Collaboration of Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the Second Indochina War, with Particular Focus on Laos, 1952-1975

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Collaboration of Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the Second Indochina War, with particular focus on Laos, 1952-1975

Roger William (Willy) Bach BA

A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy at

The University of Queensland in 2016

School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry

Abstract

This thesis examines the collaboration of Anglosphere allies, Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the US-led Indochina War and in particular, the Secret War in Laos 1954-1975. Though called the Vietnam War, and the American War by the opposing side, it was a regional war that affected all neighbouring countries. The war affected these Anglosphere allies too, whilst undermining their democratic institutions. The history of this collaboration has been largely ignored or denied, as the hitherto scarce literature showed. Most of the literature about the war has been written by US authors, or focuses on what the US did in promulgating the war. The actions of SEATO allies, Britain, Australia and New Zealand have been largely overlooked. This gap in the historical record needs closer examination. Three aspects of this collaboration have been selected to demonstrate its extent and depth.

The thesis examines the building of the Operation Crown airfield near Leong Nok Tha and the Post Crown Works road networks in Thailand over the 1962-68 period, and the rotation of many engineer units and support services from Britain, Australia and New Zealand. This infrastructure was part of the US-led SEATO military build-up in Thailand. Crown was also used for commando incursions into Laos across the Mekong River. Participation in the SEATO alliance included staffing of the SEATO Headquarters in Bangkok; planning of an invasion, occupation and partition of Laos; and planning and participating in major SEATO exercises designed to rehearse the intended invasion. The plans also involved Britain contributing nuclear weapons. The invasion was eventually abandoned due to the divergent views, limited commitment of SEATO allies, and the US failure to consult.

The study also describes Britain and Australia’s provision of counterinsurgency warfare advisers and how these individuals worked with special forces, mercenaries, and ethnic minorities to carry out covert warfare. These Anglosphere advisers also provided the US with strategic advice based on Britain’s experience in Kenya and Malaya. These counterinsurgency activities included ‘Hearts and Minds’ projects, but also the coercive removal of civilians from their traditional ancestral farming land. They set up strategic hamlets and refugee camps, destroyed food, crops, domestic animals, homes and property, and carried out the interrogation of prisoners. Eventually, advisers from Britain and Australia joined the leadership of the Phoenix Program, which assassinated 20,000 to 30,000 suspected communist sympathisers in South Việt Nam.

The third aspect of Anglosphere involvement in the war detailed here is the process of invention and development, and eventually manufacture of defoliants – including Agent Orange – that were of great importance to counterinsurgency warfare. The destruction of food crops was as central to the US Ranch Hand program as the removal of forest canopy to reveal the disposition of their

i adversaries. Defoliants were used to coerce civilians to vacate their homes and farms, turning these areas into free-fire zones. The toxicity and teratogenic nature of these chemicals caused aborted foetuses and unviable deformed babies. Eventually, the US government was obliged to phase out defoliant use, beginning with the immediate ending of crop destruction in 1971.

The British, Australian and New Zealand contributions to the war were a whole of government undertaking. There were connections between the ‘big’ conventional war that included massive bombing and invasion plans, as well as the ‘small’ covert unconventional guerrilla counterinsurgency wars in Laos and throughout Indochina that were part of the regional war of resistance to decolonisation. The war, predicated on the fears of the Domino Theory, ended with none of the predicted outcomes. The foreign forces withdrew and the local nationalist- communist victors in Laos, Cambodia, and Việt Nam set about reconstruction with varying degrees of success and largely without assistance from the Anglosphere countries which had invested so heavily in the war. US forces left Thailand in 1975-76 at the request of Thai authorities. SEATO was disbanded in 1977. Australia’s forward defence doctrine was quietly forgotten.

Declaration by author This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I have included in my thesis. I have clearly stated the contribution of others to my thesis as a whole, including statistical assistance, survey design, data analysis, significant technical procedures, professional editorial advice, and any other original research work used or reported in my thesis. The content of my thesis is the result of work I have carried out since the commencement of my research higher degree candidature and does not include a substantial part of work that has been submitted to qualify for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution. I have clearly stated which parts of my thesis, if any, have been submitted to qualify for another award. I acknowledge that an electronic copy of my thesis must be lodged with the University Library and, subject to the policy and procedures of The University of Queensland, the thesis be made available for research and study in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968 unless a period of embargo has been approved by the Dean of the Graduate School. I acknowledge that copyright of all material contained in my thesis resides with the copyright holder(s) of that material. Where appropriate I have obtained copyright permission from the copyright holder to reproduce material in this thesis.

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Publications during candidature

Article Willy Bach 100%

“Britain, Australia, the United States and Agent Orange in the Indochina Wars: Re-defining Chemical-Biological Warfare” http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/wp-content/uploads/583-Britain-Australia-the-United-States- and-Agent-Orange-in-the-Indochina-Wars-1.pdf 6 March 2015

Article Willy Bach 100%

“Decolonisation and the Rôle of Counterinsurgency Doctrine –”Hearts-and-Minds‟ or the evidence of their own eyes” http://www.polsis.uq.edu.au/docs/Challenging-Politics-Papers/Willy-Bach-Decolonisation- and-the-Role-of-Counterinsurgency-Doctrine.pdf

Article Willy Bach 100%

“Fear is the Parent of Cruelty: Racism, the Military, Terrorism and War.” The Complexities of Racism: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on 'Racisms in the New World Order',

6 - 7 December 2007 http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Bach,_Willy.html

Article published 2008 http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/34549/1/2008%20Racisms%20Conference%20Proceedings.p df

Article Willy Bach 100%

The Complexities of Racism: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on

“Racisms in the New World Order” University of the Sunshine Coast

8 - 9 December 2005”Australian Nationalism, Conflicted

Identities, Militarism and Exclusion” http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/17905/2/17905_Gopalkrishan_%26_Babacan_2006_front_pa ges.pdf

Article Willy Bach 100%

Publications included in this thesis

No publications included

Contributions by others to the thesis

No contributions by others

Statement of parts of the thesis submitted to qualify for the award of another degree

None

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the people who helped me to make this thesis possible. These include my original Supervisor, Carl Trocki and my Associate Supervisor, Ross Daniels at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia (whose enthusiasm for human rights inspired much of my work). Ross’ assistant, Ed Nixon, was first to urge me to study this topic for a higher degree. After the School of Humanities was abolished I searched for a new Supervisor and was accepted by A/Professor Chris Dixon at the School of History, University of Queensland. Supervision was transferred to Dr. Patrick Jory. I have much for which to thank Patrick, especially for his patience. I suffered a number of bouts of poor health and struggled at times when only just able to work. I have received valuable help from Martin Shaw, University of Sussex, UK, Stephen Dorril, Huddersfield University, UK Mark Phythian, University of Leicester, UK, Michael McKinley, Australian National University, Brian Martin, University of Wollongong, Australia, Richard Matthews, Brandon University, Canada, Jerry Lembcke, College of the Holy Cross, USA, Kate Cassandra McCulloch, Sutayut Osornprasop, Bangkok, Thailand, John Tirman, MIT, Boston, helpful archivists at the Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University and the generous help from librarians at George Washington National Security Archives. Thanks too to Libby Stewart at the Australian War Memorial, Chris Clark at the RAAF Air Power Studies Centre; to former diplomats, British and Australian (who I am unable to name for ethical reasons); and former intelligence and special forces people who cannot be named. A special thanks to the late Lt Col John Stevens, RE, who was first to tell me that Leong Nok Tha was intended as a launch pad for an invasion of Laos. Miss C.J. Sayer, British Ministry of Defence – Adjutant General Secretariat, should be granted special thanks. Her refusal to continue correspondence in November 1999, when I mentioned the links between Leong Nok Tha and the US-led war in Laos, impelled me to continue my inquiries with greater energy. There are a number of British and Australian veterans whose names are withheld for ethical reasons. Colonel Don Gordon, retired, formerly with USAFSOF Project 404. A number of Lao civilians and former combatants whose names are also withheld for ethical reasons. For his inspiration to pursue peace as a subject of study, Ralph Summy, founder of Peace Studies at UQ, Marianne Hanson (International Relations), Ann Brown, Daniel Druckman, Zohl De Ishtar and Winnifred Louis. I would like to mention Hurriyet Babacan and Narayan Gopalkrishnan for their dedication to the issues of nationalism and race. I would also like to thank my partner, Rowan for her forbearance and patience, encouragement and for often sparking new ideas and solving IT problems. I will always remember that while I was working on the Leong Nok Tha airfield in 1966, there was also a Thai civilian crew of labourers who sang and banged gongs on their way to work, as they carried their lunches in tiffin carriers. They were dignified. I had never seen people sing their way to work. It reminded me to dedicate this thesis to all who were harmed and disadvantaged by what we were doing.

Keywords

US, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Laos, CIA, Vietnam, Indochina, secret war

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC)

ANZSRC code: 210399, Historical Studies not elsewhere classified 100%

Fields of Research (FoR) Classification

FoR code: 2103, Historical Studies, 100%

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Table of Contents

Abbreviations ...... ix-xi Maps ...... xii-xiii Introduction ...... 1-12 Chapter 1 Military Bases and Logistics ...... 13-41 Chapter 2 Collaboration in Warlike Operations and Counterinsurgency ...... 42-70 Chapter 3 Development of Chemical Agents including Agent Orange ...... 71-101 Conclusion ...... 102-106 Bibliography ...... 107-117 Appendix ...... 118-120

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Abbreviations:

AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science Council AATTV Australian Army Training Team Vietnam ANZAC Australian and New Zealand Army Corps ANZAM Australia and New Zealand in the Malayan Area ANZUS Australia New Zealand United States alliance AO Agent Orange ARVN Army of Republic of Vietnam (South) ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations AWM Australian War Memorial BRIAM British Advisory Mission CIA Central Intelligence Agency (US) CIDA Committee of Inquiry into Defence Awards (Australia) CIDG Civilian Irregular Defense Group Col. Colonel CORDS Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support Cpl. Corporal CRD The Cultural Relations Department CW Counterinsurgency Warfare EU European Union FAC Forward Air Controller FARELF Far East Land Forces FRS Fellow of the Royal Society GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters (British) Gen. General HQ Headquarters IADL International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience

ICC International Control Commission ICI Imperial Chemical Industries (British) ISA Internal Security Act ISC International Students Conference JFK John Fitzgerald Kennedy JIC Joint Intelligence Committee KGS Knightsbridge Gurkha Services L/Cpl. Lance Corporal Lao PDR Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic LBJ Lyndon Baines Johnson LCN Load Classification Number Lt Lieutenant MACV Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Maj. Major MCP Malayan Communist Party MI6 British Secret Intelligence Service NAA National Archives of Australia NAAFI Navy, Army and Ari Force Institutes NCO Non-Commissioned Officer NCO Network Centric Operations NPFF The Republic of Vietnam National Police Field Force NSA National Security Agency (US) NZSAS New Zealand Special Air Service PL Pathet Lao POL Petrol Oil and Lubricants PRC Peoples’ Republic of China PRO Public Records Office – now National Archives, Kew PSP Pierced Steel Plank Pvt. Private

RAAF Royal Australian Air Force RAE Royal Australian Engineers RAF Royal Air Force RAR Royal Australian Rifles RE Royal Engineers RLAF Royal Laotian Air Force RNZAF Royal New Zealand Air Force RNZE Royal New Zealand Engineers RoE Rules of Engagement RTAF Royal Thai Air Force S/Sgt Staff Sergeant SAS Special Air Service SEATO South East Asia Treaty Organisation Sgt Sergeant TCDD 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (Dioxin) UKUSA Five Eyes Agreement on Intelligence Sharing UN United Nations USAF United States Air Force USAID United States Aid USN United States Navy USOM U.S. Operations Mission USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics VC Viet Cong

Maps: Map of the South East Asian region http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map_of_southeast_asia.htm

Map of Thailand with USAF bases http://wapedia.mobi/en/File:Usaf-thailand-map.jpg

The Ho Chi Minh Trail http://www.psywarrior.com/TrailLeaflets.html

Lao PDR maps showing extent of USAF bombing, Map, includes B-52 and herbicide deployments http://www.nra.gov.la/resources/Annual%20Reports/UXO%20Annual%20Report%202006_ English.pdf

Google Earth with overlay of USAF Bombing Data in Champasak and Attapeu (Mekong River and Ubon Ratchathani at left of image).

xii

Google Earth Cluster Bombs dropped on Laos

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“Air America was an American passenger and cargo airline established in 1946 and covertly owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Special Activities Division from 1950 to 1976. It supplied and supported covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War....” (The photo above was from an expired web site, but is one of a series. The same people are in this photo in the same clothes, but with a different plane: N774M) https://sites.google.com/site/thecatbirdsnest/home/air-america-flying-high-with-the-cia

UNRESOLVED The other day upon a stair A long time ago in a paddy field I met a man who wasn't there Not officially you understand He wasn't there again today Only ghosts inhabit this landscape I do wish he would go away He never will Willy Bach©1991 Acknowledgements to American poet Hughes Mearns, born 28 September 1875 and died 3 March 1965. This was taken from his poem, The Little Man Who Wasn’t There. “Mearns…composed in 1899 as a song for a play …performed in 1910 and the poem was first published as "Antigonish" in 1922.”1

1 William Hughes Mearns, "The Little Man Who Wasn't There," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hughes_Mearns (Date Accessed: 4 January 2016)

Collaboration of Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the Second Indochina War, with particular focus on Laos, 1952-1975

Introduction: the Problem

This thesis seeks to explain three aspects of Anglosphere participation in the US-led war in Laos between 1954 and 1975. It has been necessary to draw upon the far more extensive evidence from the Việt Nam theatre of the Second Indochina War. Some evidence for Laos was missing or not available at the time of writing. Much evidence was kept very secret at the time and has remained little known and rarely commented upon in the English-speaking mass media, popular or academic literature with a few exceptions. Both academic and popular histories have mainly ignored the roles played by the British and Commonwealth allies in Laos. An example of this incongruity could be observed on 7 February 2008, when then Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was interviewed on the opening of a special wing at the Australian War Memorial (AWM) in Canberra for the Việt Nam War. The substantial A$17 million extension included no mention of Laos or the Australian troops who served in Thailand, which was the front-line for the launch of assaults on Laos.2

Secrecy, thought necessary at the time for military reasons, has hampered a thorough examination of the history. Few journalists ventured into Laos or Cambodia during the war. Wilfred Burchett was an exception and his Australian passport was confiscated. There were gaps in the archival record and restrictions remained on a number of documents that had not been assessed for declassification or remained firmly closed from public scrutiny. It is a problem for historians performing authentic research. British, Australian and New Zealand governments denied this collaboration at the time. Britain still denied involvement at the time of writing. Yet, the collaboration of these allies was extensive and significant, as this thesis will demonstrate.

The foundation for collaboration arose from interests in common with the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) headquartered in Bangkok, which under-pinned the organisation of US allies and partners for the task at hand.3 Members of SEATO also included a reluctant France, and Asian nations, Thailand, The Philippines and Pakistan.

2 "New Australian War Memorial Wings Opened by PM," in AM (Australia: ABC Radio National, 2008). http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2173642.htm (accessed 13 April 2010) 3 A fuller history of SEATO is provided on pages 24-28 of this thesis.

SEATO was a creature of the Cold War and a harbinger of constrained lives, with diminished civil liberties and undemocratic governance throughout South East Asia. Even with Asian member states, SEATO was an instrument of resistance to decolonisation. SEATO researchers distilled world news into interpretations of Communist threats in their “Trends and Highlights” reports.4 In the US and to some degree in allied nations, communism was treated as a major threat to national security. Communism was regarded as a pathological contagion that would seep into any unguarded crevice. It could not be tolerated in any form or in the slightest degree. This is embedded in the language of counterinsurgency warfare. The anti-communist mindset, propelled by US Senator Joe McCarty’s Hearings on “Un- American Activities”, curtailed many careers, lives, families and friendships. Vern Countryman carried out an academic study, documenting how the Hearings proceeded.5

During Britain’s Cold War era, government agencies organised and censored what was made public through the Cultural Relations Department (CRD) and networks of compliant journalists and academics, as Richard Aldrich and others have explained.6 Moyra Grant described the chilling effect on public discourse, in academia, politics and the media, as part of the architecture of censorship, caused in part by D Notices in Britain.7 Christopher Simpson detailed how "Worldview Warfare", as he termed it, which resulted in the stifling of dissident thought, common in a number of World War II and Cold War societies, and which could be weaponised for both ‘enemies’ and domestic populations.8 In German, the word is Weltanschauungskrieg – a war of ideologies. It was used by the Nazis.

In this climate, the information dispensed by commanders to the lower ranks in the armed forces was made confusing and misleading for some, and for others simply not plausible. Fear of breaching the Official Secrets Act successfully kept many veterans from speaking out, as Australian RAAF veteran, Marc (also known as Mike) Holt demonstrated in his account of his service in Ubon, Thailand. In Holt’s own words, “…the Royal Australian Air Force ghost warriors who fought a secret war in Thailand to support the troops in Viet Nam

4 "South-East Asia Treaty Organization – Trends and Highlights," Research Office (Bangkok: SEATO, 1965 ), (1 December 1965) B1, C4, C1, (16 January 66) C3, C5, (1 February 66) B4. 5 Vern Countryman, Un-American Activities in the State of Washington: The Work of the Canwell Committee (New York: Cornell University Press, 1951), 1-12. 6 Richard Aldrich, "Putting Culture into the Cold War: The Cultural Relations Department (CRD) and British Covert Information Warfare " Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 2 (2003). 109-134 7 Moyra Grant, "The D Notice," Serendipity, http://www.serendipity.li/cda/dnot.html (Date accessed: 5 January 2006) 8 Christopher Simpson, Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 15-30.

3 have had to be silent for 40 years… more than 2,400 personnel served there between May 1962 and August 1968.”9

As the internet developed during the 1990s, veterans’ web discussions and web sites helped to reconstruct the narratives of their service in Thailand at Leong Nok Tha airfield, (Operation Crown) and on the road network, (Post Crown Works) till sufficient documents were declassified and made public. In some ways these forums were informative and supportive, but in other ways they also perpetuated confusion. Soldiers had been told that they were assisting Thailand with development of the impoverished North East and enabling agricultural products to be flown to Bangkok. They were in reality preparing for an invasion of Laos. This story was exactly what British Secretary for Defence, Denis Healey told the Parliament. As late as 12 April 1967, Healey maintained the fiction, in a House of Commons Question Time reply to Dr David Kerr, Labour MP for Wandsworth Central, that, “There is no connection between the work which we are carrying out to help the Thai Government to open up its country to Government services to enable local people to export their produce, and the events in Vietnam.”10

This secret war in Laos was not the first or only covert war which was promulgated by an intelligence agency rather than mainstream US military forces. Rather, it was one in a long list of CIA-commanded wars. Thus, officers and their paramilitary advisers and mercenaries were sent from one posting to another to carry out similar work. North Americans far from home required regular and reliable logistic support to enable their work. Deniability was an important feature of secret wars, and so the CIA chose to use the services of several privately-operated airlines. These were Air America and Continental Air Services. They fed up to 30,000 Hmong family members and fighters, resupplied weapons and the infiltration and exfiltration of CIA officers, making Long Tieng, Lima Site 20a one of the world’s busiest airports:

Air America was a CIA-owned and -operated "air proprietary" during the Cold War against the global menace of communism. From 1946 to 1976, Civil Air Transport (CAT) and Air America served alongside U.S. and allied intelligence agents and military personnel in the Far East, often in dangerous combat and combat support roles.

9 Marc Holt, "Australia's Secret Vietnam War Warriors?," Big Chilli magazine, , http://searchwarp.com/swa77414.htm (Date accessed: 24 September 2008) 10 Britain, Debate, House of Commons, Ministry of Defence, "Thailand (British Army Detachment)," HC Deb 15 December 1967, Vol 744, 1175-61175.

Behind a shroud of strict secrecy, many Air America personnel were unaware that they were "shadow people" in counterinsurgency operations. Some 87 of them were killed in action in China, Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere.11

The Agency’s prominent officers, their roles and postings, have been detailed by John Prados.12 Félix Ismael Rodríguez Mendigutia, veteran of the Bay of Pigs, ordered the execution of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and was later posted to Việt Nam to join the leadership of the Phoenix Program, as he narrated on camera.13 Secret irregular wars are fought covertly, by stealth, often in remote locations, deploying special forces, mercenaries and local proxies.

