Mondale. He condemned Viet Nam as the sole cause of the Indochina exodus, and reinforced President Carter's promise that the U.S. would begin naval and air operations to pick up thousands of "boat people" who have fled Viet Nam in overcrowded, unseaworthy vessels. One ranking U.S. official estimates that since last May 30,000 to 50,000 people have drowned each month in their attempts to escape. Mondale also said that the Administration would ask Congress for additional funds for refugee relief for this year, bringing the total to $917 million.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Denmark's Poul Hartling, received a pledge from the participating nations that they would take in 250,000 refugees this year. The promises of help, in fact, got under way before the conference. Canada announced earlier in the week that it would accept 50,000 refugees by the end of 1980, Britain that it would absorb 10,000 from overcrowded Hong Kong. The U.S. had already increased its quota from 7,000 to 14,000 a month.
To guarantee the conference's success, there was a prior agreement that it would concentrate on humanitarian solutions and avoid, as much as possible, political recriminations. This was done primarily to ensure the presence of Viet Nam, whose policies of brutal repression and wholesale expulsions have been responsible for the flood of refugees. Arriving in Geneva, Viet Nam's unctuous Deputy Foreign Minister Phan Hien pledged his country's "full cooperation" at the conference, provided that "our national sovereignty will be respected and financial help extended."

Violating the no-politics rule of the conference, China's Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Wenjin accused Hanoi of "militarism, genocide, creating and exporting refugees, causing human disasters and spreading anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia." Although China claims to have accepted 230,000 refugees, Zhang offered to take an additional 10,000 "if they choose to come." He also pledged $1 million for U.N. refugee relief.

Malaysia and Thailand were surprisingly subdued in their criticism of Viet Nam, though as the principal countries of "first asylum," they have already absorbed more than half of the 380,000 refugees now scattered throughout Southeast Asia. But U.S. diplomats estimate that at least 1 million more people may soon be joining the exodus, principally from Viet Nam. That massive an outpouring would completely swamp the already overtaxed resources of the two countries. It was Thailand's forced repatriation of refugees from Cambodia last month and Malaysia's refusal to accept any more boat people that prompted the Geneva conference.

The refugee crisis is only the most dramatic in a sequence of events that has reshaped the politics of Southeast Asia since the fall of South Viet Nam to Hanoi and of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Led by a group of aging revolutionaries who have been almost continuously at war since 1945, Hanoi has been pursuing Ho Chi Minh's goal of an Indochinese federation under Vietnamese domination. Backed by the Soviet Union, Viet Nam last December invaded Cambodia (Kampuchea), its former ally. Though an international pariah because of the brutal policies of the ousted Pol Pot regime, Cambodia received some verbal support from other Southeast Asian nations that fear Hanoi's expansionism, while China reacted in February by invading Viet Nam, its own former ally. As a result, hundreds of thousands of additional refugees were created.

The history of Southeast Asia, in fact, is a story of peoples on the move, with often disastrous consequences as one group has triumphed over another. As a migratory heritage and changing military fortunes offered scant geographic stability, ethnic purity became highly important as a means of national survival. Defeat could mean cultural obliteration and slavery for a generation or more—a debt to be repaid in kind.

Some of these peoples have all but disappeared: the Chams of central Viet Nam, for example, or the Mons of Burma. The prime survivors of the murky wars of attrition were the Vietnamese and the Thais. In the 19th century, Viet Nam and Thailand were on the verge of dividing a hapless Cambodia when the French intervened; 100 years of colonial rule postponed a historic process of ethnic competition. That process was redefined in cold war terms by John Foster Dulles. In what became known as the "domino theory," Dulles in 1953 noted, "If Indochina should be lost, there would be a chain reaction through the Far East and South Asia." The next year, President Dwight Eisenhower predicted, "The loss of Indochina would lead to the loss of Burma, Thailand, in fact all of the great peninsula on which they are situated."
So far, that has not happened. Nor, in the opinion of experts in the area, is it likely to happen soon, even though Viet Nam's smaller neighbors would be hopelessly outmanned and outgunned in a major war without China's intervention (see following story). Nonetheless, the possibility of an unintentional incident's ballooning into a regional or international crisis is alarmingly present. As a result, the U.S. has revived the almost moribund Manila Pact (whose now defunct military organization was called SEATO), which pledges Southeast Asian and Western countries to mutual security consultations in case of attack on any of its signatories. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance told a meeting of ASEAN* Foreign Ministers in Bali in early July, "We are committed morally and by treaty to support the ASEAN states. We have made this clear to all concerned—and directly to the Soviet Union and Viet Nam. The U.S. is a Pacific power. We will defend our interests and stand by our commitments in the region."

