5  Laos

5.1 Chapter Text

The U.S. war in Laos is typically called a “secret war,” and with reason. During the period of the most ferocious bombing of the civilian society of northern Laos, which even the U.S. government conceded was unrelated to military operations in Vietnam or Cambodia, the press consciously suppressed eyewitness testimony by well-known noncommunist Western reporters. Earlier, fabricated tales of “Communist aggression” in Laos had been widely circulated by a number of influential correspondents.¹ In the elections of 1958, which the U.S. government vainly attempted to manipulate, the Pathet Lao emerged victorious, but U.S. subversion succeeded in undermining the political settlement. At one point the United States backed a right-wing Thai-based military attack against the government recognized by the United States. All of this barely entered public awareness. The same was true of the CIA-sponsored subversion that played a significant role in undermining the 1962 agreements, a settlement which, if allowed to prevail, might well have isolated Laos from the grim effects of the war in Southeast Asia.

The hill tribesmen recruited by the CIA (as they had been by the French) to hold back the social revolution in Laos, were decimated, then abandoned when their services were no longer needed. Again, the press was unconcerned. When John Everingham, a Lao-speaking Australian reporter, travelled in 1970 “through dying village after dying village” among the Hmong who had been “naive enough to trust the CIA” and were now being offered “a one-way ‘copter ride to death’” in the CIA clandestine army, no U.S. journal (apart from the tiny pacifist press) was interested enough to cover the story, though by that time even the New York Times was permitting an occasional report on the incredible bombing that had “turned more than half the total area of Laos to a land of charred ruins where people fear the sky” so that “nothing be left standing or alive for the communists to inherit” (Everingham). The Hmong tribesmen cannot flee to the Pathet Lao zones or they too will be subjected to the merciless bombardment, he wrote: “Like desperate dogs they are trapped, and the CIA holds the leash, and is not about to let it go as long as the Meo [Hmong] army can hold back the Pathet Lao a little longer, giving the Americans and their allies a little more security 100 miles south at the Thailand border.”

It is only after the war’s end, when the miserable remnants of the Hmong can be put on display as “victims of Communism,” that American sensibilities have been aroused, and the press features stories that bewail their plight.²

Extensive analysis of refugee reports was conducted at the time by a few young Americans associated with International Voluntary Services in Laos. In scale and care, these studies exceed by a considerable measure the subsequent studies of refugees from Cambodia that have received massive publicity in the West, and the story is every bit as gruesome. But the press was rarely interested and published materials, which appeared primarily outside the mainstream media, were virtually ignored and quickly forgotten.³ As in the case of Timor, the agency of terrorism made the facts incompatible with the purposes of the propaganda system. The press, and scholarship as well, much preferred government tales of “North Vietnamese aggression,” and continued to engage in flights of fancy based on the flimsiest evidence while ignoring the substantial factual material that undermined these claims.⁴

With the expulsion of John Everingham of the Far Eastern Economic Review from Laos by the new regime, no full-time Western journalists remain in Laos so that direct reporting is sparse and most of what appears in the press derives from Bangkok. Such testimony must be regarded with even more than the usual care.⁵ Direct reporting by Westerners from Laos can still be found, however, by those who have learned over the years not to rely on the established press for “news.” For example, two representatives of the Mennonite Central Committee, Linda and Murray Hiebert, left Vientiane at the end of January, 1978, after five years of volunteer service in Laos and Vietnam, and wrote several articles “prepared on the basis of research in Laos, including visits to a wide variety of places and projects, interviews with government officials and ordinary people, and evaluation of data collected by United Nations and Lao government agencies.”⁶ We will return later to their eyewitness accounts and those of others who also bring perspectives that render them unusable by the Free Press.

The media have often feigned a touching regard for “lovely little Laos” and its “gentle folk,” even while they were suppressing the abundant evidence on the murderous U.S. attack on the land and its people. When the war ended, Harry Reasoner, the commentator for ABC News, offered a fairly typical reaction, which was considered sufficiently profound to merit reprinting in the press.⁷ He expressed his “guess” that the Laotians, with their “innate disbelief and disinterest in these bloody games” played “by more activist powers like Russia and China and the United States and North Vietnam”—these are the “activist powers” that share responsibility for the turmoil in Indochina—will show that “there is some alternative for small, old places to becoming either Chile or Albania.” So Laos may preserve its “elephants, eroticism, and phallic symbols”—and presumably, though he does not mention it, its average life expectancy of 40 years, its infant mortality rate of over 120 per thousand births (one of the highest in the world) and the rate of child deaths which will kill 240,000 of 850,000 infants before their first birthday in the next five years.⁸

Reasoner continues: “I hope the benign royalty which has presided over the clowning of the CIA and the vicious invasion of the North Vietnamese will be able to absorb and disregard a native communist hierarchy.” The “invasion of the North Vietnamese” was largely a fabrication of U.S. propagandists duly transmitted by the press and scholarship⁹ and the “clowning of the CIA” included those merry games that virtually destroyed those Hmong naive enough to trust them, while massacring defenseless peasant communities and converting much of Laos to a moonscape, still littered with unexploded ordnance.