These wars usually begin on a small scale and avoid unwanted media attention. The list of operations compiled by William Blum was long, but may have some minor omissions.14 The aborted Bay of Pigs (Playa Girón) covert invasion of Cuba of 17 April 1961, was a setback for US planners and their allies in Laos.15 The Indochina War, especially in Laos, was initially a small covert war, but also developed into a big conventional war, with long-term planning, procurement, recruitment and training. John Prados described the CIA’s war led by its then Director, William Colby: “Shackley saw Lair’s rubber band and baling wire operation [in Laos] as a village market, but he wanted to run a supermarket, a high-intensity covert war.”16 (CIA paramilitary case officer, James William (Bill) Lair, who directed the secret war from a building in the RTAF base, Udorn Thani). Prados has provided some definitions:

…the Joint Chiefs of Staff define a "covert operation" as one planned or conducted so as to conceal the identity of the sponsor or permit a denial of involvement… the U.S. military adds the "clandestine operation", defined as one which emphasis "is placed on concealment of the operation rather than on the identity of the sponsor"…

He also commented on the success-rate of these operations,

11 Adrian Rosales Steve Maxner, "About Air America," AirAmerica.org, http://www.airamerica.org/index.php/en/about-air-america/aboutmenuaa. 12 John Prados, Safe for Democracy the Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago, Ill: Ivan R Dee, 2006), xvii-xxix. 13 Felix Rodriguez, "Secret CIA Operations: Felix Rodriguez, the Bay of Pigs, the Death of Che Guevara & Vietnam " (US: Youtube, 2014). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjXUPbXczKQ (Date Accessed: 28 June 2015) 14 William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, Updated edition ed. (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2004 ), Contents 4-5. 15 Prados, Safe for Democracy the Secret Wars of the CIA, 3, 10, 221,45,48, 59, 63. 16 Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 167.

…American undercover actions have resulted in upheavals and untold suffering in many nations while contributing little to Washington's quest for democracy. Despite considerable ingenuity… the results of covert operations have been consistently disappointing.17

The CIA’s own legal Counsel, Lawrence (Larry) Houston wrote an ‘in-house’ opinion on 15 January 1962, that legality was an elastic concept to the CIA:

…there is no statutory authorization to any agency for the conduct of such activities. No explicit prohibition existed either … related to intelligence within a broad interpretation of the National Security Act of 1947.18

On some occasions the CIA and Britain’s MI6 agreed to collaborate. One of these was the coup d'état to overthrow the elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953.19 Another example, in 1953, was the agitation in then British Guyana to prevent the election of trade unionist, Cheddi Jagen as Prime Minister.20 These events and others ran concurrently with the early stages of the war in Laos. Documents show that Britain had taken a close interest in Laos, but it was most probably a CIA-led operation.

The CIA made assessments in 1961 that Laos was an insignificant country whose sovereignty need not be respected, as shown in one of its long-over-classified ‘Family Jewels’ documents released in 2008. Laos was described as “a diminutive jungle kingdom”. Yet, the document also states: "Laos is a peaceful country and the Lao people are dedicated to peace; yet Laos for more than twenty years has known neither peace nor security. Thus did the Laotian King Savang Vathana (Sic.) [Sisavang Vatthana] describe the anomaly that is Laos today.” This US Defense Department document was marked “SPECIAL HANDLING REQUIRED Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals12 Of 15 TOP SECRET, EXCLUDED FROM AUTOMATIC REGRADING DOD DIP 5200.10 does not apply.”21

This could help explain why Geneva conferences and agreements, with or without Britain’s ostensible perseverance in bringing about the withdrawal of foreign forces in Laos or ending

17 Safe for Democracy the Secret Wars of the CIA, xiv, xv. 18 Ibid., 291. 19 Ibid., 97, 98, 122, 23. 20 Ibid., 3, 13, 18, 19. 21 Directorate for Freedom of Information and Security Review US Department of Defense, "Chronological Summary of Significant Events Concerning the Laotian Crisis, First Installment: 9 August 1960 to 31 January 1961 (Revised Version)," Defense (Washington DC: US government, 1961), 1. http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/star/images/250/2500113001A.pdf (Date Accessed: 20 December 2015)

6 the fighting, as described by Nicholas Tarling, had no prospect success. Britain had very little influence with the US when decisions had already been made in Washington. As Tarling spelt out, “…it throws light on Britain’s policy in Southeast Asia in what, in some sense, may be seen as the last of the decades in which it was crucial… [the British government’s] essential task was to find ways of diminishing Britain’s role in a responsible way.”22

Both the North Vietnamese and the US had no intention of making the agreement and making Lao neutrality a workable arrangement that would bring an end to the fighting and bring peace, as Peter Busch concluded.23 Britain and Canada used their presence on the International Control Commission (ICC) to transmit complaints about the North Vietnamese, whist minimising complaints against the US.24 There had not been much change in US intentions from the time of the 1954 Geneva Conference and the determination of John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.25

Existing Literature

Most of the literature on the Indochina War has been dominated by US authors. Very few of the major authors mention the parts played by the US’s allies. Notably, Martin Stuart-Fox is a major author and an Australian, however, this study covered different ground from that which he covered.26 Grant Evans, who has questioned aspects of the US narrative on Laos, expressed a difference of views to those of Arthur Dommen and Stuart-Fox on the assumed domination of Laos by Việt Nam.27 It was rare to find a US author who was concerned with the effects of the war on the people of Laos and the high rate of civilian casualties, except Fred Branfman, who helped expose the secret war.28 John Tirman was the other exception.29

Few authors from beyond the US have expressed critical views of the conduct of the war or its necessity. Very little work has been done on the documentation of the military aspects of

22 Nicholas Tarling, Britain and the Neutralisation of Laos (Singapore: Singapore University Press 2011), 1-3. 23 Peter Busch, All the Way with JFK? Britain, the Us and the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 54-57. 24 Ibid., 37-65. 25 John Foster Dulles, "Indochina - Views of the United States on the Eve of the Geneva Conference: Address by the Secretary of State, March 29, 1954 " Avalon Law Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/inch019.asp (Date Accessed: 17 August 2010). 26 Martin Stuart-Fox, Buddhist Kingdom Marxist State the Making of Modern Laos, Second, 2002 ed., Studies in Asian History No 2 (Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus Co. Ltd, 1996; repr., 2002). 27 Grant Evans and Kevin Rowley, Red Brotherhood at War: Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos since 1975 (London: Verso, 1990), 59. 28 Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars Life under an Air War (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1972). 29 John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 123-81.

British collaboration in the Indochina War except by Robert Fleming, Gerald Prenderghast,30 and fellow veteran, Aly Renwick.31 Antonio Varsori has detailed Britain’s Macmillan, Conservative government’s responses to US President Kennedy’s requests for assistance with the war.32 Britain’s Labour Party Tribune Group war opponents were explained by Neville H. Twitchell.33 Rhiannon Vickers dismissed Wilson’s Labour opponents as a nuisance. Andrea Benvenuti described Britain’s withdrawal from East of Suez, which was already planned before Labour were elected.34

Recently, scholars have begun to publish material which broadly supports the conclusions of this thesis. Robert Fleming has covered some of the material here, notably Leong Nok Tha airfield, and he has interviewed and named some SAS soldiers who fought in Việt Nam.35 Gerald Prenderghast also covered some of the topics discussed here, notably BRIAM and Leong Nok Tha.36 English-speaking Singaporean and Malaysian scholars, notably Pamela Sodhy, have contributed an Asian perspective to the literature.37 A Thai scholar, Sutayut Osornprasop, has documented the effects of the Indochina War on North East Thailand.38

The role of Anglosphere counterinsurgency advisers in Cambodia and Laos, mirrored those in Việt Nam and their activities included the recruitment and training of ethnic minority peoples, the coercive removal of civilians, setting up of strategic hamlets and refugee camps, destruction of property and interrogation of prisoners. Very large numbers of Lao civilians became displaced people, possibly over thirty percent of the population.39 The “Hearts and Minds” campaign led inexorably to the Phoenix Program, which cost an estimated 20,000-

30 Gerald Prenderghast, Britain and the Wars in Vietnam: The Supply of Troops, Arms and Intelligence, 1945- 1975 (Jefferson NC: McFarland & Co Inc, 2015). 31 Aly Renwick, "Britain and the Vietnam War," Veterans For Peace UK, http://veteransforpeace.org.uk/2014/britain-and-vietnam-war/ (Date Accessed: 7 January 2016). 32 Antonio Varsori, "Britain and Us Involvement in the Vietnam War During the Kennedy Administration, 1961-63," Cold War History 3, No. 2 (2003). 33 Neville H. Twitchell, The Tribune Group: Factional Conflict in the Labour Party 1964-1970 (London: Rabbit Publications, 1998). 34 Andrea Benvenuti, "The British Military Withdrawal from Southeast Asia and Its Impact on Australia's Cold War Strategic Interests " Cold War History 5, No. 2 (2005). 35 Robert Fleming, "A Jungle Too Far: Britain and the Vietnam War," The National Army Museum, Chelsea, London, UK, http://www.nam.ac.uk/whats-on/lunchtime-lectures/video-archive/jungle-too-far-britain-vietnam- war (Date Accessed: 15 May 2013) 36 Gerald Prenderghast, Britain and the Wars in Vietnam: The Supply of Troops, Arms and Intelligence, 1945- 1975 (Jefferson NC: McFarland & Co Inc, 2015), 53-58, 144-47. 37 Pamela Sodhy, "The Malaysian Connection in the Vietnam War," Contemporary Southeast Asia 9 No. 1 (1987). 38 Sutayut Osornprasop, "Amidst the Heat of the Cold War in Asia: Thailand and the American Secret War in Indochina (1960-74) "Cold War History 7, No. 3 (2007). 39 Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars Life under an Air War.

30,000 lives of ‘suspected’ of communist sympathies or Việt Cộng membership.

Some of the ground for the invention and development, and eventually manufacture of new, novel weapons, in particular defoliants that included Agent Orange was undertaken by British scientists at Porton Down, as Mark Wheelis, Lajos Rózsa, and Malcolm Dando have described in regard to the British origin of defoliants.40 This thesis draws together their evidence, the toxicity of dioxin and eventual phasing out and destruction of the defoliants, including its effects on the unborn, as discussed by Fred Wilcox.41 Wil D. Verwey has set out the evidence of crop destruction.42 Simon Whitby was another major authority.43 These chemicals were an essential component of cooperation and merited a whole chapter.

In my conclusion I will demonstrate that these elements of collaboration and other activities of the British government made their contribution to the war a whole of government undertaking, involving much government time and effort across a number of Ministries. Readers will also see the connections between the ‘big’ conventional war that included massive bombing and the ‘small’ unconventional guerrilla counterinsurgency war, and that both were part of the whole regional war of resistance to decolonisation.

Counterinsurgency and Allies - The Anglosphere explained

The Laos theatre called for a special type of warfare, similar to and drawing from the British experience in Kenya and Malaya. Caroline Elkins documented how civilians, mainly of the Kikuyu tribe were corralled in concentration camps where many were mistreated, tortured, succumbed to diseases or died of starvation.44 Simon Webb provided an overview of the Mau Mau Uprising and the use made of these camps.45 Counterinsurgency warfare was and is a subject of study and which required collaboration with Anglosphere allies, as seen in this 1962 RAND Corporation report: “One of the UK participants, Lt Col Frank Kitson, later described how he was struck by the unity of outlook: “… it was if we had all been brought up

40 Lajos Rózsa Mark Wheelis, and Malcolm Dando, editors, Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2006), 48, 67, 237. 41 Fred A. Wilcox, Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011), 157. 42 Wil D. Verwey, Riot Control and Herbicides in War: Their Humanitarian, Toxicological, Ecological, Military, Polemological, and Legal Aspects (Amsterdam: A W Sijthoff, 1977), 98-99. 43 Simon Whitby, "Anti-Crop Biological Weapons Programmes" in Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945 ed. Lajos Rózsa Mark Wheelis, and Malcolm Dando, eds. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 213, 16, 17, 23. 44 Caroline Elkins, "Looking Beyond Mau Mau: Archiving Violence in the Era of Decolonization," The American Historical Review 120, no. 3 (2015). 45 Simon Webb, British Concentration Camps: A Brief History from 1900 – 1975 (Barnsley: Pen and Sword 2016). 151-162

9 together from youth. We all spoke the same language. …all our ideas were essentially the same...”46 General Sir Frank Edward Kitson, GBE, KCB, MC & Bar, DL, later Commander- in-Chief UK Land Forces and Aide-de-Camp General to Queen Elizabeth II. He was also a theorist on CW, and architect of the theory of Pseudo Gangs, who imitated the adversary forces in carrying out terrorist acts that were duly attributed to these adversaries in low intensity operations. These have also been called false flag operations.

The grouping of English-speaking nations involved to varying degrees in Laos and other parts of Indochina are also members of the British Commonwealth, all Anglosphere nations, except the US. All are settler societies except Britain, the Imperial motherland. These nations, proclaimed as democracies, are collectively known as the Anglosphere; yet secrecy and covert military activities are corrosive to the integrity of democratic institutions. In Intelligence, they are defined by treaties like the 1946 USAUK Quadripartite Agreement, which set out the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangements still in force at the time of writing.47 This sharing of intelligence, though partial and weighted in favour of the most powerful member; together with collaboration in weapons technology development and the arms trade, as well as shared experiences in war, created the ‘Special Relationship’ between the US, Britain and to varying degrees, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. A copy of the USAUK document can be seen at the National Archives, Kew.48 Sir Stephen Lander described an insider view.49

Methodology

This study has utilised primary and secondary sources, mainly documents from participating governments. These include Parliamentary Hansard, Cabinet records, and departmental archival records, mainly in Britain, but also in Australia. It includes some New Zealand records. Significant releases of documents from several governments occurred during the course of this research. De-classified US government documents which were available online were also accessed, including the Pentagon Papers, which were leaked in 1971 by Daniel

46 Rand Corporation, "Counterinsurgency a Symposium" (paper presented at the Counterinsurgency A Symposium, Rand Corporation, Washington DC, 16-20 April 1962), iv-v. 47 Duncan Gardham, "Document That Formalised 'Special Relationship' with the US," The Telegraph, 24 June 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7852136/Document-that-formalised- special-relationship-with-the-US.html (Date accessed: 5 February 2011) 48 "British-US Communication Intelligence Agreement," GCHQ, British and US governments (London: 1946). NAUK, HW 80/4, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukusa (Date Accessed: 5 January 2016) 49 Sir Stephen Lander, "International Intelligence Cooperation: An inside Perspective 1," Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17, no. 3 (2004): 481-93.

Ellsberg, and the redacted CIA ‘Family Jewels’ which were released in 2008. Academic theses and journal articles from English-speaking countries were also used, as were books, newspaper and magazine articles and films, both documentary and a small sample of fictionalised accounts. Fictionalised versions of the war in Laos, like the Rambo genre, have corrupted the popular imagination and added to the difficulty of recording an accurate history.

The National Archives at Kew, UK, (NAUK), has been particularly useful, but gaps do exist. Any research is limited by the retention of files in archives not accessible to researchers for twenty, thirty, fifty years or longer, depending upon their classification level and sensitivity. A more complete history will become possible at a later time. Reliance on documents alone presented problems of omission, mindfulness of future readings or difficulties in locating the relevant material.

This author also spent a year in Laos, travelled to many parts of the country, especially sites significant to the war, and photographed these. These included the Hồ Chí Minh Trail, Hin Namno, Tham Piew cave, where 374 civilians were rocketed by USAF planes.50 Other places visited included the ruins of Wat Phia Wat in the town of Muang Khun, in Xieng Khouang Province. The town was obliterated and places of religious worship targeted. The Plain of Jars was also visited, as was the Tad Hai Bridge over the Xe Bang Heing River, destroyed by bombing, and Seponkao (old Sepon) also spelt Xépôn, or Tchepone, another town obliterated by aerial bombardment, and where places of religious worship were targeted. This author visited the President Kaysone Phomvihane Memorial Museum, the Lao People's Army Museum in Vientiane and the Military Cemetery near Don Noun, Route 10, 23 kilometres from the Patuxay Monument, where the deaths of one million people are commemorated.

This author also discreetly interviewed a small number of Lao citizens. These interviews with protagonists from all sides of the war provided valuable context, but were not included as part of this thesis. Both veteran and civilian interviews required the completion of a NEAF Ethics Clearance in order to carry out this work, which required complete confidentiality of all respondents. Furthermore, this author acknowledged the invaluable assistance of numerous academics and former US Special Forces officers who helped inform this study, cross- checking facts and assisting with their advice and insights. The acknowledgement page (v)

50 Khonesavanh Latsaphao, "Ceremony to Mark 40th Anniversary of Cave Tragedy," Vientiane Times, 5 November 2008. http://www.vientianetimes.org.la/Previous_262/FreeContent/Curren_Ceremony.htm (Date Accessed: 5 November 2008)

11 lists these people.

Summary

Chapter 1 explains the building of military infrastructure in Thailand by Britain, Australia and New Zealand, SEATO's essentially anti-democratic inclinations, the massive SEATO exercises, the plans for 28 Commonwealth Brigade Group to participate in a US-led invasion Laos from Thailand (which did not eventually proceed) and the inclusion of nuclear weapons in the choice of methods. Australia's nuclear ambitions were also clarified.

Chapter 2 plots the careers of the counterinsurgency experts from Britain and Australia. Little corroborating material could be discovered regarding the activities of Myles ‘Woozle’ Osborn beyond his obituary. It is known that Osborn worked in Laos purportedly for the Royalist government, answered to MI6, directly with CIA counterparts, on recruitment of hill tribes, as Stephen Dorril explained.51 The British Advisory Mission (BRIAM) the Strategic Hamlets programme and The Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) led inexorably to Sir Robert Thompson and Colonel Ted Serong working for the CIA in the Phoenix Program that caused the assassination of between 20,000 and 30,000 South Vietnamese.

Chapter 3 follows the development of Agent Orange and other defoliants from Porton Down in Britain to its use in Indochina for both clearing jungle canopy cover and destroying food crops. It explains the toxicity and teratogenicity of dioxin, why it caused malformed infants, why it harmed allied combatants and how it was eventually removed from Việt Nam and destroyed. Defoliants were also manufactured in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for sale to the US. Australian veterans were treated with disdain when they made claims that defoliants had affected their health and that of their offspring.

51 Dorril, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations, 712.

Chapter 1.

Military Bases and Logistics

Introduction

Anglosphere participation in the US-led war in Việt Nam, which included military operations in Laos and Cambodia, has remained little commented upon in the English-speaking mass media, popular or academic literature. The SEATO alliance headquartered in Bangkok under- pinned the organisation of US allies and partners. SEATO researchers distilled world news into interpretations of Communist threats in their “Trends and Highlights” reports.52

This chapter explains some of the visible elements of Anglosphere collaboration at major formation levels, though these contributions of many thousands of military personnel, mainly over the period from 1962-1968, were relatively conspicuous, but were only given very occasional and controlled media attention.

The air field near Leong Nok Tha, known as Operation Crown was a minor link in the chain of US Air Force bases in Thailand at that time. These bases were used for massive bombing of North Việt Nam and Laos. As F.N. Kirk explained in an MOD document, the specifications for the Crown runway stated that that the new “Mukdahan airfield” was to be 1,254 metres (5,000 ft) long.53 Vic Flintham drew the connections between the war in Laos, Crown, the US satellite communications base at Phu Mu, as well as the RAF, RNZAF and RAAF deployments. Flintham described Crown as “…close to the US signals post at Phu Mu…”54 The airfield provided landing facilities for Commonwealth flights from Singapore and Butterworth én route to USAF Tân Sơn Nhứt, near Sài Gòn, and notably, for the CIA’s private contractor, Air America. “Between February 1967 and April 1968, Sioux helicopters of the Royal Engineers Air Troop were based at Leong Nok Tha.”55 These were for the Post Crown Works.

11 Independent Field Squadron RE, with an attached Australian RAE troop, was one of the many units that participated in the air field’s construction. A list of units that were rotated

52 SEATO, "South-East Asia Treaty Organization – Trends and Highlights," Research Office (Bangkok: SEATO, 1965 ), (1 December 1965) NAUK, B1, C4, C1, (16 January 66) C3, C5, (1 February 66) B4. 53 F.N. Kirk, "Some Analyses of Airfield Distribution in Thailand Working Paper WP/19," Ministry of Defence Defence Operational Analysis Establishment (London: 1966), List of 36 airfields in Thailand, 3-4. NAUK, DEFE 48/718 54 Vic Flintham, High Stakes: Britain's Air Arms in Action 1945-1990 (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2009), 284-86. 55 Ibid.

