The Untold Story Of The CIA's War In Laos | America's Secret War | Timeline

my name's dan snow and i want to tell you about history hit tv it's like the netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit tv you can either follow the information below this video or just google history hit tv and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video my fellow americans laos is far away from america but the world is small it's two million people live in a country three times the size of austria the security of all southeast asia will be endangered if laos loses its neutral independence its own safety runs with the safety of us all in real neutrality observed by all i want to make it clear to the american people and to all the world that all we want in laos is peace not war [Music] my father was part of the heavy artillery unit i actually stayed with him in the fox his foxhole overlooking uh long chain when the communists infiltrated long gang he was out there firing his 105 and 155 guns so i was out there with my father then i'll be in the foxhole [Music] so i all i could hear was you know all these constant bombardment these these cannons going off and rockets flying during that time at night they would fire flares and these flares there'll be a little parachute that would glide it down i mean that's why it came down really slow and so um we as kids we would often seek out those parachutes for toys after the conflict calmed down the next day i woke up really early and went out and searched for those parachutes and i got near the airfield and i saw these dead vietnamese it was all quiet and everything so i decided probably not safe for me to be here so i walked back home home was a secret military base in the mountains of northern laos called lung chang the base was also known as headquarters for the cia's clandestine operations in the country commanded by general vang pao to his forces he was a george washington-like figure general was not a person like us he was a hmong people still honor and believe in vain power general van paol had a calling fight against the violent north vietnamese communist invasion of laos few in the united states were aware that next door to the vietnam war in laos the cia was running a full-blown military operation minus most of the us armed forces [Music] it was the so-called secret war the communist pathet law with the backing of ho chi minh's north vietnamese army were the enemy mong kumu lao mian and soldiers of all ethnicities defended laos with the help of some very powerful and secretive friends the war was run by the cia and the state department so the state department and the cia are not part of the department of defense the secret war became a model for future war operations carried out by the cia the clandestine war in laos killed tens of thousands of lao citizens among the hardest hit were the hmong of northern laos tens of thousands died in the war even more lost their lives escaping to freedom after the war while the vietnam war was televised nightly the secret war lingered in the shadows they are left at a village deep in enemy territory the reason law was important was during that time there was the red scare right so basically fear communism combine is gonna drop communism gonna dominate southeast asia we already have china there and so you have north vietnam now it's a communist state and so if the country flowers falls then the rest of that region would fall to communism it would turn red so it's the dominant theory right so if one domino falls the resident would fall us president dwight d eisenhower was particularly concerned that if laos fell it would be a gateway to india a communist domination of an entire hemisphere [Music] after the geneva conference in 1954 no one was supposed to be in laos north vietnamese was using laos as a staging area to resupply and law was supposed to be neutral no one needs to touch the country of laws in the end neutralism was impossible the efforts of a communist dominated group to destroy this neutrality never ceased in the last half of 1960 a series of sudden maneuvers occurred and the communists and their supporters turned to a new and greatly intensified military effort to take over and so the united states basically said okay so if north vietnam is going to play this game we can do the same thing and instead of using our own troops right that we can use in the indigenous people and that's why colonel bellaire was sent over to train the hmong people to fight as surrogate soldiers of the american armed forces because they couldn't be there military forces can't be there but they send cia advisors biller was at that period of time the ca agent in southeast asia and when biller got to uh laos the first person that he sought was general powell colon and village came to ask him yet another vanguard if the royal law government send you ammunition guns i would like to ask you if someday you and your home people are going to turn the guns against the royal agreement colonel van gaal said that colombia i am officer of the royal lao army my mom said yes and i we never turn our guns against our royal army and because of that they ask you for help two days after the royal lao army sent to military dakota to drop ammunition indians and food from lutheran colombia in his son use in that moment the u.s and the moon became bound to one another whether by choice or necessity no war to keep the communist north vietnamese and papa lao from overthrowing the royal lao government i think for the moment what they really would want is just just forget about the war we don't want any part of it you know we just want to live free they had to choose either the communists or the king and ring power even if the communists ruled laos or the king ruled laos it's the same for them they're still a minority right they're still going to be discriminated against they'd rather not pay the price if they don't have to the fact that they ended up paying the price in northeastern laos on both sides you know was because they were forced to choose you know one side or the other chin nobody questioned whether it was a good or