PART 7: :THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN S.E ASIA,HONG KONG;HEIR TO THE HEROIN TRAFFIC;GOLDEN TRIANGLE

The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia 

By Alfred W. McCoy with 

Cathleen B. Read 
and Leonard P.Adams II 


7

The Golden Triangle: 

Heroin Is Our Most Important Product 

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN," announced the genteel British diplomat, raising his glass to offer a toast, "I give you Prince Sopsaisana, the uplifter of Laotian youth." The toast brought an appreciative smile from the lips of the guest of honor, cheers and applause from the luminaries of Vientiane's diplomatic corps gathered at the send-off banquet for the Laotian ambassador-designate to France, Prince Sopsaisana. His appointment was the crowning achievement in a brilliant career. A member of the royal house of Meng Khouang, the Plain of Jars region, Prince Sopsaisana was vice-president of the National Assembly, chairman of the Lao Bar Association, president of the Lao Press Association, president of the Alliance Francaise, and a member in good standing of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League. After receiving his credentials from the king in a private audience at the Luang Prabang Royal Palace on April 8, 1971, the prince was treated to an unprecedented round of cocktail parties, dinners, and banquets. (1) For Prince Sopsaisana, or Sopsai as his friends call him, was not just any ambassador; the Americans considered him an outstanding example of a new generation of honest, dynamic national leaders, and it was widely rumored in Vientiane that Sopsai was destined for high office some day. 

The send-off party at Vientiane's Wattay Airport on April 23 was one of the gayest affairs of the season. Everybody was there: the cream of the diplomatic corps, a bevy of Lao luminaries, and, of course, you-know who from the American Embassy. The champagne bubbled, the canapes were flawlessly French, and Mr. Ivan Bastouil, charge d'affaires at the French Embassy, Lao Presse reported, gave the nicest speech. (2) Only after the plane had soared off into the clouds did anybody notice that Sopsai had forgotten to pay for his share of the reception. When the prince's flight arrived at Paris's Orly Airport on the morning of April 25, there was another reception in the exclusive VIP lounge. The French ambassador to Laos, home for a brief visit, and the entire staff of the Laotian Embassy had turned out. (3) There were warm embraces, kissing on both cheeks, and more effusive speeches. Curiously, Prince Sopsaisana insisted on waiting for his luggage like any ordinary tourist, and when the mountain of suitcases finally appeared after an unexplained delay, he immediately noticed that one was missing. Angrily Sopsai insisted his suitcase be delivered at once, and the French authorities promised, most apologetically, that it would be sent round to the Embassy just as soon as it was found. But the Mercedes was waiting, and with flags fluttering, Sopsai was whisked off to the Embassy for a formal reception.

While the champagne bubbled at the Laotian Embassy, French customs officials were examining one of the biggest heroin seizures in French history: the ambassador's "missing" suitcase contained sixty kilos of high-grade Laotian heroin worth $13.5 million on the streets of New York,(4) its probable destination. Tipped by an unidentified source in Vientiane, French officials had been waiting at the airport. Rather than create a major diplomatic scandal by confronting Sopsai with the heroin in the VIP lounge, French officials quietly impounded the suitcase until the government could decide how to deal with the matter. 

Although it was finally decided to hush up the affair, the authorities were determined that Sopsaisana should not go entirely unpunished. A week after the ambassador's arrival, a smiling French official presented himself at the Embassy with the guilty suitcase in hand. Although Sopsaisana had been bombarding the airport with outraged telephone calls for several days, he must have realized that accepting the suitcase was tantamount to an admission of guilt and flatly denied that it was his. Despite his protestations of innocence, the French government refused to accept his diplomatic credentials and Sopsai festered in Paris for almost two months until he was finally recalled to Vientiane late in June. 

Back in Vientiane the impact of this affair was considerably less than earthshaking. The all-powerful American Embassy chose not to pursue the matter, and within a few weeks everything was conveniently forgotten (5) According to reports later received by the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics, Sopsai's venture had been financed by Meo Gen. Vang Pao, commander of the CIA's Secret Army, and the heroin itself had been refined in a laboratory at Long Tieng, which happens to be the CIA's headquarters for clandestine operations in northern Laos.(6) Perhaps these embarrassing facts may explain the U.S. Embassy's lack of action. 

In spite of its amusing aspects, the Sopsaisana affair provides sobering evidence of Southeast Asia's growing importance in the international heroin trade. In addition to growing over a thousand tons of raw opium annually (about 70 percent of the world's total illicit opium. (7) Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle region has become a mass producer of high-grade no. 4 heroin for the American market. Its mushrooming heroin laboratories now rival Marseilles and Hong Kong in the quantity and quality of their heroin production. 

As America confronted the heroin epidemic in mid 1971, government leaders and mass media newsmen reduced the frightening complexities of the international drug traffic to a single sentence. Their soothing refrain ran something like this: 80 percent of America's heroin begins as raw opium on the slopes of Turkey's craggy Anatolian plateau, is refined into heroin in the clandestine laboratories of Marseilles, and smuggled into the United States by ruthless international syndicates. 

If any of the press had bothered to examine this statement they might have learned that it was based largely on a random guess by the French narcotics police, (8) who had eleven officers, three automobiles, and a miserable budget with which to cover all of southern France! (9) If they had probed further they might have discovered this curious anomaly: that although Southeast Asia produced 70 percent of the world's illicit opium, it was credited with being the source of only 5 percent of America's heroin supply, while Turkey, with only 7 percent of the world's illicit opium, was allegedly responsible for 80 percent of our heroin. (10) 

The truth, as it often is, was rather embarrassing. To summarize, Turkey's opium production had declined sharply in the late 1960's, and international drug syndicates had turned to Southeast Asia as an alternate source of raw materials. Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle-comprising the rugged Shan hills of northeastern Burma, the mountain ridges of northern Thailand, and the Meo highlands of northern Laos-had become the world's largest source of opium, morphine, and heroin. Its narcotics were flooding into the United States through Hong Kong, Latin America, and Europe. The sudden increase in Southeast Asian heroin exports to the United States was fueling a heroin epidemic among American youth. Since some American allies in Southeast Asia were managing the traffic and U.S. policies had contributed to its growth, the Nixon administration was hardly anxious to spark a heated political controversy by speculating openly on Southeast Asia's growing importance in America's heroin traffic. 

In the 1960's a combination of factors-American military intervention, corrupt national governments, and international criminal syndicates -pushed Southeast Asia's opium commerce beyond self-sufficiency to export capability. Production of cheap, low-grade no. 3 heroin (3 to 6 percent pure) had started in the late 1950's when the Thai government launched an intensive opium suppression campaign that forced most of her opium habitues to switch to heroin. By the early 1960's large quantities of cheap no. 3 heroin were being refined in Bangkok and northern Thailand, while substantial amounts of morphine base were being processed in the Golden Triangle region for export to Hong Kong and Europe. However, none of the Golden Triangle's opium refineries had yet mastered the difficult technique required to produce high-grade no. 4 heroin (90 to 99 percent pure).

In late 1969 opium refineries in the Burma-Thailand-Laos tri-border region, newly staffed by skilled master chemists from Hong Kong, began producing limited supplies of high-grade heroin for the tens of thousands of alienated GIs serving in South Vietnam. The U.S. military command in Saigon began getting its first reports of serious heroin addiction among isolated units in early 1970. By September or October the epidemic was fully developed: seemingly unlimited quantities of heroin were available at every U.S. installation from the Mekong Delta in the south to the DMZ in the north. 

