Laos' Secret Drug War Lives On

BERKELEY, Calif. - The recent arrests of General Vang Pao, the former leader of royalist forces in Laos, and a retired U.S. army lieutenant colonel, Harrison Jack, for plotting to inflict al-Qaeda like terror on the capital of Laos, may seem like no more than a curious anecdote about a distant country. But their plot has potential implications for Americas drug problems, mostly ignored in the mainstream press.

American newspapers have paid little attention to what the London Daily Telegraph pointed out on Wed., June 7, that during the CIAs secret war in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s, Vang Pao's forces, 40,000-strong at their peak, were largely funded by the heroin trade, with raw opium transported on the airplanes and helicopters of Air America, the private airline of his CIA supporters.

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