Kurlantzick Chronicles the U.S. Secret War in Laos and Creation of a Paramilitary CIA in New Book

Kurlantzick Chronicles the U.S. Secret War in Laos and Creation of a Paramilitary CIA in New Book

“Over the course of the war, U.S. bombing of Laos would become so intense that it averaged one attack every eight minutes for nearly a decade,” observes Joshua Kurlantzick in his new book, A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA. Kurlantzick, a Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia, mines extensive interviews and recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records to give a definitive account of the secret war in the tiny Southeast Asian nation of Laos, which lasted from 1961 to 1973, and was the largest covert operation in U.S. history. The conflict forever changed the CIA from a relatively small spying agency into an organization with vast paramilitary powers.

January 24, 2017 10:15 am (EST)

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“Over the course of the war, U.S. bombing of Laos would become so intense that it averaged one attack every eight minutes for nearly a decade,” observes Joshua Kurlantzick in his new book, A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA. Kurlantzick, a Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia, mines extensive interviews and recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records to give a definitive account of the secret war in the tiny Southeast Asian nation of Laos, which lasted from 1961 to 1973, and was the largest covert operation in U.S. history. The conflict forever changed the CIA from a relatively small spying agency into an organization with vast paramilitary powers.

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The book explores how the responsibility for U.S. military conflicts shifted from the uniformed armed services to U.S. intelligence agencies operating with less scrutiny. Kurlantzick asserts that it began in 1961, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved Operation Momentum, a plan to create a proxy army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces in Laos, in order to minimize U.S. military involvement and keep the war hidden from the public at home, as well as most of Congress.

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Kurlantzick’s account follows the war’s central characters, including the four instrumental people who led the operation: the CIA operative who came up with the idea; the charismatic general who led the Hmong army in the field; the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew; and the wild card paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong army and is believed to be an inspiration for Marlon Brando’s character in Apocalypse Now.

The book reveals that

The CIA had previously been a relatively small player in American policy, one that concentrated on intelligence and political work. Although the anticommunist forces supported by the United States were eventually defeated, “within the CIA, the Laos war quickly took on an exalted status, both as an operation that effectively stalled the communist takeover in Southeast Asia and as an operation that remade the agency into a stronger, bigger beast,” Kurlantzick writes.

The secret war in Laos created a CIA that fights with real paramilitary forces and weapons as much as it gathers secrets, contends Kurlantzick. The war became a template for CIA proxy wars all over the world, from Central America in the 1980s to today’s war on terrorism, where the CIA and Special Forces operate with little oversight. 

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To interview the author, please contact the Global Communications and Media Relations team at 212.434.9888 or [email protected].  


Praise for A Great Place to Have a War:

“The war’s entire compelling tale can be found in the lucid prose and revelatory reporting of Joshua Kurlantzick’s new book. . . . A vivid picture of protagonists like Vang Pao.”
Economist

“In this excellent historical analysis, Kurlantzick . . . relates how the U.S. got involved with Laos, seeing it as a vital piece in the strategy of containing communism in Southeast Asia. . . . An instructive tale without a happy ending for any of the main players, and it continues to have relevance in the 21st century.”
Publishers Weekly

“Joshua Kurlantzick’s story of the CIA’s secret war in Laos brilliantly illuminates one of the most obscure yet harrowing chapters of the Vietnam conflict. With sure pacing and a gallery of rich characters, Kurlantzick shows how a modest operation to harass Communist forces escalated into a military onslaught that killed and displaced tens of thousands and wrecked a country. This is a cautionary tale of arrogance, recklessness, and unrestrained power that, tragically, finds echoes in many of today’s battlefields.”
—Joshua Hammer, author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

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