When rapid U.S. troop withdrawals in 1970-1972 reduced the local market for the Golden Triangle's flourishing heroin laboratories, Chinese, Corsican, and American syndicates began sending bulk shipments of no. 4 heroin directly to the United States. As a result of these growing exports, the wholesale price for a kilo of pure no. 4 heroin at Golden Triangle laboratories actually increased by 44 percent-from $1,240 in September 1970 to $1,780 in April 1971-despite a 30 percent decline in the number of G.I's serving in Vietnam during the same period. (11) Moreover, the rapid growth of exports to the United States has spurred a dramatic leap in the price of raw opium in the Golden Triangle. One American trained anthropologist who spent several years studying hill tribes in northern Thailand reports that "between 1968 and early 1970 . . . the price of raw opium at the producing village almost doubled from $24 to $45 a kilogram. (12) While the growing rate of addiction among remaining U.S. troops in Vietnam probably accounted for some increased demand, increased exports to the American domestic market provided the major impetus behind the price rise. Significantly, it was in April 1971 that the first bulk shipments of Laotian heroin were intercepted in Europe and the United States. On April 5 U.S. customs officials seized 7.7 kilos of Double U-0 Globe brand heroin at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, (13) and on April 25 French authorities seized Prince Sopsaisana's 60 kilos at Orly Airport.

In 1970-1971 U.S. law enforcement officials became alarmed over the greatly increased heroin supplies available to America's addict population. Massive drug seizures of unprecedented size and value did not even make the "slightest ripple" in the availability or price of heroin .(14) Knowing that Turkey's opium production was declining, U.S. narcotics experts were mystified and began asking themselves where all this heroin was coming from. (15) The answer, of course, is the Golden Triangle.

The CIA, in its 1971 analysis of narcotics traffic in the Golden Triangle reported that the largest of the region's seven heroin factories, located just north of Ban Houei Sai, Laos, "is believed capable of processing some 100 kilos of raw opium per day."(16) In other words, the factory is capable of producing 3.6 tons of heroin a year-an enormous output, considering that American addicts only consume about 10.0 tons of heroin annually. Moreover, none of this production is intended for Asian addicts: as we have already mentioned, high-grade no. 4 heroin is too expensive for them; and they either smoke opium or use the inexpensive low-grade no. 3 heroin. In Bangkok, for example, one gram of no. 4 heroin costs sixteen times more than one gram of no. 3. (17) The only market outlets for these heroin laboratories are in the well-heeled West: Europe, with a relatively small addict population, and the United States, which has a large and rapidly increasing addict population. 

U.S. military and political activities had played a significant role in shaping these developments. Although opium production continued to increase in Burma and Thailand, there were no major changes in the structure of the traffic during the 1960's. Still enjoying tacit CIA support for their counterinsurgency work, Nationalist Chinese (K.M.T) military caravans continued to move almost all of Burma's opium exports into northern Thailand, where they were purchased by a Chinese syndicate for domestic distribution and export to Hong Kong or Malaysia. The Shan national revolutionary movement offered a brief challenge to K.M.T hegemony over the opium trade, but after their most powerful leader was defeated in the 1967 Opium War, the Shan threat evaporated. 

After the 1967 Opium War, the K.M.T solidified its control over the Burma/Thailand opium trade. Almost none of the seven hundred tons of raw opium harvested annually in Burma's Shan and Kachin states reaches world markets through any of Burma's ports: instead, it is packed across the rugged Shan hills by mule caravan to the tri-border junction of Burma, Thailand, and Laos. This area is the beginning of two pipelines into the illicit international markets: one shoots across Laos to Saigon, the other heads due south through central Thailand to Bangkok." (18)(For smuggling routes, see Map) 

Although Shan rebel bands and Burmese self-defense forces collect a heavy tax from tribal opium farmers and itinerant small merchants who transport raw opium to major Shan States market towns, they control very few of the caravans carrying raw opium south to refineries in the tri-border area, In 1967 one CIA operative reported that 90 percent of Burma's opium harvest was carried by Nationalist Chinese army mule caravans based in northern Thailand, 7 percent by Shan armed bands, and about 3 percent by Kachin rebels.(19) 

Thailand's northern hill tribes harvest approximately two hundred tons of opium annually, according to a 1968 U.S. Bureau of Narcotics estimate. (20) The Thai government reports that K.M.T military units and an allied group of Chinese hill traders control almost all of the opium commerce in northern Thailand. 

In Laos, CIA clandestine intervention produced changes and upheavals in the narcotics traffic. When political infighting among the Lao elite and the escalating war forced the small Corsican charter airlines out of the opium business in 1965, the CIA's airline, Air America, began flying Meo opium out of the hills to Long Tieng and Vientiane. CIA cross-border intelligence missions into China from Laos reaped an unexpected dividend in 1962 when the Shan rebel leader who organized the forays for the agency began financing the Shan nationalist cause by selling Burmese opium to another CIA protege, Laotian Gen. Phoumi Nosavan. The economic alliance between General Phoumi and the Shans opened up a new trading pattern that diverted increasingly significant quantities of Burmese opium from their normal marketplace in Bangkok. In the late 1960's U.S. air force bombing disrupted Laotian opium production by forcing the majority of the Meo opium farmers to become refugees. However, flourishing Laotian heroin laboratories, which are the major suppliers for the GI market in Vietnam, simply increased their imports of Burmese opium through already established trading relationships. 

The importance of these CIA clients in the subsequent growth of the Golden Triangle's heroin trade was revealed, inadvertently, by the agency itself when it leaked a classified report on the Southeast Asian opium traffic to The New York Times. The CIA analysis identified twenty-one opium refineries in the tri-border area where Burma, Thailand, and Laos converge, and reported that seven were capable of producing 90 to 99 percent pure no. 4 heroin. Of these seven heroin refineries, "the most important are located in the areas around Tachilek, Burma; Ban Houei Sai and Nam Keung in Laos; and Mae Salong in Thailand." (21)   

Although the CIA did not bother to mention it, many of these refineries are located in areas totally controlled by paramilitary groups closely identified with American military operations in the Golden Triangle area. Mae Salong is headquarters for the Nationalist Chinese Fifth Army, which has been continuously involved in CIA counterinsurgency and intelligence operations since 1950. According to a former CIA operative who worked in the area for a number of years, the heroin laboratory at Nam Keung is protected by Maj. Chao La, commander of Yao mercenary troops for the CIA in northwestern Laos. One of the heroin laboratories near Ban Houei Sai reportedly belongs to Gen. Ouane Rattikone, former commander in chief of the Royal Laotian Army-the only army in the world, except for the U S. army, entirely financed by the U.S. government.(22) The heroin factories near Tachilek are operated by Burmese paramilitary units and Shan rebel armies who control a relatively small percentage of Burma's narcotics traffic. Although few of these Shan groups have any relation to the CIA today, one of the most important chapters in the history of the Shan States' opium trade involves a Shan rebel army closely allied with the CIA. (For location of these laboratories, see Map ) 

Other sources have revealed the existence of an important heroin laboratory operating in the Vientiane region under the protection of Gen. Ouane Rattikone. Finally, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics has reports that Gen. Vang Pao, commander of the CIA's Secret Army, has been operating a heroin factory at Long Tieng, headquarters for CIA operations in northern Laos. (23) 

Thus, it is with something more than idle curiosity that we turn to an examination of CIA clandestine operations and the concurrent growth of the narcotics traffic in the Golden Triangle.