bad idea during that time it was mandatory if you didn't let your family members men and sons get recruited there were consequences the training team comes with vong if we became soldiers then we would have shoes clothes and hats to wear and receive monthly wages we became soldiers so that we wouldn't be poor during that time i was still a young boy and only able to babysit children i was probably 10 or 11 years old after i finished high school i wanted to go to vientine to learn english to become a teacher and it teaches among children in the villages but because of this war i had to let the dream go and became a soldier cia operatives like jerry daniels worked hand in glove with general vang powell general vengpao was hmong an ethnic group much persecuted by the dominant culture they were sometimes called barbarians or male a holdover from the chinese who chased them out of their country the united vengpao essentially ran the northern part of the secret war together they were a powerful team didn't know why we were in this war and for what they taught us how to use knives and guns and told us that we were going to fight in the war there were two goals one goal was to protect the country from the path the second goal was to help the americans but we didn't know why we were helping them the 57 millimeter recoilless rifle is the ideal weapon hung soldiers were trained in guerrilla tactics by americans and thai specialists they were called special guerrilla units or sgus the sgus are are the toughest you know the ones who die first uh the ones who have to go you know like like the marines right like the american marines that we always send first in south vietnam the u.s fought conventional war tactics and then the communists fought guerilla tactics against the us and laos is completely opposite the communists had the conventional war tactics and then the hmong used guerrilla tactics against them soldiers were desperately needed so training was a hurried affair on the third day we learned how to shoot the 60 and 81 and throw grenades we learned the basic training for three days and then went to war on the ground the people's army of north vietnam the communists were known for the unrelenting fighting style when one soldier fell others behind him kept coming the sgus responded in kind battles were fierce brutal injuries were common [Music] [Music] and they were sent to battle that day we were on two helicopters these helicopters were transporting us [Music] there were about 12 of them in the helicopter [Music] as the helicopter started to land close to communist lines everyone started jumping off [Music] before they all could get off the communists through [Music] the helicopter swerved off immediately with two soldiers still in it [Music] they must have thought that they were safe because they were fighting together but they all died [Music] one time they shot at me and a bullet hit me right in the rib and lodged into my lung they threw grenades and they exploded near me hitting the bullet that hit me in my lung caused blood to rush up into my throat i started to feel the blood clogging my throat making it hard to breathe so i spit it out well i had some medicine in my pocket so i took it out and ate it i also had some morphine so i shot one in my arm there was so much blood that i had to take off my shirt a grenade then went off about two feet behind me the logs behind me exploded into my back butt arms hands and legs it was so hard to walk because of the pain so i started crawling the flies and leeches were everywhere they were getting into my eyes and my wounds as i lay to rest for a while in my large pool of blood i came upon a group of soldiers near a small hill and i called out to them they were not a part of my group they were yao soldiers i was sitting inside an abandoned communist bunker and so when i called to them they came to help me there were six of them they took me to their base where they put me by the campfire and told me to warm up here my captain heard that i was at their base so he and another soldier came to get me my captain told me that we needed to leave because a helicopter was not able to pick me up here and the communists were planning to attack this base tonight i told them that i was in too much pain to walk they continued to convince me that if we stayed then we would get captured and i had already suffered this far i was in too much pain so they told me they were caring as they held me up i felt the bullet in my lung and all the wounds on my legs it was so painful i thought i was going to die they both slowly carried me and we walked back to an area overnight the next day they attempted to airlift me but they were unable to [Music] foreign [Music] as in all wars witnessing death pained the soul [Music] during war when one of your soldiers or friends dies there will be tears but you think that it's him and it's not me if you get hurt you wonder why me will my [Music] to their families and they came and cried to me they'd come and cry to me and i didn't know what to do [Music] [Music] i asked if there was any financial assistance for them they would get some money and then i wouldn't see these families again [Music] we had a group of widows he would put their family name in this group and there was someone that took care of their needs this is what makes me sad [Music] while the special gorilla units were in the midst of unforgiving hand-to-hand combat air support and aerial assaults piled up more damage against the north vietnamese and pathet lau the royal law army supplied pilots while the americans supplied flight training in the t20 planes used in battle the cia's air america a so-called charter airline along with a secret group of officially unofficial u.s air force pilots called the ravens provided forward air support they spotted the enemy relayed positions and asked the t28s to go after them [Music] radar and satellite tracking were crucial to air operations only in recent years has the u.s acknowledged an isolated installation called lima site-85 to the hmong who called the area home it was pupati lima site-85 was run by the us air force the only