Talk:Vang Pao

NPOV?

I am not familiar with this article's subject, but it appears to be lacking any references and I also detect an underlying bias against Vang Pao. I recommend that more information be given about the subject and that certain phrases like "being duped" be removed in favor of more neutral (and documented) statements. --Impaciente 00:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Newly added material about McCoy

The following was recently added by an anonymous IP [1]: "Allegations of drug trafficking and war crimes as circulated in the media are made by Professor Alfred W. McCoy. McCoy's own credibility comes into question when accusing Vang Pao since he spent a mere two weeks in Laos and never stepped foot in Long Cheng where Vang Pao's military headquarter was located and where McCoy claimed was the center of the alleged drug trafficking. Furthermore, in an interview, McCoy's alleged that he was "ambushed by a group of C.I.A. mercenaries". When asked by Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now, "How did you know they were C.I.A.?", McCoy responded, "Oh, look, in the mountains of Laos, there aren’t that many white guys, okay? I mean, the mercenaries? First of all, the C.I.A. ran what was called the Army Clandestine. They had a secret army, and those soldiers that ambushed us were soldiers in the secret army. That, we knew." McCoy's ability to distinguish between the 'non-white' faces fighting is questionable since there where multiple factions fighting in the Secret War, each having constituents from different ethnic groups. McCoy's characterization of the fighters for democracy who sided with the Royal Lao Government and C.I.A. as mercenaries also underscores his lack of knowledge in Lao history, warfare, and situation during the Secret War."

Some of this material might be worth incorporating into the article, but as short as it is right now, I feel this material places undo emphasis on the debate surrounding McCoy's controversial assertions. This article should focus first and foremost on Vang. Nposs 01:49, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think any of this needs to be in the article. It's a flat-out lie to say that McCoy is the only one making these accusations against Vang, or that they come only from people who spent little time in Laos. Gazpacho 06:23, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Pretty bullshit that there is nothing about drug running in here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.249.106 (talk) 14:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

References

Removed section

I removed the "also see" section, we have a perfectly good "see also" section. It referenced a Vang Pao Incident article. There is no such article, but there is an article called, similarly, Vang Tao Incident. This one has not been edited since December 2006, but says, interestingly "There is a possibility that the military attack on the Communist government was financed by a California based group called the United Lao Nation Resistance for Democracy in Laos." Because it says that and _predates_ the news here, some cross-referencing might be warranted. Chris 07:19, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Year of birth?

What is the source for his year of birth? Most sources I've seen give his year of birth as 1927 (or thereabouts). Josh 19:31, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Drug running

I don't know why certain editors keep trying to spin and defame the allegations of drug running, but it comes down to this: Vang Pao not some perfect man who never did anything questionable in his life. He was fighting a war and he had to pay his soldiers. The drug trade was one source of money available to him. A lot of people who were in a position to know, say that he used it. Don't go rewriting history so you can set up this man as some kind of idol. WillOakland (talk) 03:10, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here. You say on one hand you don't know why people are trying to suggest Vang Pao was a drug runner and on the other hand you say that he had to, to pay his troops. It is relevant to mention in this article that he ran drugs or was alleged to have run drugs IF outside sources state that he did. No one here is making personal accusations as far as I'm aware. They are simply taking information from outside sources to include in the article, as per Wikipedia's rules, and given the nature of modern conflict it is indeed relevant if a soldier used drugs to finance his operations.--Senor Freebie (talk) 04:28, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Why would he sell drugs if the CIA provided him everything that he needed to pay his soldiers??

Excellent point. The CIA would deliver all kinds of supplies in cargo planes--rice and other foodstuffs, and "hard rice" (guns and ammo). 66.122.183.163 (talk) 05:16, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

All of the above might be true, it's almost "common knowledge" that the CIA's Air America shipped dope to the USA, in part to finance it's covert operations there. Also, there are books and a movie on that topic, —not to mention a zillion wacko anti-Clinton conspiracy buffs. CHEERS!
--2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:5469:B725:F19:5151 (talk) 18:57, 14 September 2018 (UTC)Doug Bashford

---

My common knowledge is based upon my personal experiences during the 18 months I was stationed in Luang Prabang during the Secret War. I was the U.S. Air Force's sole source of intelligence for the northern third of the country. All of which is admittedly OR by WP standards, but establishes my credentials on the Secret War. I was in Laos about 36 times as long as Dr. McCoy.

Unmentioned in the above discussions is the fact that trading in opium in Laos was not a violation of Laotian law at the time.

Another unmentioned fact is that control of opium was a factor in both Indochina wars. SDECE depended on funding from the opium trade. The French occupation of Dien Bien Phu denied opium revenues to the Viet Minh. And the South Vietnamese sold it to American GIs. Et cetera.

Vang Pao's fellow generals such as Ouane Rattikone were not only smuggling opium internationally; they had refineries cranking out 96% pure heroin for export. (See 1967 Opium War for an interesting example.) And, the sections of McCoy's book that explore the heroin trade by these generals and their counterparts in Thailand and Vietnam is far more extensive than that concerning Vang Pao.