13 through Operation Crown and worked on the construction of the air field can be found on the 11 Indep Fld Sqn blog. There were also Thai civilian labourers, as Hank tich Lawrence documented.56 The road network that interconnected USAF air fields, Post Crown Works, was partly built by RNZE troops, RE’s and Thai Army engineers and Thai civilian labour. There were also surveyors of 84 Survey Squadron RE, Pasir Panjang, Singapore and a long list of support staff from medics and cooks to pay clerks and diesel fitters.57 11 Indep Fld Sqn RE was part of 28 Commonwealth Brigade Group, which was part of 3 Gurkha Infantry Division. The Brigade was the formation that was prepared for an invasion of Laos under SEATO Plans during the period from 1962 to 1968. The invasion plan was eventually abandoned, but the preparations and pre-positioning of forces and heavy equipment, mainly in Thailand were substantial. Much of this combat-readiness and demonstrations of overwhelming force were carried out in response to the successes of the Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies in Laos as a warning to them not to advance further west towards the Mekong River.58

Another Australian contribution to the war was the RAAF 79 Sabre Squadron stationed at the large US air base at Ubon Ratchathani, in Thailand. This required the unit to be redeployed from Butterworth, Malaya, to Ubon, and to be focused beyond former duties of maintaining security in Malaya. This required delicate negotiation with Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman.59 This was negotiated to his satisfaction, as this cable dated 17 May 1962 from the British Commonwealth Relations Office indicated.60 The Australian government also had their own anxieties about what appearances the deployment gave, which included a “…Desire that any fighting that may occur shall not be in nature of white versus brown.” And they were “…most anxious for reasons of internal presentation in Australia not to appear to be merely following American lead and so place emphasis on S.E.A.T.O. obligations.”61 The Australians flew support missions to protect the air-space of Ubon Ratchathani and RAAF Airfield Defence Guards patrolled the perimeter on the ground. They also provided the fire

56 Hank tich Lawrence, "June 1963 a Large SEATO Manouevre Was Held in Thailand, Operation Dhanarajata," http://11independentfldsqnmalaya.blogspot.com/2008/12/thailandoperation-dhanarajata-june-1963.html (Date accessed: 25 February 2009) (site discontinued). 57 Roger Andrews, "Operation Crown 1963 - 1968 - the History of Operation Crown " Roger Andrews http://op- crown.webs.com/thestoryofcrown.htm (Date accessed: 17 October 2011) 58 British Defence Chiefs of Staff, "SEATO Planning for Military Intervention," British Ministry of Defence, SEATO Planning (London:1962), n.p. NAUK, DEFE 25/174 59 British Embassy Kuala Lumpur, "Tunku’s Statement on Laos," Britain Foreign Office (London: 1962), Telegram No. 291, 1. NAUK, 60 "Laos," British Commonwealth Relations Office (London: 1962), My Telegram No 428, NAUK, DO 169/124, 1-2. 61 Canberra Acting HC, "Laos," British Foreign Office (London: 1962), 1. NAUK

14 brigade and in-flight refuelling of US planes.62 The unit was commanded by RAAF officers, but its mission was integral to the US command structure. See page viii for map.

In 1962 Britain’s RAF also responded specifically to the crisis events in Laos and dispatched 20 Squadron Hawker Hunter FGA9s to Yanhee Airport near Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, as part of the SEATO regional pre-positioning of forces. The RAF deployment was codenamed Operation Bibber. They trained with USAF counterparts till November that year, before returning to regular duties.63

Leong Nok Tha, Operation Crown

Leong Nok Tha (also spelt Loeng Nok Tha) was a proposed British Commonwealth invasion of Laos coordinated with US forces to the North. The SEATO Plan involved a crossing of the Mekong near Savannakhet, capture of the old French air field at Seno, the seizure of the Mekong towns, partition the country along the 17th parallel, then advancing East along Highway 9 and severing the Hồ Chí Minh Trail near the Việt Nam border. Crown was to be the air-bridge across the Mekong River for troops and heavy equipment. Numerous documents mentioned a perceived risk of an invasion of Thailand from Laos in accord with assumptions embodied in the Domino Theory, which predicted a communist takeover of the whole of South East Asia. The Pathet Lao, however, did not have an air force, nor could they obtain one. US air superiority over Laos was all-but unassailable. In reports of USAF attacks on the Hồ Chí Minh Trail, they referred to this undefended air space in terms of its ‘survivability’ for US crews.64 See page viii map.

Air power and the strategic location of air fields was the key element of this military superiority. Operation Crown was first conceived in 1962. British Cabinet minutes for 17 October 1963, marked the formal decision to approve the project and stated both the intent of building the air field and the British government’s hesitancy in taking up the task. The Cabinet document concluded with the words: “Foreign Office please pass to Washington as

62 Dennis Pearce, "Inquiry into Unresolved Recognition Issues for Royal Australian Air Force Personnel Who Served at Ubon between 1965 and 1968 ", Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal (Canberra: Australian government, 2011), 8-20. 63 RAF Museum, "British Military Aviation in 1962," RAF Museum, http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/milestones- of-flight/british_military/1962.cfm (Date accessed: 22 May 2009) (site discontinued August 2014). 64 Bernard C. Nalty, "The War against Trucks Aerial Interdiction in Southern Laos 1968-1972," United States Air Force (Washington DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, United States Air Force, Washington, D.C. , 2005), 61.

15 my telegram No. 48.”65 There was concern regarding runaway costs, but also anxiety about lessening London’s influence in Washington, and what perceptions might have been formed in Canberra and in Wellington. They did not mention any threat to Britain.66

The village of Kok Sam Lan, adjacent to the air field was renamed Ban Kok Talat, which was ten kilometres south of Leong Nok Tha town and 110 kilometres north of Ubon Ratchathani. Crown was 25 kilometres, as the crow flies, from the Laos border. Engineer and support elements of the Brigade Group were detached from their permanent base at Terendak Camp, Melaka, in West Malaysia. Some units were posted to Crown from Britain. Documents and personal accounts revealed the collaboration to be far more extensive than the voluntary provisions of the SEATO Treaty. A telegram to British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan sent by US President, Lyndon B. Johnson, on 22 May 1964 expressed US government appreciation: “I greatly value the close consultation our two governments have had and the parallel actions we have been taking…” The Summary Record of Meeting 1, Honolulu 2 June 1964, includes the following comment:

…any SEATO contribution. Martin said ‘keep them doing what they are: UK building a field near Savannakhet; Australia has aircraft at Ubon. Felt that troops into Mekong towns (inside Laos) will not all be US (but UK and Australia feel that their ground forces are tied up in Borneo; might provide air).67 [Crown was here referred to as being close to Savannakhet in Laos]

Some of the historical details of Crown’s progress were written by then serving officers and published in Corps journals. Australian Brigadier P.J. Greville wrote in Chapter Three, quoting Captain Malcolm van Gelder, who more accurately described the location for the air field as follows:

The airfield location was strategically midway between the two US bases of Ubon and Nakom Phanom [sic.], but not too close to the Mekong River, the border with Laos.68

65 "Cabinet. Defence and Oversea Policy Committee. Proposed Airfield at Mukdahan," in SECRET copy No 22, Office of Cabinet (London: 1963), NAUK, 26, 27. 66 Ibid., n.p. “In the event of a threatened invasion from Laos SEATO now plans to hold the Mekong by moving troops to Thailand. 67 William Z. Slany, "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Volume XXVIII, Laos," Department of State (Washington DC: US government Department of State, 1998), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v28/preface (Date accessed: 19 November 2015). 1. 68 Greville, "Chapter Three, Thailand and Operation Crown, the Construction of Leong Nok Tha Airfield," 27- 28.

US authors were more candid about the purpose of their presence in Thailand. They were there to fight a secret war in Laos, as Robert Kaylor stated in a caption of one photo, “56th Special Operations Wing Skyraiders prepare for missions over Laos”. Kaylor included a number of photos of planes parked on the Pierced Steel Plank (PSP) apron at Nakhon Phanom (NPK). 69

The Crown airfield specifications provided for a compacted laterite runway, which was then to be capped. The runway was upgraded to incorporate a bitumen capping, achieved at considerable expense, as the bitumen plant had to be constructed in Britain and transported by sea, then trucked from Bangkok to Crown along 600 kilometres of deeply-rutted roads with diversions through muddy creek beds where bridges were inoperable.

Each of these solutions proved inadequate, especially after monsoon rains, as heavier aircraft sank into the runway’s surface. Though unfinished, Crown was prematurely handed over to the Thai Minister of Defence, Field Marshall Thanom Kittikachorn, on 17 June 1965. The runway was then resurfaced in pavement quality concrete and completed in 1967. There were no landing lights, except an improvised line of bonfires, and no fire brigade.

Greville reported that New Zealand Prime Minister, Keith Holyoake, visited Crown in 1964, in a Kiwi Air Force Bristol Freighter. There was some other air traffic at the airfield, in spite of the risks posed by the low-intensity insurgency war being waged across the north east of Thailand.70

As early as 1964-5, SEATO allies were anxious that the project had run late and over-budget, and failed to achieve (load classification number) LCN 30, calling into question both British engineering competence and commitment to the SEATO alliance. One particular SEATO exercise, Kachorn Suek, scheduled for March 1966, illustrated the pivotal role of Crown in the preparations for the invasion of Laos, noted in a Foreign Office document.71 And72 The then bitumen runway surface was weak in places, due to subsidence, and unsuitable for all but light planes. British documents described the situation, included in a 1967 brief. The

69 Robert Kaylor, "Nakhon Phanom During the Secret War 1962-1975," Robert Kaylor, http://aircommandoman.tripod.com/ (Date accessed: 27 May 2015). 70 Ibid., 23. 71 "SEATO Exercise Kachorn Suek Loeng Nok Tha Airfield November 1965," Foreign Office (London: 1965), NAUK, FO 371/152361, n.p. 72 "SEATO - Exercise Kachorn Suek," Australian Department of Defence (Canberra: 1965), National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A1838, 688/25/25, n.p.

Background stated, “…a. Deployment across the Mekong through Seno/Savannakhet Airfields might be operationally impossible.”73

A photograph of an Air America plane on the runway at Crown, was taken by RE veteran, Derek Sandilands.74 Documents demonstrated beyond doubt that the CIA were using this facility. According to Secret telegrams, British officers sought clarification as to how they should entertain Americans in civilian clothes with no badges of rank. They were instructed to welcome the visitors to the Officers’ Mess:

1. ... On 20th September 5 aircraft landed, two C 123 and one CARIBOU landing in the space of half an hour. Four of these five aircraft were from different agencies and were unaware of the movements of the others.75

In 1965-66, when the runway had still not achieved the required standard, the instructions from Bangkok directed the RE officers on site was to keep Air America and other users informed of the readiness status of Crown. This file was marked “TOP SECRET U.K. EYES ONLY” and “GUARD” and received a second review in 1991.76 As this cable stated, “…THIS INFORMATION WAS CIRCULATED TO ALL RELEVANT AMERICAN AIRCRAFT USERS INCLUDING AIR AMERICA IN THAILAND AND IN LAOS ON 1 OCT.”77 British and Commonwealth SAS soldiers used Crown as a lily-pad for their incursions into Laos. They crossed the Mekong in small craft as specialist commando teams. Robert Fleming’s account of these covert operations included interviews with identified former British SAS soldiers.78

British Hansard recorded, on 15 December 1965, British MP for Ashfield, William Warbey, asked then Secretary of State for Defence, Dennis Healey, how many British troops were in Thailand on the Operation Crown project. The reply given by Healey was token. “…62 officers and 670 other ranks have served in Thailand since 1st January, 1965, the majority –

73 "Brief Sheet Occasion Air Commanders Visit to Loeng Nok Tha," Group Captain Groups Plans, Ministry of Defence (London: 1967), NAUK, 3-4. 74 Derek Sandilands, "Thailand Operation Crown , CRE, 1966--68 Leong Nok Tha," Picassaweb, https://picasaweb.google.com/106165232118597757916/THAILANDOPERATIONCROWNCRE196668LEON GNOKTHA# (Accessed: 18 October 2015) 75 "Air Traffic Control - Crown," CRE (Works) Crown, CRE British Army (Leong Nok Tha: 1966), 75650, NAUK, n.p. 76 "Aircraft Safety at Loeng Nok Tha " British RE Officer Commanding Operation Crown, British Army, Corps of Royal Engineers, 1965, NAUK, DEFE 6/97/57, 1. 77 Ibid., 1. 78 Robert Fleming, "A Jungle Too Far: Britain and the Vietnam War," The National Army Museum, Chelsea, London, UK, http://www.nam.ac.uk/whats-on/lunchtime-lectures/video-archive/jungle-too-far-britain-vietnam- war (Date accessed: 15 May 2013).

32 officers and 565 other ranks – being there for the construction of the airfield at Loeng Nok Tha. 79

Decades of campaigning for recognition in Australia resulted in the Australian government’s CIDA Report, 1993, which documented post-facto the Australian participation in Operation Crown. It stated in part:

The Committee also received a submission on behalf of 2 Field Troop Royal Australian Engineers (RAE), who served in Ban Kok Talat for five months in 1964 and for six months in 1965-66. On both occasions the troop’s employment was associated with construction of an airfield at Leong Nok Tha (Operation ‘Crown’) as part of Australia's commitment under SEATO… in six separate insurgent incidents in the ‘Crown’ area, eighteen Thai dead and five wounded were reported including police and government officials.80

Post Crown Works

After the completion of the airfield the Engineers built a road from Crown to Ban Khok Klang near Yasathon, as part of Post Crown Works.81 Corps histories documented these projects. The authors of this 1967 journal ranged from Major to Brigadier. They wrote with illuminating clarity, situating the engineering projects to the war and plainly recognised the hazardous nature of the undertaking:

Loeng Nok Tha District is only 100 miles from North Vietnam, and since early 1965 had been a prime target for Communist activity. In view of poverty and the very low standard of living of its inhabitants, and their lack of proper administration, this was not really surprising.82

79 Britain, House of Commons, Debate, HC Deb 15 December 1965 Vol. 722 cc290-1W, "Mr. Warbey Asked the Secretary of State for Defence How Many British Personnel, and of Which Ranks and Arms, Have Served in Thailand During the Past Year; and on What Duties They Have Been Engaged", 1965), 290 – 91. 1175 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1967/apr/12/thailand-british-army-detachment (Date accessed 1 December 2015). 80 Australian Government, "Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Defence Awards: March - CIDA Report," in March 1993 (Canberra: Australian Parliament, 1994), vi, 45-6. 81 John 'Ginge' Hamnett, "The Op Crown Story".(Date accessed: 7 August 2008) (site discontinued November 2008). 82 Rose C.F., Aylwin-Foster P.F., Woolcott P., Rougier C.J., Driscoll P.R.T., Woollatt G.E.C., "Operation Post Crown (Road Construction in Thailand)," The Royal Engineers Journal (1967 ): 192-207.

The intended purpose of the projects was not revealed to the Other Ranks, although officers engaged in risk management knew about the dangerous nature of the work. The level of risk can be ascertained from these authors’ allusion to helicopter use:

… The area of the road was subject to some minor terrorist activity… For this reason recce and survey parties were not allowed to remain out at night. When the helicopters were available parties could be repositioned next morning with the minimum of delay.83

The risk of attacks on foreign military engineers at work was mentioned in the Thai media:

…that… young Thais, a hundred or more at a time, were being taken across the Mekong River …to a training camp near Hanoi…. They were then returning to …join guerrilla groups in the surrounding jungles. During the first four months of 1966 they killed seven out of thirty eight policemen in Loeng Nok Tha District, as well as a number of other officials, headmen, teachers, ands so-called informers.84

The authors reported the skills which they employed to obtain consent and cooperation from the Thai civilian population, for which they accredited the counterinsurgency warfare expertise of RE Major-General R.L. Clutterbuck, OBE:

Compensation for accidents, and in one case for oil pollution of a padi [Sic.] field, [Sic.] were speedily dealt with. This …gave a good background to a reputation for fair dealing… All … were done officially. Many others were done unofficially.85

Medical staff also contributed to building trust with Thai civilians:

No mention of Communist Relations would be complete without credit being given to the successive Force Medical Officers and their staffs. The sick parades in Camp and the clinics in villages probably did as much as anything else to maintain good relations.

83 Ibid., 197-207. 84 Ibid., 192. 85 Ibid., 209.

It is possible that too long a stay of the force in the area would have usurped the local government power and kudos. (...) POST CROWN was essentially a military project with a limited short-term objective.86 (Italics added)

The road was extended from Ban Khok Klang to Waeng District HQ by Thai military engineers. This would connect with roads to Roi Et and Khon Kaen and the connection to Korat, Udon Thani and Nakhon Ratchisima; as well as the connection between Khon Kaen and Ubon Ratchathani. Clearly, the road had military importance to the USAF.87 See map - (Appendix: page 115).

New Zealand’s then Minister of Defence, Mark Burton delivered a particularly frank statement in February 2003, in which he acknowledged that Crown air field was a military project and linked this with the US war in Laos. He announced that personnel who served in Thailand between 1962 and 1971 were eligible for a newly issued medal. In addition, Burton acknowledged that RNZAF transport aircraft, an SAS detachment, and Army engineers were included. So, it is highly probable that NZSAS commando teams flew to Crown to join their counterparts who crossed the Mekong and infiltrated into Laos:

In the 1960’s and early 1970’s, Thailand was threatened by both Communist insurgency in the northeast and invasion along the Laos border. As part of an allied response to these threats, New Zealand deployed military forces to Thailand in the period between 1962 and 1971, including RNZAF transport aircraft, an SAS detachment, and Army engineers…88

There was silence in London which remained at the time of writing.

Operation Bibber

In 1962, the RAF sent 20 Squadron Hawker Hunter FGA9s to Yanhee Airport near Chiang Mai, Thailand in response to military developments in Laos. Operation Bibber was part of the pre-positioning of SEATO forces into the region. The RAF trained with USAF counterparts in the style of flying that had been employed during the Malayan Emergency. The tour ended in November 1962. RAF Museum recorded the deployment and its link, both to events in

86 Ibid., 197-207. 87 Ibid., 192-207. 88 Mark Burton, "New Medal to Be Awarded for Service in Thailand," New Zealand government, http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new+medal+be+awarded+service+thailand (Date accessed: 11 December 2008)

Laos and to SEATO activities. Archival documents included reports of the unit’s rehearsal activities:

R.A.F. Detachment Chiengmai [Sic.] came about through the rather unsettled state of affairs in Laos that existed in the early part of the year, and gradually deteriorated as the year progressed.89

Flight plans and reports demonstrated that the RAF exercises carried out included “FAC low flying, photographing practise targets like bridges. The report for Oct-Nov 1962 described:

... ground attack …low level navigation exercises …“quickie” strikes, i.e. ten …Hi-lo-hi strikes, reconnaissance exercises with U.S. troops in the field and three days of F.A.C. training.90

US accounts of the SEATO exercises were more candid:

Simultaneously to the deployment of the JTF-116 in Thailand in May 1962 the exercise Air Cobra took place. It involved RAF Hunters, RAAF Sabres and Canberras, USAF F-100s and F-102s, French Vautours, and RTAF F-84Gs and F- 86Fs.91

The overall integration of RAF and RAAF units into the US war in Laos was explained in The Plain of Jars, an article by Walter J. Boyne, in June 1999, for the US Airforce Magazine:

…operations continued with SC-47s, one of which was shot down Feb. 11, 1962…

Also in 1962, the buildup continued. Two squadrons of F-100D fighters were deployed to Takhli RTAB, Thailand. These were augmented by Marine UH-34D and A-4 units. It was for a time a combined operation, featuring an RAF Hawker Hunter squadron and Australian Sabre squadron.92

The success of a Pathet Lao offensive in March 1964 led to the activation of "Yankee Team" armed reconnaissance, using a combination of USAF RF-101Cs and US Navy RF-8As and

89 "RAF Contingent Chieng Mai 1962 May – November," RAF, Royal Air Force (London: 1962), NAUK, AIR 29/3534, n.p. 90 Ibid. 91 Albert Grandolini Troung and Tom Cooper, "Laos, 1948-1989; Part 1" http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_347.shtml (Date accessed: 15 July 2009) (site discontinued September 2015). 92 Walter J. Boyne, "The Plain of Jars," Airforce Magazine, June 1999, 78-83.

RA-3Bs. US air operations intensified in 1964, with the initiation of Operation Barrel Roll, which continued until 1973”.93

79 Sabre Squadron RAAF Ubon Ratchathani

RAAF 79 Sabre Squadron was despatched to Ubon Ratchathani to patrol and protect the Ubon Ratchathani air-space. Australians protected the air field perimeter, staffed the fire brigade and refuelled US planes in-flight.94

The work was dangerous in several ways, partly it was a danger to health; but there was always a risk of coming under attack, as Michael John Claringbould explained:

Late April 1967, Thai police overran an insurgency camp and discovered documents … by a group calling itself Thais who love their country offered a five hundred dollar bounty to any Thai who assassinated an American serviceman...” and “...the US facilities at Ubon were attacked by terrorists only a short time after the RAAF withdrawal...95

These Australians subsequently struggled to achieve recognition of warlike service. This campaign was pursued for decades by Richard Stone and Mal Barnes, spokespeople of the RAAF Ubon "Reunion-Recognition" Group.96 The Australian acknowledgement helped to reveal more of the extent and context of Commonwealth involvement, the number of personnel, the nature of the units and the intentions that lay behind Ubon as well as the Engineer deployment.97

This inexplicable reluctance to bestow eventual official recognition was described belatedly in the 2000 Mohr Report, but not entirely rectified till 2011. Mohr confirmed both the long-term stress and the actual danger experienced by RAAF personnel:

…RAAF [personnel] undertake the air defence alert tasks with its aircraft at ‘Alert State Five’, from dawn to dusk seven days a week … [which]

93 Max Rosenberg, "USAF Plans and Policies in South Vietnam and Laos USAF 1964," USAF Historical Division Liasion Office (Washington:1964), http://historyinpieces.com/documents/documents/air-force- operations-south-vietnam-laos-1964/ (Date Accessed: 11 October 2011) 1. 94 R. F. Mohr, "Review of Service Entitlement Anomalies in Respect of South-East Asian Service 1955-75," Australian Department of Defence (Canberra: Australian government, 2000), 70-74. 95 Michael John Claringbould, "Australia's Secret War," Flightpath, August-October, 1999, 80-83. 96 Richard Stone and Mal Barnes, "Outcome at Long Last," RAAF Ubon "Reunion-Recognition" Group, 2 March 2000, n.p. 97 "Australian Active Service Medal 1945-1975," Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia http://www.vvaa.org.au/service.htm (date accessed: 18 November 2015)

required that two fully armed aircraft be held on the operational readiness platform, preflighted, with pilots in close presence, ready and able to become airborne within five minutes to engage an intruding aircraft with a view to its destruction. …and the next alert state, which called for a ‘Combat Air Patrol’ to be mounted with two aircraft airborne at all times, was beyond the Squadron’s capability.98

In February 2011, a further investigation into the most intense period of Ubon service was published, chaired by Professor Dennis Pearce AO. With such specific terms of reference, however, some official secrets remained buried.99 New Zealand’s efforts to recognise their veterans of Operation Crown and Post Crown Works in 2003 surpassed the Australian acknowledgement.100 London remained silent.