Land of the Poppy 

Laos is one of those historical oddities like Monaco, Andorra, and Lichtenstein which were somehow left behind when petty principalities were consolidated into great nations. Although both nineteenth century empire builders and cold war  summit negotiators have subscribed to the fiction of Laotian nationhood out of diplomatic convenience, this impoverished little kingdom appears to lack all of the economic and political criteria for nationhood. Not even the Wilsonian principle of ethnic determinism that Versailles peacemakers used to justify the carving up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I validate Laos's existence. Some 8.0 million Lao live in northeast Thailand, but there are only about 1.5 million Lao in Laos. With a total population of between 2 and 3 million and singularly lacking in natural resources, Laos has been plagued by fiscal problems ever since independence in 1954. Unable to finance itself through corporate, mineral, or personal taxes, the Royal Laotian government has filled its coffers and lined its pockets by legalizing or tolerating what its neighbors have chosen to outlaw, much like needy principalities the world over. Monaco gambles, Macao winks at the gold traffic, and the Laotian government tolerates the smuggling of gold, guns, and opium. 

While the credit card revolution has displaced paper currency in most of suburban America, peasants and merchants in underdeveloped countries still harbor a healthy distrust for their nations' technicolor currency, preferring to store their hard-earned savings in gold or silver. Asian governments have inadvertently fostered illicit gold trafficking either by imposing a heavy revenue producing duty on legal gold imports or else limiting the right of most citizens to purchase and hold gold freely; thus, an illicit gold traffic flourishes from Pakistan to the Philippines. Purchased legally on the European market, the gold is flown to Dubai, Singapore, Vientiane, or Macao, where local governments have imposed a relatively low import duty and take little interest in what happens after the tax is paid.  

Laos's low duty on imported gold and its government's active participation in the smuggling trade have long made it the major source of illicit gold for Thailand and South Vietnam. Although Laos is the poorest nation in Southeast Asia, Vientiane's licensed brokers have imported from thirty-two to seventy-two tons of gold a year since the American buildup in Vietnam began in 1965. As thousands of free-spending G.I.s poured into Vietnam during the early years of the war, Saigon's black market prospered and Laos's annual gold imports shot up to seventy two tons by 1967.(24) The 8.5 percent import duty provided the Royal Lao government with more than 40 percent of its total tax revenues, and the Finance Ministry could not have been happier. (25) However, in 1968 the Tet offensive and the international gold crisis slowed consumer demand in Saigon and plunged the Laotian government into a fiscal crisis. Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma went before the National Assembly and explained that because of the downward trend in the gold market, "one of our principle sources of income will not reach our expectations this year." Faced with what the prime minister described as "an extremely complex and difficult situation," Finance Minister Sisouk na Champassak privately suggested that the government might seek an alternate source of revenue by taxing the clandestine opium trade. (26) When the establishment of a gold market in Singapore in 1969 challenged Laos's position as the major gold entry port in Southeast Asia and forced the Finance Ministry to drop the import duty from 8.5 to 5.5 percent in 1970, (27) Sisouk na Champassak told a BBC reporter, "The only export we can develop here is opium, and we should increase our production and export of it." (28)

As minister of finance and acting minister of defense, Sisouk is one of the most important government officials in Laos, and his views on the opium trade are fairly representative of the ruling elite. Most Laotian leaders realize that their nation's only valuable export commodity is opium, and they promote the traffic with an aggressiveness worthy of Japanese electronics executives or German automobile manufacturers. Needless to say, this positive attitude toward the narcotics traffic has been something of an embarrassment to American advisers serving in Laos, and in deference to their generous patrons, the Laotian elite have generally done their best to pretend that opium trafficking is little more than a quaint tribal custom.(29) As a result, violent coups, assassinations, and bitter political infighting spawned by periodic intramural struggles for control of the lucrative opium traffic have often seemed clown like or quixotic to outside observers. But they suddenly gain new meaning when examined in light of the economics and logistics of the opium trade.  

Since the late 1950's the opium trade in northern Laos has involved both the marketing of the locally grown produce and the transit traffic in Burmese opium. Traditionally most of Laos's domestic production has been concentrated in the mountains of northeastern Laos, although it is now greatly reduced because of massive U.S. bombing and a vigorous opium eradication program in Pathet Lao liberated zones.(30) Designated on Royal Lao Army maps as Military Region 11, this area comprises the Plain of Jars and most of the Meo highlands that extend from the northern rim of the Vientiane Plain to the border of North Vietnam. While northwestern Laos also has extensive poppy cultivation, opium production has never achieved the same high level as in the northeast; soil conditions are not as favorable, the traffic has not been as well organized, and tribal populations are more scattered. For example, there are between 150,000 and 200,000 Meo living in the northeast, but only about 50,000 Meo in the northwest. As a result, the opium trade in northwestern Laos, now known as Military Region 1, was always secondary in importance during the colonial era and the early years of the postcolonial opium traffic. However, in the mid 1960's Shan and Nationalist Chinese opium caravans began crossing the Mekong into Laos's extreme northwest with large quantities of Burmese opium. As dozens of refineries began springing up along the Laotian bank of the Mekong to process the Burmese opium, the center of Laos's opium trade shifted from the Plain of Jars to Ban Houei Sai in northwestern Laos. 

The mountains of northern Laos are some of the most strikingly beautiful in the world. Shrouded with mile-high clouds during the rainy season, they are strongly reminiscent of traditional Chinese scroll paintings. Row upon row of sharp ridges wind across the landscape, punctuated by steep peaks that conjure up images of dragons' heads, towering monuments, or rearing horses. The bedrock is limestone, and centuries of wind and rain have carved an incredible landscape from this porous, malleable material. And it is the limestone mountains that attract the Meo opium farmers. The delicate opium poppy, which withers and dies in strongly acidic soil, thrives on limestone soil. Tribal opium farmers are well aware of the poppy's need for alkaline soil, and tend to favor mountain hollows studded with limestone outcroppings as locations for their poppy fields. 

But the mountain terrain that is so ideal for poppy cultivation makes long-range travel difficult for merchant caravans. When the French tried to encourage hill tribe production during the colonial era, they concentrated most of their efforts on Meo villages near the Plain of Jars, where communications were relatively well developed, and they abandoned much of the Laotian highlands to petty smugglers. Desperate for a way to finance their clandestine operations, French intelligence agencies expropriated the hill tribe opium trade in the last few years of the First Indochina War and used military aircraft to link the Laotian poppy fields with opium dens in Saigon. But the military aircraft that had overcome the mountain barriers for Laotian merchants were withdrawn in 1954, along with the rest of the French Expeditionary Corps, and Laos's opium trade fell upon hard times.

Corsican Aviation Pioneers: 

"Air Opium," 1955-1965 

After France's military withdrawal in 1954, several hundred French war veterans, colonists, and gangsters stayed on in Laos. Some of them, mainly Corsican's, started a number of small charter airlines, which became colorfully and collectively known as "Air Opium." Ostensibly founded to supply otherwise unavailable transportation for civilian businessmen and diplomats, these airlines gradually restored Laos's link to the drug markets of South Vietnam that had vanished with the departure of the French air force in 1954. At first, progress was hampered by unfavorable political conditions in South Vietnam, and the three fledgling airlines that pioneered the these new routes enjoyed only limited success.31

Perhaps the most famous of the early French opium pilots was Gerard Labenski. His aircraft was based at Phong Savan on the Plain of Jars, where he managed the Snow Leopard Inn, a hotel that doubled as a warehouse for outgoing opium shipments (32).Another of these aviation pioneers was Rene "Babal" Enjabal, a former French air force officer whose airline was popularly known as "Babal Air Force" (33) The most tenacious member of this shadowy trio was Roger Zoile. His charter airline was allied with Paul Louis Levet's Bangkok-based Corsican syndicate. 