The New York Times presented a historical analysis of the war as it came to an end.¹⁰ “Some 350,000 men, women and children have been killed, it is estimated, and a tenth of the population of three million uprooted” in this “fratricidal strife that was increased to tragic proportions by warring outsiders.” In actuality, as in the case of Vietnam, it appears unlikely that there would have been any extended “fratricidal strife” had it not been for outsiders, of whom the United States was decisively important. The “history” is very well-sanitized, as befits America’s “newspaper of record.” The U.S. role is completely ignored apart from a few marginal and misleading references.¹¹ As late as 1975, the New York Times is still pretending that the U.S. bombers were striking only North Vietnamese supply trails—Saxon mentions no other bombing—although the ferocious aerial warfare waged against the civilian society of northern Laos was by then well-known, and had even been reported occasionally in the Times.¹² Ideologically based misrepresentations of history pervade the article, e.g., in the reference to the 1954 Geneva conference which “left Laos with an ineffective International Control Commission and enough ambiguities for the Pathet Lao to retain its stronghold.” The ICC was indeed ineffective in preventing U.S. subversion in subsequent years, as the United States attempted to exploit “ambiguities” it perceived or invented in international agreements that permitted Pathet Lao control of the areas in question and laid the basis for their integration into the national political system in 1958, with consequences already noted.

When the war ended in 1975, the victorious Pathet Lao appear to have made some efforts to achieve a reconciliation with the mountain tribesmen who had been organized in the CIA clandestine army. One of the leaders of the Hmong (“who are best known to the outside world by the pejorative name ‘Meo’”), Lyteck Lynhiavu, held the position of director of administration in the Ministry of the Interior in the coalition government. He was the leader of a small group of Hmong who had refused to join the CIA-Yang Pao operation. Lyteck tried to stem the flight of Hmong tribesmen (who “had reason to be fearful because it was they who had done much of the hardest fighting against the Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese supporters”) to Thailand, but in vain. Lyteck “alleged that the U.S. had flown leaflets to Long Cheng [the base of the CIA army] and that these caused the Hmong people there to fear for their lives.” U.S. officials denied the charge; “other sources said that the leaflets were in circulation long before Gen. Yang Pao left Laos and that they had been produced for propaganda purposes by an officer who had worked for the general,” who was commander of the CIA clandestine army.¹³ “Whatever their origin, the leaflets appeared to be a fabrication. They were written in a complicated style that would have been difficult for many of the Hmong to understand.”[^ch05-fn014]

Lewis M. Simons, another correspondent with a record of serious reporting, gave a detailed account of Pathet Lao “reeducation” programs shortly after.¹⁴ He interviewed people who had participated in Pathet Lao-organized “seminars” where “to the surprise of even some of the more skeptical, a lot of what they are taught seems to make sense to them.” One office clerk reported: “The Pathet Lao are genuine patriots. They want to teach us pride in ourselves and our country, something we never had under the old regime.” A graduate student expressed admiration for what he called the “scientific” approach the Pathet Lao took at the seminars, which he said were “tailored to the educational level of the people attending” and included persuasive arguments, though the authoritarian character of the system that was being introduced was evident enough: “There’s no doubt in my mind that they’re sincerely interested in improving the lives of the common people. That’s more than you could ever have said for the previous government.”

How common such reactions may be is an open question. Norman Peagam, a Lao-speaking correspondent of demonstrated integrity, wrote a long and critical report from Vientiane in the New York Times a year and a half later.¹⁵ “Little of the surface of life seems to have changed in Vientiane two years after the Communists’ gradual and bloodless seizure of power,” though the economy is run down “partly as a result of the halt in United States aid in 1975 and the blockade imposed by neighboring Thailand,” which controls Laos’s access to the outside world. But there have been changes: “Crime, drug addiction and prostitution have been largely suppressed” and “everyone is expected to work hard and take part in communal rice and vegetable projects in the evening and on weekends.” Most of the professional and commercial elite are among the 100,000 people who have fled (the great majority of whom, however, were hill tribesmen), and some farmers and urban workers have also escaped despite the border guards who often shoot at refugees. Many others “want to leave but lack the money, the connections or the courage,” while “there are many others who support the new Government or at least accept it despite all the difficulties,” and hundreds have returned from France and other Western countries.¹⁶ Outside of Vientiane, “it seems likely that the Communists have a solid political base in the two-thirds of Laos that they effectively controlled during the recurrent conflicts that began in the 1950s. In the fertile populated Mekong Valley, where they are still relative newcomers, their power is largely maintained through apathy and the threat of armed force.” Western diplomats estimate the number in reeducation centers at 30,000. “They are being kept in centers ranging from picturesque islands for juvenile delinquents, drug addicts and prostitutes¹⁷ to remote labor camps barred to outsiders from which only a handful of people have so far returned.” “Western diplomats list firm political will, honesty, patriotism and discipline as the new rulers’ main strengths. But, they maintain, the priority of ideological over technical considerations, the Communists’ deep suspicion of Westerners and intolerance of dissent and their poor managerial skills seriously hamper efforts to develop the country.” Another “factor hampering development has been the activities of rebels”; “it seems apparent that Thai officials give them support.” Another problem is corruption and the “new elite” of government and party officials who “enjoy numerous privileges not available to others,” creating cynicism and leading to exploitation of peasants “partly to feed this unproductive class.”