place in laos where air force personnel are publicly known to have served during the secret war more than half of all bombing operations against north vietnam were guided by lima site 85 the small group of u.s airmen and the hmong soldiers who guarded the site were of tremendous importance to both the vietnam war and the secret war you know what the hell how the vietnamese soldiers do at night only they go over there and cut the throat of the american the soldier or the official american all together over there yeah among two all the soldiers over there up there that time american they see a lost big important place over there because the vietnamese know exactly what they do over there during the war most hmong women were charged with a hard physical labor of keeping their family farms up and running raising their children and supplementing the family income in whatever way they could she had a little stall where she sold vegetables and things like that and so my mother's doll was right by the airport so every time the planes come in you would see all these dust rising you know planes landing taking off constantly all day long and never stop [Music] a much smaller number of among women worked away from home choi tau was the first home nurse trained as a medic to care for the wounded one night we at the site 72 is a small airport and the american wrong the b-52 yeah bombed by mistake in long chain and they brought 270 casualty to the hospital that night no doctor there everybody go bien chen only me and another loud medic so i told him that hey you and me we had to run for 270 to check hey hey are you alone hey hey are you bleeding are you late or i'm broken you know we work very hard and like i told you know what how i say you better be nice to us and one time he hit his finger they tried to kill him on the back they hit this finger because in lao custom loud belief among believe that he had good protection with him he yelling when the nurse was washing his tiny finger then i was angry i go and hold his hand and say come on general you are my son-in-law because you marry one of my nurses the best nurse listen then i hold his hand and i said give me a syringe they give me a swing and i say is that okay he said what are you gonna do i said because y'all ain't i'm gonna give medicine in here and not hurting you oh no i don't like the needle i say as soon as general the soldier cut off the arm cover the leg i never see you and now your tiny finger doesn't hurt and he looked at me very strange i said stop looking at me [Music] start looking at me like that i want will you i want you to come and visit those soldiers sometimes but you have so busy i never see you then after that yeah he come visit um [Music] an nbc news crew captured the head of all hmong forces general vang pao on one of his later visits since 1961 the secret war had swallowed northern laos losses were heavy on both sides [Music] the paris peace accords were signed in 1973 ostensibly putting an end to the war in vietnam next door jenna vanpa was pushing hard to continue fighting the communist north vietnamese and pathet lao had not let up but a corner had been turned the u.s wanted out of southeast asia and that included laos finally this sign the indian peace accord on february 21st 1973 the two sides the communists and the royal law government were to jointly rule laos with the third group neutralists providing a middle ground all were to be equal it was a tenuous arrangement enemies coming together to rule after decades of war the people of laos had hope they created a representative congress called the national political consultative council the leaders of the three parties were meeting regularly optimism was in the air i was asked by the royal woman to be part of a task force to plan for the future my task force and i even to do workshop from north laos to south loud to plan for national reconciliation social and economic development and everywhere i went i saw the population was very happy to see peace coming lao citizens were officially going to be at peace for the first time since the start of the french indochina war in the 50s but the north vietnamese and the pathet lao were secretly making plans to forcibly take the country general vangpao's headquarters at long gang were a prized target if the communists could take it then a march into the capital of indian was almost certain communist forces spent months sending thousands of soldiers to surround lon kang then they waited for word to attack it was mid-may 1975 saigon in cambodia had both already fallen general vang pao was said to have known that they were coming he was ready to stay and fight but the cia ordered him to make a clandestine escape to safety in thailand no one was to know for fear of the chaos his absence could cause his closest soldiers engineered his escape by first getting him out of his house [Music] when we got to the steps i took off my hat because they had a large brim and put it on [Music] [Music] the american usaid helicopter was already circling in the river valley waiting for us they circled up and landed next to the fish pond the general started to enter with one foot and used both hands to hold onto the bars above his head and then he steps back down i don't know what he was thinking he points his finger to the sky and spins it around thank god he then stamped his foot twice on the ground and got on the helicopter the door closed and the helicopter took off at that time i felt like i could have died i was sad and to this day i still feel disappointed because he had always said that you will go with me when the helicopter took off he left me behind my hope was completely gone and i thought he left [Music] escape was meant to be secret word got out those who could made their way to long king in hopes of getting a flight to safety too grandparents cousins aunts and uncles were gathered together to make the trek to the mountains to lung chang it was very chaotic during that time and when we got there it was several thousand people were all waiting there and then soon the plane started to come and then it landed and then people were