Levet was probably the most important Marseille underworld figure regularly supplying European heroin laboratories with morphine base from Southeast Asia in the late 1950s. Levet arrived in Saigon in 1953-1954 and got his start smuggling gold and piasters on the Saigon-Marseille circuit. After the gold traffic dried up in 1955, he became involved in the opium trade and moved to Bangkok, where he established the Pacific Industrial Company. According to a U.S. Bureau of Narcotics report filed in 1962, this company was used as a cover to smuggle substantial quantities of morphine base from northern Thailand to heroin laboratories in Europe. Through a network of four prominent Corsican gangsters based in Vientiane, Phnom Penh, and Saigon, Levet used Zoile's airline to move morphine base from the Golden Triangle region to seaports in Thailand and Indochina (34) There was an enormous amount of shipping between Southeast Asia and Europe, and so arranging for deliveries presented no problem. Saigon was particularly convenient as a transshipment point, since substantial numbers of French freighters carrying Corsican crews still sailed direct to Marseilles. Even though Levet's syndicate was preoccupied with the European traffic, it also had a share of the regional opium trade.(35) 

Although all these men were competent pilots and committed opium smugglers, the South Vietnamese government had adopted an intolerant attitude toward the opium traffic that seriously hampered their operations. In 1955 South Vietnam's puritanical President Diem closed most of Saigon's opium dens and announced his determination to eradicate the drug traffic. Denied secure access to Saigon, the Corsican air smugglers had to devise an elaborate set of routes, transfers, and drop zones, which complicated their work and restricted the amount of narcotics they could ship. However, only three years later President Diem's chief adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu, reopened the dens to finance his secret police and became a silent partner in a Corsican charter airline. (36)

Named Air Laos Commerciale, the airline was managed by the most powerful member of Saigon's Corsican underworld, Bonaventure "Rock" Francisci. Tall and strikingly handsome, Francisci sported a thin, black mustache and a natural charm that won friends easily. Beginning in 1958 Air Laos Commerciale made daily flights from its headquarters at Vientiane's Wattay Airport, picking up three hundred to six hundred kilos of raw opium from secondary, Laotian airports (usually dirt runways in northern Laos) and delivering the cargo to drop points in South Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Gulf of Siam. While these opium deliveries were destined for Southeast Asian consumers, he also supplied Corsican heroin manufacturers in Marseilles. Although a relative latecomer to the field, Bonaventure Francisci's airline had important advantages that other Corsican airlines lacked. His rivals had to take elaborate precautions before venturing into South Vietnam, but, thanks to his relationship with Nhu, Francisci's aircraft shuttled back and forth to convenient drop zones just north of Saigon. (37)

With easy access to Saigon's market restored, opium production in northern Laos, which had declined in the years 1954-1958, quickly revived. During the opium season, Corsican charter companies made regular flights from Phong Savan or Vientiane to isolated provincial capitals and market towns scattered across northern Laos-places such as Sam Neua, Phong Saly, Muong Sing, Nam Tha, Sayaboury, and Ban Houei Sai. Each of these towns served as a center for local opium trade managed by resident Chinese shopkeepers. Every spring these Chinese merchants loaded their horses or mules with salt, thread, iron bars, silver coins, and assorted odds and ends and rode into the surrounding hills to barter with hundreds of hill tribe opium farmers for their tiny bundles of raw opium. (38) Toward the end of every harvest season Corsican aircraft would land near these towns, purchase the opium, and fly it back to Phong Savan or Vientiane, where it was stored until a buyer in Saigon, Singapore, or Indonesia placed an order. (39)

Francisci also prospered, and by 1962 he had a fleet of three new twin-engine Beechcrafts making hundreds of deliveries a month. With his debonair manner he became something of a local celebrity. He gave interviews to the Vientiane press corps, speaking proudly of his air drops to surrounded troops or his services for famous diplomats. When asked about the opium business, he responded, "I only rent the planes, I don't know what missions they're used for." (40) 

But unfortunately for Francisci's public relations, one of his pilots was arrested in 1962 and Air Laos Commerciale's opium smuggling was given international publicity. The abortive mission was piloted by Rene Enjabal, the retired air force officer who had founded Babal Air Force. In October 1962 Enjabal and his mechanic took off from Vientiane's Wattay Airport and flew south to Savannakhet where they picked up twenty nine watertight tin crates, each packed with twenty kilos of raw opium and wrapped in a buoyant life belt. Enjabal flew south over Cambodia and dropped the six hundred kilos to a small fishing boat waiting at a prearranged point in mid-ocean. On the return flight to Vientiane, Enjabal fell asleep at the controls of his plane, drifted over Thailand, and was forced to land at a Thai air force base by two Thai T-28 fighters. When his "military charter" orders from the Lao government failed to convince Thai authorities he was not a spy, Enjabal confessed that he had been on an opium run to the Gulf of Siam. Relieved that it was nothing more serious, his captors allowed him to return to Vientiane after serving a nominal six-week jail sentence. While Enjabal was being browbeaten by the Thai, the opium boat moved undisturbed across the Gulf of Siam and delivered its cargo to smugglers waiting on the east coast of the Malayan peninsula. Although Enjabal had earned a paltry fifteen dollars an hour for his trouble, Francisci may have grossed up to twenty thousand dollars for his role in this nautical adventure. (41)

While this -unfortunate incident cost Francisci most of his legitimate business, it in no way hampered his opium smuggling. Even though Enjabal's downfall was the subject of a feature article in Life magazine, Francisci continued to operate with the same brash self confidence. And with good reason. For not only was he protected by South Vietnam's most powerful politician, Ngo Dinh Nhu, he was allied with the all powerful Guerini syndicate of Marseilles. During the period these Corsican airlines operated in Laos, the Guerini brothers were the unchallenged masters of the French underworld, and lords of a criminal empire that stretched across the globe. (42) All of Francisci's competitors suffered mysterious accidents and sudden arrests, but he operated with absolute impunity. These political connections gave him a decisive advantage over his competitors, and he became Indochina's premier opium smuggler. Like the Guerini brothers in Marseille, Francisci despised competition and used everything from plastique explosives to the South Vietnamese police to systematically eliminate all his rivals. 

Francisci's first victim was none other than the catnapping Rene Enjabal. On November 19, 1959, Vietnamese police raided a remote dirt runway near Ban Me Thuot in the Central Highlands shortly after a twin-engine Beechcraft belonging to Rene Enjabal landed carrying 293 kilos of Laotian opium. After arresting the pilot and three henchmen waiting at the airstrip, the Vietnamese impounded the aircraft. (43) With the loss of his plane, Enjabal had no alternative. Within several months he was flying for the man who in all Probability was the architect of his downfall-Bonaventure "Rock" Francisci. (44) The Vietnamese took no legal action against Enjabal and released the pilot, Desclerts, after a relatively short jail term. Desclerts returned to France and, according to a late 1971 report, is working with Corsican syndicates to ship bulk quantities of heroin to the United States. (45) 

After Enjabal's airline collapsed, Francisci's most important competitor for the lucrative South Vietnamese market was Gerard Labenski, one of Air Opium's earliest pioneers, whom many considered the best bush pilot in Laos. Francisci bitterly resented his competition, and once tried to eliminate Labenski by blowing up his Cessna 195 with plastique as it sat on the runway at Phong Savan. When that failed, Francisci used his contacts with the South Vietnamese government to have his rival's entire seven-man syndicate arrested. On August 25, 1960, shortly after he landed near the town of Xuan Loc, fortyfive miles north of Saigon with 220 kilos of raw opium, Vietnamese police descended on Labenski's entire syndicate, arrested him and impounded his aircraft. Labenski and his chief Saigon salesman, Francois Mittard, were given five-year jail sentences, the others three years apiece. (46) 

After languishing in a Vietnamese prison for more than two years, Labenski and Mittard were so embittered at Francisci's betrayal that they broke the Corsican rule of silence and told U.S. narcotics investigators everything they knew about his syndicate, claiming that their arrests had been engineered by Francisci to force them out of business. But Francisci was too well protected to be compromised by informers, and Air Laos Commerciale continued flying until 1965, when political upheavals in Laos forced all the Corsican airlines out of business. As for Mittard and Labenski, they were released from prison in 1964 and left Saigon almost immediately for Laos. (47) 

While Enjabal and Labenski concentrated on local markets, Paul Louis Levet's Bangkokbased syndicate competed directly with Francisci for the European market. His Corsican rivals always considered Levet the "most shrewd of all the persons smuggling opium out of Laos," but he, too, was forced out of business by police action. On July 18, 1963, Levet received a telegram from Saigon that read, Everything OK. Try to have friend meet me in Saigon the 19th. Am in room 33 Continental Hotel. [signed] Poncho. 

