BACK FIRE - The CIA's Secret War in Laos and its Link to the War in Vietnam by Warner, Roger

New York. 1995, Simon & Schuster. first US edition, hard bound in dust jacket, 6 1/2 x 9 1/2, FINE/FINE CONDITION, 416 pages, illus, maps, notes w/ bibliog., index........................................................... Until now, the history of America's war in Vietnam has been incomplete. The origins of that conflict-the most controversial and painful chapter in American history since the Civil War-were in Laos, a remote, landlocked, mountainous country where the CIA waged a secret war against communism. Drawing on unprecedented access to previously closed files and on extensive interviews, Back Fire fills in the last missing piece in the puzzle of America's tragic involvement in Southeast Asia...................................................... In 1960, Laos was a seemingly peaceful, even sleepy kingdom of mostly primitive people. But in fact it was fast becoming one of the hottest fronts in the superpowers' (:old War. U.S. military advisers were training Laotian government forces to fight the Pathet Lao, who were allied with Ho Chi Minh's North Vietnam-and, by extension, with the Soviet Union and communist China.Taking us to the heart of the war in Laos-from CIA headquarters in Washington to the lImong tribesmen's huts, where ideals were discussed and promises made and then broken-Roger Warner tells the previously untold story of the secret war through the experiences of the key players. These include an imperious ambassador, William Sullivan, who was determined to preserve the kingdom's facade of neutrality and keep the war's true nature a secret from Congress; a retired Indiana farmer, Edgar "Pop" Buell, who went into the mountains of Laos to teach the tribesmen how to farm and enlisted in the secret war; a hard-charging CIA field man, Tony Poe, who had previously served in paramilitary operations in Korea, Tibet, and Indonesia and who in Laos trained the tribesmen to fight the North Vietnamese; the legendary spymaster Ted Shackley, who escalated the conflict; a gruff Texas Cajun, Lloyd "Pat" Landry, who organized the logistics for the war; a former hill tribe police officer, Fang Pao, who rose from obscurity to become the leader of the only effective Laotian army fighting the communists; Richard Secord, who later surfaced in the Iran ...............................................................................Then there is Bill Lair, the quiet, earnest CIA operative who, in Operation Momentum, organized the Laotian hilltribe army, which grew to 30,000 men. For a time, Lair's forces pushed back the North Vietnamese Communists. But when the United States sent combat troops to neighboring South Vietnam, control of the war in Laos was taken away from Lair, who saw his operation become hopelessly mismanaged and the hill tribes set on the road to tragedy.Beyond his narrative of key players and events, Warner shows how the secret war in Laos was connected to the larger war in Vietnam, and how Vietnam was central to the shifting alliances of Cold War geopolitical rivals.Back Fire makes the puzzle of the U.S. war in Vietnam whole and reveals how an obscure people was set on the path of achieving national identity onlv to be abandoned in the wake of America's escalating conflict in Vietnam.