just like literally we know that those uh planes were only reserved for military officers in fact general powell said that each of those planes were designated for a colonel when the plane landed and they said this is kuno sandang young's airplane and so my dad said okay if it's cool it's airplane then let's go and so everybody flocked and then they you know these c-46 quite high so you need to climb the stairs all the way to the door and so they pushed us and then my dad pushed us my mom got in my brothers got in i got in and then they closed the door and it was like sardines in that c-46 you could probably fit about 30 people in there but must have had been over 100 people in there when we arrived in nam pong we got out and looked around and it was my dad was my brother was my grandma grandpa and aunts and uncle looked around and see them and i remember waiting at the airport with my mom to see when the next plane's gonna land and whether my dad and my grandma grandpa was gonna step off so waited until like nine o'clock or so and the c-130 came and the c-130 landed and my dad and grandma and grandpa came out the communist forces took over lon king on may 15 1975 and seized power in the capital of vien kin just three months later as one war ended for the hmong another began this one was a fight to get out of the country and then on to france america australia or whichever country would take the refugees [Music] during the time of vaingp i was still in laos for me life was very normal it didn't seem like a war uh what seemed like a war was after you know afterwards only a fraction of those who wanted to escape were able to get out the rest had to stay and plot other ways to leave the country for they were in danger the communists had declared that the hmong were to be hunted and killed because they worked for the much hated united states if they surrendered and cooperated they would be sent to seminar or re-education camps indoctrination torture deprivation food deprivation especially where you're giving you know just very minimal rice and water called in daily to be beaten psychologically tortured where they would pull the gun to your head like russian roulette type of things and you never know when the bullet is going to hit you and if you survive it then they take you back to your barracks and the next day starts over [Music] rather than surrender entire multi-generational families spent years hiding where they knew best in the dense mountain forests or in remote villages on the highest mountaintops like pumbia always on the move alert for the next phalanx of communist soldiers my father had already anticipated you know the attack because he had military experience so every night we would go sleep in our field houses rather than stay in the village you know because he knew he knew that they were going to attack the village at any any moment at the actual time of the attack we were actually in our fields on a mountain that overlooks the village so you know i watched from the mountain the village being bombed and attacked and all the villagers someone killed others scattered after that they we just ran from from our field houses you know up to pumbia like run further up ran out of food just like eating roots and whatever we could find in the jungle and and then the comments just kept coming you know just kept attacking us as we're running we went around the mountain twice all the men left because they felt that if they stayed and they were captured they would definitely be killed and then they told the women to go surrender so we came back to our village and then we surrendered to the communists so after that we lived with the communists for a whole year surviving in communist villages meant wrenching choices the her family mom kuyang and dad sia ying were perilously close and i having their daughter sia make it to america during that time were so depressed we didn't know whether we were going to die today or tomorrow we were poor and starving those of us leaving the village were so poor and scared we're afraid of being killed by the pettadlao we're also afraid that the pacquiao were going to find and kill my father and our husbands in the jungle we were afraid of everything [Music] during that time my sister-in-law was pregnant i was pregnant and my cousin was pregnant my father and the men lived in the jungles and when we were pregnant we were afraid that the pathetic law would know that my father and his men were close and that was how we became pregnant [Music] i was pregnant with you for about two months everyone started telling me that i should find some medicine to abort you they said that we might have trouble with the peptide law so i decided to find some medicine to abort you we're all afraid that the pathetic law would investigate and cause trouble for us so that's why we decided to abort my sister-in-law and cousin changed their minds and decided not to they decided that they were willing to take a risk regardless of what the pad type law would do but i decided that i would still abort [Music] i knew that your mom was pregnant with you but we were afraid that the communists were going to cause problems for your mom so i also agreed to finding medicine to abort [Music] i sought out people who were known to have medicine that aborts babies they guaranteed that it would work they gave me their best medicine but for some reason it didn't work i gave birth to sia in december back then we gave birth in the jungles when i gave birth to sia i knew that i drank too much of the medicine ceo was black and blue when she was born as i continued to care for her and raised her she got older the black and blue colors slowly went away and she continued to get bigger without any problems [Music] whether families surrendered or hid in the jungles the ultimate goal was escape groups of people and sometimes entire villages crept through the forest evading the enemy on their way out of the mountains to the lowland river banks of the mekong river avoiding towns and in roads you know going through the jungle literally hacking the jungle you know with knives and the women and children