What the U.S. Is Doing There

IN the spring of 1946, an American OSS veteran named James Thompson paid a call on the governor of Thailand's Nong Khai province. "Come upstairs," said the governor. "I have a Lao prince you might like to meet." The governor's guest was Prince Souphanouvong, then a leader of the embryo Laotian independence movement and now titular head of the pro-Communist Pathet Lao. Souphanouvong asked Thompson for pledges of U.S. support against the French colonialists who were then re-establishing their control over Laos. Their talk was, almost certainly, the first contact between American officials and independence-minded Laotians.

No American help was forthcoming in 1946. Since then, however, U.S. aid to Laos has grown to the point where its withdrawal would cause the collapse of the Vientiane government.

In the early 1950s, American funds flooded into Indo-China, but mostly to support the French in their ill-fated effort to defeat the Viet Minh, Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary army. Laos remained on the periphery until the Geneva cease-fire was signed in 1954. From that point, the U.S. presence in Laos grew, spurred by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' determination to prevent Southeast Asia from falling under Communist domination.

After 1955, the Pathet Lao (with heavy North Vietnamese support) tightened their hold on northeast Laos. The Royal Laotian Army--trained by U.S. advisers along conventional lines--proved incapable of fighting a counterinsurgency war. By 1959, a mysterious mission known as the Programs Evaluation Office (PEO) was functioning in Vientiane. Ostensibly an arm of the U.S. aid mission, its actual function was to oversee training of the Laotian army, and it had almost total control of all U.S. aid to Laos. The money, however, failed to shore up the Vientiane government. A new Geneva accord signed in 1962 called for the establishment of a tripartite government in Vientiane, with Prince Souvanna Phouma's neutralists holding the balance between General Phoumi Nosavan's right-wing forces and Souphanouvong's Pathet Lao. Foreign troops were expressly forbidden.

The accord was completely ignored. As the war in Viet Nam intensified, increasing numbers of North Vietnamese poured into Laos to defend the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Chinese road builders appeared all over the north. U.S. advisers flocked to Vientiane, and American planes filled the skies--bombers to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail and transports to ferry government troops around.

Politically, the U.S. found itself backing a brace of hopelessly ineffective right-wing leaders. After 1962, U.S. support grudgingly switched to Souvanna, who had previously been ignored if not excoriated for his neutralist views.

For Souvanna, American backing has proved to be no great blessing. Despite total U.S. air supremacy, the Communist forces seem to be able to seize and hold pretty much what they need. The regular Laotian army is famed for its ineffectiveness. The CIA-supported Meos, a guerrilla army of mountain tribesmen, are far superior but are not capable of standing up to North Vietnamese regulars in pitched battle. The U.S. presence, however, is substantial, and the program goes far beyond simply supporting military operations. Aid now runs at more than $250 million a year in a country of only 3 million people, one-third of them under Communist control.

According to the American embassy in Vientiane, there are 2,350 Americans in Laos--833 U.S. Government employees and the rest dependents. The real total is far higher, for the official figures do not include American personnel assigned for three-to six-month temporary tours of duty in Laos, or CIA men who spend their nights in Thailand but commute daily to Long Cheng. Many of them are Green Berets who have completed their Army service and signed up as "spooks." American casualties in Laos are equally difficult to assess. The Pentagon will say only that since 1961, the U.S. has lost 193 air crewmen--Army, Air Force and Navy--over Laos, chiefly while bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It is not known whether the missing men have been captured or killed.

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