CIA's Laotian Army-Some Still Insist "It Was Worth It" Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Friday, April 28 3:49 PM SGT Covert CIA-recruited Hmong army: abandoned but proud WASHINGTON, April 28 (AFP) - Colonel Wangyee Vang was just 14 years old when he became a demolition expert for the covert CIA-backed Hmong army fighting the North Vietnamese. "Tony Poe, a CIA case officer, came to our home town. He trained me," Wangyee recalled. "All my brothers, cousins and relatives joined." Capitalizing on the Hmong's own fight against communism, the CIA recruited Wangyee Vang and more than 100,000 Laotian Hmong, a fiercely independent tribal hill people, to interdict the North Vietnamese. "It was worth it. We were able to save our people and save many American young," Wangyee Vang told AFP. "If there had been no Hmong to intercept (the north Vietnamese) there would be many more Americans killed." Led by General Vang Pao, the Hmong finally received US Congressional recognition for their part in the Vietnam war in 1997. "I am proud of working with the Americans," Vang Pao, now an old man in his 70s, told AFP, explaining that he allied his people with US forces in an attempt to bring democracy to Laos. And although the Hmong leader is less enthusiastic about the outcome of the war, in which an estimated 35,000 Hmong died, his objectives remain the same. "I think the Americans wanted to win for political and economic reasons, and did not (push through) to a military victory," he said. "I think we will continue to push the US government to bring Laos back to democracy." Thousands of sorties were flown from Laos: it was the largest covert operation in US history, with some 50,000 Hmong fighters on the ground for the duration of the war, many in their early teens. The Hmong, a largely farming people turned guerrillas, emerged as crucial US allies in the war, recovering downed US pilots and protecting radar sites that guided US bombing raids in North Vietnam. Veteran Thai C. Vang recalled fighting alongside US troops to defend the CIA's famed Lima Site 85, a secret US bombing control radar station based inside Laos set on top of a 5,600-foot rock-cliff ridgeline. In spite of heavy bombing, the North Vietnamese had managed to build roads to the position, which was guiding almost a quarter of all air strikes against northern Vietnam. The ensuing battle for Lima Site 85 was vicious. "We were on the top with the US officers. There was shelling all day and night, with the North Vietnamese climbing up the rocks to the top, throwing TNT and hand grenades. "We fought from about five in the morning to 9 a.m. Then US helicopters came in to pick up the US officers. We were left to fight," he told AFP. But they were defeated. By 1975, after US forces ignominiously pulled out of Saigon, Hmong leaders ordered their troops to withdraw from the frontline. But there was no US plan in place to evacuate the Hmong from vengeful Vietnamese forces. Rogue CIA officers, defying orders, flew in C-130 and C-143s and evacuated some 2,500 Hmong fighters to a former US air force base in northeast Thailand at Nam Phong. The rest were left to fight and walk 30 to 60 days to the Thai border. Many died along the way or drowned trying to cross the Mekong river. Twenty-five years later, many of these fighters, slowly brought with their families from refugee camps in the Thai jungle to the United States, are still struggling for US citizenship. But a stone in Washington's Arlington Memorial Cemetery dedicated to Hmong and Lao combat participants reminds visitors that these veterans "will never be forgotten." ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytas-04.28.00-17:26:12-24114