falling behind and eventually we did hit the mekong on the other shore miles away was thailand and freedom from certain death my father said the trip to the mekong for me it was just like you know one suffering after another i don't have memory of how many days but my father said it actually took us 28 days because we got lost twice you know we got lost toys first we ran into a pack of elephants and some people were attacked and wounded and then our guides left us behind next we ran into a military fort the people in front were attacked a lot of people was killed the next big obstacle was how do we cross it of course there's no boats we have no idea where we were along the mekong zombie the river was also patrolled by the pathet lao soldiers like these who were interviewed for a documentary by the french television channel tf1000 did not know how to swim and with a fast-moving river as wide as two miles many people drowned so my father said okay chop down as much bamboo as we can carry come back use that you know as floats years later people made story cloths or pandau to process their experiences put two poles you know in triangle like this and they fit another pole and it fits right under your armpit and then you put another pole right behind it you get in there and tie in and then you they strong the bamboos together so one family would be floating together we waited until night fall and then we just plunge right right into the river and swim you know literally swim for your life even tiny things like crying babies were a mortal danger silence meant survival [Music] it was 1979 in march we had a third child who was a little girl we were about to escape to thailand as we got closer to the mekong river everyone in our group agreed that we would be unhappy with anyone who had a crying child which would have given away her location and guiding us killed we didn't give opium to the older two we gave opium to our youngest one who was about 16 days old after we gave her some liquid opium she became not everyone was lucky children and the elders were especially vulnerable when we crossed the mekong my dad actually put me with two other relatives of ours [Music] so i was actually separated from my family and i got to thailand i was actually alone my biggest fear was [Music] that my parents would die right they would be shot especially my dad and now they're really gone so i was just thinking like oh my god i could be an orphan and somehow i knew that there was a ban vinai and my parents had told me that i had it aunt there so then i was thinking like wow i i may have to go to banvinai and find my aunt high soldiers and aid workers patrolled the mekong in order to collect those who made it across over 50 000 women were estimated to have died trying to get into thailand more than were killed during the war french television's tf1 documentary crew happened upon some hmong refugees as they first stepped foot into thailand survivors were taken to temporary camps to wait for permanent placement in a refugee camp there'll be loads and loads of buses that would keep coming you know and i was just sitting there looking at the people that you know disembarked from the bus and thinking where's my mom where's my dad you know and every bus that came i didn't see them and finally i saw my mom came out and i remember the relief you know and i just ran toward her and i was just crying and my mom was crying too because she thought i had died you know there were 29 refugee camps scattered across thailand with the northern ones home to most of the hmong refugees minnesota was one of the states that hmong refugees sought out local tv station wcco sent a crew to document bon vinai the largest of the hmong refugee camps with around 40 000 people the population of a small city crammed onto 400 acres to say it was crowded was an understatement each family was assigned a tiny living space with virtually no privacy there were many people living here they were the educated wealthy and poor people here there were also the good the bad and enemies we all lived here together we lived in poor conditions no bathrooms and bad hygiene if you needed to poop or pee you would have to dig hoes for yourself water was not good to drink these were some things that everyone struggled heavily with living here there was a lot of illness and death everyone was faced with death and loss the path that we took to bury the dead there was not one day where we didn't carry the dead to be buried thai officials wielded incredible power over the moon in the camps [Music] in the mornings they would blare the thai national anthem and on the radio when you're supposed to stand right stand at attention with your hand of course over your heart and hmong people they don't have that kind of practice they never salute it you know they had a role where if you move while the national anthem is being played whether you are a child or an adult they would either hit you or they could put you in jail for a period of 24 hours and i remember probably one time i moved for days and nights i had this nightmare about some thai officer coming in and carting me off i did witness some beating you know right where the thai police would be in there people didn't stand they continued doing what they want and then they would just pick some guy and beat him up kids did a lot of growing up in the camps i remember going to the market with my father in the couple remember yeah they would play these thai songs i remember your favorite singer bandana right and that market was the first time i heard him sing and i was looking at some yams and the only reason why i remember that particular yam really well was because i was examining it only because the song was on and my father looked really sad and i didn't want to look at his face so i looked at the at this fruit that was in front of me i remember that fruit because of that scene in that market some families spent more than a decade in the refugee camps children were born there people married neighborhoods were created all the while waiting for their names to show up on the list of families approved to leave and even then