Also unmentioned is the fact that the Hmong dealt in opium for the same reason Appalachian settlers dealt in moonshine. In both cases, isolated farmers had to find a high-value portable product to take to market over trails and dirt roads. In both cases, the product became currency. However, while hooch improves with age, opium deteriorates. It must be either sold timely or discarded.

And so, inevitably, Vang Pao would have had to had some dealings in opium. There is some evidence that he allowed local trade in opium used as currency. Given the fact that he was a major general without a staff waging a years-long war didn't leave him much time for dope deals. His dual roles as military commander and tribal leader kept him very busy indeed.

Lastly, while I have been writing the history of the Secret War in here, I have not discovered a single source that says the CIA smuggled opium or heroin from Southeast Asia to the U.S. Also, I have never found evidence that AA even operated flights back to the U.S. I challenge Mr. Bradford, or any other editor, to supply a reliable source for this accusation. If such can be supplied, I will insert that info into this article. If not, it's time to ditch an untruth.

Georgejdorner (talk) 21:36, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Birth year

Two different years of birth given, which is the right one? 94.237.126.237 (talk) 14:07, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

INVOLVEMENT IN DRUG TRAFFICKING

FROM THE PBS WEBSITE:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/archive/gunsdrugscia.html I SUGGEST READING THE WHOLE INTERVIEW. IT IS PRETTY DAMNING

(EXCERPT) RON RICKENBACH The man that was in charge of that local operation was a man by the name of Tony Poe, and he was notorious. He had been involved with the agency from the OSS days he was a World War II combat veteran and he had been with the agency from its inception and he was the prototype operations officer. They made a movie about him when they made Apocalypses Now. He was the caricature of Marlon Brando.

NARRATOR Until now, Tony Poe has never talked publicly about the Laos operation. He saw it from beginning to end. one of Vang Pao's early case officers, Poe claims he was transferred from Long Chien because unlike his successors, he refused to tolerate the Meo leader's corruption.

TONY POE, Former CIA Officer You don't let him run loose without a chain on him. You gotta control him just like any kind of an animal or a baby. You have to control him. Hey! He's the only guy that had a pair of shoes when I first met him--what are you talking about, why does he need Mercedes Benz, apartments and hotels and homes where he never had them in his life before. Why are you going to give it to him?

Frontline: Plus he was making money on the side with his business?

Tony Poe: Oh, he was making millions, 'cos he had his own source of, uh, avenue for his own, uh, heroin.

Frontline: What did he do with the money?

Tony Poe: What do you mean? U.S. bank accounts, Switzerland, wherever.

Frontline: Didn't they know, when Vang Pao said 'I want some aircraft', didn't they know what he wanted that for?

Tony Poe: I'm sure we all knew it, but we tried to monitor it, because we controlled most of the pilots you see. We're giving him freedom of navigation into Thailand, into the bases, and we don't want him to get involved in moving, you know, this illicit traffic--O.K., silver bars and gold, O.K., but not heroin. What they would do is, they weren't going into Thailand, they were flying it in a big wet wing airplane that could fly for thirteen hours, a DC-3, and all the wings were filled with gas. They fly down to Pakse, then they fly over to Da Nang, and then the number two guy to President Thieu would receive it.

NARRATOR Nguyen Van Thieu was president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. Reports at the time accused president Thieu of financing his election through the heroin trade. Like Vang Pao, he always denied it, remaining America's honored and indispensable ally.

Tony Poe: They were all in a contractual relationship:Some of this goes to me, some of this goes to thee. And you know just the bookkeeping--we deliver you on a certain day; they had coded messages and di-di-di. That means so and so as this much comes back and goes into our Swiss bank account. Oh they had a wonderful relationship and every, maybe, six months they'd all come together, have a party somewhere and talk about their business:is it good or bad. It is like a mafia, yeah, a big organized mafia.

NARRATOR By the end of 1970, there were thirty thousand Americans in Vietnam addicted to heroin. GI's were dying from overdoses at the rate of two a day.

WILLIAM COLBY When the drug traffic became a real problem to the American troops in Vietnam, then the CIA was asked by President to get involved in the program to limit that traffic and stop it.

NARRATOR But in 1972, a U.S. intelligence agent in Southeast Asia sent a secret field report to customs. It suggested a serious conflict of interest: quote--"It was ironic that the CIA should be given the responsibility of narcotics intelligence, particularly since they were supporting the prime movers. Even though the CIA was, in fact, facilitating the movement of opiates to the U.S., they steadfastly hid behind the shield of secrecy and said that all was done in the interest of national security." End quote.

VICTOR MARCHETTI I doubt that they had any strong deep understanding of what they were allowing to happen by turning their head the other way and letting Vang Pao ship his dope out which was made into heroin which was going to our troops, which was corrupting people throughout Southeast Asia and back here, the effect it had on crime, I doubt that any one of them really thought in those terms at the time.