The wire was a prearranged signal. Levet and his assistant, Michel Libert, packed eighteen kilos of Burmese opium into a brown suitcase, put it in the trunk of Levet's blue Citroen sedan, and drove out to Bangkok's Don Muang Airport. Just as they were making the transfer to a courier who was ticketed on a regular commercial flight to Saigon, Thai police closed in. The unfortunate Libert was given five years in prison, but Levet was released for "lack of evidence" and deported. Levet disappeared without a trace, while Libert, after serving his full jail term, left for Laos, where he resumed an active role in Indochina's Corsican underworld. 

While Francisci is the only one of these Corsican racketeers believed to have been allied with Ngo Dinh Nhu, all of the charter airlines had to reach an accommodation with the Laotian government. All airports in Laos are classified as military terminals, and permission to take off and land requires an order from the Royal Laotian Army. Opium runs were usually classified as requisition militaire-military charters-and as such were approved by the Laotian high command. One Time correspondent who examined Air Laos Commercial's log books in November 1962 noted that a high percentage of its flights were listed as requisition militaire. (48) 

Despite the destructive infighting of the various Corsican airlines, they proved to be reliable opium suppliers, and the Laos-Saigon opium commerce flourished. Guaranteed reliable access to international markets, Laos's opium production climbed steadily during the ten-year period that the Corsican's controlled its opium economy; in 1953 Laos's annual harvest was estimated at 50 tons of raw opium, but in 1968 it had expanded to 100-150 tons. (49) Moreover, these syndicates, most notably Francisci's and Levet's, made regular morphine base shipments from Southeast Asia to heroin laboratories in Italy, Germany, and Marseilles. Although Southeast Asian morphine still accounted for a relatively small proportion of European heroin production in the late 1950's and early 1960's, these shipments established the first links of what was to be a veritable pipeline between the Golden Triangle's poppy fields and Marseilles's heroin laboratories-links that would take on added importance as Turkey's opium production ebbed toward abolition in the late 1960's.

Although they were forced out of business in 1965 when Laotian Gen. Ouane Rattikone decided to monopolize the trade, these syndicates later served as the link between Laotian heroin laboratories and American distributors when Golden Triangle laboratories began producing no. 4 heroin in the early 1970's. 

Gen. Phourni Nosavan: 

"Feudalism Is Still with US" 

According to Gen. Ouane Rattikone, the man who issued the "requisition militairy" and controlled much of the opium traffic was Gen. Phoumi Nosavan, CIA protege and political leader of the Laotian right wing. (50) Phoumi Nosavan was just another ambitious young colonel in 1958 when an unexpected electoral victory by the leftist Pathet Lao movement brought a neutralist government to power and panicked the U.S. mission. Horrified at the thought that Laos might eventually go left, the U.S. mission decided that special measures were called for. Almost immediately the CIA financed the formation of a right-wing coalition, and several weeks later the State Department plunged the neutralist government into a fiscal crisis by cutting off all aid. Little more than three months after the elections Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna and his neutralist government resigned. When a right-wing government took office the new prime minister, Phoui Sananikone, declared, "We are anticommunists." (51)  

Col. Phoumi Nosavan was one of the bright young men the CIA picked to organize the right wing. Backed by the CIA, Phourni became a cabinet minister in February 1959 and a general several months later. (52) With his personal CIA agent always by his side, General Phoumi went on to plot coups, rig elections, and help the CIA build up its Secret Army; in short, he became the major pawn in the CIA's determined effort to keep Laos's government militantly anti-Communist. However, in 1961 the Kennedy administration opted for a neutralist coalition rather than risk an armed confrontation with the Soviet Union over Laos, and General Phoumi was ordered to merge his right-wing government into a tripartite coalition. When General Phoumi refused despite personal appeals from President Kennedy and the assistant secretary of state, the State Department had his personal CIA agent transferred out of the country and in February 1962 cut off the $3 million a month aid it had been supplying his government. (53) 

Desperate for funds but determined not to resign, Pboumi turned to the opium traffic as an alternate source of funds for his army and government. Although he had controlled the traffic for several years and collected a payoff from both Corsican and Chinese smugglers, he was not actively involved, and his percentage represented only a small share of the total profits. Furthermore, Laotian opium merchants were still preoccupied with marketing locally grown opium, and very little Burmese opium was entering international markets through Laos. The obvious solution to General Phoumi's fiscal crisis was for his government to become directly involved in the import and export of Burmese opium. This decision ultimately led to the growth of northwest Laos as one of the largest heroin-producing centers in the world.

Adhering to his nation's feudal traditions, General Phoumi delegated responsibility for the task to Gen. Ouane Rattikone, commander of Military Region I and warlord of northwestern Laos. General Ouane recalls that he was appointed chairman of the semiofficial Laotian Opium Administration in early 1962 and charged with the responsibility of arranging Burmese opium imports. (54) Working through a commander in the Secret Army in Ban Houei Sai, he contacted a Shan rebel leader employed by the Agency in the Golden Triangle region who arranged the first deliveries of Burmese opium several months later. (55) General Ouane is proud of this historic achievement, for these were the first major opium caravans to cross the Mekong River into Laos.

When asked whether he exported the Burmese opium by dropping it in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, General Ouane responded: 

No, that is stupid and done only by small merchants and not great merchants. . . . We rented Dakotas [C-47's] from the civil aviation companies and then dropped the opium into the Gulf of Siam. The opium was wrapped in four or five layers of plastic and then attached to floats. It was dropped to small fishing boats, taken to fishing ports in South Vietnam, and then it disappeared. We are not stupid; we are serious merchants. (56) 

General Ouane says these early shipments were quite profitable, and claims that they provided General Phourni with an average income of about $35,000 a month during 1962. 

But despite General Ouane's best efforts, a series of military and financial reverses soon forced General Phourni to merge his right-wing government into the tripartite coalition. Phoumi's government had simply ordered the National Bank to print more money when American aid was cut off in February; the foreign exchange backing for Laotian currency declined by 30 percent in six Months and consumer prices in Vientiane jumped by 20 percent. General Phoumi had gone on a whirlwind tour of Asia's anti-Communist nations to appeal for aid, but only South Korea was willing to help. (57) When his rightist troops suffered a disastrous defeat at Nam Tha, northwestern Laos, in May 1962, General Phourni acknowledged his failure and in June merged his government into a neutralist coalition headed by Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna. 

