The Fred Branfman And Bouangeun Luangpraseuth Timeline Of The American Secret War In Laos
From Legacies of War
As we recently marked the 60th Anniversary (12/18/24) of the first U.S. strikes on Ho Chi Minh Trail, Legacies of War presents their Timeline of the American Secret War in Laos.
In 1955, when the U.S. sent the first covert advisors to Vientiane, Laos was a sovereign nation recognized by the United Nations. The 1954 Geneva Accords prevented Laos from entering into foreign military alliances, so those first advisors were retired or reserve military personnel working undercover and housed in the “Program Evaluation Office” at the civilian-led U.S. Operations Mission.
With the Pathet Lao refusing to participate in national elections and several thousand North Vietnamese regulars inside Laos, the country was quickly caught up in the Cold War. By 1959, American Green Berets in civilian dress were based at the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane and by 1961, the CIA’s proprietary airline, Air America, was contracted to provide helicopter support to American forces in Laos.
As the neighboring American war in Vietnam amplified, so, too, did clandestine military activities in Laos. By 1964, U.S. pilots, alongside American-trained Lao pilots, began flying secret bombing sorties over the historic Plain of Jars. On the ground, the CIA had spent the past five years recruiting, training, and arming indigenous guerilla units to support the Royal Lao Army and aerial reconnaissance missions by Lao and American pilots. In December 1964, the Air Force and Navy began Operation Barrel Roll, a nine-year bombing campaign to block North Vietnamese troops and weapons moving into South Vietnam along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of roads, paths, and tunnels hidden in the mountains that separate Laos and Vietnam. Approved by Lao Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma, bombings on Lao soil were coordinated by the American Ambassador in Vientiane along with the CIA Station Chief, military attaché, and U.S. commanders in Thailand, Vietnam, and Hawaii.
The American bombings left Laos the most heavily bombed nation, per capita, in human history. When the last bombs fell on August 14th, 1973, American pilots had flown 580,000 bombing runs over Laos, the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for almost a decade. An estimated 30% of the over 270 million cluster munitions dropped on Laos failed to detonate. Today, millions of these unexploded bombs remain in Lao soil, contaminating all 17 provinces and killing dozens of people each year–a majority of them children.
While the American public was kept largely in the dark about the bombings, in Laos, the nightly sorties were impossible to hide from American diplomats, USAID officials and staff, International Voluntary Service Volunteers, and U.S. armed forces. Lao farmers suffered the greatest impact, fleeing villages and fields to live for years in caves and struggling to earn a living in towns and cities. They were wounded and died in unknown numbers. Their experiences came to the attention of the world in 1971, when Fred Branfman, a young International Voluntary Service employee who had been expelled from Laos, exposed the bombing to the American public in his testimony before Congress. His interviews with Lao villagers and their drawings collected by his colleague, Bouangeun Luangpraseuth, were compiled into the 1972 book, “Voices from the Plain of Jars.” This timeline is dedicated to Fred, Bouangeun, and to the estimated one million civilians of Laos who were displaced, made homeless, wounded, and died during the American Secret War in Laos.
This is only the beginning! Legacies Library plans to expand on this timeline project as more funding is made available.
Images courtesy Legacies Of War
To view the timeline, please visit:
https://www.legaciesofwar.org/legacies-library#introduction