Phu Mu

The US satellite communications base at Phu Mu was twenty-six kilometres north of Leong Nok Tha on the road to Mukdahan. As US veteran, Terry W. Colvin, explained, its function was to give USAF pilots final flight plan coordinates onto their bombing targets in Laos and North Việt Nam. This unit, later privatised, maintained an outpost for secret signals activity at Crown. British governments would have known of Phu Mu FAC communications base and maintained an inter-dependant relationship. The medical officer flew from Bangkok to Crown monthly to check the health status of Phu Mu personnel.101

British retired Staff Sergeant Bill Lewis explained that Crown also hosted a US communications facility. Little was known about it or its function. British personnel were not permitted to enter, except for Provost Sergeant Lewis. The sign on the door read: “Off Limits to Unauthorized Personnel”. The only clue British troops had as to its function was the weekly production of British FA football results, pinned up in the cookhouse as a morale booster. A photo showed the signage at the turnoff from the main road. The second sign is proof of co-location of US and British units. It read: “U.S. Army, 29 Signal Group, STRATCOM, Loeng Nok Tha Communications Site, COC 442nd Signal Bn (LL), 1st Signal

98 R.F. Mohr, "Review of Service Entitlement Anomalies in Respect of South-East Asian Service 1955-75," 70- 74. 99 Pearce, "Inquiry into Unresolved Recognition Issues for Royal Australian Air Force Personnel Who Served at Ubon between 1965 and 1968 " 5-9. 100 Mark Burton, "New Medal to Be Awarded for Service in Thailand".(Date accessed: 11 December 2008) 101 Terry W. Colvin, "The Abandoned Airstrip Is near Amanat Charoen, 50 Miles NNW of Ubon and About 8 Miles South of Camp Phu Mu," Terry W. Colvin, http://ubvet.tripod.com/phumu/id7.html (Date accessed: 15 June 2007)

Bde.” US veteran of Phu Mu, Colvin confirmed this and provided maps of the US military signals network throughout Thailand.102 Colvin’s blog.103 Appendix: page 141-142, Photo of signage and signals hut.

The SEATO Treaty (South East Asia Treaty Organization)

Former Polish diplomat and Member of the International Control Commission, Marek Thee, also known as Gdański, argued that the SEATO Treaty preceded the 1954 Geneva conference agreements on Indochina. Thee argued that the signatories had planned to breach those Geneva agreements. A meeting took place in Paris on 14 July, with Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and John Foster Dulles, which produced a secret Anglo-American position paper one week before the Geneva conference. This agreement was augmented, with the inclusion of Pierre Mendès France and became the Anglo-American-French agreement, signed in the US Embassy in Paris. Thee called it “The Secret Western Understanding”. The SEATO Treaty was signed that September in Manila by the US, France, Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan. The Alliance never had a coherence to the shared interests of all parties and was formally disbanded in 1977.104

US Foreign Office documents stated that The SEATO Treaty was:

Lacking a clearly defined role, it instead propounded broad principles, declaring the signatories’ aim of upholding “the principle of equal rights and self - determination of peoples, and declaring that they will earnestly strive by every peaceful means to promote self-government and to secure the independence of all countries whose people desire it...105

If peaceful means failed, however, the treaty made provision for military assistance:

Each party recognises that aggression by means of armed attack in the treaty area against any of the Parties or against any state or territory which the Parties by unanimous agreement may hereafter designate, would endanger

102 Ibid., Diagramatic map.(Date accesssed: 15 June 2007) 103 Terry W. Colvin, "Re. U.S. Army in Thailand", Thailand and Laos Brotherhood, http://tlc- brotherhood.com/Forum/index.php?topic=76.0 (Date accessed: 26 May 2015 104 Marek Thee, Notes of a Witness: Laos and the Second Indochinese War (New York, Random House, 1973), 38-40. 105 "Foreign Office Files: United States of America, Series Two: Vietnam, 1959-1975, Part 4: SEATO, South East Asia General and Thailand, 1959-1963 " US Foreign Office, http://www.ampltd.co.uk/digital_guides/fo_files_usa_series_two_part_4/Publishers-Note.aspx (Date accessed: 17 June 2009).

its own peace and safety, and agrees that it will in that event act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes...106

The effects of the Treaty’s implementation demonstrated no commitment to self- determination, especially as covert military actions had preceded these pronouncements of intent. Another serious flaw with the treaty was the exclusion of Cambodia, Laos and Việt Nam, the three countries most at risk from internal subversion and outside interference. The agreements reached at Geneva, aiming to keep Indochina neutral, forbade these countries from joining in any military alliances. Nevertheless, an ambiguous protocol to the SEATO agreement did “designate for the purpose of Article IV of the Treaty the States of Cambodia and Laos and ...Vietnam” as special areas that if threatened, would endanger the “peace and security” of the signatories, thus justifying SEATO intervention in certain circumstances.107 US documents also acknowledged:

Such open-ended sanctions were regarded by many countries as little more than a carte blanche for Western intervention in South East Asia. The Chinese and North Vietnamese were particularly opposed to SEATO, believing, not entirely without justification, that it was little more than an American instrument to thwart the neutrality imposed by the Geneva Accords and to legitimise the establishment of an independent, pro-western, southern Vietnamese republic.108

Former British Ambassador, Sir Anthony Rumbold, whose appointments included Sài Gòn and Bangkok, correctly predicted that SEATO would have a short life.109 David McKnight described how the US unilateral policies led to increased conflict in Indochina, pointing to, “… a number of internal tensions within Western intelligence and between them and Asian security bodies… the difficulty in employing counter- subversion strategies when they impinge on democratic rights… [noting that SEATO

106 Ibid. 107 "Protocol to the Manila Pact, September 8, 1954," US State Department, The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale Law School http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/usmu004.asp (Date accessed: 9 June 2009) 108 "Foreign Office Files: United States of America, Series Two: Vietnam, 1959-1975, Part 4: SEATO, South East Asia General and Thailand, 1959-1963 " US Foreign Office, Adam Matthew Publications http://www.ampltd.co.uk/digital_guides/fo_files_usa_series_two_part_4/Publishers-Note.aspx (Date accessed: 17 June 2009) 109 Michael Alexander, British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1998), https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Alexander.pdf electronic. (Date accessed: 19 November 2015) 28. 69 David McKnight, "Western Intelligence and SEATO's War on Subversion, 1956-63 " Intelligence and National Security 20, No. 2 (2005): 288-303

26 was] increasingly by-passed by the United States, which pursued a more unilateral course culminating in the Vietnam War”.110

The application of the SEATO Treaty in Thailand was described by David A Wilson in his 1963 report for the Rand Corporation. Thailand had a special role as an exemplar of the development paradigm promoted by the US government and its agencies and as hosts to the large US military bases then being assembled. Communist insurgency in the Northeast of Thailand led the authoritarian government Field Marshal Sarit Dhanarajata to focus its efforts on internal security, which they applied forcibly.

Thailand’s Community Development Department, operated as a subsidiary of the Department of Interior, controlling Education, Agriculture, Public Health, US-funded Pilot Projects, ‘agrimetro’’ and the village-based Volunteer Defense Corps. The (Dean) ‘Rusk formula’ was negotiated as Wilson described here:

[Dean] Rusk (Secretary of State):

The Foreign Minister and the Secretary of State agreed that Southeast Asia Treaty provides the basis for the signatories collectively to assist Thailand in case of Communist armed attack against that country. [and that] … this treaty obligation is individual as well as collective.111

The Thai government was also bound to the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, signed in Manila on 8 September 1954, upon which it could call. “Thailand deposited its instrument of ratification Dec. 2, 1954; the remaining signatories (the United States, Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom) deposited their instruments Feb. 19, 1955”. The Treaty provided for a US response to aggression which was intended to “apply only to communist aggression but affirms that in the event of other aggression or armed attack it will consult under the provisions of Article IV, paragraph 2”. The Protocol to the Manila Pact, 8 September 1954 additionally mentions:

111 David A. Wilson, "Thailand - 1962," (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1963), 7.

“Article IV of the Treaty the States of Cambodia and Laos and the free territory under the jurisdiction of the State of Vietnam”.112

US Foreign Office documents showed Thailand’s significant role in US strategic planning as events developed in Laos. All of these treaties acknowledged the United Nations Charter, the UN Security Council and peoples’ aspirations to self-determination. Yet the Pacific Charter document also mentioned the already contentious entities of “the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” There is also the statement that signatories were, “… determined to prevent or counter by appropriate means any attempt in the treaty area to subvert their freedom or to destroy their sovereignty or territorial integrity.”113

Yet none of these Treaties were invoked in regard to US military and intelligence actions in Laos; nor were the United Nations Charter or the UN Security Council.

When the Pathet Lao moved into northwestern [Sic.] Laos in March 1962 … Two months later, US troops were stationed in Thailand in response to the deteriorating situation in Laos. The arrival of these forces in May 1962 was seen by the Thai government as confirmation of the United States commitment to preserve Thailand’s independence and integrity against communist expansion. On the other hand, despite continual pressure from the Americans, Sarit refused to entertain ideas of democratic reform.114

Australian General Sir John Wilton, Chief of the SEATO Military Planning Office, 1960 till 1962, fully understood the implications of working closely with undemocratic regimes that were being challenged by peasant discontent and insurgency. He also understood the limitations of the SEATO Treaty.115

In May 1962 the Pathet Lao overran the Lao town of Luang Nam Tha. This also led to SEATO air and ground units being deployed to northern Thailand, led by US forces, including Commonwealth troops. On 21 May 1962, US President John F. Kennedy issued a

112 US State Department, "Protocol to the Manila Pact, September 8, 1954". The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale Law School http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/usmu004.asp (Date accessed: 9 June 2009) 113 “Pacific Charter, September 8, 1954", The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/usmu005.asp (Access date: 18 October 2015) 114 "Foreign Office Files: United States of America, Series Two: Vietnam, 1959-1975, Part 4: SEATO, South East Asia General and Thailand, 1959-1963 " US Foreign Office, Adam Matthew Publications, http://www.ampltd.co.uk/digital_guides/fo_files_usa_series_two_part_4/Publishers-Note.aspx (Date accessed: 17 June 2009) 115 Ibid.

28 statement of intent to deploy US military power, which was transmitted to all outposts of the British Foreign Office from the Embassy in Bangkok.

The despatch of United States forces to Thailand was considered desirable because of recent attacks in Laos by Communist forces … We are in consultation with SEATO Governments on the situation. I emphasize that this is a defensive act on the part of the United States and wholly consistent with the United Nations Charter... In the spirit of that Charter, I have directed that the Secretary General of the United Nations be informed of the actions we are taking. There is no change in our policy toward Laos, which continues to be the re-establishment of an effective cease-fire and prompt negotiations for a Government of National Union.116 [Excerpt]117

The reference to the UN Charter and informing of the UN Secretary General were acts performed only as a formality, in the wake of the huge movement of forces. These forces were being deployed to established bases in Thailand. There was no evidence that the Pathet Lao would have had the capacity or intention to carry out any virtually-impossible ambition to overwhelm Thailand.

SEATO: The Cold Warrior

The counter-insurgency prescription that was applied in Indochina and in Thailand pervaded life throughout South East Asia. The Cold War paradigm was evident in the reports of proceedings of SEATO meetings. Delegates concerned themselves with infiltrators’ reports of trade union meetings in Wellington, New Zealand; student union meetings in Oxford University, England; Ceylonese tea workers’ disputes over wages and the 1965 Nanyang Chinese University language demonstrations in Singapore (which were about student demands for the continued use of the Chinese language as the medium of study).118 All of these seemingly unrelated events in disparate locations around the world were regarded by SEATO researchers as evidence of a skilfully-orchestrated global Communist threat.

As was shown in this SEATO document dated from 16 January 1966, the tendency to perceive threat in any dissident group was a challenge to civil liberties in Britain too:

116 "Foreign Relations, 1961-1963, Volume XXIV, Laos Crisis," US State Department Archive, http://2001- 2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/kennedyjf/53979.htm (Date accessed: 27 July 2012) 117 John F. Kennedy, "192 - Statement by the President Announcing the Dispatch of Additional U.S. Forces to Thailand," The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8657 (Date accessed: 16 June 2015) 118 SEATO, "South-East Asia Treaty Organization – Trends and Highlights," (1 December 1965) NAUK, B1, C4, C1, (16 January 66) C3, C5, (1 February 66) B4.

“This edition includes (C1) An example of Communist exploitation of neutrality:

Communist delegates to the recent council meeting of the British National Union of Students (NUS) gained a temporary victory when they persuaded delegates to the meeting to reject a motion that the NUS should join the non-Communist International Students Conference (ISC). Communist activities at this meeting, which was held from November 26 to 29, provide an excellent example of Communist aims and tactics in similar movements throughout the Free World.119

The pages in the SEATO “Themes and Highlights” report showed that Oxford students were subjected to the same communist infiltration anxieties as the other groups of Ceylonese tea workers and New Zealand dock workers. Their civil liberties were also threatened by the presence of informants.

US Navy Commander, Jack H. Harris referred frequently to this SEATO document in his 1966 thesis for the US Army War College, underlining the importance he placed on the SEATO reports of Communist subversion.120 By contrast, it was claimed in the British House of Commons, in 1971, by Mr Roland Moyle, then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, that there were only three copies “distributed in Great Britain through official channels”.121 Such vital information was so secret that few British decision- makers could read it.

In newly independent Singapore and Malaysia authoritarian governments made extensive use of the Internal Security Act (ISA), modelled on British colonial security legislation originated in 1957 by General Sir Gerald Templar during the Malayan Emergency and renewed in 1960 (In Malay: Akta Keselamatan Dalam Negeri). The ISA was then and is at the time of writing, used to suppress all varieties of dissent. It provides for detention without trial, euphemistically called ‘preventive detention’. In 2005 David McKnight reiterated the dilemma within SEATO caused by the organisation’s tendency to prescribe authoritarian governments throughout Asia. As McKnight explained.”122 It was, in essence, a dismal

119 SEATO, "South-East Asia Treaty Organization – Trends and Highlights (1 December 1965) NAUK, B1, C4, C1, (16 January 66) C3, C5, (1 February 66) B4. 120 Jack H. Harris, "What Next after Ho Chi Minh?" (US Army War College, 1966), 32, 52, 54-57. 121 Britain, House of Commons, Written Answers, Foreign And Commonwealth Affairs, "S.E.A.T.O. Publication "Trends and Highlights", HC Deb 22 February 1971 vol 812 c15W, 1803–2005 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1971/feb/22/seato-publication-trends-and-highlights (Date Accessed: 15 October 2015)

122 McKnight, "Western Intelligence and SEATO's War on Subversion, 1956-63 " 185.

30 doctrine for post-colonial Asians to inherit, which failed to offer the hope of achieving democratic governance.

“Stabilisation of the situation in South East Asia by military means”

The proposed US and SEATO invasion of Laos planned in readiness for 1962 and current till 1968 was to be portrayed as the ‘stabilisation of the situation in South East Asia by military means.’123 Under SEATO Plans 4, 5, 6, and beyond, 28 Commonwealth Brigade Group was to assist US forces to acquire the river crossings from Thailand; occupy the Mekong towns as “enclaves of importance”; hold all areas then under Royal Laotian Army control and not yet under Pathet Lao control; partition Laos at the 17th parallel, (forming a direct line from North of Mukdahan in Thailand to Huế on the East coast of Việt Nam. Further North, US and allies were to hold Xayaboury Province, preferably with SEATO but not Thai troops (as their presence could provoke a response from the PRC); and “Hold vulnerable salients … extending many miles beyond the outskirts of the towns themselves... including Vientiane and Thakhek”.124

The file described “…a single, short partition line … a division of Laos favourable to the West [Italics added] and forming a defensible, viable and united anti-communist state.”125 Commonwealth allies were reluctant to commit to the Plan without clarification from US military planners, and they sought this. There was a high risk that ‘mission-creep’ would present them with runaway obligations and costs, with thousands of troops bogged-down in close-quarter counterinsurgency fighting in the difficult terrain of Laos. There was also discussion of the real likelihood that the presence of foreign troops in Laos could stimulate recruitment to the Pathet Lao, thereby worsening the military situation for the Royalist government.

The plan required the Brigade Group plus supporting units to mobilise 13,000 men, with another 3,000 reserved in Britain for rotation plus Australians and New Zealanders. This major undertaking required the investment of much Cabinet time on their Laos policy. The British Cabinet meeting on 2 May 1961 demonstrated disinclined support for the SEATO invasion plan. The preference was to contribute as little as possible, and only because they were asked by the US and sought to maintain the ‘special relationship’ through necessary

123 "SEATO Planning for Military Intervention," British Defence Chiefs of Staff, NAUK, n.p.(ANNEX A TO COS.1145/13/8/62 (Concluded)) and (JIC(61)50(FINAL) 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid.

31 demonstrations of willingness. No UN approval had been sought for the invasion; nor was there an invitation from the Royalist Laotian government, as was mentioned in the discussion. Busch described British reluctance to commit to the SEATO Plan and doubts about prospects for success of the invasion as an attitude of “dismay”.126

A considerable effort was made trying to arrange for SEATO to do only just what had to be done. An example of this was found in CAB 195/19 notes for the British Cabinet Meeting 2 May 1961. Limiting the operation to “…a perimeter around Vientiane” was also postulated. Worse still, Australian field commanders would not be able to participate in decisions and their troops could have been commanded “…by U.K./U.S. mil. Only.” This was especially relevant, as shown in 2 May minutes.”127

At that time New Zealand agreed to deploy an HQ and two troops of SAS soldiers to Thailand, as shown in Telegram No. 260, dated 22 May 1962, though carefully differentiating New Zealand’s contribution as “token”:

“…flown in New Zealand aircraft from here to Thailand” and “wholly under New Zealand command though they would act as necessary in general support of the United States forces. Three Bristol freighters of 41 Squadron would proceed to Bangkok, and would be available for whatever jobs required to be done. H.M.N.Z.S. TARANAKI would also be available if required.”

“…New Zealand Government policy remains firmly in favour of a non-military settlement there. New Zealand force is going into Thailand and not into Laos”.128 (Italics added)

Ron Crosby’s book on the NZSAS agrees with the New Zealand government telegram. He correctly recorded inasmuch as officially the NZSAS did not cross the Mekong into Laos. There remained questions as to whether official accounts are entirely truthful. Crosby acknowledges that his book was thoroughly checked by government officers to ensure the maintenance of security, which, at the time of writing, could not be further resolved. For rigorous accuracy this question remains. Crosby stated:

126 Peter Busch, All the Way with JFK? Britain, the US and the Vietnam War (New York, Oxford University Press, 2003), 20. 127 "Cabinet Minutes C.C.(60) 30th Conclusions – C.C.(61) 45th Conclusions," British Cabinet Office (London: 1960), NAUK, (CAB 195/19 2 May 1961) n.p. 128 Acting High Commissioner Wellington, "Inward Telegram to Commonwealth Relations Office No. 260 Laos," Foreign Office (British government, 1962), n.p.