But the price of General Phourni's compliance came high. Although he yielded some of his political power, he demanded compensatory economic concessions from the neutralist government. Bartering away several powerful ministries, Phourni retained control over the Finance Ministry and won the right to monopolize much of Vientiane's thriving consumer economy. With the prime minister's tacit consent, he established a variety of lucrative monopolies over the capital's vice trades and legitimate commercial activities. (58) 

One of his enterprises was an offensive but profitable gambling casino in downtown Vientiane that one journalist described as "an ugly, five story building that stank like an Indonesian urinal." When he announced plans to erect similar monstrosities in every major Laotian city, the king categorically refused to allow one in Luang Prabang, the royal capital, and local authorities in Thakhek raised equally vehement objections. But Phourni was not daunted by these minor reverses in the establishment of his financial empire. Gold trafficking was even more lucrative than gambling, and the Ministry of Finance granted General Phourni's Bank of Laos a monopoly on the import of gold, which netted him from $300,000 to $500,000 a year. (59) 

The opium trade, however, was the most profitable of all ventures. General Phoumi opened a seedy, ramshackle opium den in Vientiane that could accommodate 150 smokers. To ward off any possible criticism from his free world allies, Phourni had a sign hung over the entrance to his palace of dreams "Detoxification Clinic." When a French journalist asked Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna why this eyesore was allowed to remain open, he replied, "Feudalism is still with US." (60) 

Although Phoumi had abandoned his plans for fiscal independence from the United States, Gen. Ouane Rattikone continued to manage the Laotian Opium Administration with considerable success. Larger Shan caravans were entering northwestern Laos every year, and from 1962 to 1964 profits on exports to South Vietnam tripled. According to the Laotian Opium Administration's ledger, which General Ouane now stores in an upstairs closet of his Vientiane villa, November 1963 was a typical month: 1,146 kilos of raw opium were shipped to South Vietnam, netting $97,410. (61) 

But Phourni's parsimonious management of his monopolies produced serious tensions in the right-wing camp, and were a major cause of the April 19, 1964, coup that toppled him from power. Not only did he monopolize the most lucrative portions of Vientiane's economy, but he refused to share his profits with the other right-wing generals. 

The commander of the Vientiane Military Region, Gen. Kouprasith Abbay, considered the capital his rightful economic preserve, and was bitterly resentful toward Phourni. Gen. Ouane Rattikone harbored somewhat similar feelings: more than seven years after the coup, the genial, rotund General Ouane still knits his brow in anger when he recalls that Phourni paid him a monthly salary of two hundred dollars to manage an opium administration making more than a million dollars a year. (62) Moreover, Phourni's "understanding" with Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna had softened his hostility toward the neutralist government; and this cost him a great deal of political influence among the extreme right wing, which included both Kouprasith and Ouane. 

Although the ostensible motivation for the right-wing coup of April 19, 1964, was to eliminate the neutralist army and make the prime minister more responsive to the right wing, the generals seem to have devoted most of their energy to breaking up Phourni's financial empire. (63) The coup began at 4:00 A.m. as General Kouprasith's troops seized the city, captured most of the neutralist army officers, and placed the prime minister under house arrest. There was no resistance and virtually no bloodshed. While the threat of a U.S. aid cutoff convinced Kouprasith and Ouane to release the prime minister from house arrest, nothing could deter them from stripping Phourni of his power. (64) On May 2 General Phourni resigned his portfolio as minister of defense. That same day, the Ministry of Finance cancelled the import license for Sogimex Company, one of Phourni's businesses, which had enjoyed a monopoly on the import of all alcoholic beverages. The Revolutionary Committee closed his gambling casino, and the Ministry of Finance broke the Bank of Laos's monopoly on gold imports. (65) 

But in the best comic opera tradition, General Phoumi tried to recoup his lost empire by launching a counter coup on February 2, 1965. After four separate groups of soldiers wearing three different color-coded scarves charged about Vientiane firing off heavy artillery and machine guns for four or five days, Phourni finally gave up and fled to Thailand. (66) The situation was so confusing that General Ouane and General Kouprasith held a press conference on February 8 to proclaim their victory and to explain that there had most definitely been a coup-their coup. (67) 

As the victors, Kouprasith and Ouane divided up what remained of General Phourni's financial empire. While Kouprasith inherited most of the fallen general's real estate holdings, brothels, and opium dens in the Vientiane region, General Ouane assumed full control over the opium trade in northwestern Laos.

Ouane's accession to Phourni's former position in the drug trade brought an end to the activities of the Corsican "Air Opium" charter airlines. Unwilling to tolerate any competition, General Ouane refused to issue them requisitions militaires, thereby denying them access to Laotian airports. This made it impossible for the Corsican airlines to continue operating and forced them out of the opium transport business. (68) However, General Ouane had seriously overestimated his air logistic capabilities, and the move produced a major crisis for Laos's opium trade. 

As it turned out, Ouane probably could not have picked a worse time to force the Corsican's out of business. Laotian military air power was at a premium in 1964 and 1965: bombing operations along the Ho Chi Minh Trail were just getting underway; Lao T-28 fighters were being used in clandestine reprisal raids against North Vietnam; and renewed fighting on the Plain of Jars required lavish air support. (69) The commander of the  Laotian air force was determined to give these military operations top priority, and refused to allocate air transports for General Ouane's opium runs to Ban Houei Sai. 

In the Meo highlands of northeastern Laos the situation was even more critical. Capture of the Plain of Jars by Pathet Lao rebels in 1964 restricted government aircraft to temporary dirt landing strips on the surrounding mountain ridges. Heavy C-47 transports were almost useless for this kind of flying, and the Laotian air force had almost no light observation planes. Wartime conditions had increased Meo dependence on poppy cultivation, and the lack of air transport created serious economic problems for hill tribe opium farmers. Since the CIA was using the Meo population to combat Pathet Lao forces in the mountains of northeastern Laos, the prosperity and well being of this tribe was of paramount importance to the agency's success. By 1965 the CIA had created a Meo army of thirty thousand men that guarded radar installations vital to bombing North Vietnam, rescued downed American pilots, and battled Pathet Lao guerrillas. 

Without air transport for their opium, the Meo faced economic ruin. There was simply no form of air transport available in northern Laos except the CIA's charter airline, Air America And according to several sources, Air America began flying opium from mountain villages north and east of the Plain of Jars to Gen. Vang Pao's headquarters at Long Tieng. (70) 

Air America was known to be flying Meo opium as late as 1971. Meo village leaders in the area west of the Plain of Jars, for example, claim that their 1970 and 1971 opium harvests were bought up by Vang Pao's officers and flown to Long Tieng on Air America U.H-l.H helicopters. This opium was probably destined for heroin laboratories in Long Tieng or Vientiane, and ultimately, for G.I addicts in Vietnam. (71) 

The U.S. Embassy in Vientiane adopted an attitude of benign neglect toward the opium traffic. When one American journalist wrote the Embassy complaining that Laotian officials were involved in the drug trade, U.S. Ambassador G. McMurtrie Godley responded in a letter dated December 2, 1970: 

"Regarding your information about opium traffic between Laos and the United States, the purchase of opium in Southeast Asia is certainly less difficult than in other parts of the world, but I believe the Royal Laotian Government takes its responsibility seriously to prohibit international opium traffic. . . . However, latest information available to me indicated that all of Southeast Asia produces only 5% of narcotics which are, unfortunately, illegally imported to Great Britain and the US. As you undoubtedly are already aware, our government is making every effort to contain this traffic and I believe the Narcotics Bureau in Washington D.C. can give you additional information if you have some other inquiries." (72) 

But the latest information available to Ambassador Godley should have indicated that most of the heroin being used by American G.I's in Vietnam was coming from Laotian laboratories. The exact location of Laos's flourishing laboratories was common knowledge among even the most junior U.S. bureaucrats.