Viet Nam is the focal point of these regional tensions. Its foreign ventures have cost Hanoi dearly. Contrary to their expectations, Vietnamese military commanders have seen their Cambodian campaign extend well into the rainy season, and there is no end in sight. Viet Nam's own economy is in bad shape, in part because of the Cambodia war, but also because of several bad crop years compounded by gross mismanagement. Viet Nam suffered enormous damage to its northern provinces during its fierce one-month war with China. Factories, schools, office buildings and other structures were demolished. Though the war has been over for several months, normal life has yet to return to the devastated areas.

Hanoi's biggest headache is in Cambodia, where elements of four Khmer Rouge divisions loyal to deposed Premier Pol Pot are still able to terrorize civilians and harass Vietnamese units immobilized by the monsoons. Last month Khmers thought to be loyal to Hanoi's new regime in Phnom-Penh expelled the Vietnamese garrison from the river port of Kratie. Though the town was quickly recaptured, the startled Vietnamese began to transfer Pathet Lao troops from Laos as a means of guaranteeing village security.

Hanoi, in effect, is trying to fill one pocket by emptying another. The Pathet Lao troops are needed in northern Laos, where Chinese-supplied tribesmen are smuggling rifles to anti-Communist Meo guerrillas. According to Western and Thai intelligence, the insurgents last month killed 200 Pathet Lao troops assigned to guard a new highway.

Meanwhile, Cambodia continues to hemorrhage, in what some observers believe may be the death throes of the Khmers as a people. A nation that once numbered between 7 million and 8 million people is now believed to total only 4 million to 5 million. Much of the country's farm land has been devastated by war, and refugees report that the Vietnamese forces are shipping to their own country what little rice is now being grown in Cambodia. French doctors who recently visited the country fear that it could be swept by bubonic plague.

"Pressure on Viet Nam is the only way we can improve the situation," says one Western ambassador in Bangkok. But who can apply that pressure? The U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Hanoi—a fact that some observers believe pushed Viet Nam even further into Moscow's orbit. China, of course, has just fought a war with Viet Nam, while Moscow openly supports Hanoi's attempt to subdue Cambodia, The worldwide outcry over the refugees has only just begun to have an effect on Hanoi—but as for getting out of Cambodia, the Vietnamese so far have been adamant. Ironically, it is Politburo Member Le Due Tho, the winner along with Henry Kissinger of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, who is said to be directing Viet Nam's civil operations in Cambodia.

If there is a vulnerable domino in Southeast Asia, it is Thailand. Except for a friendly southern border with Malaysia, Thailand is surrounded by enemies, new and old: Cambodia, Laos and Burma. Above all, the Thais fear the Vietnamese. Hanoi has repeatedly warned Bangkok to stay neutral in the Cambodia war, and complained that Pol Pot forces are being harbored in the crowded refugee camps. Well aware that the Vietnamese have ten divisions arrayed along the Thailand-Cambodia frontier, China has made both public and private gestures of support for Bangkok, including the offer of troops in case of invasion. Such proposals only embarrass the Thais, who are determined to maintain their traditional independence.

The 45 million people of this France-size land call their country Muang-Thai, which means land of the free. Thailand, in fact, is the only country in Southeast Asia that was never colonized by a Western power. For centuries the country has managed to survive the ambitions of would-be occupiers through a combination of diplomatic guile, compromise, opportunism and sheer luck.