At the request of the Royal Thai Government a detachment of 30 men were stationed in Thailand from 2 June to 16 September 1962 during the Laotian crisis. The detachment was split into two Troops, with one working with United States Special Forces and the Marines at Udon in the north-east and the other deployed with a reinforced United States Army battle group at Khao [Sic.] in the central region. Neither Troop took part in any operations involving action against the enemy, but the deployment provided the detachment with an opportunity to train in jungle and mounted operations while working with American and Thai forces.129

One puzzling question regarding New Zealand’s role that remained at the time of writing can be found in an Australian document, however. New Zealand requested special fuel for its planes, (Bristol freighters) for the Laos invasion. This needed clarification, since the fuel was to be supplied to SEATO allies by the US.130 Under the heading: “NZ POL Requirements” New Zealand queried that: “…compounding of additional charges which is not acceptable to the New Zealand Government... [and sought] clarification of the units of measurement ie, whether United States or Imperial Gallons… [And in particular] an RNZAF special fuel requirement for Bristol freighters. 100U oil is required for these aircraft…” The negotiating would have been without purpose if New Zealand was not going into Laos. In addition, Australia probed the medical facilities at USAF Korat, which were not sufficiently prepared to treat casualties evacuated from the anticipated battles in Laos. They cited “... lack of surgical cover in Korat from T to T + 7 [first week of the military operation] ... appears to be a serious weakness in the medical plan ...very doubtful whether it would be acceptable to Australia...”131 Another Australian document detailed the military planning for the invasion and outlined the uncertainties of success and a long list of Australian military objections.132

Nuclear Weapons

This invasion force and its undertaking was momentous. Britain as a member of the select group of nuclear weapons nations, had adopted nuclear deterrence doctrine and

129 Ron Crosby, NZSAS - the First Fifty Years (Melbourne: Penguin / Viking 2011), 13-14, 134. 130 "JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] - SEATO Military Intervention and Its Likely Effect on the Situation in Laos", Joint Intelligence Committee, Departmentof External Affairs (Canberra: 1961), National Archives of Australia, Canberra A1838, TS666/61/72, n.p. 131 "Draft ANZAM Plan No 1 (Buckram) - Part 4 ", Australian Department of Defence (Canberra: 1961-62), National Archives of Australia, Canberra, A1945 15/4/9, 2. 132 Joint Intelligence Committee, "JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] - SEATO Military Intervention and Its Likely Effect on the Situation in Laos ". National Archives of Australia, A1838, TS666/61/72

33 normalised considerations of nuclear weapons use in military doctrine, as Hiroyuki Umetsu explained, inevitably the 1954 crisis in Indochina, brought about by the French defeat at Điện Biên Phủ, involved Australia and New Zealand as ANZAM partners in the British Commonwealth Strategic Reserve.133 British military planners also expressly included the possibility of nuclear weapons use in Laos in their scenario assumptions. In the Declaration of Forces for SEATO Plan 4 and 5, for the US-led SEATO invasion of Laos, Britain agreed to contribute “Eight light bombers with nuclear capability…” (Italics added)134

Peter Edwards accessed many previously unavailable Australian Cabinet documents and described the several crises which could have propelled Australia into a war in Laos.

Of the 1962 crisis, Edwards noted:

The talks indicated that the American and British military advisers were envisaging a SEATO operation under which about 14 000 men would seek to hold significant bridgeheads, notably airfields and Mekong River crossings."135

"The Australian Chiefs [of Staff] ... felt that the current plan did not take sufficient note of the ease with which DRV could openly intervene with formed PAVN units in response to SEATO action, with further support from China and the Soviet Union. They argued that it would be dangerous to deploy such a relatively small force to several widespread bridgeheads. The chiefs recommended that, unless SEATO members, especially the United States, were prepared to cope with any intervention in Laos, the plan should instead be given to developing two other SEATO plans - Plan 6, which provided for the defence of the protocol states against DRV forces, and Plan 4, for the defence of Southeast Asia against an attack by both the DRV and China. These plans, which were being developed in a somewhat desultory fashion in the SEATO machinery, envisaged limited war, a scale of conflict markedly higher than counterinsurgency for which Plan 5 was prepared, but still short of global war.136

133 Hiroyuki Umetsu, "Australia's Response to the Indochina Crisis of 1954 Amidst the Anglo-American Confrontation," Australian Journal of Politics and History 52, no. 3 (2006): 398-416. 134 "The State of the Alliance," British Ministry of Defence (London: 1962), NAUK, Refers to: War Office Current Affairs Discussion Brief Number 77, 2-10 135 Peter Edwards, "Australia and the Crises in Laos, 1959-61," Australian National University. Strategic and Defence Studies Centre Working paper; no. 219 (1990): 19. 136 Ibid.

Edwards further noted:

...the possibility of escalation, with the intervention of DRV and Chinese forces... could lead to a military demand for the use of nuclear weapons. The [ad hoc] committee stated that the first use by a Western power of nuclear weapons against an Asian country would risk the most disastrous consequence[s] both politically and militarily. Therefore plans for intervention in Laos should not contemplate or need to rely on the first use of these weapons.137

Garry Woodard spelt out in detail the deliberations of Australia’s political leaders who were very opposed to any consideration of the use of nuclear weapons. Any use of nuclear weapons in Laos by either the US or Britain would severely impact on Australia’s long-term acceptance as a neighbour in South East Asia. This is only one of many statements to this effect:

On 22 September Cabinet asserted its authority over its military in stating that use of nuclear weapons was not a military matter. It was a political question of supreme and lasting importance …

Australia was prepared to risk displeasing the American military by both stating this position and advising the UK of it.138

It should be noted that Australian documents referred to SEATO Plan 5 by the name, Plan Buckram.139 Buckram then cascaded into a shifting series of code names, starting with TAPPY.140 Edwards explained “The significance of the Laos Crises” and the undemocratic departures from Cabinet procedure by which then Prime Minister Menzies and some of his Cabinet Ministers sought to conceal plans to deploy troops to Laos from the Australian public and media:

On three separate occasions - in September 1959, March 1961 and May 1961 - Cabinet decided in principle that Australia would be prepared to participate in a military intervention in Laos under United States leadership, preferably in a

137 Ibid., 20. 138 Garry Woodard, Asian Alternatives: Australia's Vietnam Decision and Lessons on Going to War Chapter 2, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2004), http://www.mup.unimelb.edu.au/ebooks/0-522-85143- 6/index.html electronic. 27.(Date accessed: 15 November 2010) (site discontinued 14 January 2013). 139 "SEATO Plan 5 Barcode 1183672,"Australian Prime Minister's Office (Canberra: 1961), National Archives of Australia, Canberra, 1183672, n.p. 140 Australian Department of Defence, "Draft ANZAM Plan No 1 (Buckram) - Part 4", National Archives of Australia, A1945 15/4/9, 2. n.p.

SEATO context. On each occasion the crisis eased, quite fortuitously, immediately after the decision. While there were numerous hints and suspicions that some major decisions were impending, no firm announcements were made.141

Britain’s inclusion of nuclear weapons in preparations for an invasion of Laos in the 1960s would have been regarded as routine by the Macmillan government at any time after 1954, as they struggled to reduce their military spending, reduce their military presence East of Suez and placed greater emphasis on deployment of Britain’s nuclear weapons as a deterrent to any attacks by the USSR and PRC. The British nuclear strategy was understood in Washington, as long as the British held no more than their place as a ‘middle power’ that normally acted only at the request of US governments. Martin Stephen Navias’ thesis explained the complexities of this strategy.142When then British Secretary for Defence, Duncan Sandys addressed the media in Melbourne in 1957, his message was designed to assuage the abandonment anxieties of Australian audiences. He exaggerated his message with tough Cold War rhetoric, as The Canberra Times reported on 21 August,143 and on 2 September:144 He was linking Britain’s nuclear weapons to SEATO and the plan to invade Laos, whilst also hinting that the storage of the weapons would be in Singapore, which is how Singaporeans received this. Jones made it clear that the SEATO Plans were very much part of this contingency, albeit that Britain needed a lead from the US and was poorly provided with refuelling and target selection.145 The plans to invade Laos could escalate into a regional war, which could include attacks on targets in Southern China.146

141 Edwards, "Australia and the Crises in Laos, 1959-61," 21. 142 Martin Stephen Navias, "The Sandys White Paper of 1957 and the Move to the British New Look: An Analisis of Nuclear Weapons, Conventional Forces and Strategic Planning 1955-57" (PhD, King's College, London, 1989), 395-414. 143 Duncan Sandys, "Mr Sandys Says, Nuclear Arms Planned for SEATO Sector," The Canberra Times, 21 August 1957 1957, 1. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/91596458?searchTerm=sandys%20AND%20nuclear&searchLimits= (Date Accessed: 2 August 2015) 144 "World Faces Threat, Says Sandys," The Canberra Times 2 September 1957, 1. http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/91597351?searchTerm=sandys%20AND%20nuclear&searchLimits= (Date Accessed: 3 August 2015) 145 Matthew Jones, "Up the Garden Path? Britain's Nuclear History in the Far East, 1954–1962," The International History Review 25, no. 2 (2003): 322. 146 Ibid., 322-6.

Alarm over the US response to developments in Laos, and the hope of influencing the United States's [sic.] approach to Far Eastern questions, governed Britain's appraisal of its nuclear contribution to SEATO during this period.147

In September 1957, Sandys visited Singapore and delivered a non-committal answer to questions from The Straits Times as to whether Britain planned to store nuclear weapons at RAF Tengah or other facilities in Singapore or Malaya, for both journalist, David Tambyah on 15 September;148 or the paper’s Editor on 16 September,149 British documents showed that the answer Sandys gave to Singaporeans was a more problematical and secret one. Singaporeans were unwittingly taking on a nuclear target on the cusp of their independence. The document read: “Closed extracts: Folios 33, 38-41, 43-45, 51, 52/1, 53 - Closed For 70 years - International Relations – prejudice – till 2030.”150 As Matthew Jones stated, the weapons were indeed in Singapore.151 As Richard Moore observed, “There was never any possibility that nuclear weapons would be tested in Britain, itself a small and densely- populated island.”152

SEATO Exercises

SEATO exercises were designed to rehearse a real war scenario of the invasion of Laos. The Canberra bombers from RAF Tengah, also participated, as documented by US Navy historian, Edward J. Marolda, noting the importance of the exercise for the war in Indochina and particularly Laos: “In May 1962 … SEATO air and ground units [were] being deployed to northern Thailand, commanded by US forces, including British, Australian and New Zealand allied troops.”153 Kev Darling explained the fact, possibility and rationale for British bombers to carry nuclear weapons.154 Military exercises tested military strategy and tactics and characterised future opponents and scenarios. They were not only about ‘preparedness’,

147 Ibid., 323. 148 David Tambyah, "Singapore Will Remain Britain’s Main Military Base in the Far East and the Bulk of the 40,000 Strong British Troops Will Remain in Malaya, Defence Minister Duncan Sandys Said Yesterday.," The Straits Times, 15 September 1957, 1 and 5 149 Editor, "Defence in S.E. Asia,"The Straits Times, 16 September 1957, 5. 150 "Singapore: Visits of Duncan Sandys, Secretary of State for Defence, to Singapore, August and September 1957 and April 1959," British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (London: 1957), NAUK, FCO 141/14707/1 151 Jones, "Up the Garden Path? Britain's Nuclear History in the Far East, 1954–1962," 306-33. 152 Richard Moore, "Where Her Majesty's Weapons Were," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 57, no. 1 (2001): 6. 153 Edward J. Marolda, By Sea, Air, and Land: An Illustrated History of the U. S. Navy and the War (Washington DC: Naval Historical Center, 1994), 13-19. 154 Kev Darling, Avro Vulcan, Part 1, RAF Illustrated (Raleigh, NC: Lulu.com, 2007), 55.

37 but also intentionality. SEATO allies conducted one or more exercises annually. Below are listed some of these exercises and their magnitude:

Exercise Pony Express, April 1961 included RAF, RAAF and RN planes from Butterworth (Malaya), Tengah, Seletar, Sembawang (Singapore) and Far East Fleet, Captain H.R.V. Janvrin, who commanded HMS Victorious, mentioned British planes that participated in this exercise: the Armstrong-Whitworth Single-Seater Scimitar and the De Havilland Sea Vixen FAW.2 XP919.155 In his book, HMS Cavalier, Patrick Boniface explained that on 4 April 1961 the RN ship left Singapore én-route to Hong Kong in order to participate in exercise Pony Express, which “… involved six nations, sixty ships and one hundred aircraft”. 156 The HMS Victorious and Seventh Fleet tank landing ship, USS Windham County were also participants. Australian aircraft carrier, HMAS Melbourne, Fleet Air Arm aircraft carrier, HMAS Bulwark, guided missile destroyer HMAS Hobart, were included, according to Marolda.157

Exercise Dhanarajata, June 1963 (named after Thai General Sarit Dhanarajata) was mentioned in the Australian War Memorial records, testifying to the participation of 79 Sabre Squadron RAAF, and recorded in the RAE Corps history journal, This huge exercise inevitably involved British forces.158 Participating units included the US 2nd Airborne Battle Group, 503rd Infantry from Okinawa and the British [Commonwealth] 28th Brigade from Malaya (including the Australian B Co, 2 RAR Group).

The exercise was of such significance that British documents showed Meeting Number 29 of 1963 with Department of Defence heads, placed Dhanarajata at agenda item 2 and notably, nuclear strikes in overseas theatres at item 3, which showed that there was a possibility that RN and/or RAF forces may have carried nuclear weapons with them, though ‘neither confirmed nor denied’ and that US forces were likely to have operated under a similar doctrine. Comments suggesting that any nuclear attack was anticipated from the PRC were not made known to this researcher:

US Major General F. T. Unger reported troop strengths, contributing nations and the sources from which these units were drawn to the US State Department on 4 June1963:

155 H. R. V. Janvrin, "HMS Victorious 1960-62," n.k. (1962): 9-19. 156 Patrick Boniface, HMS Cavalier ( Penzance: Periscope Publishing Ltd, 2004), 52. 157 Marolda, By Sea, Air, and Land: An Illustrated History of the U. S. Navy and the War, 15-20. 158 Malcolm van Gelder & David Crosby & Alan Hodges & Gordon Chave & Tom Thornton, "A History of 2 Field Troop RAE Chapter Seven Views from the Top," A History of 2 Field Troop RAE 2004, 73-86.

SEATO Forces in Thailand During June 1963

1. During the period 11–24 June 1963, a total of some 25,000 military personnel from all SEATO nations will participate in Exercise Dharnarajata [sic.] in Thailand. These include 17,000 Thais, 7,449 US (in addition to the 4,218 US military personnel now stationed there), and approximately 1,000 from the Commonwealth nations (United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand) and the Philippines, France and Pakistan.

2. US forces participating in the exercise consist of one infantry battle group from Hawaii, one airborne brigade from Okinawa, one tactical fighter squadron (18 F- 400), tactical reconnaissance fighters (4 RF-101), and transport aircraft (14 C- 130). In addition, 315th Air Division and MATS aircraft will be entering and leaving the country during deployment, exercise, and redeployment to provide airlift to all Services.

3. For the exercise, a Commonwealth brigade (one rifle company each from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, each representing a battalion), with fighter, bomber and transport aircraft will participate. France, Pakistan and the Philippines are supplying headquarters staff officers. The Philippines are also sending elements of ordnance and engineer units. The Thais are using four regimental combat teams, special forces units and aircraft.

4. It is planned that the US battle group from Hawaii will remain in Thailand until some time after 5 July 1963, for further training and area indoctrination.159

Dean Rusk also authored a document on the subject of Exercise Dhanarajata 160

Operation Lam Son 719 – a real invasion of Laos

159 F. T. Unger, "Foreign Relations of the United States, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963 Volume XXIII, Southeast Asia, Document 478," US Department of State, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v23/d478 (Date accessed: 14 April 2015) 160 Dean Rusk, "Foreign Relations of the United States, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963 Volume XXIII, Southeast Asia, Document 477," US Department of State, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v23/d477 (Date accessed: 14 April 2015)

Space did not permit an examination of Australia’s role in the 1971 attempted invasion of Laos from the East, using Highway 9 to break through from Khe Sanh, in Việt Nam to sever the Hồ Chí Minh Trail and push on into Laos and the town of Tchepone (Sepon) and the North Vietnamese Base Area 604. This was the disastrously unsuccessful Operation Lam Son 719, also known as (Chiến dịch Lam Sơn 719 or Chiến dịch đường 9 – Nam Lào). Between 8 February and 25 March 1971, US military planes and armour led an invasion by South Vietnamese (ARVN) troops. No 2 Squadron RAAF operated as part of the US Air Force's 35th Tactical Fighter Wing, and gave air support to the South Vietnamese till they reached the Laos border. There were also Australian AATTV troops on the ground supporting the operation but no Australian or US advisers were officially permitted to cross the border. The former Republic of Vietnam awarded the Cross of Gallantry with Palm Unit Citation to both Australian units. Yet, few accounts were found, so Dale Andradé’s account sufficed.161 The AWM marked this operation with a photo of the citation parade and reference to the fact that the AATTV was involved in very heavy fighting, and was located “…on the Laotian Border.”162

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the larger-scale collaboration of Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the US-led war in Indochina and Laos. The evidence of this major collaboration was significant both in the range of assets deployed and troop numbers for the SEATO invasion of Laos; but also the inclusion of nuclear weapons. The invasion was eventually abandoned as a militarily unsound idea, but also in view of the uneven level of support it had from allies and the US itself. As an alliance, SEATO was unlikely to function effectively in difficult circumstances into which they were entering. In subjecting other aspects of the SEATO collaboration to closer scrutiny, the involvement of nuclear weapons in plans to invade a peasant society drew into question matters of proportionality in how first-world powers conducted themselves in a post-colonial world.

Operation Crown was built for use by both US and Commonwealth air forces and the CIA’s contractors like Air America. It was also, an air-bridge to Seno in Laos as part of SEATO’s invasion Plan 5. The airfield was also a base for SAS incursions into Laos, which drew

161 Dale Andradé, "Fighting against Time: The South Vietnamese Army on the Road to Self-Sufficiency" (paper presented at the The Australian Army And The Vietnam War 1962–1972 The 2002 Chief Of Army’s Military History Conference, Canberra, 2002), 138-51. 162 Australian Army, "P02636.022," Army Public Relations, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/P02636.022 (Date Accessed: 13 February 2016)

40 attention to New Zealand’s reluctant position. Post Crown Works was mainly carried out for the purpose of connecting roads to USAF bases. The road probably enabled positive economic activity and generated local trade; though insurgents at the time probably made it dangerous unless escorted by Thai Army or police. In a time of relative peace, the roads were probably the most useful gift from the Commonwealth troops to the people of the North East of Thailand. Australian and New Zealand soldiers received recognition from their governments, but not British soldiers.

Operation Bibber, the RAF’s brief involvement in interoperability training has been remembered by the RAF Museum. Australia’s 79 Sabre Squadron RAAF Ubon Ratchathani from 1962-68 was much longer and engaged with the war itself. Personnel were denied recognition for decades, but eventually received medals. The Australian War Memorial accepted the story of that unit. Phu Mu became a forest park, yet with ample evidence of dilapidated US buildings still marking the place. The SEATO Treaty and the plan to invade Laos, entitled “Stabilisation of the situation in South East Asia by military means” and the SEATO Exercises that rehearsed this all expired at the end of the Indochina War and finally disbanded in 1977. SEATO the Cold Warrior had ended its short existence as the Indochina War ended in withdrawal of Western forces and final proof that Pathet Lao ‘Dominoes’ stopped at the Thai border. Even the Thai government asked the US military to leave these bases in 1976, which they did.

Chapter 2

Collaboration in Warlike Operations and Counterinsurgency

Introduction

One of the key aspects of Anglosphere collaboration involved Britain, Australia and New Zealand providing counterinsurgency warfare capabilities in the form of doctrine, training and leadership. This chapter examines this contribution to the Indochina War including the Laos theatre, and how British CW became integral to the adopted doctrine for fighting the war. It will focus on a small cohort of highly-skilled individuals whose participation in warlike operations was mainly kept discreetly from public view and from the public record. Britain, as co-chair of the Geneva agreements of 26 April -20 July 1954 and 23 July 1962, could not be seen to be working closely in a partisan role with their US allies on this project, as Richard J. Aldrich described.1

It is first necessary to situate these activities in their context of unacknowledged warfare. Counterinsurgency was part of the West’s response to the decolonisation process, with links to theories of modernisation, development, paciﬁcation, and nation-building. The theory and policy-making that informed US efforts in Indochina were fashioned by people like political scientist, Samuel Huntington;2 economist Walt Whitman Rostow;3 and CW practitioner/theorist/advocate, USAF Major General Edward Lansdale.4 They believed, as US President Lyndon Baines Johnson believed, that they belonged to an advanced modern culture that could play an instrumental role in the world. They could, in the Johnson’s words, turn the Mekong River catchment into the Tennessee Valley Authority. US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, included ANZUS and SEATO allies in the great project.5

1 Richard J. Aldrich, "Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence since 1945," English Historical Review 119, no. 483 (2004): 923. 2 Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957), 261. 3 W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge University Press, 1960), 156. 4 Edward G. Lansdale, "The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 1, Document 95, Lansdale Team's Report on Covert Saigon Mission in 1954 and 1955," The Pentagon Papers (Washington: Gravel, 1971), 573-83. 5 Richard Boucher, "Release of Foreign Relations Volume on Southeast Asia Region, 1964-1968," (2000), Federation of American Scientists, http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/state/frussea.html (Date accessed 25 September 2009)

Johnson delivered this message in an address to an audience at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland on 7 April 1965 on his aims in Indochina.6

Johnson’s message appeared to be about an intention to deliver the fruits of development and prosperity; yet it was accompanied by plans to escalate the war with even greater military force, as Times journalist, Fred Emery, revealed. “...as early the beginning of 1964 the United States was moving almost irreversibly towards trying to inflict a military defeat on North Vietnam.”7 The confidence of Johnson’s vision was a source of strength, though undermined by false assumptions of US superiority and the assumption of basic primitivism in their adversaries, who were said to practice a ‘primordial form of warfare’. Patrick Porter called this worldview, ‘Military Orientalism’.8 In order to achieve a noble cause for civilisation, it was necessary to ‘contain China’ and shut out the ‘contagion’ of influence from the communist Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC).