As in the case of Vietnam, one can find little discussion in the U.S. press of the Lao programs of reconstruction and social and economic development, or the problems that confront them. Repression and resistance, in contrast, are major themes of the scanty reporting. A brief report from Thailand describes “harsh concentration camps and a network of labor farms holding tens of thousands of political prisoners…Informed Western sources estimate that 60,000 persons, many with little hope of rehabilitation, are in about 50 camps.”¹⁸ Henry Kamm cast his baleful eye on Laos in March, 1978,¹⁹ reporting the continued flow of “Meo hill tribesmen of Laos who fought for the United States in the Indochina war,”²⁰ some still carrying “their American-issued rifles.” The refugees report “a major military campaign by Laotian and Vietnamese forces”—U.S.-style, with “long-range artillery shelling, which was followed by aerial rocketing, bombing and strafing,” burning villages and food supplies, driving villagers into the forests (March 28). And again on the following day: “The Communists are bombing and rocketing Meo villages, presumably causing civilian casualties.” “Resistance groups of various sizes, operating independently and without central direction or foreign assistance, are active throughout Laos, according to self-described resistance fighters, other recent refugees and diplomatic sources.”

That the resistance forces are operating without U.S. or Thai assistance seems dubious (cf. Peagam, above, and notes 17 and 24), in the light of the long history of U.S. intervention in Laos based in Thailand, always the “focal point” for U.S. terror and subversion in Southeast Asia.²¹ And the record of U.S. journalism with regard to Laos is in general so abysmal that even if there is an American hand, if a long tradition prevails, the reader of the New York Times will be unlikely to hear about it—though an exposé may come years later when the dirty work is long finished and the CIA is once again being reformed, in keeping with traditional U.S. commitments to justice, democracy, and freedom.

The guerrilla groups, Kamm claims, are “led mainly by former officers of the Laotian regular and irregular armies”—the latter term being the euphemism for the forces organized and directed by the CIA—“and are said to include significant numbers of defectors from the Pathet Lao, the Communist guerrilla organization [who, incidentally, constitute the present government, recognized by the United States], who are unhappy about the growing Vietnamese influence in their country.”²² Kamm’s “picture of the Meo’s situation in Laos” conveniently omits any discussion of the U.S. program to organize them to fight for the United States, trapping them like desperate dogs and throwing away the leash when they lost their usefulness. Other problems and developments in Laos are not on the beat of the Times Pulitzer prize winner.²³

The continued resistance of the Hmong serves as an inspiration to the editors of the Christian Science Monitor, who write (5 April 1978) that “one can only marvel at the human spirit and the tenacious longing of men for independence,” sentiments that they never expressed when Laotian peasants were struggling to survive in the face of a ferocious U.S. attack that vastly exceeds in scale anything that the Communists are capable of mounting. “The fighting serves to remind the world—a long five years after the Indo-China war—that the communists have not won the hearts and minds of the people. They have victimized them.” Note that for these representatives of the Free Press, “the people”—a term that rarely appears in U.S. journalism—are the hill tribesmen, who, as Kamm correctly reports, “fought for the United States in the Indochina war.”

The Monitor editorialists are as oblivious as Henry Kamm to the past record of U.S. involvement with the hill tribesmen (nor do they seem aware of their own news reports; see above, p. 140). But they do know that Laos was bombed, though they do not seem to recall by whom: “Mercilessly bombed during the war, today Laos is hounded with problems, including a terrible food shortage (it was once self-sufficient in food), a disrupted economy, an exodus of skilled technicians, and of course political domination by the Vietnamese”—of course. “Little Laos is in fact tragically caught between the anvil and the hammer: a pawn of the Vietnamese as the frontline of defense against Thailand and a client of the Soviet Union in its big-power competition with China.”

In the light of the well-known historical facts, it is no less than amazing that a major U.S. newspaper, one of the few that attends seriously to international affairs, and one that exudes moralism in its editorial commentary, can fail to make any mention whatsoever of the U.S. role, past and present, in creating these “problems,” presented as if they were entirely the fault of the Communists. Once again, we see the remarkable similarities between the Free Press and its counterparts in the totalitarian states.

But, the Monitor informs us, “some signs of hope for the long-suffering Laotian people are emerging.” In particular, “if they [the Laotian Communists] were to resolve the issue of the MIAs, they would also be able to improve relations with the United States.” At this point, words fail.

And then these final thoughts:

In the final analysis, it will all depend on Hanoi. The question is how soon the Vietnamese want to establish normal links with the West and derive the benefits that come from being responsible members of the international community. As the men in Hanoi ponder their strategy, the people of Laos go on enduring.

If only Hanoi would choose to become a “responsible member of the international community,” joining the country that pounded Laos to dust while the Monitor looked the other way, then the long-suffering people of Laos might see a ray of hope. Hanoi is responsible for their tragedy, not the murderers and their accomplices in the press.²⁴

The New York Times did run an Op-Ed describing the scandalous refusal of the Carter Administration to respond to the appeal of the Laotian government for international assistance “to stave off the impending disaster” of starvation after a terrible drought.²⁵ This Op-Ed cites the two Mennonite relief workers who had just returned from Laos²⁶ who report “that irrigation networks have collapsed and that paddy fields are pockmarked with bomb craters.”²⁷ Others have estimated that so many buffalo were killed during the war that farmers “have to harness themselves to plows to till fields” while “unexploded bombs buried in the ground hamper food production.” But the U.S. Administration, fearing “that it will appear to be pro-Communist, thereby jeopardizing the canal treaties,” has refused to send any of its rice surplus (the world’s largest) to Laos, despite impending starvation.²⁸ The problem is compounded by the fact that “last year the Congress specifically forbade direct aid to Laos,” though the “Food for Peace law” permits an exception. “Any more delay in Washington would simply compound the barbarity that the United States has already brought to that region”—and specifically, to Laos, though one could hardly learn that fact from current reports in the Free Press.²⁹ For an indication of the impact of this statement, see the Monitor editorial (just cited), three weeks later.