To Americans living in cities and suburbs cursed with the heroin plague, it may seem controversial, even shocking, that any U.S. government agency would condone any facet of the international drug traffic. But when viewed from the perspective of historical precedent and the demands of mountain warfare in northern Laos, Air America's involvement and the U.S. Embassy's tolerant attitude seem almost inevitable. Rather than sending U.S. combat troops into Laos, four successive American Presidents and their foreign policy advisers worked through the CIA to build the Meo into the only effective army in Laos. The fundamental reason for American complicity in the Laotian opium traffic lies in these policy decisions, and they can only be understood in the context of the secret war in Laos. [Understood???,fact is,time has PROVEN, that the CIA are the biggest drug dealers on the planet!!!!DC]

Secret War, Secret Strategy in Laos 

Noting with alarm the renewed guerrilla activity in South Vietnam and Laos in the late 1950's, American intelligence analysts interpreted these reports as the first signs of Communist plans for the subversion and conquest of Southeast Asia. And so CIA operations with Meo guerrillas in Laos began in 1959 as a part of a regional intelligence gathering program. General Edward G. Lansdale, who directed much of the Defense Department's strategic planning on Indochina during the early years of the Kennedy administration, recalls that these hill tribe operations were set up to monitor Communist infiltration: 

"The main thought was to have an early warning, trip-wire sort of thing with these tribes in the mountains getting intelligence on North Vietnamese movements. This would be a part of a defensive strategy of saving the riceproducing lowlands of Thailand and Vietnam by scaling off the mountain infiltration routes from China and North Vietnam." (73)

 In the minds of geopolitical strategists in the CIA's Special Operations division, potential infiltration routes stretched from the Shan hills of northeastern Burma, through the rugged Laotian mountains, and southward into the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. According to one retired CIA operative, Lt. Col. Lucien Conein, Agency personnel were sent to Laos in 1959 to supervise eight Green Beret teams then training Meo guerrillas on the Plain of Jars. (74) In 1960 and 1961 the CIA recruited elements of Nationalist Chinese paramilitary units based in northern Thailand to patrol the China/Burma border area (75) and sent Green Berets into South Vietnam's Central Highlands to organize hill tribe commando units for intelligence and sabotage patrols along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. (76) Finally, in 1962 one CIA operative based in northwestern Laos began sending trained Yao and Lahu tribesmen into the heart of China's Yunnan Province to monitor road traffic and tap telephones. (77) 

While the U.S. military sent half a million troops to fight a conventional war in South Vietnam, the mountain war has required only a handful of American personnel. "I always felt," said General Lansdale, "that a small group of Americans organizing the local population was the way to counter Communist wars of national liberation." (78) 

American paramilitary personnel in Laos have tended to serve long tours of duty, some of them for a decade or more, and have been given an enormous amount of personal power. If the conventional war in South Vietnam is best analyzed in terms of the impersonal bureaucracies that spewed out policies and programs, the secret war in Laos is most readily understood through the men who fought it. 

Three men, perhaps more than any of the others, have left their personal imprint on the conduct of the secret war: Edgar Buell, Anthony Poe, and William Young. And each in his own way illustrates a different aspect of America's conscious and unconscious complicity in the Laotian opium traffic.

William Young, perhaps one of the most effective agents ever, was born in the Burmese Shan States, where his grandfather had been a missionary to the hill tribes. Arriving in Burma at the turn of the century, Grandfather Young opened a Baptist mission in Kengtung City and began preaching to the nearby Lahu bill tribes. Although they understood little of his Christian message, a local oracle had once prophesied the coming of a white deity, and the Lahu decided that Reverend Young was God. (79) His son, Harold, later inherited his divinity and used it to organize Lahu intelligence gathering forays into southern China for the CIA during the 1950's. When William was looking for a job in 1958 his father recommended him to the CIA, and he was hired as a confidential interpreter-translator. A skilled linguist who spoke five of the local languages, he probably knew more about mountain minorities than any other American in Laos, and the CIA rightly regarded him as its "tribal expert." Because of his sophisticated understanding of the hill tribes, he viewed the opium problem from the perspective of a hill tribe farmer. Until a comprehensive crop substitution program was initiated, he felt nothing should be done to interfere with the opium traffic. In a September 1971 interview, Young explained his views:  

"Every now and then one of the James Bond types would decide that the way to deal with the problem was to detonate or machine-gun the factories. But I always talked them out of it. As long as there is opium in Burma somebody will market it. This kind of thing would only hurt somebody and not really deal with the problem." (80) 

If William Young was too sympathetic toward the hill tribes to interfere with the opium trade, Anthony Poe was indifferent to the problem. A marine in the Pacific during World War II, Poe joined the CIA's Special Operations division sometime after the war and quickly earned a reputation as one of its crack clandestine warfare operatives in Asia. (81) Just prior to his arrival in Southeast Asia, he played an important role in the CIA's Tibetan operations. When the CIA decided to back Tibet's religious ruler, the Dalai Lama, in his feud with Peking, Anthony Poe recruited Khamba tribesmen in northeastern India, escorted them to Camp Hate in Colorado for training, and accompanied them into Tibet on long-range sabotage missions. (82) His first assignment in Indochina was with anti-Sihanouk mercenaries along the Cambodian border in South Vietnam, and in 1963 Poe was sent to Laos as chief adviser to Gen. Vang Pao. (83) Several years later he was transferred to northwestern Laos to supervise Secret Army operations in the three-border area and work with Yao tribesmen. The Yao remember "Mr. Tony" as a drinker,an authoritarian commander who bribed and threatened to get his way, and a mercurial leader who offered his soldiers 500 kip (one dollar) for an ear and 5,000 kip for a severed head when accompanied by a Pathet Lao army cap. (84) His attitude toward the opium traffic was erratic. According to a former Laos U.S.A.I.D official, Poe refused to allow opium on his aircraft and once threatened to throw a Lao soldier, with half a kilo of opium, out of an airborne plane. At the same time, he ignored the prospering heroin factories along the Mekong River, and never stopped any of Ouane Rattikone's officers from using U.S.-supplied facilities to manage the drug traffic.

The most curious of this CIA triumvirate is Edgar "Pop" Buell, originally a farmer from Steuben County, Indiana. Buell first came to Laos in 1960 as an agricultural volunteer for International Voluntary Services (I.V.S), a Bible Belt edition of the Peace Corps. (85) He was assigned to the Plain of Jars, where the CIA was building up its secret Meo army, and became involved in the Agency's activities largely through circumstance and his own God-given anti-Communism. As CIA influence spread through the Meo villages ringing the Plain of Jars, Buell became a one-man supply corps, dispatching Air America planes to drop rice, meat, and other necessities the CIA had promised to deliver.(86) Buell played the innocent country boy and claimed his work was humanitarian aid for Meo refugees. However, his operations were an integral part of the CIA program.

As part of his effort to strengthen the Meo economy and increase the tribe's effectiveness as a military force, Buell utilized his agricultural skills to improve Meo techniques for planting and cultivating opium. "If you're gonna grow it, grow it good," Buell told the Meo, "but don't let anybody smoke the stuff." Opium production increased but, thanks to modern drugs that Buell supplied the Meo, local consumption for medicinal purposes declined. (87) Thus, more opium than ever was available for the international markets.