So arose an elaborate scholarly architecture of economics, social science and politics that assisted in the essentially military undertaking of the pacification of Indochina and the surrounding region of South East Asia. The US State Department established the Council of Policy and Planning and the military implementation known as Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS), counterinsurgency warfare. Christopher T. Fisher described this as an illusion of development.9 An integral part of the US military strategy was the forcible removal of entire peasant populations into concentration camps, known as the Strategic Hamlet Programme, as Fisher explained.10 From this all else flowed.

During the period the US government sought to continue its operations in Laos knowingly in violation of the 1954 Geneva agreements, whilst keeping its activities discreetly out of public view. Highly skilled specialists were retired from the regular US military and then put through a process known as ‘sheep dipping’, whereby these specialists were removed from the US government payroll and placed in the employment of Lockheed Aerospace, or sometimes USAID, without revealing their actual whereabouts in Laos or their authentic job

6 Lyndon Baines Johnson, "President Johnson on U.S. Aims in Vietnam, April 7, 1965," Whitehouse (Washington: US government, 1965), 1. http://www.vietnamwar.net/LBJ-2.htm (Accessed: 6 July 2015) 7 Fred Emery, "Pentagon Documents Reveal How Intervention in Vietnam Was Prepared Seven Years Ago " The Times, Monday 14 June 1971, 6 8 Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes (Critical War Studies) (London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd 2009), 1, Introduction 9 Christopher T. Fisher, "The Illusion of Progress: CORDS and the Crisis of Modernization in South Vietnam, 1965 –1968," Pacific Historical Review 75, No. 1 (2006).25 10 Ibid., 25-27, 28-29.

43 descriptions.11 The procedure was described in detail by Heinz Duthel, in the Pentagon Papers and the New York Times.12

The US government maintained the appearance that there were officially few, if any, American boots-on-the-ground in Laos. The significance of this cloaking of US operations demonstrated how this reinforced their need not to reveal allies. Duthel’s description of ‘sheep dipping’ was similar to the procedure used to send British SAS soldiers into anonymous deployments in Việt Nam.13

The US tried to contain its adversaries by enlisting the support of the South Việt Nam government and army. The war in South Việt Nam was initially kept small-scale, low- intensity and covert in the early 1960s, in a similar way to the war being conducted in Laos. Warlike tasks were carried out with local proxy forces under Operation Farm Gate in South Việt Nam and comparable arrangements in Laos. Justin Hoffman explained how US ‘instructors’ helped to fly small, mainly propeller-driven aircraft on combat missions with local crews and with non-US insignia for deniability.14

News of the war in Laos did eventually reach the US media in 1969, when three US journalists walked into Lima Site 20a, Long Tieng, and broke their story to the world.15 Finally news of the war reached US Senators through the revelations made by US volunteer, Fred Branfman.16 This led to the 1970 Symington Inquiry in the US Senate.17 Emery described how the inquiry threatened to unravel the secrecy of the war in Laos, as Republicans demanded government transparency. 18 The progress of the inquiry was followed in London. On 5 March 1970, British Foreign and Colonial Office officer, John D.I. Boyd wrote from the British Embassy in Washington that:

11 Willy Bach, "Decolonisation and the Rôle of Counterinsurgency Doctrine – "Hearts-and-Minds" or the Evidence of Their Own Eyes," in Challenging Politics: New Critical Voices Emerging Scholars Conference: A Conference for Postgraduates and Early Career Researchers University of Queensland 10 - 11 June 2010 (Universty of Queensland: School of Political Science, 2010). 12 Heinz Duthel, The 'Secret Team'. The Insider (USA: Books On Demand, 2013), 59, 158, 72, 73. 13 Robert Fleming, "A Jungle Too Far: Britain and the Vietnam War," The National Army Museum, Chelsea, London. http://www.nam.ac.uk/whats-on/lunchtime-lectures/video-archive/jungle-too-far-britain-vietnam-war (Date accessed 15 May 2013) 14 Justin Hoffman, ""To Hell with the Paperwork:" Decyphering the Culture of the Air Commandos" (Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, 1995), 35-7. 15 John Prados, Safe for Democracy the Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago, Ill: Ivan R Dee, 2006), 360. 16 Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars Life under an Air War (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1972), Introduction: Laos and the Advent of Automated War, 3-37. 17 Ibid. 18 Fred Emery, "Republicans Ask for Candour in the Laos Controversy," The Times, 8 June 1971, 7.

…the only proposition which commands a wide measure of agreement is that the time has come to lift the veil of secrecy from the war in Laos, whatever international embarrassment this may bring.

One of the most revealing British documents regarding the Symington Inquiry was the letter from H. Smedley, Ambassador to Laos, from the British Embassy in Vientiane, dated 15 April 1970, in which he gave an eleven-page detailed explanation of British knowledge of American military personnel, advisers and ‘civilians’ in Laos. The report included the existence of Lima Sites, notably 20a, Long Tieng, with General Vang Pao’s Hmong troops, L’Armée Clandestine; the 30,000 Thai mercenaries and numerous other details. 19 Although much was revealed about the North American participants in Laos, almost nothing was mentioned about Anglosphere collaboration.

US military planners admired Britain’s CW methods that were learned in various parts of the Empire. The literature was redolent with references to contagion and hygiene. One example was that of Wade Markel, who linked counterinsurgency to “population control”, code for removal of civilians from the battle-space, along the lines of Sir Robert Thompson’s programme, and the term ‘draining the swamp’ to describe this process.20

US proponents especially admired the examples in Kenya and Malaya, which were regarded by US military theorists at the time as British successes.21 US theorist, John Nagl, has made useful a comparison of how the British Army learned lessons from the Malaya experience and how the US Army did not learn from Việt Nam. Nagl called this process, “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife”. Lawrence D. Freedman summarised Nagl’s argument:

…the lessons, in the end, [from British experience] are sensible and highly topical: provide means to deal with real grievances; commit sufficient troops; isolate the conflict area; display rectitude toward civilians and prisoners; emphasize intelligence; disrupt the insurgents' food supplies; and divide the leaders from the followers. 22

19 "Military Activity by U.S. In Laos," British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (London: 1969), NAUK, FCO 15/1263, n.p. 20 Wade Markel, "Draining the Swamp: The British Strategy of Population Control," Parameters Spring 2006: 35-49. 21 Fleming, "A Jungle Too Far" n.p. 22 Lawrence D. Freedman, "From Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife; Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency " Foreign Affairs 83, no. 6 (2004): 148.

US military leaders actively sought British advice, and that from Australian practitioners like Colonel Francis Philip "Ted" Serong. British counterinsurgency advisers Richard Noone, Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson, Lieutenant-Commander George Myles Thomas ‘Woozle’ Osborn, Douglas Rivett-Carnac and British Ghurkha commander, jungle warfare specialist and special forces parachute commander, Colonel J.P. Cross, all performed significant roles These deniable conflicts also created space for special forces soldiers, some retired to become mercenaries, and for the use of local indigenous and minority tribes.

‘Woozle’ Osborn and the Hmong in Laos

Stephen Dorril mentioned the ethnological contribution of Lieutenant-Commander George Myles Thomas 'Woozle' Osborn, RN, Fleet Air Arm. The nickname 'Woozle' referred to a much-loved passage in Winnie the Pooh. During World War II, Osborn flew with the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. The Fleet Air Arm obituary mysteriously ends its narrative there. Osborn gained counterinsurgency warfare experience during the Malayan Emergency, and served as a district officer during that period. “He was an expert on communist infiltration: his Malayan experience had taught him that the "hearts and minds" and the allegiance of the people were crucial.”23 According to Dorril, Osborn “….was employed in 1963 under the Colombo Plan”. Osborne promoted development in Asia, and worked as a ‘hill tribes adviser’ in Laos, reported to MI6 and “…gave ‘valuable service’ to the Laotian government.”24

Osborn’s obituary in The Times, dated 12 May 1997, indicated that he was in Laos for seven years, till he suffered a series of strokes which caused him to retire to Spain in 1971. During this period in Laos, Osborn was working for the British government under a subterfuge that compromised the Colombo Plan study programme and its development mission. He had ‘disappeared’ in Laos and re-emerged with an OBE. His obituary did indicate, however, that Osborn found time to relax in Vientiane, commenting that “… His undiplomatically boozy parties in Vientiane were legendary.”25

Remarkably, none of the North American veterans and authors who documented the exploits of the CIA in the Secret War made any mention of Osborn. US Staff Sergeant Ervin ‘Dave’

23 Editor, "Obituaries Lieutenant-Commander Myles Osborn," The Times, 12 May 1997, 23. 24 Dorril, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations, 712. 25 Editor, "Obituaries Lieutenant-Commander Myles Osborn," 23.

Davis came closest, with his list of allies: Osborn was not named on Davis’ site, only that there were British, Australian and New Zealander allies.26

Osborn’s unique experience with short-take-off-and-landing (STOL) aircraft, learned on aircraft carriers, makes it very likely that he was training Hmong pilots for the Royal Lao Air Force (RLAF), actually General Vang Pao’s air force operating out of the CIA’s many mountain-top Lima Sites. The people Osborn helped to recruit were mainly Hmong, who fought some of the bloodiest battles against the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese regular forces, eventually, as Davis described, suffering massive casualties that decimated their communities.27 Osborn was the one member of the group of CW experts who was known to be operating in Laos, though Ted Serong and Sir Robert Thompson later worked for US agencies and probably did work there too. There was an absence of further evidence at the time of writing.

The British Advisory Mission in Sài Gòn (BRIAM)

Richard Noone and the Senoi Praaq

The British Advisory Mission (BRIAM) in Việt Nam and many off-shoots, like the Australian special forces operation, Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV), led inexorably from Strategic Hamlets to Hearts and Minds to coerced removals, food destruction and massacres of civilians and finally to mass detentions, torture and the Phoenix Program of mass assassinations. This developed from the genesis of the idea for British assistance to the South Vietnamese and the US in Sài Gòn. Peter Busch set out the chronology.28 Significantly, Phoenix was known to South Vietnamese people as Phụng Hoàng (an “all-seeing bird”). As BRIAM was part of the remit of the CIA, it was inevitably integral to The Agency’s activities. Mass detention and interrogation by torture were inevitable elements.

BRIAM was initiated when British Field Marshal Sir Gerald Walter Robert Templer, who had served as the senior British commander in Malaya during the Emergency, visited South Việt Nam’s President Diệm in October 1960 in order to explain the successful British approach in Malaya.29 Thompson and Noone had both worked directly under Templer’s

26 Ervin 'Dave' Davis, "Laos : The Secret War," Ervin 'Dave' Davis, http://www.preservingourhistory.com/Laos.html (Date Accessed: 28 January 2016) 27 Ibid. 28 Peter Busch, All the Way with JFK? Britain, the US and the Vietnam War (Oxford University Press, USA, 2003), 66-92 and 93-134. 29 A. Varsori, "Britain and Us Involvement in the Vietnam War During the Kennedy Administration, 1961-63 " Cold War History 3, no. 2 (2003): 104-05.

47 command during the Malayan Emergency. BRIAM was set up by Harold Macmillan’s government in September 1961, attached to the British Embassy in Sài Gòn and, in spite of its paramilitary functions, gave the appearance of aiding the local police. It was one of the more visible elements of Britain’s contribution to the war, though its work was secretive.

The organisation was devised by Noone, who led the 'Noone mission', which carried out reconnaissance in South Việt Nam. As Noone and the work he did remained secret and rarely mentioned, it was necessary to piece-together his associations with other actors. Author, Mario Mirarchi was a US military colleague who worked with Noone and was a witness.30 Peter Moss corroborated the provenance of Mirarchi’s facts and linked further details of Noone’s life as a counterinsurgency anthropologist in Malaya, and ultimately to his appointment as an adviser to SEATO and early death in Bangkok in 1973, as reported by Peter Moss.31 Noone’s job description at SEATO, as he wrote in his book, was “…the tribal expert in the Department of Counterinsurgency and Counter-Subversion…”32 Australian Captain Barry Petersen met Noone and struck up an instant rapport. Frank Walker was also an Australian officer in the AATTV unit and knew Noone, drew attention to Noone’s heavy smoking, noting that Noone had died at fifty-five from lung cancer.33 Fleming’s description of Noone’s mission was that it, “…began in the summer of 1962 and was still operating in 1963.”34

Dorril termed Noone as, “an anthropologist and special action expert, [who, in August 1962] led an MI6 team of Malays and tribesmen from Borneo on a tour of duty among the ethnically similar Montagnards in South Vietnam.”35 The reference to Montagnards, denoted peoples of the Central Highlands area of Ban Mê Thuột, where the AATTV operated. It echoed the use that was made of the Meo (Hmong) in Laos, who were also being trained, armed and led by the CIA’s Special Activities Division (SAD), as Dorril noted.36 Noone had employed his anthropological skills with the indigenous minority Orang Asli “Original People” of Malaya during the Malayan Emergency, as his older brother, Pat had done during the Japanese occupation, and took a group of these people, who had trained as fighters, with

30 Mario Mirarchi, "The Richard Noone Expedition to Vietnam," Britain's Small Wars, http://www.britains- smallwars.com/Vietnam/Noone.htm (Date accessed 7 June 2009) (Discontinued 3 March 2014) 31 Peter Moss, Distant Archipelagos: Memories of Malaya (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, Inc. , 2004), 114. 32 Richard Noone, Rape of the Dream People (London: Hutchinson, 1972), Blurb. 33 John Cribbin and Barry Petersen, Tiger Men an Australian Soldier’s Secret War in Vietnam (Melbourne The Macmillan Company Of Australia Pty.Ltd, 1988), 170. 34 Fleming, "A Jungle Too Far" n.p. 35 Stephen Dorril, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations (Glasgow: Fourth Estate, 2000), 718. 36 Ibid.

48 him to Việt Nam, as Timothy Norman Harper noted.37 The experiment was ultimately aborted, as Moss explained:

However, the [South] Vietnamese Government attached to Noone’s expedition a Vietnamese unit from its own Special Forces. The Vietnamese became suspicious of Noone’s men because of their ethnic closeness to the Montagnard, whom the Vietnamese never really trusted, and the resulting animosity became so unbearable that Noone had to request his team’s removal from Vietnam.38

Walker stated that Ban Mê Thuột was where Petersen recruited montagnard Rhade (Ê Đê) tribesmen. Petersen expressed surprise that Noone had worked in the Central Highlands of Việt Nam, as he believed that Britain was not engaged in Indochina.39.Noone and his group of fighters were recorded by Roy Davis Linville Jumper, who described them as, “a small group of volunteers from among his [Noone’s] Senoi Praaq squadrons”.40

Noone’s group was more than just volunteers, as Senoi Praaq means “war people” in the Semai tribal language and also “those who fight”. They were much-feared as stealthy jungle fighters, highly-skilled with traditional weapons, who hunted their adversaries, as they would stalk wild game, Jumper continued.41 Noone, who also referred to his Orang Asli fighters with ironic romanticism, as ‘the dream people’, was in charge of a dangerous team of assassins, remarkably fit for purpose for the future Phoenix Program.42 The problems that were caused by the presence of Noone’s fighters were also noted by Walker.43 Noone also met Cross in Borneo and both Noone and Thompson met in Kota Tinggi at the Jungle Warfare School, in Malaya which Cross commanded.44 Douglas Valentine noted that Noone met Serong in Việt Nam.45

Sir Robert Thompson and Strategic Hamlets

In September 1961 former Malayan Emergency police intelligence officer, (later Sir) Robert Thompson, was appointed Head of BRIAM, in a role that made him answerable to both

37 Timothy Norman Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2001), 271. 38 Moss, Distant Archipelagos: Memories of Malaya 114. 39 Petersen, Tiger Men an Australian Soldier`S Secret War in Vietnam, 167-70. 40 Roy Davis Linville Jumper, Death Waits in the "Dark": The Senoi Praaq, Malaysia's Killer Elite (Westport CT: Praeger 2001), 85. 41 Ibid., 61-3. 42 Noone, Rape of the Dream People, 1-212. 43 Frank Walker, The Tiger Man of Vietnam (Sydney: Hachette, 2009), 238. 44 J.P. Cross, Jungle Warfare Experiences and Encounters (London: Arms and Armour, 1989), 108. 45 Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2000), Chapter 6, 196.

Washington and London. His thoughts on counterinsurgency were very much sought after by President John F. Kennedy’s aide and adviser, Roger Hilsman, who shared some similar experiences. Thompson had gained employment with the US government “a pacification plan drawn up by Hilsman in February 1962 [which] embodied Thompson's own ideas.”46 The BRIAM office was established in February 1962.47 Thompson was the architect of the strategic hamlets initiative known as the Delta Plan in the Mekong Delta, in close, though not always harmonious cooperation, with his CIA counterparts.

Thompson was very closely acquainted with South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm and his agents.48 He reported to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall, but also to Kennedy in Washington and to Diệm. Thompson was, “…a former Brigadier General and counter-insurgency expert who had fought with the Chindits during the Burma Campaign of WWII.” During the 1950s Thompson had been the Permanent Secretary of Defence for Malaya and was mentioned as “a major player in the defeat of the communist insurgency during the Emergency.”49

As Herbert A. Friedman explained, one of Thompson’s major tasks in Malaya was his participation in drafting the Internal Security Act (ISA) “…which gave the British colonial government the legal and constitutional right to arrest and jail anyone suspected of being a "subversive." that these people could be incarcerated indefinitely and without trial... It basically gave the government carte blanche”.50 According to Varsori, British influence extended to the highest level of the newly established autonomous government of the Federated States of Malaya, through the cohort of British veterans of the Emergency.51

The fact that CW leads to authoritarian governance was underlined on 13 November 1962, by British Lieutenant General Sir Geoffrey K. Bourne, who delivered a speech in Tanglin, Singapore, in which he spelt out what the West offered to the peoples of the region through CW and the inevitable curtailment of civil rights. In part, Bourne also acknowledged that as far as ‘Chinese Aggression’ was concerned, as he informed fellow Staff Officers ... “China

46 Ian F.W. Beckett, "Robert Thompson and the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam, 1961–1965," Small Wars & Insurgencies 8, no. 3 (1997): 48. 47 Busch, All the Way with JFK? Britain, the Us and the Vietnam War, 45, 81, 94. 48 Varsori, "Britain and US Involvement in the Vietnam War During the Kennedy Administration, 1961-63 " Abstract. 49 Herbert A. Friedman, "Psychological Warfare of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960 " Lee Richards, http://www.psywar.org/malaya.php (Date accessed 15 January 2009). 50 Ibid. 51 Varsori, "Britain and US Involvement in the Vietnam War During the Kennedy Administration, 1961-63" 84.

50 was now in the middle of a definitive inward-looking phase”. In spite of this seemingly unorthodox departure from containment doctrine, he prescribed for South East Asia a regimen of securitised states that would include ...”a really good system of Intelligence and a Special Branch ... but this will not necessarily be democratic in the British sense”. Notably, Malayan Emergency veteran Bourne, with his experience as Director of Operations 1954- 1956, cautioned his colleagues with this salutary warning:

…but if the separate nationalities do not successfully resist internal Communist subversion no amount of Western military advice will suffice.52

The organisation Thompson founded ran into the inevitable complexities of implementation in an unfamiliar location. There was little attempt to understand the context and history of Vietnamese culture and the brutality of Diệm’s forces. Australians drew attention to some of the less favourable assessments of Thompson’s strategic hamlets programme. These were expressed in 1967-68 by an Australian field officer in Việt Nam, Colin Bannister, a 3RAR platoon commander and senior operations officer with the Australian task force, who previously served in Malaya. He wrote: “I doubt Malaya taught much of value for operations in Vietnam. Malaya’s lessons “were against a weak, depleted, dispirited enemy... Any ‘lessons learned’ … needed to be applied with caution to the much larger-scale Vietnam war.”53

British Labour MP for Leeds East, Denis Healey, was a front-bencher in opposition in 1964. He expressed an even more sceptical view of Thompson´s plan, in his memoirs:

In Malaya the communists belonged almost wholly to the Chinese minority; they were easily identifiable and loathed by the Malays as trying to impose a Chinese dictatorship.54

Healey, who toured Việt Nam, was not confident of a US victory and was critical of the methods used. Later as Britain’s Secretary of State for Defence, Healey’s actions nevertheless supported the war as he encouraged and approved many joint special forces training exercises

52 "The Defence of South East Asia " in The Defence of South East Asia General Sir Geoffrey Bourne (Singapore: British government, 1962), NAUK, DO 169/156, n.p. 53 Ian McNeill & Ashley Ekins, On the Offensive: The Australian Army in the Vietnam War, 1967-1968 (Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 2003), 197. 54 Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (London: W.W. Norton & Co Inc, 1989), 226-7.