While in the United States, it is axiomatic that “of course” the Vietnamese dominate little Laos, caught between the Vietnamese hammer and the Russian anvil, others, who suffer the disadvantage of familiarity and concern with fact, express some doubts. Nayan Chanda writes from Vientiane that:

Diplomats here dismiss some of the sensational Bangkok press stories about ministries crawling with Vietnamese advisers, but they believe that a sizable number of Vietnamese—soldiers and engineers—are building roads and bridges in eastern and central Laos. Although old colonial routes 7, 8 and 9 are dirt tracks unusable during the monsoons, they helped bring essential supplies from Vietnam in the dark days of 1975 when Thailand closed its borders. The Vietnamese now working to repair these routes are thus helping to reduce Lao dependence on Thailand.³⁰

Lao dependence on U.S.-backed Thailand has been a crucial element in its postwar distress—a fact which escaped the attention of the Monitor in its ode to the human spirit—alongside of U.S. cruelty in withholding aid, which likewise escaped notice. “Both Lao and Vietnamese officials privately admit,” Nayan Chanda reports, “that Thailand is going to be Vientiane’s lifeline to the world for years to come.”³¹ The heavily-bombed roads to Vietnam and Cambodia “need large-scale repairs before being put to commercial use” and problems in Vietnamese ports make it doubtful that this construction will be of much help to Laos in the short term. Meanwhile, Thailand is controlling the lifeline effectively: “A de facto blockade by Thailand has virtually halted the trickle of foreign aid and Laos’ own drive to earn foreign currency through exports.” The Lao government reported that the blockade “has been asphyxiating the economy,” and foreign missions complain of “harassment by Thai customs.”³²

Quite apart from food and supplies, Thailand had refused to ship medicines ordered and paid for by the International Red Cross. Meanwhile in Laos malaria has been raging since the United States cut off its malaria prevention program in 1975, “killing adults and children indiscriminately, infecting pregnant women, and weakening many people so that they cannot work”—it is “having a ‘devastating effect’ on the Lao population,” according to foreign doctors, along with intestinal and respiratory illnesses, typhoid and malnutrition. When the oxygen-producing plant broke down and surgical operations had to be suspended, Thailand refused to allow emergency deliveries of oxygen, according to Laotian officials.³³

Warnings of imminent starvation as a result of the recent severe drought and other causes have been repeatedly voiced by UN officials, foreign journalists, and others.³⁴

In addition to the problems caused by the consequences of the U.S. air war, the drought, and the Thai blockade that had virtually halted the trickle of foreign aid as well as Lao exports, Laos faces structural problems that are a legacy of French and U.S. imperialism.³⁵ The economy inherited by the Pathet Lao was “totally artificial,” with its “crippling dependence” on dollar aid, and “the nature of the outside influence brought serious distortion to a subsistence economy,” Chanda observes.³⁶ He cites a confidential World Bank report of 1975 which pointed out that in the Vientiane zone industrial production (almost entirely comprising brewing and soft-drink manufacture), and the structure of urban services in general, were “heavily influenced by the demand of expatriates and a tiny, wealthy fraction of the Laotian population.” The main “production” of towns like Vientiane was administration, services for the administration and foreign personnel attached to it, and, of much less importance, production and services for the rest of the urban population—and, finally, for the country at large.

It is “the structural imbalance and artificial economy inherited from the old regime” that lie “at the root of the present crisis,” though “a series of blunders by the new Government worsened the situation.” The same World Bank report “warned that termination of the [foreign, largely U.S. aid] programme ‘would cause the collapse of organised administration, and much of urban life.’” The aid was terminated, even vital food, malaria control and medical supplies. Without large aid commitments from West or East, and lacking export earnings, “harsh economy measures are inevitable” and “the exodus of refugees seeking a better life abroad continues,” stirring the compassion of Westerners who deplore Communist depravity as Laos groans between the Vietnamese hammer and the Russian anvil.

Like other beneficiaries of Western tutelage and benevolence for many years, the Lao often do not find it easy to comprehend the profound humanitarian commitments of the West—recall their “deep suspicion of Westerners”—thus leading them to mistake as well the meaning of the noble Human Rights Crusade now being led, once again, by the United States:

Asked how he viewed the opposition of the American Congress to direct or indirect aid to the countries of Indochina, [Lao Vice-Foreign Minister Khamphay Boupha] referred to his recent meeting with Frederick Brown (the officer in charge of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam affairs at the U.S. State Department) during the latter’s visit to Vientiane. “I told him that the US talks a lot about human rights, but what would they do in the face of a situation like ours?