More than 90% of Thais are practicing Buddhists, and the symbols of religion are omnipresent: young men in saffron robes practicing the 227 rules of tripitaka (the summation of Hinayana Doctrine), temples that dominate the jumbled skyline of humid, traffic-jammed Bangkok. Another symbol of Thai unity is the country's constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 51, whose official title is King Rama IX. A talented jazz saxophonist who was born in Cambridge, Mass. (where his father was a medical student), the shy monarch travels constantly throughout the country. He personally hands out diplomas to all graduates of state universities and military colleges. That is no mean chore: 20,000 got their degrees in Bangkok alone last year.

The King is considered above politics. The task of governing his peculiar land of serenity and violence, of beauty and disorder, is in the hands of Premier Kriangsak Chomanan, 61. A retired army general who came to power in a 1977 army coup, Kriangsak has found it hard to manage a largely agricultural economy that is plagued by bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. He has also had to give a great deal of his attention to the threat posed by war at Thailand's doorstep, and the persistence of Communist insurgency, especially in the south.

Because of its even, tropical climate and predictable rainfall, Thailand has become one of the world's leading agricultural nations. It is the world's fourth largest producer of sugar and the third biggest rubber exporter. This year Thailand expects to become the world's leading rice exporter. Ironically, the country's farmers remain among the poorest in Asia, a factor that Kriangsak recognizes as a serious threat to internal security. The most oppressive exploiter of the farmer is Bangkok itself, which by government decree keeps the rice price paid to the farmer well below world levels. The "rice premium" has been a favorite tool of Thailand's military rulers. By lowering the urban consumer's cost of living, the Premier has ensured political stability in Bangkok.

Keeping the countryside poor, however, is no longer an option for Bangkok. Kriangsak declared 1979 as the "year of the farmer" and launched an ambitious $2 billion rural reform program to be renewed annually. Said Kriangsak: "Thai farmers will eventually be standing proud and tall in the coming decade."

Nevertheless, security is the Premier's main concern, as he explained last week in an interview with TIME'S Hong Kong bureau chief Marsh Clark and correspondent David DeVoss: "Close to our borders there is a full-scale war. We have Communist subversion within the country. Added to that there is the refugee problem that undermines our stability. We need arms to preserve peace. Tell the U.S. Congress to come to Thailand to see the situation. Giving us a foreign military sales credit of $24 million is not enough. Thailand faces a war situation. It deserves a higher priority. We need antiaircraft weapons, tanks, TOW missiles. We are a little impatient."

Within the past year, Kriangsak has responded to invitations from Washington, Moscow and Peking by making official visits to all three capitals. The interest in Thailand shown by the superpowers goes well beyond their concern to have amicable diplomatic relations with Bangkok. It is a tacit admission that turmoil in Southeast Asia could be as great a threat to the peace and stability of the world as a crisis in the Middle East.

[8pliag]

Peb ho mus nyeem ib tug neeg uas muaj txiaj ntsig rau communist seb nws lub neej suaj kaum li cas es lawv ho yuav muaj siab thiab siv zog ua luaj.

Pab pab Nyab Laj thiab Communists es tau dab tsi

[8pliag]

Cov neeg nkawg xaiv siv hlwb li cas thiaj noj tau lawv tus yeeb ncuab

CIA 1968

Gathering Intelligence in Laos in 1968

Learning Quickly on the Job

Frederic McCann

“I was sent to interview refugees and ralliers who had fled from the communist Pathlet Lao guerrillas.”

In 1968, I was sent from Tokyo to Laos to interview refugees and ralliers from the communist Pathet Lao guerrillas who had fled to the protection of royalist Gen. Vang Pao's army of Meo hill tribe “irregulars.” Busy with things Japanese, I knew little about the conflicts in former French colonial Indochina except that the insurgent Pathet Lao were supported and supplied by the North Vietnamese. The only thing going for me was that I had studied French in high school and college.