Since there were too few U.S. operatives to assume complete responsibility for daily operations in the hills of Laos, the CIA usually selected one leader from every hill tribe as its surrogate commander. The CIA's chosen ally recruited his fellow tribesmen as mercenaries, paid their salaries with CIA money, and led them in battle. Because the CIA only had as much influence with each tribe as its surrogate commander, it was in the agency's interest to make these men local despots by concentrating military and economic power in their hands. During the First Indochina War, French commandos had used the same technique to build up a force of six thousand Meo guerrillas on the Plain of Jars under the command of Touby Lyfoung. Recognizing the importance of opium in the Meo economy, the French flew Meo opium to Saigon on military transports and reinforced Touby Lyfoung's authority by making him their exclusive opium broker. 

But when the CIA began organizing its Meo army in 1960, only six years after the French disbanded theirs, it found Touby unsuitable for command. Always the consummate politician, Touby had gotten the best of the bargain from the French and had never committed his troops to a head-on fight. As one Meo veteran fondly remembers, "Touby always told us to fire a few shots and run." The CIA wanted a real slugger who would take casualties, and in a young Meo officer named Vang Pao they found him. 
Touby had once remarked of Vang Pao, "He is a pure military officer who doesn't understand that after the war there is a peace. And one must be strong to win the peace." (88), For Vang Pao, peace is a distant, childhood memory. Vang Pao saw battle for the first time in 1945 at the age of thirteen, while working as an interpreter for French commandos who had parachuted onto the Plain of Jars to organize anti-Japanese resistance. (89) Although he became a lieutenant in the newly formed Laotian army, Vang Pao spent most of the First Indochina War on the Plain of Jars with Touby Lyfoung's Meo irregulars. In April 1954 he led 850 hill tribe commandos through the rugged mountains of Sam Neua Province in a vain attempt to relieve the doomed French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. 

When the First Indochina War ended in 1954, Vang Pao returned to regular duty in the Laotian army. He advanced quickly to the rank of major and was appointed commander of the Tenth Infantry Battalion, which was assigned to the mountains east of the Plain of Jars. Vang Pao had a good enough record as a wartime commando leader; in his new command Vang Pao would first display the personal corruption that would later turn him into such a despotic warlord. 

In addition to his regular battalion, Vang Pao was also commander of Meo self-defense forces in the Plain of Jars region. Volunteers had been promised regular allotments of food and money, but Vang Pao pocketed these salaries, and most went unpaid for months at a time. When one Meo lieutenant demanded that the irregulars be given their back pay, Vang Pao shot him in the leg. That settled the matter for the moment, but several months later the rising chorus of complaints finally came to the attention of Provincial Army Commander Col. Kham Hou Boussarath. In early 1959, Colonel Kham Hou called Vang Pao to his headquarters in Meng Khouang, and ordered him to pay up. Several days later thirty of Vang Pao's soldiers hidden in the brush beside the road tried to assassinate Colonel Kham Hou as he was driving back from an inspection tour of the frontier areas and was approaching the village of Lat Houang. But it was twilight and most of the shots went wild. Kham Hou floored the accelerator and emerged from the gantlet unscathed. 

As soon as he reached his headquarters, Colonel Kham Hou radioed a full report to Vientiane. The next morning Army Chief of Staff Ouane Rattikone arrived in Meng Khouang. Weeping profusely, Vang Pao prostrated himself before Ouane and begged for forgiveness. Perhaps touched by this display of emotion or else influenced by the wishes of U.S. special forces officers working with the Meo, General Ouane decided not to punish Vang Pao. However, most of the Laotian high command seemed to feel that his career was now finished. (90)   

But Vang Pao was to be rescued from obscurity by unforeseen circumstances that made his services invaluable to the Laotian right wing and the CIA. 

About the same time that Vang Pao was setting up his abortive ambush, Gen. Phoumi Nosavan was beginning his rise to power. In the April 1959 National Assembly elections, Phoumi's candidates scored victory after victory, thus establishing him as Laos's first real strong man. However, the election was blatantly rigged, and aroused enormous resentment among politically aware elements of the population. The American involvement in election fixing was obvious, and there were even reports that CIA agents had financed some of the vote buying. (91)

Angered by these heavy-handed American moves, an unknown army officer, Capt. Kong Le, and his paratroop battalion launched an unexpected and successful coup on August 8, 1960. After securing Vientiane and forcing Phourni's supporters out of power, Kong Le turned the government over to the former neutralist prime minister, Souvanna Phouma, on August 16. Souvanna announced that he would end the simmering civil war by forming a neutralist government that would include representatives from left, right, and center. The plan was on the verge of success when General Phoumi suddenly broke off negotiations in early September and returned to his home in Savarmakhet, where he announced the formation of the Revolutionary Committee. (92) Perhaps not altogether unexpectedly, dozens of unmarked Air America transports began landing at Savarmakhet loaded with arms, soldiers, and American advisers (93) and Laos was plunged into a three way civil war. The CIA backed right wing was in Savarmakhet, the neutralists were in Vientiane, and the leftist Pathet Lao was in the forests of Sam Neua Province (the extreme northeast). Everything in between was virtually autonomous, and all three factions competed for territory and influence in the undeclared provinces. 

While the right-wingers quickly consolidated their hold over the south, the neutralists initially gained the upper hand in Xieng Khouang Province, which included the Plain of Jars. This success strengthened the neutralist position considerably; with three major roads meeting on the plain, Xieng Khouang was the strategic key to northeastern Laos. The influential Meo leader Touby Lyfoung was minister of justice for the neutralist government, and seemed to be working closely with Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma. (94) The neutralist position in the northeast further improved when the newly appointed commander of Military Region 11 (Sam Neua and Xieng Khouang provinces), Col. Kham Hou, declared his loyalty to the neutralist government on September 28. (95) 

General Phourni's camp was extremely worried about its lack of support in strategic MR 11. After Col. Kham Hou rebuffed their overtures, Phourni's agents reportedly contacted Vang Pao in late September. They promised him financial support if he would lead a Meo coup against the neutralists, thus bringing MR It into the rightist orbit. According to Laotian army sources, Vang Pao radioed Savarmakhet on October 1 or 2, requesting money and arms from General Phourni. On October 5, an unmarked Air America transport from Savannakhet dropped thirty rightist paratroopers and several hundred rifles to Vang Pao's supporters on the Plain of Jars. Later that day Vang Pao called a meeting of local Meo leaders at the village of Lat Houang. Surrounded by the paratroopers, Vang Pao told a crowd of about three hundred to four hundred Meo that he supported General Phourni and promised guns for all those who joined him in the fight against the neutralists. (96) 

When word of the incipient Meo revolt reached Vientiane, Prime Minister Souvanna Phourna sent his minister of justice, Meo leader Touby Lyfoung, up to the Plain of Jars to negotiate with Vang Pao. Instead of dissuading Vang Pao, however, Touby diplomatically bowed to superior force and joined him. Using his considerable talents as a negotiator, Touby met with Col. Kham Hou and urged him not to interfere with the Meo revolt. Unwilling to engage in unnecessary slaughter and somewhat sympathetic to the right wing, Col. Kham Hou agreed not to fight, (97) thus effectively conceding control of the Plain of Jars to the right wing.

Confused by the murky situation, Souvanna Phourna dispatched another emissary, General Amkha, the inspector general of the neutralist army, on October 7. But the moment General Amkha stepped off the plane, Vang Pao arrested him at gunpoint and had him flown to Savannakhet, aboard an unidentified transport, where he remained in prison for almost three years on General Phourni's orders. That same day Touby was "invited" to Savarmakhet and left on a later flight. When Col. Kham Hou resigned from command shortly thereafter, General Phoumi rewarded Vang Pao by appointing him commander of Xieng Khouang Province. (98) 

to be continued 219s(98e)