“The US has dropped 3 million tons of bombs—one ton per head—forced 700,000 peasants to abandon their fields; thousands of people were killed and maimed, and unexploded ordnance continues to take its toll. Surely the US does not show humanitarian concern by refusing to help heal the wounds of war.” Khamphay revealed that Brown had asked them to wait for a period—and in the meanwhile, he wryly added, “they have forced Thailand to close the border.”³⁷

Meanwhile the people of Laos die from malnutrition, disease, and unexploded ordnance, arousing no sympathy in the country that bears a substantial responsibility for their plight with its “clowning of the CIA,” and now coldly withholds aid because, as the press sees it, Hanoi refuses to join the community of “responsible nations.” The 240,000 of 850,000 infants who will die before their first birthday in the next five years (see page 140), and the many others who will expire with them, may be added to the accounts of imperial savagery, quickly forgotten by Western humanitarians.

But the efforts to rebuild continue:

The problem is the shortage of essential tools, draught animals and the costly legacy of war—unexploded ammunition. One official of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who recently visited newly-resettled areas on the Plain of Jars described efforts to grow food in small patches of land in a dusty bomb-cratered landscape.

The official gave the example of Muong Pek, with a population of 33,000, out of which 25,000 were displaced persons who returned to their villages after the war. Before the war, the population of the district owned 83,000 buffaloes to provide draught power and meat. When peace came there were only 250 buffaloes.

Although the number has since gone up to 2,000, it is still inadequate for ploughing the hardened soil abandoned for years. In some places, men have to strap themselves to a plough to turn the earth. Last year, not surprisingly, the peasants in the area produced only enough rice for between two and four months. In one commune in the district with a population of 3,500, 15 people were killed by ammunition left after the war.³⁸

A few months later Chanda visited the Plain of Jars, “the scene of some of the heaviest bombing during the Indochina War,” where “people are making a start on reviving what was once a prosperous rural society.”³⁹ From the air, the Plain of Jars “resembles a lunar landscape, pockmarked as it is with bomb craters that are a stark testimony to the years of war that denuded the area of people and buildings,” a consequence of “six years of ‘secret’ bombing” by U.S. aircraft.⁴⁰ “At ground level, the signs of death and destruction are even more ubiquitous.” The province capital was “completely razed.” “But the once-flourishing rural society of the plain is slowly coming back to life, raising bamboo-and-mud houses on the ruins of the old, reclaiming abandoned rice paddies, turning bomb craters into fish ponds, and weeding out the deadly debris of war that litters the area.” Thousands are now returning from refugee camps and “many have emerged from their forest shelters and caves in the surrounding mountains” to villages where sometimes “not even a broken wall is to be seen.” The peasants of one village have to work in rice fields 15 kilometers away because “heavy bombing in the nearby mountains brought hundreds of tons of mud hurtling down into the river that once irrigated” their paddy fields. A peasant who joined the Pathet Lao, recruited by U.S. bombs, recalls the day when a U.S. jet “scored a direct rocket hit on a cave in which 137 women and children of the village, including his own, were hiding. The cave was so hot from the explosion, he says, that for more than a day he could not go near it.” Today, “death still lurks in every corner of the plain” in the form of such “war debris” as “golf-ball size bombs containing explosives and steel bits released from a large canister” and other products of American ingenuity that killed thousands during the war, and continue to exact their deadly toll.⁴¹

There are Vietnamese present, Chanda observes; namely “Vietnamese workers and soldiers” who are “building schools and hospitals, improving the road network…repairing roads and bridges,” and “were never seen carrying guns.” “If any Soviet experts were in the area, they were well hidden,” and there were few “visible items of Soviet assistance.” There are slow efforts to introduce cooperative stores and cooperative farming, facilitated by “the economic dislocation caused by the US in its attempt to defeat communism” which makes it easy to persuade “villagers to pool their resources” in construction and farming. “Despite moves towards a Marxist-Leninist order, socialism in Laos remains a typically soft, Lao variety which does not conform to the rigid dialectical materialism of European Marxists.” Traditional ceremonies are preserved—at least that should please Harry Reasoner.

Louis and Eryl Kubicka visited the Plain of Jars on the same trip. They quote Chit Kham, whose wife and three daughters were among the 137 people killed when an F105 jet bomber “succeeded in hitting the cave entrance with three out of four rockets it fired, according to an eyewitness with whom we spoke…whose job it was to monitor the bombing from a tree-top perch.” Asked what the United States might do “to regain the respect of the people here,” Chit Kham answered: “Of course we want aid, but they have killed us, so many lives were lost…we want back those lives that were lost.”⁴² Kubicka also describes the vast destruction, the unexploded ordnance (his wife “found a CBU bomblet [by nearly stepping on it]”), the “billions of pieces of shrapnel scattered over” the province, “the lack of pulling power” because of the killing of buffaloes. He left believing “that few Americans could personally visit here and see what we saw with the quiet amicable people who hosted us, without feeling a sense of basic human sympathy, or without being ready to lend a helping hand.”

Earlier, Kubicka had published a report from Vientiane on the U.S. program of bombing the peasant society of northern Laos and the Lao efforts to reconstruct. He quotes a UN official who had returned from the Plain of Jars, where some refugees had already been resettled: “I’ve seen a lot of refugee situations in my time throughout the world, but this is the best organization I’ve ever seen. If this is what Laos is going to be like in the future, we’re going to see some significant development here.” But of course assistance will be needed: “Conspicuously absent from the list of those proffering assistance is the United States,” Kubicka comments, adding that “every other major nation represented diplomatically in Vientiane is currently providing Laos with some aid.”⁴³

The November 1977 visit was the first by journalists to the Plain of Jars, an area which, for people who have freed themselves from the Western system of indoctrination, has come to symbolize the terror that can be visited by an advanced industrial society on defenseless peasants. To our knowledge, no word about it appeared in the mainstream media, which continue to guard their secrets.