Passing through Thailand, I was given a knapsack for all my worldly possessions, a set of fatigues, a pair of boots, and a baseball cap, which I later exchanged for an Australian bush hat. Vang Pao, who supported the Royal Kingdom of Laos in the expanding local war, had crossed eastward across the Plaine des Jarres in northern Laos. I was ferried to various Laotian towns, whose names I cannot recall, passing through a bleak, mountainous countryside. After receiving the requisite handshake from Vang Pao, I finally settled into a small Royal Lao Army outpost called Pha Khao, located in the southern part of the Plaine des Jarres.

Since there were only a few intelligence officers in Laos during the Pathet Lao rebellion, I hope this anecdote will help to convey the flavor of that time.[1]

Author, on one of the ancient clay vessels in the
Plaine des Jarres, 1968.

First Lesson

On my first day on the job, I met my interpreter, a spit-and-polish Thai captain named My. He had received some military training in the United States and spoke good English. Unfortunately, he had not been exposed to American standards of intelligence work and proceeded to mistreat the Laotians I had selected to interview. With open disdain, he would gruffly order them to stand up, sit down, and not speak unless spoken to. Since he communicated in Lao, it took me awhile to realize that he was frightening the interviewees to the point that providing me with information was the last thing that interested them. This was my introduction to the myriad racial animosities germane to the Indochina peninsula.

After two wasted days of frightening Laotians, I called a halt to the interviews and asked Captain My to take me through the refuge camp. It was the same kind of camp that surrounded all Royal Lao Army posts, inhabited by hangers-on seeking food, work, or maybe information that could be put into the rat-line to the enemy. The locals were openly curious about me as I walked around bowing to the elders, patting little boys on the head, and repeating the only Lao words I knew, which were the equivalent of “good day.” We came upon a soldier washing a Pathet Lao uniform. As I approached, he sprang to attention and gave me a French military salute. I returned an American salute and greeted him with “good day” in French. When I asked the captain why I had not had the opportunity to interview this man instead of the poor farmers and their wives with babies at the breast, I received a sheepish response that this Pathet Lao soldier had only entered the camp late the previous night and had not “been processed.”

Second Lesson

I immediately drew the conclusion that someone at the camp was in charge of my activities and it wasn't me. We changed that on the spot with a few strong words to Captain My. I instructed him to take this soldier to the warehouse for new clothes and shoes and get him a meal at the mess hall, and keep me informed of all new military arrivals in the camp. I nodded to the soldier and asked My to give him my name and tell me his. He said his name was Thanh, and he repeated my name as “Mister Fred.” We shook hands and My told him that we would talk after he had eaten. Thanh readily agreed.

Before interviewing Thanh, I rearranged my office with three chairs around a coffee table. I explained to Captain My that he would sit off to one side and truly be the interpreter, which was absolutely essential because neither Thanh nor I had a full command of the French language. I instructed him never to speak to Thanh unless I told him to do so and to say exactly what I said. Thanh and I would attempt to converse in French, but if we could not find the right word, I would say the word in English and My would say the word in Lao to Thanh. We would then try to continue to converse in French. My was a bit stiff about all this but cooperative.

Testing A New Approach

When Thanh arrived at my office, I instructed the escorts to return to their posts, saying that Captain My and I would bring the detainee back. It took some doing for the captain to carry out my wishes, but eventually the escorts complied. This brief skirmish was not lost on Thanh and, I think, helped him decide that I was in charge of the interview even though we were on a Royal Army base.

I showed Thanh to a chair and offered him a cigarette. When he took it, I placed the pack in front of him, indicating it was for him. When I took out a fresh pack for myself, I saw a smile cross his face. It was clear that he was not used to the simplest of kindnesses.

I explained to Thanh that I wanted to talk to him about his life and his time as a Pathet Lao soldier. I outlined My's role, which was to assist us. Thanh would speak directly to me in French and only use the interpreter when necessary. Thanh and I both recognized the challenge.