FROM THE ECONOMIST:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/asiaview/2011/01/vang_pao

While Vang Pao remained an admired leader among the exiles, he did not escape controversy. Interviews with CIA agents and former UN staff had made it clear that he was involved in trafficking heroin during the “secret war”.

VANG PAO'S CIA BOSSES ADMIT HIS INVOLVEMENT IN DRUG TRADE: http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=6542

Tony Poe, Vang Pao's former CIA case handler in Laos, describes the situation in even starker terms, saying that Vang Pao personally profited from supplying opium to a high-level South Vietnamese heroin syndicate.

"Oh, he was making millions," and he put the money in "U.S. bank accounts, Switzerland, wherever," Poe said.

in the Frontline documentary, Joe Nellis, a former chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Narcotics, flatly says: "Van Pao had a heavy hand in the production of heroin in that area."

Quincy traces Vang Pao's involvement in the opium trade to 1963 when he desperately wanted to add more soldiers but lacked the money to pay them. "He used military helicopters to collect opium from mountain villages and delivered the narcotics to merchants in central Vietnam where opium fetched top dollar."

The Russians tried to subvert Vang Pao's opium operation, Quincy writes, by shipping 15 tons of silver and 3.5 million feet of cloth to North Vietnam in a failed to effort to buy the drug from the villagers before Vang Pao's troops bargained for it.

excerpt FROM 'Warlord," a chapter from Keith Quincy's book, Harvesting Pa Chay's Wheat: The Hmong and America's Secret War in Laos [PDF]. http://www.hmongstudies.com/HSJv3_Quincy.pdf

Vang Pao first became involved in the opium trade in 1963. Desperate for more soldiers but strapped for the cash to add them to his pay roster, he used military helicopters to collect opium from mountain villages and delivered the narcotics to merchants in central Vietnam where opium fetched top dollar. Most of the money from the sales went for soldiers' salaries, though Tony Poe later claimed Vang Pao grew rich from narcotics trafficking.{60} [116] Vang Pao greatly expanded his involvement in narcotics once the war heated up after 1965. The intense fighting kept opium merchants out of the highlands. In village after village, opium harvests moldered in sheds instead of reaching the market. Rather than let the fruit of their labor rot in burlap sacks, Hmong farmers in communist-held territory north of the Plain of Jars began selling their harvest to the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese.{61} Profits from these deals purchased weapons to kill Hmong soldiers. To deny the opium to the communists and to reap the profits for himself, Vang Pao arranged for the CIA to begin transporting opium from the highlands to Vientiane, Saigon, and Bangkok.[

146.244.206.87 (talk) 00:43, 3 March 2011 (UTC)TRUTHTELLER

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Inspired a great poet

He is mentioned in CIA dope calypso by Allen Ginsberg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.76.9.189 (talk) 10:43, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Disorganized and muddled

Somebody should re-write this, each section seems directionless and confusing. ...Like the answer sheet of a multiple choice test. Each section should tell a story (or) putting ideas about this man in context. ...not just blurt facts.

Also, excessive use of lazy links, as if links were magical writing aides rather than supplemental info. Example: "George Foobar strongly opposed the tax." Repaired as: "George Foobar, temporary adviser to the king, strongly opposed the tax." Sometimes a few more words are needed, but that often takes true effort. Most people avoid clicking on links unless forced by circumstance, or often never return. Thus the story becomes muddled, meaningless, lost.

I seemingly learned more about him in this obit: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/world/asia/08vangpao.html "Vang Pao, a charismatic Laotian general who commanded a secret army of his mountain people in a long, losing campaign against Communist insurgents, then achieved almost kinglike status as their leader-in-exile in the United States...." ...or almost godlike status. CHEERS!
--2602:306:CFCE:1EE0:5469:B725:F19:5151 (talk) 19:43, 14 September 2018 (UTC)Doug Bashford

Military career

Vang Pao campaigned against the communists for over a decade, throughout dozens of battles. However, you would never know it by this article. Apparently fighting a long and nearly successful war is not as notable as legal dealings in opium. Isn't anyone going to write up his military career?Georgejdorner (talk) 19:57, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Evidence for persecution or genocide

A {{Citation needed}} maintenance tag, dated June 2021, included a reason for the tag, given as: "reason– evidence needed to show the veterans were actually being persecuted and/or subject to genocide". It had been appended to the statement:

Vang's ethnic Hmong and Laotian veterans and their refugee families who served in the U.S. "Secret Army" were eventually granted the status of political refugees by the United Nations because of alleged persecution by the Lao Marxist government and communist Vietnam who took control in 1975.

I do not think this is a reasonable request in this article, for this assertion. The substantive claims in the sentence are:

1. Hmong and Laotian veterans were accorded refugee status; and
2. the UN did so because of alleged persecution by the government in Laos

See no reason why evidence of actual persecution needs to be adduced here. It should be enough if it is verified that they were accorded the status; and that this was done for the ostensible reason stated. Perhaps the original tagger or other editors will let me know if they have a different view. In the meantime, I have removed the tag. AukusRuckus (talk) 13:52, 29 October 2023 (UTC)