The Hieberts described this visit to the Plain of Jars on their return to the United States from Vientiane in January, 1978 (see note 6). They too describe in detail the ravages of U.S. bombing and the efforts to reconstruct, with the assistance of Vietnamese workers who are, according to Vietnamese diplomats, “fulfilling their two years of national service by working in Laos.” The Hieberts, who were engaged in relief work in Laos, also describe the attempts of the new regime to undertake rehabilitation of the human debris of war—orphans, drug addicts, and others—and to bring health services to the countryside, and the problems caused by severe drought, the withdrawal of U.S. aid from the artificial economy it had created, and the “on and off blockade by Thailand,” which in September, 1977, blocked fuel imports from Singapore, Swedish road-building supplies, 2,000 tons of rice donated by the UN for refugees, $100,000 worth of medicines, and drought-related equipment and supplies.

No U.S. government aid had to be obstructed.

5.2 Footnotes

See also the eyewitness report by T.D. Allman at just the time when Air Force Secretary Robert Seamans, visiting the same areas, reported that “I have seen no evidence of indiscriminate bombing.” Allman’s report of massive destruction from highly discriminate bombing aimed at civilian targets appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Manchester Guardian; Seaman’s failure to see anything was reported in the Washington Post. Direct reporting from the ground by Michael Morrow did not appear in the U.S. press at all, to our knowledge, as befits observations of U.S. atrocities by a Western reporter who concludes that “it is unlikely that Americans are or will ever be around to pick up the unexploded pieces of the most extensive bombing campaign in history,” a campaign that is now being expunged from the historical records. See At War with Asia, pp. 95f; For Reasons of State, pp. 173f. For the Decornoy report and much other valuable material that is conveniently ignored in the United States, see N.S. Adams and A.W. McCoy, eds., Laos: War and Revolution, Harper, 1970.

^ch05-fn014 Daniel Southerland, “Lao tribesmen moving out,” Christian Science Monitor (30 May 1975). Southerland was one of the small group of correspondents in Indochina who maintained a high level of professional integrity throughout. We are indebted to Louis and Eryl Kubicka of the AFSC, who spent three years in Laos (including two and one-half years after the war), for additional information about Lyteck and for helpful comments and information about other matters. The Kubickas have made extensive efforts to bring information about postwar Laos to the U.S. press, to little effect. They inform us that their accounts were seriously distorted by New York Times reporters Paul Hoffman and David Andelman, “by the device of omission and by taking the negative side of balanced statements we made” and other standard Free Press techniques. An important analysis of Thai perception of U.S. moves to undermine Thai democracy prior to the October 1976 military coup (see Volume I, chapter 4, section 2) was submitted to the New York Times, Washington Post and other journals, but rejected. For their own account of the postwar situation in Laos, see Louis Kubicka, “Laos: Resettlement Begins on Bombed-Out Plain of Jars—Minus U.S. AID,” Los Angeles Times (1 March 1976); “War Hangover in Laos,” Eastern Horizon, March 1978; “From the Plain of Jars,” Progressive, March 1978.

It appears, however, that even this tiny gesture towards “humanitarianism” was a fraud. When the State Department announced that a piddling 10,000 tons of food would be released for the starving Lao on May 31, it was assumed that this munificence would be in addition to the regular contribution of the United States to the World Food Program of the United Nations, which had pledged 30,000 tons of food to Laos. But it seems that the U.S. donation is to be “merely a part of its normal biannual contribution to WFP, and no more.” The estimated need in Laos to avoid disaster is at least 120,000 tons of emergency food. Roger Rumpf and Jacqui Chagnon, AFSC representatives in Laos, letter, Washington Post (14 October 1978). There appear to be no limits to the cynicism of the Human Rights Administration.

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1. See Bernard Fall, Anatomy of a Crisis: The Laotian Crisis of 1960-61, Doubleday, 1969, for a detailed exposure of some of the more ludicrous incidents in the early phases of the U.S. war; this exposure, like others, had no detectable effect on subsequent reporting.

2. See the reports by Henry Kamm in the New York Times, cited below; or for example a Sunday feature story by Ogden Williams, “The Tragic Plight of our Abandoned Allies,” Washington Post (24 September 1978). Williams is identified as a former CIA officer who also worked with USAID in Vietnam—quite possibly, a distinction without a difference in this case, since as was finally conceded in public, the aid program, in Laos at least, was providing a CIA cover from 1962. He claims that the Hmong army organized by the CIA was tying up two divisions of North Vietnamese regulars in Laos. Comparable claims are common, but tend to evaporate on investigation; cf. the references of footnote 4 for detailed analyses. Sources close to the U.S. government estimate perhaps one combat regiment of North Vietnamese soldiers in northern Laos, where the CIA army was fighting, in 1968.

3. See Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars, Harper and Row, 1972; Walter Haney, “A Survey of Civilian War Casualties Among Refugees from the Plain of Jars,” U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings before the [Kennedy] Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees, 92nd Congress, 1st session, 22 July 1971, Appendix 2; “A Survey of Civilian Fatalities Among Refugees from Xieng Khouang Province, Laos,” Kennedy Subcommittee Hearings, 92nd Congress, second session, 9 May 1972, part 2, “Cambodia and Laos,” Appendix 2; see also his paper “The Pentagon Papers and U.S. Involvement in Laos,” in N. Chomsky and H. Zinn, eds., The Pentagon Papers, Critical Essays, vol. 5 of the Senator Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers, Beacon, 1972. See also the references of footnote 4.