We got off to a great start. Thanh was about 21 years old. He had been born in Vientienne, the capital of Laos. Three years before, the Pathet Lao had kidnapped him while he was a student at the French Pedagogical Institute in Vientiane, leaving behind a pregnant wife. His captors had first taken him to the Pathet Lao stronghold in Sam Neua Province. Later, he had received training as a finance officer in Hanoi. His most recent assignment had been to distribute Pathet Lao funds to various units of the guerrilla force. Thanh stated that he had defected to the Royal Army outpost with the hope of joining his wife and seeing his child.

Debriefing

Because of his finance duties, I suspected that Thanh knew the current location of each Pathet Lao unit, its strength, and maybe the name of the commanding officer. To involve Captain My in my intelligence gathering activity, I explained to him that I wanted to create an Order of Battle (OB) for the Pathet Lao force. I asked him to obtain a map of Laos and work directly with Thanh to put all of his knowledge directly on the map. I conveyed to the captain that his military experience was most important and my role in this activity was unnecessary. “So, please work directly with Thanh, and treat him in a friendly way like you would a fellow officer,” I requested. While he went for the map, I explained our plan to Thanh.

Both men were up to the task and created an Order Of Battle in French and English within a day or two. When the OB was sent to Gen. Vang Pao, he made a special trip to Pha Khao, congratulated Captain My, and made Thanh an officer in his irregular army. This action was unique because his force was composed of ethnic Meo while Thanh was an ethnic Lao. (I heard later that the general had been encouraged to integrate his force and that he often pointed to this event as his first step.)

These fortunate developments changed my relationship with Captain My. In short order, he came to me and, in private, said that he now understood my way of obtaining cooperation and useful information. He thanked me for the lesson and from that day became “my captain.” He started calling me “Papa Fred,” because I had begun to grow a gray beard à la Ernest Hemingway.

Unfolding events also solidified my relationship with Thanh. While he was preparing the OB, I asked the Royal Lao Army to locate his wife in Vientiane and bring her and their child to Pha Khao, if she wanted to come. Without telling Thanh, I took him to the airstrip when the plane arrived. When he saw his family, he embraced his wife and scooped up his child. Then he came to me and thanked me. With a wink, I said “I am now your mandarin and you must obey me.” He saw the humor of my being a Chinese lord and replied, “I will serve you loyally as long as you fill my rice bowl and protect me.” We began a great relationship for two men who could barely converse in a third language with one another.

One Thing Led to Another

One morning, Thanh came to me and informed me that a Pathet Lao officer had rallied the night before. His name was Sung, and he had been Thanh's superior officer. As the senior finance officer, Sung had had daily contact with the Pathet Lao leadership.

Unfortunately, when he rallied, he was carrying a knapsack full of Pathet Lao money. When a Royal Army officer tried to take the money, Sung began to fight and broke the officer's arm. Consequently, Royal Lao soldiers took Sung to a cave in a nearby mountain and beat him, intending to kill him the next day.

I immediately went to the post commander and told him that I would not remain on the post if they killed a rallier. I charged that such a killing would shut off the flow of ralliers from the Pathet Lao, which General Vang Pao would not look kindly upon. Lastly, I told him that Sung might have crucial information on the Pathet Lao leadership and I wanted to interview him. The commander agreed to turn Sung over to Captain My after the noon meal.

Sung was brought to me in chains. I insisted that he be freed and that his guards return to their posts. It took Captain My some time to carry out my wishes, but he was successful. Thanh was in the room and welcomed Sung warmly. He explained to Sung that I had saved his life and he suggested that he cooperate with me. Sung was apprehensive but agreed.

We began to produce reports on the Pathet Lao leaders, including their attitude toward the peace negotiations taking place in Paris. Of unusual interest was their use of narcotics, given to them by their Vietnamese wives, who reportedly had been trained in China on how to administer the drugs and control their husbands. Throughout, Sung was cooperative and informative.