it wasn't simple our name came up twice we didn't want to come family was divided into two it was my my parents right and then it was my grandma and grandpa and my aunts and uncle so if we were to leave what's gonna happen to them what if they didn't get to come right and so that was the fear here we are we came all the way here we're gonna leave them here and we're gonna go to america in a country we know nothing about and we know where it is right or what state we're gonna be in finally my dad decided okay let's go and so we came on october 2nd 1976. [Music] i remember the first time we walked to this place to look at that list and my father didn't see our name on it and i that was when i knew that going to america was really important for my father reaching the united states after years of surviving endless war brought one level of relief a daily chance of dying fell dramatically but the absence of immediate trauma released long suppressed fears and emotions my father was very depressed we first came i think it's hardest for the men [Music] among men don't want to admit anything right and so you may not want to say you know i'm suffering from and we don't have a word for mental health in the home community in the home language and so the only word for mental health the only equivalent is the person is crazy and so you don't want to be labeled as a crazy person you know i'm suffering to this couple when i sleep i sometimes scream and yell and my wife wakes me up and asks me what's wrong i would tell her that i dreamt that we were still at war sometimes when there's a loud noise it startles me and reminds me of the bombs that the communists shot towards us [Music] i've been controlling myself and so i haven't talked to any doctors you know you're always on the alert you know and even to this day you know i tell my wife and i tell my children in the middle of the night don't just come screaming into my room because you put me in that mode right and this is where the ptsd comes into play right i think i may have suffered i may have ptsd because if in the middle of the night if people come in and scream and yell i would just stand right up i mean i'm just like what's going on you know and uh if that's i'm experiencing that just imagine someone in the battlefield they are still living with a war that hasn't ended for them soldiers also have to live with old war wounds [Music] two bullets have gone through my body but the one that hit my rib is still lodged in my lungs then i would prefer not to do it in 1971 i got hit on the head by a bullet from an ak gun [Music] so if you are learning something you don't remember it after a while talking like this is fine but when we talk about learning something you sometimes forget hmong soldiers are not considered u.s veterans they receive no veterans benefits even though they were paid by the american cia one hmong that died in laos meant one american from south vietnam going home because we we prevented the north vietnamese army from going into south vietnam to massacre the americans down there towards the end of this war there were more than 35 000 laos that died on behalf of the americans [Music] we were more than happy to die for the americans this is what we [Music] after we lost the war the whole world knew about the sacrifices we made for the americans and we fought for them in secret [Music] what's difficult is that the hmong did not officially served when you look at the conditions right did you serve officially as an american you know gi i know and so it was through the cia which is not a military it's not a military branch many of the veterans have been fighting since the 80s to obtain veterans benefits [Music] right now what we have been lobbying and asking for is benefits we want benefits to help with health care whatever the american vietnam veterans get and benefits we would like the same thing we also want burials for our dying soldiers we want to be buried in the cemetery with other soldiers we hope that one day america will recognize our efforts during the war [Music] they say that we are hmong soldiers but we really are us soldiers happy we want the sgu soldiers to be happy when their sacrifices are recognized by america and that they are actual soldiers we don't want to be looked at as crazy that we just wanted to be soldiers but we really wanted to help out the americans so i don't know whether we should hold a breath [Music] not many of these veterans are around and they're dying off every single day and many of the policy witness are all dead [Music] [Music] here i don't know why it's so difficult why we're caught up in this bureaucratic paperwork you know do the morally right thing i think you know there's kind of his moral thing where you know what we can look at okay fine you know we know you served we know you did this it's no longer a secret war the cia declassified lots of these documents where the president say recruit more hmong people [Music] even ambassador sullivan you know basically said we funded these people we shipped them the supplies we fed them we clothed them they are all people this is from the ambassador that ran the war you know what more do you need you know they get caught up in this bureaucratic paperwork [Music] we served the united states of america we protected the americans interest we die protecting americans interests why the feet dragging and the closed lips this is 41 years later [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 1,153,547

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, america's secret war, war in laos, CIA in Laos, CIA history, american military history, vietnam war, viet cong, covert operations, secret war in laos, cold war

Id: QQ8GnDt_75Y

Length: 56min 36sec (3396 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/mikeg5417]

Just some trivia: One of the members of Easy Company (Band of Brothers) was a CIA officer that served in the Laotian Secret War, and participated in the formation of Delta Force (and,IIRC, the operation to free hostages in Iran). Robert Burr Smith. He was not portrayed in the series, but was mentioned in the Steven Ambrose book.