4. For a detailed analysis of the material just briefly reviewed, see N. Chomsky, At War with Asia, Pantheon, 1970, chapter 3; For Reasons of State, Pantheon, 1973, chapter 2; and references and documentary evidence cited there. The scholarly literature is useful but must be treated with care, since as demonstrated in the sources just cited the conclusions reached often derive from the most dubious evidence, sometimes sheer fabrication on the part of government officials who are taken quite seriously despite their long record of prevarication.

5. See John Everingham, “Press war creates problems for Laos,” Far Eastern Economic Review, writing from Vientiane before his expulsion on the “hostile and inaccurate Thai press coverage of Laotian affairs” that “may convince those not on the spot,” and on the questionable “principle of reporting Laos from Thailand,” where one finds a “stream of anti-Lao hysteria and falsities.”

6. Laos Recovers from America’s War, Southeast Asia Chronicle, no. 61, March-April 1978, P.O. Box 4000D, Berkeley, California 94704. Most of the material in this issue is by the Hieberts. Other material is supplied by Mennonite missionaries still in Laos.

7. “How now, Laos?,” Christian Science Monitor (10 June 1975).

8. Hieberts, op. cit. These features of lovely little Laos, and of other “small old places,” have intrigued thoughtful U.S. observers like Reasoner much less than the eroticism, which, as visitors to Vientiane quickly learned, was a major preoccupation of the press corps, many of whose members seemed to divide their time between the U.S. Embassy (where they received “the news”), the hotel bars, and the local house of prostitution. As elsewhere in Indochina, there were noteworthy exceptions.

9. See footnotes 1 and 4.

10. Wolfgang Saxon, “Long Fratricidal Strife in Laos Was Intensified by Outsiders,” New York Times (24 August 1975).

11. E.g., Phoumi Nosavan’s “proclaimed anti-Communism won him military aid from the Eisenhower administration and the Thai government” in 1960. In fact, Phoumi was armed and backed by the United States in his successful effort to overthrow the government recognized by the United States, and thousands of Thai troops (virtually, U.S. mercenaries) were apparently fighting in Laos (see At War with Asia). The U.S. role in overthrowing the 1958 political settlement in which the Pathet Lao emerged as the dominant force is not so much as mentioned, though it is entirely beyond controversy. See, for example, Hugh Toye, Laos: Buffer State or Battleground, Oxford, 1968; Charles Stevenson, The End of Nowhere: American Policy towards Laos Since 1964, Beacon, 1972.

12. See T.D. Allman, New York Times (1 October 1969) reporting on the testimony of refugees from the Plain of Jars and concluding that “the rebel economy and social fabric” are now the main target of the U.S. bombardment, which is claimed to be a success: “The bombing, by creating refugees, deprives the Communists of their chief source of food and transport. The population of the Pathet Lao zone has been declining for several years and the Pathet Lao find it increasingly difficult to fight a ‘people’s war’ with fewer and fewer people.” On the same day Le Monde (weekly selection) reported that this “battering” of Laos had been going on for over five years and that “the United States Air Force carries out more than 12,500 raids a month.” As already noted, eyewitness reports of the U.S. attack on the rebel economy and social fabric had been reported by Jacques Decornoy of Le Monde in July 1968, and repeatedly brought to the attention of editors of the New York Times and other journals, to no effect. See p. 134, above.

13. Given what is known about CIA control and activities, it seems likely that this was part of a U.S. intelligence campaign. This places the subsequent show of compassion for the refugees—see footnote 2—in a still more ugly light.

14. “Learning to Love the Pathet Lao,” Washington Post (27 October 1975).

15. Norman Peagam, “Communist Changes in Laos Upset Easy-Going Way of Life,” New York Times (3 May 1977).

16. Interviews with two refugees who returned are reported by John and Beulah Yoder of the Mennonites, writing from Vientiane in February, 1978 in Laos Recovers from America’s War. One, a Hmong tribesman now in a teacher training college, recalls “the intense anti-Lao propaganda in the Thai camps” and the “many lies about Laos” spread in France. In the Thai camp, “we lived like pigs. No one had enough to eat” and the Thai military attempted to recruit refugees to fight communism, possibly in Laos, while camp guards beat or imprisoned anyone trying to escape. The second says that he fled to Thailand “because I didn’t understand the policies or goals of the new regime. In the old regime we were taught only to make ourselves rich. We were not taught love for our nation.” Living in France, he “learned about the goals of the new Lao regime” from the Lao student organization. “He realized they had a vision for Laos which he could share.” On the Thai camps, see footnote 24 below.

17. Since these important elements of the “prisoners” in “re-education camps” are a legacy of Western imperialism, they are regularly disregarded in Western commentary.

18. “Political repression reported in Laos,” Boston Globe (10 February 1978). (See footnote 5, above.)

19. Henry Kamm, “Hill People Who Fought for U.S. Are Fleeing Laos,” New York Times (28 March 1978); “Laos Said to Battle Internal Resistance,” New York Times (29 March 1978). Both stories are filed from Thailand.

