Back Fire: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and Its Link to the War in Vietnam

Warner, Roger. Back Fire: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and Its Link to the War in Vietnam. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. 416 pp.

This is an important book. Roger Warner is no stranger to mainland Southeast Asia and now he has turned his attention from an earlier interest in Cambodia to write what is arguably the best book yet on America's "secret war" in Laos. This is an ambitious study of the clandestine activities of a small group of CIA operatives and of the massive, illegal, and "secret" war U.S. military/political war planners conducted against the strategically located Kingdom of Laos from the early 1960's through 1973.

This "secret war" was pursued in support of what American war strategists considered the more important fight in southern Vietnam. As Warner tells the story, operations in Laos began in an almost haphazard manner and were initiated by lowlevel CIA operatives such as Bill Lair who were sensitive to the local culture and had a decent understanding of the language. Warner even begins the book by describing the arrival in 1960 of the colorful forty-seven year old Indiana farmer Edgar "Pop" Buell who first came to Laos under the auspicious of the non-governmental service organization, the International Voluntary Services (IVS). After two years with that organization "Pop" joined Lair the ethnic Hmong military leader General Vang Pao to build a resistance force that they hoped would stop the communist Pathet Lao guerrilla advance in its tracks.

These three early characters were joined by other unique individuals such as the self-destructive, alcholoic, sociopath "Tony Poe" and the well-meaning young Princeton graduate Xlnt" Lawrence. For a time this odd crew of dedicated counterguerrilla cold warriors were left pretty much to their own devices and even gained the support of the chief of the CIA's Far East Division, William Colby. From its beginnings until the mid-1960's, this highly irregular operation seems to have had some successes and there was hope. Although many of Vang Pao's fellow Hmong fighters were lost in combat, the communist advance was held in check. However, the U.S. escalation after the Gulf of Tonkin incident would change everything.

As the stakes increased, operations in the mountains of northeastern Laos could no longer continue with the same autonomy; neither American military strategists nor military units from northern Vietnam would allow Laos' collection of bizarre CIA characters to conduct business as usual. In 1965 U.S. Ambassador to Laos William H. Sullivan arrived and quickly organized the massive secret air war that would unmercifully pummel north and south Laos for years to come. From this point until its cessation in 1973 the air war and not the "nation-building" approaches of the early idealists would define the war story in Laos. The sympathetic Colby was replaced by Ted Shackley who Warner describes as unappreciative of the use of indigenous forces and lower-level technology. The early idealists are soon replaced or side-tracked as the war machine brutalized Warner's formerly peaceful and idealic little country.

The thrust of Warner's narrative puts the blame for what went wrong in Laos squarely on the shoulders of men such as Ambassador Sullivan and the CIA's Shackley. On one level it is difficult to take issue with Warner. The United States' tragic intervention in Southeast Asia was undertaken with the "arrogance of power" that men such as Sullivan and Shackley wielded with amoral thoughtlessness. To make this point even clearer Warner makes excellent use of the perspective of Fred Branfman, another IVS volunteer who arrived in Laos much later than "Pop" Buell and whose perceptions and loyalties were far different. Branfman became the best known critic of the American "secret war" in Laos even though he was neither the first nor the only IVS volunteer to protest and work against the American war effort.

Despite Branfman's collaboration with American investigative newsmen and the concurrent and increasingly sharp Congressional probes that sought to discover the truth behind the "secret war;" for the Hmong and the Laotians the war was already lost. A few temporary victories by Genera Vang Pao's forces could not halt the inevitable tide of battle and the brutal air war was ultimately ineffective and made enemies of potential allies. Most of the book details the downward spiral that Laos, and especially the Hmong, suffered thanks to the mentality of the war planners who used real people as pieces in their complicated geopolitical gains. Warner also shows how Sullivan obscured facts and lied to Congress in a futile attempt to keep the lid on the Executive branch's failed military adventure.

In his story telling, Warner is clearly drawn to the early characters and if there is a weakness in his narrative it is precisely that. Although the cold-hearted cost-accountant mentality of war managers such as Sullivan and Shackley does not inspire admiration, Warner has so completely thrown in his lot with the early CIA romantics that his vision is obscured. While Lair, Buell, Lawrence, and the others were motivated by selfless idealism, Warner does not consider the possibility that their love for the Hmong ultimately led to consequences that were at least as destructive and barbaric as those of the war planners who pushed pins into maps in far away capitals. "Pop" Buell's affection for the Hmong and his delivery of refugee relief goods merely kept the CIA's ragged Hmong on the battlefield so they could be decimated. If anything, Lair, Buell, and the others were guilty of using the Hmong as cannon fodder in U.S. managed battles against domestic Pathet Lao guerrillas and invading northern Vietnamese army units. From the beginning the CIA romantics were guilty of "Hmongizing" the war, but it was an American war, it was not the Hmong's war. Similarly, Hmong General Vang Pao is treated with such sensitivity and respect that hard questions about his military decisions and political leadership are not asked.