51 and secondments of British SAS to the US Green Berets and related units.55 He did describe, however, what he saw as the main flaws in Thompson’s coercive resettlement plan:

It was a disaster; peasants should never be taken more than five miles from the land they farm. Instead of breaking the communist infrastructure, as intended, these hamlets were heavily infiltrated by the Viet Cong; of eight thousand only one thousand were judged secure. The mutinous despair of the peasants in the one I visited was worthy of the Gulag Archipelago.56 (Italics added)

Implementation of the BRIAM programme was pitilessly carried out by Diệm’s army and police. As Mark Curtis wrote, Thompson’s plan included dominating, controlling and gaining the support of the rural population, while enforcing curfews and creating prohibited areas. These restrictions included ‘limited food control’, which meant that the receipt of food rations was conditional on cooperation with occupation forces in designated zones. Thompson's Delta Plan caused many thousands of villagers to be forcibly removed from their fertile traditional ancestral lands. This led to hunger, sickness, societal fragmentation and deprivation of liberty in concentration camps behind bamboo stakes and barbed wire fences.57 The Pentagon Papers reported that the programme, “... ran into resentment if not active resistance”.58

As an example of the ‘strategic hamlets’ program’s tragic irony for distressed, dispossessed peasants, Don Luce described in the evidence he gave at the 1971 Oslo Hearings. Frank Browning and Dorothy Forman cited Luce regarding a sign over one of these villages that was a metaphor for the despair of its inhabitants, it read: “Refugees from Communism cannot leave the camp”.59 Luce described how well over twenty-five percent of the South Vietnamese population became refugees in their own country. Scott Burchill situated the figure at thirty per-cent.60

55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Mark Curtis, "Britain's Secret Support for US Aggression: The Vietnam War," https://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/britains-secret-support-for-us-aggression-the-vietnam-war/ (Date accessed 21 October 2013) 58 US State Department, "The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 2, Chapter 2, "the Strategic Hamlet Program, 1961-1963," 128-159," US State Department (Washington DC: Beacon Press, 1971), 128-59. 59 Frank Browning and Dorothy Forman, The Wasted Nations: Report of the International Commission of Enquiry into United States Crimes in Indochina, June 20-25, 1971 (New York: Harper Colophon Books. Harper & Row, 1972), 20. 60 Scott Burchill, "Refusing to Learn from History," NewMatilda (2005), https://newmatilda.com/2005/05/11/refusing-learn-history (Date accessed 17 July 2015)

This policy effectively persuaded these villagers to turn to the Việt Cộng for assistance. There was substantial evidence of Diệm’s systematic mass-detentions, torture, assassinations and other human rights violations documented at the Oslo Hearings. Political detention impacted between 100,000 and 400,000 detainees during the Diệm regime.61 Hà Nội´s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed in 1964 that the coercive removal of civilians as part of the ‘U.S. "Special War" in South Viet Nam’, was a major source of discontent and Việt Cộng recruits.62 Gary R. Hess enumerated his list of reasons for US failure to prevail in the war. In part, Hess reported that: “Between 1964 and 1969, about 3.5 million South Vietnamese – or one fourth of the rural population – became refugees at one time or another: this figure does not include millions of others who were temporarily displaced by acts of war.” 63

Thompson, who was in Wellington at the time of Diệm’s overthrow, explained in a despatch, “...that in the Asian context concepts such as ‘public opinion’ and ‘consensus’ had no meaning and that Ngo Dinh Diem still enjoyed mass support. … He stressed that Diem’s methods of policing were not too different from those the British had used in Hong Kong and in Malaya” (italics added).64 The use of these methods in the Malayan Emergency included food denial called Operation Starvation as a collective punishment.65 Similar, though less- well documented activities, continued in Laos under CIA auspices. Healy was well-briefed by US military commanders and saw for himself how the war was being fought, including operations in Laos:

The programme [as shown to Healey] embraced a wide range of covert activities, including U-2 spy flights, the parachute insertion of kidnapping and sabotage teams, seaborne raids, the bombing of North Vietnamese Patrol Boat Torpedo (PT) boat bases and other coastal targets, and also, air operations against the infiltration routes in Laos by aircraft bearing Laotian markings, but actually manned by CIA and Thai pilots. Some of these operations were in clear violation of the Geneva Accords.66

61 Frank Browning and Dorothy Forman, The Wasted Nations: Report of the International Commission of Enquiry into United States Crimes in Indochina, June 20-25, 1971, 20. 62 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, U.S. "Special War" in South Viet Nam (Hanoi: Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1964), 38-39. 63 Gary R. Hess, Vietnam: Explaining America's Lost War (Brisbane: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 119. 64 Antonio Varsori, "Britain and US Involvement in the Vietnam War During the Kennedy Administration, 1961-63," Cold War History 3, No. 2 (2003): 102-3. 65 Friedman, "Psychological Warfare of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960" http://www.psywar.org/malaya.php (Date accessed 15 January 2009). 66 Healey, The Time of My Life, 192.

“The Buddhist crisis” led to the 1962 CIA-backed military coup d'état in South Việt Nam.67 This resulted in the assassination of President Diệm and his replacement by Dương Văn Minh, followed by General Nguyễn Khánh, and in turn by General Nguyễn Văn Thiệu. The term crisis described Thompson’s situation too, since he had lost his close patron following Diệm’s assassination. Ultimately, Thompson’s advice to the US military to use more force on the ground was disregarded in favour of air power. The changed political circumstances caused BRIAM to be disbanded in 1965.68 Yet British involvement did not end. In March 1965, British police officers who worked directly within the USOM Public Safety Division replaced the unit that had been BRIAM, as Ian F.W. Beckett explained.69

Thompson found other work with RAND, first as a consultant, then…as an analyst on counterinsurgency,” and with the CIA, as Duong Mai Elliott described. “[US Marine officer, Bing] West joined the Social Science Department in September 1967 and stayed for about three years.”70 Robert William "Blowtorch Bob" Komer was a key CIA officer in the pacification program. Komer was reportedly pleased that Thompson was working as a RAND consultant, noting that “Thompson had been hired by President Nixon in November 1969 to assess the situation in South Vietnam, because American withdrawal—which had begun in August—was due to continue.”71

Colonel Francis Philip "Ted" Serong

Colonel “Ted” Serong was the first commander of the AATTV, which was a SAS special forces highly secret project to train Rhade Montagnards in covert modern warfare. From 1962 onwards, Australian special forces troops, serving with AATTV, under Serong’s command were involved in the implementation of Thompson’s plan in the Central Highlands, as described above. Both Serong and Thompson worked closely with Diệm, US commanders and the CIA. British and Australian CW exponents in the Vietnamese Central Highlands led to fractious relationships with US commanders, particularly General Paul Harkins, commanding MACV, as Harkins favoured a heavier reliance on the use of overwhelming force. Serong conveyed his dismay to Harkins, regarding the intentions of the South Vietnamese forces he also commanded. This was noted by J.P. Harris:

67 Varsori, "Britain and US Involvement in the Vietnam War During the Kennedy Administration, 1961-63." 68 Ibid., 104-5. 69 Beckett, "Robert Thompson and the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam, 1961–1965," 49. 70 Duong Van Mai Elliott, "RAND in Southeast Asia: a History of the Vietnam War Era," in RAND Corporation (RAND Corporation, 2010), 332. 71 Ibid., 39.

Their aim in the High Plateau is the subjugation of the Montagnards, their destruction as an ethnic identity, and the incorporation of the Montagnard people and the Montagnard land in an integrated Vietnamese community. Serong doubted that Australians and Americans should “allow ourselves to be used as a catspaw in an operation that has an excellent prospect of finishing as genocide.”72

Regular troops were also employed to carry out relocation operations, as Paul Ham illustrated. Another Australian officer, Peter Frances Leahy, who later retired as a Lieutenant General, wrote a detailed critique of the Strategic Hamlets programme.73 Australian Sergeant, Bill Fogarty, who served in Phước Tuy with the Fire Assault Platoon, 7RAR, wrote in a letter to his family: “Dear Dad ... we are going to relocate about three villages ... all houses are to be destroyed, crops burned etc. These people will go to a new village closer to Nui Dat.”74

Australian Captain, Peter Hudson, OC, 1st Psychological Operations Unit, described the village of Ap Sui Nghệ as, “a hamlet without a soul”.75 Ham further quoted Colonel John Warr: “The ‘hearts and minds campaign’ ... does not seem to be working in this village. The villagers appear sullen and uncooperative”.76 “The erection of a barbed-wire fence 2 metres high around Hoa Long merely inflamed an already hostile people”, Ham concluded.77

In 1967 the British FCO was seeking abridged editions of Thompson’s handbook, Defeating Communist Insurgency in Thai and Tagalog, in spite of the contestable success of BRIAM. The Philippines and Thai links confirmed that both nations were US client states, characterised by corrupt authoritarian governance, indigenous unrest and repression, as Sir Robert Thompson acknowledged.78 Thai script could also be read by literate Laotian officers of the Royalist Army. Implementation in Thailand was intended to suppress cross-border Pathet Lao operations and local insurgents. This underlined the intention to implement the programme in North East Thailand. In 1967 the British Information Research Department

72 J.P. Harris, "The Buon Enao Experiment and American Counterinsurgency," Sandhurst Occasional Papers, No. 13 (2013): 32 Note 78. 73 Peter Francis Leahy, “Why Did the Strategic Hamlet Program Fail?” (Ohio: eHistory at The Ohio State University 2011), http://ehistory.osu.edu/vietnam/essays/hamlets/index.cfm electronic. 153-58.(Date accessed 12 October 2011). 74 Paul Ham, Vietnam: The Australian War (Sydney: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007), 321. 75 Ibid., 325 76 Ibid., 291. 77 Ibid. 78 Sir Robert Thompson, "Defeating Communist Insurgency," Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Information Research Department (London: 1967), NAUK, FCO 95/339 n.p.

(IRD) of the FCO was also still offering its counterinsurgency services to the Royal Laotian government with its “proposed visits by Head of Malaysian Psychological Warfare Division to Vientiane, and by Laotian provincial governors to Malaysia”.79 Browning and Forman examined the legal implications of coerced relocation of civilians. “…mass deportation of the civilian population” was in breach of the Nürnberg Principles, as it was an “…obligation of an occupying power” to provide Protection of Civilian Persons.80

BRIAM could not be described as a token of Britain’s commitment to the US special relationship. It involved South Vietnamese forces, other allies, irregular Montagnard units, Australian and New Zealand special forces and regular field units. MI6 and CIA, as well as the US command structure, were integral to BRIAM activities, as were the use of instruments like air strikes, search and destroy operations, and defoliants. Although Thompson’s plan was seen to have miscarried, US CW practitioners continued his work, acknowledging his influence, adapting from his methods and, as Kate Tietzen explained, adapting their own methods when preferred.81 As ‘hearts and minds’ approaches ultimately failed, there was an inevitable progression from universal suspicion to the Phoenix Program, which involved the assassination of scores of thousands of local people with little if any suspicion. The ‘targeted killings’ were an inevitable result of US, and British CW doctrine. ‘Targeted killings’ without any moral considerations were integral to the doctrine, not an aberration, as Tal Tovy explained in his case study.82

Petersen was a rare Australian officer who had gained the trust of the Rhade people around Ban Mê Thuột, and who had the conviction of his conscience to raise misgivings regarding the next logical step in the process, following his instructions from CIA officer, Stu Methven. Phoenix and its affiliates would see the Rhade wiped out by the Vietnamese:

I was seeing a lot of Stu Methven following my return to the highlands....

79 "Laos: Proposed Visits by Head of Malaysian Psychological Warfare Division to Vientiane, and by Laotian Provincial Governors to Malaysia 1967 Jan 01 - 1968 Dec 31," Foreign and Commonwealth Office (London: 1967), NAUK, FCO 95/168, n.p. 80 Frank Browning and Dorothy Forman, The Wasted Nations: Report of the International Commission of Enquiry into United States Crimes in Indochina, June 20-25, 1971, 297-8. 81 Kate Tietzen, "“They Were Hard Nuts”: The Australians in Vietnam, 1962-1972 a Focus on the American Failure to Make Maximum Use of the Australians’ Counterinsurgency Tactics in South Vietnam," PhD (2014): 1-23. 82 Tal Tovy, "The Theoretical Aspect of Targeted Killings: The Phoenix Program as a Case Study," Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 11, No. 4 (2009): 2-23.

I didn't know it at the time, but what he was proposing later became an element of the Phoenix Program...instigated and funded by the covert Action Branch of the CIA...

When I first heard the proposal from Methven, I didn't know the full story. But I didn't like the idea at all.

'You want me to form teams of professional assassins,' I said.

'Call them that if you like,' Methven said. 'But we need them. Start looking around for the right guys and build up a couple of teams.'83

William Rosenau and Austin Long acknowledged the inevitability that CW and its disappointments would lead to the excesses of the Phoenix Program or its equivalents and recommending that in future conflicts these measures should be applied with more effectiveness. The use of the word ‘infrastructure’ represented rest areas, clinics and hospitals for the wounded as well as command posts and logistics depots and civilian areas:

One of the principal requirements of counterinsurgency is the ability to disrupt or destroy not just the insurgency’s military capabilities but also the infrastructure that supports the insurgent forces.84

Like other Anglosphere CW experts, Serong vigorously opposed US methods and resisted what he regarded as unreasonable demands to transform the Rhade Montagnard unit into assassin teams, and the implicit breaches of the trust cultivated with the Rhade of Buôn Enao Civilian Irregular Defense Group program (CIDG). Australian officer, David Wilkins, Adjutant and OC, C Company, 2nd Tour, expressly stated that some members of the AATTV also had roles in the Phoenix Program. Ian McNeill listed Serong’s consultancy work: adviser to US General Harkins, attached to U.S. State Department, RAND Corporation, MACV, Montagnards, Republic of Vietnam National Police Field Force (NPFF), secondment to Australian Defence Department, USAID, and USOM.85 Serong could be said to have managed his reputation skilfully in civilian life. His biographer, Anne Blair and US

83 Petersen, Tiger Men an Australian Soldier`S Secret War in Vietnam, 116-7. 84 William Rosenau and Austin Long, "The Phoenix Program and Contemporary Counterinsurgency," (Santa Monica, CA: DTIC Document, 2009), Preface iii. 85 Ian McNeill, The Team: Australian Army Advisors in Vietnam, 1962-1972 (University of Queensland Press in association with the Australian War Memorial, 1984), 11, 197, 412, 386, 196, 414, 42, 44, 47, 50-1, 12-14.

57 researcher, Kate Tietzen both wrote in great detail on his exploits without mention of the Phoenix Program. Similarly, Serong’s obituary on 12 November 2002 by John Farquharson, omitted this important detail from his little-explained role in the war zone over a ten-year period. Farquharson, however, did claim that Serong left the Australian Army in 1968, with the rank of Brigadier, not Colonel:

During those Vietnam years he was also a consultant to the Pentagon and to the policy planners of three American presidents - John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. He was one of the last to leave, flying out in the final airlift by the US embassy helicopter on April 29, 1975, the day before the fall of Saigon.86

Valentine made numerous references to both Thompson, who continued in or returned to Việt Nam after the disbandment of BRIAM to work with the CIA, and Serong, who had left the Australian Army and was working for the CIA via a sinecure position with USAID and RAND, as Duong Van Mai Elliott explained:

In 1968, the CIA instructed Serong to secure a contract with RAND to acquire a “suitable cover for his continuing operations in Vietnam,” and Serong retired from the Australian Army.87

Serong did not make significant contributions at RAND. In Saigon, he would appear occasionally at the RAND office, and the staff used to wonder what he was really doing and for whom he was really working, and some would speculate— correctly, it turned out—that he was in the pay of the CIA.” George Tanham [a RAND Corporation employee], who met Serong in Saigon and later in Bangkok, would recall that “Serong was always very busy, but it was not always clear what he was up to.88

Both Serong and Thompson were deeply involved in the command of the Phoenix Program, which began in 1967 and continued till 1972, and with some aspects till 1975. Valentine described their roles:

86 John Farquharson, "Counter-Insurgency Jungle Warrior Brigadier Ted Serong, Military Tactician 1915-2002," Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 2002, 25. 87 Elliott, "RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era," 39. 88 Ibid.

The British found this necessary in Malaya, and they created Police Field Forces there. In fact, the original idea of the Vietnamese Police Field Forces came out of Malaya. Robert Thompson recommended it. And when I got to Vietnam, they had a contract Australian ... who had taken over for himself the Police Field Forces: Ted Serong.89

In 1974 this was the situation reported by Valentine:

…Frank Snepp continued to interrogate prisoners at the National Interrogation Center. Robert Thompson returned as an adviser to the National Police, and Ted Serong returned as an adviser to the Joint General Staff.90

The Australian War Memorial supported Valentine’s view of AATTV and Serong’s role in Phoenix, putting this evidence, as far as it goes, beyond dispute. It was even more curious, however, that the AWM, with its scrupulous attention to detail, listed Serong’s service in Việt Nam the Australian Army, AATTV from 1962-1965 and his final rank as Colonel, not Brigadier, as claimed by Farquharson:

From the beginning the AATTV was divided into groups and dispersed. Some worked with Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units, some with indigenous peoples in the remote, mountainous areas of the country’s north-west, some with South Vietnam’s Civil Guard which was responsible for protecting key provincial infrastructure, some with the ARVN’s elite Ranger units and some with the American Combined Studies Division which trained village militias and which was also involved in the Phoenix Program that targeted Viet Cong cells and cadres for assassination.91

Douglas Rivett-Carnac and Counterinsurgency in Northeast Thailand

War in Indochina generated regional unease with political and security challenges that drew Thailand’s military government into the turmoil, as Sutayut Osornprasop explained. There was extensive unrest in North East Thailand as well as distrust of the central government in Bangkok, which increased from 1960. It was a low-intensity insurgency war against the central government and their foreign allies. This conflict was worrying the British

89 Valentine, The Phoenix Program, 47. 90 Ibid., 196. 91 "The Australian Army Training Team Vietnam," Australian War Memorial, http://vietnam- war.commemoration.gov.au/vietnam-war/australian-army-adv isors.php# (Date accessed 17 May 2015)

59 government and Commonwealth partners too, as evidenced by the volume of documents reports to the FCO in London and to Canberra and Wellington. Reports were also generated and passed on from SEATO Headquarters in Bangkok.92

This unrest was described by Charles F. Keyes, who explored the complex web of its causation. In his conclusions, Keyes outlined the range of grievances that included the region’s poverty and the violent suppression of political dissent by the central government’s armed forces, but also the tensions generated by the presence of US military personnel in growing numbers and “...the presence of American military bases in the region...”93 Keyes mentioned that USOM was providing development aid to Thailand via the Mobile Development Units (MDUs). Arne Kislenko elaborated on the quantity and purpose of this aid: “Between 1950 and 1975 Thailand received from Washington approximately $US 650 million in economic aid, nearly 75 percent of which was directed toward counter-insurgency activities.” (Italics added)94

The US government was heavily invested in the strategic provision of development aid that was specifically designed to prioritise security concerns and to out-bid the communists and insurgents and to control the population of the region, characterised as: “...Accelerated programs in economic development, and "Thai-ification" [Sic.] of the [ethnic Lao] Isan populace...”95

“The money to finance such a large undertaking was to come, in great part, from U.S. aid grants (New York Times, April 14, 1962).”96 This was explained in US State Department reports in 1961, stating that:

This proposes increased regionalization of US policy and the establishment of an “Agri-metro” system of village strong points in North East Thailand to offset the

92 "South-East Asia Treaty Organization – Trends and Highlights," Research Office SEATO, (Bangkok: SEATO, 1965 ), NAUK, (1 December 1965) B1, C4, C1, (16 January 66) C3, C5, (1 February 66) B4. 93 Charles F. Keyes, Isan: Regionalism in Northeastern Thailand, vol. Cornell Thailand Project Interim Report Series Number Ten, Data Paper: Number 65 Southeast Asia Program (Ithaca New York: Cornell University, 1967), 62. 94 Arne Kislenko, "A Not So Silent Partner: Thailand's Role in Covert Operations, Counter-Insurgency, and the Wars in Indochina," Journal of Conflict Studies Vol. XXIV No. 1, No. 1, Summer 2004 (2004): 65. 95 Keyes, Isan: Regionalism in Northeastern Thailand, Cornell Thailand Project Interim Report Series Number Ten, 54. 96 Ibid., 56.

static nature of the village system, it envisages a leap frog strategy of hit and run ...97

This was development aid that prioritised security. Thailand became known in R. Sean Randolph’s words, as an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ for the US’s Indochina War.98 The facilitation of large US military infrastructure and large numbers of mainly male non-Thai military personnel, with generous disposable incomes exacerbated a distortion of many aspects of Thai society. Osornprasop discussed the ethnic Lao aspect of the region’s population the role that Thailand played in supplying troops and mercenaries in significant numbers for the war in both Việt Nam and Laos and the hosting of US air bases.99

An illustration of how counterinsurgency efforts were portrayed to the domestic US audience can be seen in the popular Time magazine. An editorial dated 24 May 1963 informed readers of the threat of communism in North East Thailand. The article revealed the Bangkok central government’s neglect and the impoverished conditions which the North East endured, both of which were sources of grievance, as well as the authoritarian nature of Thailand’s US-backed military government. Time made use of medical terms similar to those in the counterinsurgency manual, beginning with the title, “In the Vaccination Stage”, which described, in language redolent with medical metaphors, how,

Thailand today is particularly vulnerable to what U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Todd Young calls "aggression by seepage." Some 45,000 North Vietnamese, many of whom settled in Thailand during IndoChina's [Sic.] war against France, have been heavily infiltrated by Communist agents...100

In view of the unrest in Thailand’s north east, SEATO planners sought ways to stabilise the situation and secure the US air bases. British counterinsurgency consultant Douglas Rivett- Carnac was attached to SEATO HQ, Bangkok. Pacification measures comparable to Thompson’s were seen as the remedy to the growing insurgency in North East Thailand. Thailand is bounded in the North and East by the Mekong River forming the Laos border. The Cambodian border is 190 kilometres to the south of Ubon Ratchathani. Four of the seven major US air bases were the launch-pad for the bombing of North Việt Nam and Laos were:

97 WHB, "Foreign Relations of the United States, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963 Volume XXIII, Southeast Asia, Document 423," US Department of State (Washington DC: US Department of State, Office of the Historian, 1962), 899, , https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v23/d423 (Date accessed: 1 May 2015) 98 R Sean Randolph, The United States and Thailand: Alliance Dynamics, 1950-1985, vol. 12 (Berkley, CA: University of California Institute of East Asian Studies, 1986), 49. 99 Sutayut Osornprasop, "Amidst the Heat of the Cold War in Asia: Thailand and the American Secret War in Indochina (1960-74) " Cold War History 7, No. 3 (2007): 349-50. 100 Editor, "Thailand: In the Vaccination Stage," Time 1963, 34.