A New Twist

One day when Thanh, Sung, and I were sitting in my office, Captain My came into the room and interrupted us. “I have just interviewed a new arrival who has told me that the Pathet Lao plan to overrun this camp next week,” he told me in English. I asked him to tell Thanh and Sung in Lao, and he did so. When he finished, Sung spoke quietly to Thanh, and I saw My place his hand on his weapon. Immediately, I asked Thanh what Sung was saying. He replied, “Sung says that the Pathet Lao will overrun this camp 10 days after the full moon and that will be the third day of next week.”

Needless to say, we all recognized the seriousness of Sung's knowledge of the pending attack. I pushed my chair back from the table and placed my hand on Captain My's arm because he had begun to speak directly to Sung. I asked Thanh to ask Sung how he knew about this plan. Sung spoke at length to Thanh, during which time the captain put his hand on his weapon again.

The scene became tense. I was the only one who did not know why. Thanh slowly told me the following: “Sung says that he did not come here as a deserter. He got caught stealing the foreign exchange holdings of the Pathet Lao, and they sent him here on a mission rather than put him in jail. The bag of Pathet Lao money was a smoke screen. He was sent here to kill you. But, since you saved his life, he promises never to hurt you.”

I asked Thanh if Sung would tell us if the information he had provided about the Pathet Lao leadership was true. Thanh asked, and Sung nodded. Sung had become very quiet. He sat with his head bowed in embarrassment. Thanh relayed, “Sung says that his information is true, and it seems true to me based on my limited observation of the leadership.”

I suggested to Captain My that he return Sung to detention so that we could concentrate on preparing a report to the base commander. When Sung stood up, he spoke briefly to Thanh who translated for me: “Sung says that he has watched us shake hands with each other and he has never done that. I have been coaching him how to do it, and he would like to shake your hand as a sign of mutual respect.” I stood up and extended my hand, which Sung took and said, “merci.” I returned the handshake and repeated “merci.”

The Ultimate Lesson

This exchange made me realize that I had never been briefed on the potential dangers of being in Pha Khao. Up to that point, US intelligence had been unaware that the Pathet Lao would go to the extreme of targeting non-combatant Americans.

After briefing a skeptical base commander about the possibility of an attack, I returned to my office and informed Vientiane by wire of my report. Since the end of my short-term assignment was overdue, I requested air transportation to the camp in Thailand where I had left my clothes and where I could catch a plane to Bangkok and on to Hong Kong, where my wife was waiting. While in Bangkok, I read that the Pathet Lao had indeed overrun the base at Pha Khao. I hoped that my two Lao friends had managed to escape, but I was never able to find out.

Sobered by my personal experience, when I returned to Laos five years later in another capacity, I was not surprised to hear that the Pathet Lao had broken a truce they had agreed to and violated the rules for their participation in a coalition government. Nor was I surprised later at their ruthlessness in wiping out the Meo tribe when they took over the government of Laos in 1975.

[1]This anecdote, written 30 years after the event and completely from memory, was initially prompted by a notice that the Library of Congress was creating a collection of personal stories of military experiences.

Frederic McCann served in the CIA Directorate of Operation

[8pliag]

Yog peb leej twg ho xav paub kom meej thiab tseeb txog YHVP thiab Asmiskas kev ua tsovrog nyob Lostsua, yeej meem taug qhov link no mus. Thaum mus txog tov lawm ces koj mus SEARCH UNDER THE KEY WORD "Vang Pao" xwb.

[jhonydep]

hu ua Teev, nws yog neeg siab phem kawg. Nws ua tej yam tim tsis taus lub ntuj. Nws muab cov poj niam los ua* ua npua tas, nws muab riam los phais lawv thiab muab txoj nyhuv me nyuam lis coj los saib. Nws thiaj pom tias txoj nyhuv me nyuam mus txog hauv lawd, ncau ua ob ceg. Yog muaj me nyuam rau ces sab laug mas yog tub, muaj rau ces sab xis mas yog ntxhais. Lawv huab tau nyiaj kuv phem ntau ntau kawg. Thaum lawv yuav rov los, Vaj Tuam Thaij txwv tsis pub leej twg tham tej ntawd rau Paj Cai paub.