20. A phrase of rare accuracy from this pen, though one wonders whether the author comprehends its meaning.

21. See chapter 1, note 16. In the documents cited there, it is proposed that Thailand be developed “as the focal point of U.S. covert and psychological operations in Southeast Asia.” The proposal was implemented, and Thailand also became a major base for direct U.S. military operations against Laos and Vietnam, and for CIA-backed groups attempting to undermine the neutralist government of Cambodia. (See Volume I, chapter 4, section 2; chapter 6, below, and references cited there).

22. On the “growing Vietnamese influence,” always a staple of U.S. reporting—it has been “growing” in the U.S. press for some 25 years—see footnote 4, and also pp. 147, 151-53, below, and note 31.

23. On the Thai refugee camps, see John Burgess, “City of broken lives,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 26 May 1978. According to refugees, some “use the camp as a base to support the guerrillas harassing the communist government in Laos” though most are more interested in finding another country, usually the United States, to take them in. “People leave Laos for varied reasons: some because they are threatened with reeducation, some because they have records as prostitutes or criminals, others because they cannot find jobs.” The underworld is thriving in the camp, where Thai police “claimed to have discovered a syndicate…that was producing Laotian women for the brothels of Bangkok,” and the drug trade flourishes. 41% of the people in the camp “claimed direct or indirect membership in U.S.-affiliated agencies, mostly the old Laotian armed forces.” A few of the camp’s people intend to join the anti-Communist resistance in Laos, and “one well-placed refugee” reports that small numbers “pass in and out of Laos with help and equipment from the Thai military.” A Hmong veteran of the CIA army reports that “his village had been destroyed by artillery” while others claim that the Lao government used poison gas against them.

24. It is superfluous to note that Vietnam’s attempts “to establish normal links with the West” have been blocked at every turn by the U.S. government, since Hanoi has not yet succeeded in meeting the exalted standards set by the United States, to the applause of the Free Press.

25. Peter Kovler, “Laos’s need: U.S. rice,” New York Times (14 March 1978). The Op-Ed page of the Times is the spot where all sorts of odd opinions are permitted occasional expression.

26. See footnote 6. This is the only press reference to the Hieberts that we have noted, though their eyewitness report from a country virtually closed to the West would have been featured in a country enjoying a free press.

27. The reference, presumably, is to the Plain of Jars, where the vast U.S.-inflicted war damage remains unrepaired (if indeed it can be repaired).

28. The impending starvation is a result of the U.S. attack and also the natural disasters that have afflicted Southeast Asia in the past several years.

29. In what it called “a humanitarian aid decision in keeping with the Administration’s policy of answering basic human needs,” the Carter Administration agreed to send 10,000 tons of rice in August and September of 1978; UPI, “U.S. giving $5m in rice to Laos,” Boston Globe (2 June 1978); Don Oberdorfer, “U.S. Will Give Laos $5 Million in Food Aid To Avert a ‘Disaster,’” Washington Post (1 June 1978). The last U.S. aid was in 1974, when 24,000 tons of rice were sent. The 10,000 tons allegedly forthcoming would supplement the 80,000 tons pledged by other countries. Note that the fear of jeopardizing the canal treaties was past, at this time.

30. Nayan Chanda, “Laos keeps up a cold front,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 15 April 1977. Vietnamese influence in Laos has no doubt been growing, for several reasons, among them, punitive U.S. policies towards Laos and Vietnam and the Vietnam-China conflict. Occasionally, propaganda fabricated with no concern for fact may be accurate—in this case, in part as a consequence of the brutal policies supported or concealed by the media.

31. Nayan Chanda, “Drought Worsens Laotian Plight,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 26 August 1977.

32. The situation may have somewhat improved in subsequent months, as the Thai government moved to a more “liberal” anti-Communist policy.

33. Norman Peagam, “Letter from Vientiane,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 6 May 1977. No aid donor countries offered to supply the DDT required for malaria control after the U.S. aid cut-off. Peagam adds that the health problem is exacerbated by efforts to encourage hill tribes to move down to the lowlands in order to conserve the forests and “sending civil servants into the countryside for political seminars and manual work.”

34. Among them, Thai journalists, accurately for once. Theh Chongkhadikij, “Fears of Imminent Famine in Laos,” Bangkok Post (1 March 1977), reporting the fear of “ambassador-level sources in Vientiane” that Laos faces starvation within a few months, largely because of the drought. Similar fears have been repeatedly expressed in the Far Eastern Economic Review.

35. For a review of some of these, see At War with Asia, chapter 3.

36. “Drought Worsens Laotian Plight” (see footnote 32).

37. Nayan Chanda, “Lao-Thai gulf is still wide,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 26 August 1977.

38. Nayan Chanda, “Laos Gears up for Rural Progress,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 8 April 1977.

39. Nayan Chanda, “Putting the pieces back together,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 23 December 1977. See Branfman, op. cit., for the view from the wrong end of the guns.

40. Properly, Chanda places the word “secret” in quotes. As we have seen, the “secrecy” was a matter of decision by the Free Press.

41. Recall that the bombing in the Plain of Jars had nothing to do with North Vietnamese supply trails, as loyal correspondents for the New York Times and other specimens of the Free Press continue to pretend. Rather, its purpose was to destroy a civilian society that was undergoing a mild social revolution. See the references of notes 3 and 4.

42. “War Hangover in Laos.” (See footnote 14).

43. Los Angeles Times (1 March 1976). (See footnote 14).