Ubon Ratchathani, Udorn Thani (also the HQ for the Secret War in Laos), Korat and Nakhon Phanom. The US military provided most of the skilled personnel and the overall command of these bases. See page viii: Map of Thailand with USAF bases. British documents showed that in the midst of this insurgency and several SEATO construction projects, a version of Thompson’s strategic hamlets strategy was planned for North East Thailand to ensure uninterrupted operations for USAF air fields. As part of the 1962 plan, Rivett-Carnac intended to adapt Thompson’s coercive resettlement scheme to the whole North East region. The operation involved giving radios to villagers whose listening choices would be monitored and guided by village headmen, who were to watch any villagers who listened to communist broadcasts. The radios could only be tuned to government anti- communist propaganda.101

The Thai government was reluctant to implement this plan, though the reason for this was not spelled out in English-language documents.102 As British Ambassador, Sir Archibald Rumbold, pointed out in correspondence to London: one million radios meant, “...one to every eight of the population...”103 Rumbold wrote a letter on 2 August 1965 to J. K. Drinkall at the Information Research Department (IRD) of the Foreign Office, in which he explained the reason for the Thai government’s cool reception of Rivett-Carnac’s ideas, believing that US listening posts in Okinawa and Saigon already met this requirement. The Thai government negotiator, Air Chief Marshal Dawee Chullasapya, informed the British government that Thailand, “... did not want any British help.”104 Rivett-Carnac also assembled a counterinsurgency reading list for fellow advisers at SEATO and offered to share this with colleagues in Bangkok, London and Washington.

Colonel J.P. Cross and the Gurkhas

Colonel John Philip Cross was a key person among the group of counterinsurgency practitioners and advisers to British and US intelligence. His British Army service spanned several decades and his contribution was substantial. Most of what is known of Cross was written by his own hand, but he reveals much. Cross was a jungle warfare theorist,

101 Sir Anthony Rumbold, British Ambassador in Bangkok, "Subject: Encloses Copy of a Paper by D. Rivett- Carnac on Counter-Propaganda in Thailand," Foreign Affairs (London: 1965), NAUK, PR 10140/3/G (1069/65G) n.p. 102 Ibid. 103 Sir Anthony Rumbold, British Ambassador in Bangkok, to J.K. Drinkall, Foreign Office London, "Rivett- Carnac's Visit to Bangkok: Discusses Counter-Subversion Work with Dawee, Deputy Defence Minister: Poor Response," in PR Information Research Dept., Foreign Office (Bangkok: 1965), NAUK, PR 10140/6, (16712/65G). 104 Ibid., n.p.

62 practitioner and trainer with a great deal of experience, a special forces and parachute specialist, founder and Commander at the Kota Tinggi Jungle Warfare Centre in Johor, authored British Army’s jungle warfare manual and was the school’s Chief Instructor. He trained many of the regular soldiers and irregular fighters for the war in Indochina, including Laos, which meant that he was well-known to other CW exponents and to the students who graduated from the school.

Cross had long-term experience as a Gurkha officer and was fluent in Nepali and Lao. He knew all fellow key protagonists including Noone and Thompson. Cross represented the essence of British assistance to the US war effort in Indochina.105 He was highly praised by British and US agents for his intelligence work. 106 Cross, Noone and Thompson crossed paths on numerous occasions, especially in Borneo and at Kota Tinggi. Similarly, Noone and Serong were familiar to each-other. Cross explained Noone’s credentials as follows:

... In Vietnam itself some aid was provided; for instance the Protector of Aborigines in Malaya, Mr Dick Noone, went to advise on ethnic minorities and the Secretary for Defence in the Federation of Malaya, the ex-Chindit and jungle warfare expert, Sir Robert Thompson, was often there.107

Cross was a veteran of the First Gurkha Rifles, with jungle warfare experience fighting against the Japanese occupying forces in Burma during World War II. He served in the controversial British re-occupation of Sài Gòn in 1945 under Major General D. D. Gracey, where Cross played an intelligence role. He was in Malaya during the Malayan Emergency where he also encountered Noon’s Orang Asli Senoi Praaq in Perak.108 Cross was in Borneo during the Indonesian Konfrontasi (Confrontation) in the mid-1960s for the top secret cross- border Gurkha and SAS Operation Claret patrols.109 He was also the founder and commander of the Gurkha Independent Parachute Company. As a Major, Officer Commanding (OC) Gurkha Independent Parachute Company in January–February 1966, Cross wrote reports from the patrols he sent out. Cross recalled with amusement how he showed a training film

105 Cross, Jungle Warfare Experiences and Encounters, 108. 106 Don Gordon, "The Easiest Way to Understand the War in Laos, 1960-1975, Review Of: Back Fire: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and It's Link to the War in Vietnam " Thriftbooks.com, http://www.thriftbooks.com/w/back-fire-the-cias-secret-war-in-laos-and-its-link-to-the-war-in-vietnam_roger- warner/515312/ (Date accessed 15 July 2015) 107 Cross, Jungle Warfare Experiences and Encounters, 108.(During the same period, 210 Thai, 34 Filipino and 21 South Korean students were also trained.) 108 J.P. Cross, A Face Like a Chicken's Backside: An Unconventional Soldier in South East Asia, 1948-1971 (London: Greenhill Books, 1996), 55,59, 100-2, 04, 07, 10, 44. 109 "Gurkha Independent Parachute Company: Patrol Reports, Borneo," War Office (1965), WO 305/4334, n.p.

63 on parachute operations to his Gurkha soldiers, emphasising how easy it was to jump out of planes.110

Cross’ Gurkha Independent Parachute Company, played the role of ‘enemy’ to South Vietnamese and other students at Kota Tinggi. An explicitly ‘Vietnamese village’ was constructed by RE Sappers. Six courses per year were conducted for the South Vietnamese ARVN. The training included the use of RAF Whirlwind helicopters. “From 1964-1970 1,693 Vietnamese students were trained in jungle warfare… [at Kota Tinggi] … and, on occasions, visual tracking.” All of these soldiers and irregular fighters trained at the British school were to be deployed in Laos and South Việt Nam.111

Cross described how, in October 1971, an angry Gurkha wanted to kill a South Vietnamese student with his khukuri, because the student had kicked him in the face during an all-too- realistic battle exercise. Cross averted an international incident, and unwelcome media exposure of his school’s activities. Cross referred to meetings in Laos and Thailand with his former Kota Tinggi students who belonged to various irregular units, like the Thai mercenaries, and Lao special forces fighters like the highly mobile Scorpions, whilst he was in Laos as the British Defence Attaché.

A photo plate in Cross’ memoirs shows him with his colleague, the Australian Attaché, Colonel Cam West, together with CIA paramilitary case officer, Bill Lair, from Project 404, Udorn Thani.112 Cross designated Lair as "an unknown American advisor". Although Lair preferred anonymity and kept a very low-profile, Cross most certainly knew him and his job description. Cross demonstrated first-hand knowledge of the Thai Unity Forces, a significant force of 30,000 Thai mercenaries in Laos which reinforced Vang Pao’s Hmong fighters. Highly disciplined troops on the US side, like the Thai Police Area Reconnaissance Units (PARU) forces, were protégés of Bill Lair and trained by Cross at Kota Tinggi. Cross recalled that PARU routinely called in B-52 airstrikes on any bend in the road to ensure that they would not be ambushed by the Pathet Lao.113 The Wilson Labour government and the FCO in London also had close knowledge of this, but Minister of State, Lord Malcolm Newton Shepherd, chose to ignore the presence in Laos of “the American forces”, when

110 Jungle Warfare Experiences and Encounters, 73. 111 Ibid., xiv. 112 J. P. Cross, First in Last out an Unconventional British Officer in Indo-China (1945-46 and 1972-76) (London: Brassey's 1992), 44-45 Plate 13. 113 Jungle Warfare Experiences and Encounters, 44 and 56.

64 asked questions by Lord Archibald Fenner Brockway in the House of Lords on 12 March 1970. Lord Shepherd explained in reply that:

Certainly we would welcome the withdrawal of the 67,000 North Vietnamese soldiers that are now in Laos. To the best of my knowledge there are no American soldiers on the ground...114

One of Cross’s former colleagues who expressed admiration was retired US Colonel, Don Gordon. Gordon served in Project 404, Special Operations Force at Udorn RTAF base, where Bill Lair was CIA paramilitary case officer, Project 404 who managed the CIA’s Secret War in Laos from the relative safety of Thailand.115 Gordon pointed that American authors tended to write of their own exploits with little or no mention of allies; as indeed Cross imparted much information about himself. Gordon acknowledged that he also knew Cross’ Australian colleague, Colonel Cam West, who often accompanied Cross. Although Gordon wrote in his review of Roger Warner’s book. ‘Backfire’, his comments were really much more about Cross, rather than the book he was reviewing:

While Americans were flying to and from in Laos, Colonel Cross walked from border to border, village to village, through government and communist- controlled territory and gained more intelligence than all the CIA…and knew most everyone on all sides. He understood Laos and its politics like few other foreigners or Laotians.116

Robert Kaplan was a writer for Atlantic Monthly. He praised Cross’ intelligence skills and visited Cross’ retirement home in Pokhara in northern Nepal in May 2006, the official historian for the Royal Nepal Army. Kaplan’s interest was in Cross’ period as British Defence Attaché to Laos between 1972 and 1976. In the interview Cross told Kaplan about how he had been deployed to Laos as an Attaché. Kaplan gave this explanation.117

…as the last British defense attaché before the fall of the monarchy, Cross became the de facto eyes and ears of the U.S. embassy, tracking the Communist

114 Britain, House of Lords, Question, Lord Fenner Brockway, “Laos: Proposed Talks”, HL Deb 12 March 1970 vol 308 cc893-4893, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1970/mar/12/laos-proposed-talks (Accessed: 15 July 2015). 115 Don Moody, "Prelude Nevermore until Tomorrow Short Stories from Laos 1961-1975," &info World-Wide Development Center, Inc., http://ravenfac.com/ravens/Adventures/Episode0000.htm (Date accessed 15 July 2015). 116 Gordon, "The Easiest Way to Understand the War in Laos, 1960-1975, Review Of: Back Fire: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and It's Link to the War in Vietnam " (Date accessed 15 July 2015). 117 Robert D. Kaplan, "Colonel Cross of the Gurkhas," Atlantic Monthly 2006, 79, 82, 84.

Pathet Lao (the British ambassador, he says with a sneer, “was a fellow- traveler).118

The British Ambassador Cross mentioned was John Lloyd, for whom Cross expressed considerable contempt in his memoirs. Lloyd opposed USAF bombing and the CIA’s interference in Laos, and indiscreetly made his views clear to North Americans in Vientiane diplomatic circles. The remark about “eyes and ears” verified the close affinity of British intelligence with US policy on Laos and the espionage role that Colonel Cross played in Vientiane.

Cross described his intelligence work as Defence Attaché as: “… being on the fringe of the intelligence world, but not of it”, “...working on a ‘need to know’ basis”, “...entirely in an overt rôle, never covertly...” “...for the collection of open military information, collected by observation, extrapolation and common-sense methods… not ‘unofficial spies’”.119 Cross’s own account of his time in Laos consisted of visits to military units by embassy car, plane or helicopter, including meeting Hmong General Vang Pao in Long Tieng and Pathet Lao leaders at their HQ near Sam Neua, sending reports to the Foreign Office, and the intrigues of Embassy cocktail parties. Cross was supplied with a de Havilland Beaver plane for the purpose of long-range visits. The plane is displayed at the Army Museum of Flying, Middle Wallop, in Hampshire.120

Whilst in Vientiane, Cross lived in a house close to the national religious monument of That Luang and routinely walked his dog, papa looly, and stopped to exchange pleasantries in fluent Lao with local people. His home was only one to two kilometres from 'Six Klicks City', the USAID/CIA compound. Regular intelligence sharing meetings whilst innocently walking his dog would have been feasible.121 Cross explained that he cultivated a false impression of himself as amusing and silly, but it is improbable that such an effective field commander, would have been specially selected to become the Defence Attaché in Laos if he was going to spend his time less productively on Embassy parties and small-talk. Cross described how intelligence was shared, as though by an opaque osmotic process, in which people who were not authorised to discuss intelligence managed to do so. An example of this

118 Ibid. 119 Cross, First in Last out an Unconventional British Officer in Indo-China (1945-46 and 1972-76), 36. 120 shortfinals, "Veteran of the War in Laos – an Unexpected British Survivor!," shortfinals, http://shortfinals.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/veteran-of-the-war-in-laos-an-unexpected-british-survivor/ (Date accessed 29 February 2011) 121 Cross, First in Last out an Unconventional British Officer in Indo-China (1945-46 and 1972-76), Plate 26. Papa Looly on patrol. 182, 209.

66 could be in this incidental meeting one Saturday morning between Cross, who was in civilian clothes, and CIA officers from 404 at Vientiane’s Wattay Airport.122

Not much was known about Cross’ Junior Defence Attaché, Major Peter Shields, or his Australian colleague, Colonel Cam West. Cross, somewhat vain at times, recorded the glowing testimonials from his FCO managers. As Cross’s superior in Whitehall, Simon Hutchinson, wrote: “You have achieved an almost legendary reputation here and even if you were never to send us another line of intelligence it would not be impaired…” On the occasion of Cross receiving an OBE his Assistant, Shield, received an MBE. Cross expressed delight:

Rejoicing and congratulations are certainly in order… Of all the SE Asian countries Laos was the only one where we always felt quite confident that our intelligence was streets ahead of anyone else’s…123

Cross also visited Hà Nội in 1976 and remarked about his debriefing, “The Americans were very interested in finding out my views…” Regarding Hà Nội, he reported that there had been “…no bomb damage in the residential area.” Yet Cross revealed that he had full knowledge of US military use of excessive and disproportionate force in Laos and felt uneasy about this destruction, especially in the Pathet Lao areas. Despite Cross’ strongly anti-Communist politics, he also had a genuine regard for Laos and the heavy bombing that country had suffered. He was also saddened by the growing list of restrictions on personal liberty under the new Pathet Lao rule. Cross confessed to feeling “desperately tired and emotionally drained”.124 He also said that, in his opinion:

…what the Americans had done; bombing was a favourite subject [of the Pathet Lao], ruins of Sam Neua and other towns, followed by views of napalm scars, refugees and harassment of aid officials. … Fundamentally I still firmly believed that having American allies was better than having Soviet ones.

It was not my business to defend the Americans and much of what they had done was anathema to me… By then I was positively glad that successive British governments had declined to send armed forces into Indo-China (Italics added)125

122 Ibid., 45. 123 Ibid., 207. 124 Ibid., 215. 125 Ibid., 195.

The ending of hostilities brought uncertainty and self-doubt for “military Orientalists” who had believed in their own unassailability. Porter reminded readers that, “The very idea of the ‘West’ continually replenishes itself through war.”…and… “Popular and elite culture is still drawn to the relationship between Western identity and conflict”126 Cross, a warrior imbued with his love of Nepal was reluctant to return to Britain to retire. He made further reference to his misgivings for the future viability of Western geopolitical dominance, saying:

I further believe that the Western world helped defeat itself by not realizing its weakness and weakened itself by not knowing its strengths. By eroding its standards it eroded others’ trust in it, so still lives on borrowed time. (Italics added)127

This was less than fulsome support for Britain’s major ally. These comments were likely to have derived from Cross’ genuine affection for the Lao people, certainly his affection for the Nepali people and Gurkhas. There was space to reflect, and experience unease about the extent to which USAF bombing had targeted civilians.

British historians are familiar that Harold Wilson rejected Lyndon Johnson’s numerous requests for British troops in Việt Nam. The well-known reference to a bagpipe band was actually a more serious request for the elite Scottish Black Watch. Jonathan Colman narrated: “From time to time…. [Johnson] would ask me [Wilson] if we could not just put in a platoon of Highlanders in their kilts with bagpipes, despite their relatively limited military value.’”128

Regarding requests for Gurkha troops, Cross was understandably reticent, but volunteered that, “In 1963 the [British] Royal Marines were asked [by the Americans] to go to Laos to fight, but this was turned down on the excuse that the British were fighting their own war [Konfrontasi] in Borneo”.129

Cross mentioned a secret meeting he had in 1975, in Pathet Lao-occupied Vientiane, with one of his Royalist Lao contacts. The Pathet Lao ‘victory’ was untidy and incomplete, though Cross amiably brushed shoulders with them daily as he went about his work. Both The

126 Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes (Critical War Studies), 4. 127 Cross, Jungle Warfare Experiences and Encounters, 99. 128 Jonathan Colman, The Foreign Policy of Lyndon B. Johnson: The United States and the World, 1963-1969 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 74. 129 Cross, Jungle Warfare Experiences and Encounters, 108.

Agency and their devastated client army refused to accept that the war was finished, and in fact, kept up their hopes till well after 1975:

He had gone home to his family as he knew his house was under surveillance. After leaving me he was going to Thailand, hoping to join the ‘Black Horse’ programme. This was continuing and clandestine support for the Meo Irregulars- turned-guerillas, [Sic.] when unmarked helicopters ferried men and stores back into Laos to help them continue the struggle. He gave me many details of its organisation.130

Conclusion

The provision of CW experts and jungle warfare training to a range of combatants were significant British and Commonwealth contributions to the US war-effort in Indochina. The promotion of largely British of CW Doctrine in a range of locations in Thailand, Laos and Việt Nam was also noteworthy. In spite of misleading statements by British Ministers, BRIAM was never a one-off or token example of Britain’s collaboration; nor were its activities limited to a prescribed area of responsibility. BRIAM was integral to US and South Vietnamese pacification operations. British CW advisers who were deployed in the Indochina War included Richard Noone, Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson, Lieutenant-Commander George Myles Thomas 'Woozle' Osborn in Laos, Douglas Rivett-Carnac in Thailand and at the SEATO HQ in Bangkok, where Noone also worked. British Ghurkha commander, jungle warfare specialist and special forces parachute commander, Colonel J.P. Cross, each applied their particular expertise. There were also Australian advisers, commanded by or connected to Colonel Francis Philip "Ted" Serong, like Captain Barry Petersen and Major Frank Walker. It was, however, Serong who ended his career with the Australian Army, stayed on, and in company with Thompson, worked directly with the CIA and became part of the Phoenix Program of CIA targeted assassinations. A share of responsibility for what then took place remains part of the record of the Indochina War. On this matter, in Serong’s case, the AWM was meticulous and correct.

Whilst British and Australian advice was not always welcomed by US commanders, CW experts and the CIA; nor by the South Vietnamese authorities, the doctrine British and

130 Cross, First in Last out an Unconventional British Officer in Indo-China (1945-46 and 1972-76), 204.

Commonwealth advisers brought with them did help to shape the war. All of them performed in great secrecy under official government sanction and public denial.

This study substantiated the fact that collaboration in the Indochina War and the war in Laos was part of a comprehensive, yet discreetly implemented government policy. This chapter dealt with the British CW specialists, though evidence in this study did not include the significant number of SAS specialists who underwent a British version of ‘sheep dipping’ in Sài Gòn and went on to fight in Indochina and who agreed to be interviewed by Fleming.131

131 Fleming, "A Jungle Too Far" n.p.

Chapter 3.

Development of Chemical Agents including Agent Orange

Only We Can Prevent Forests Only We Can Prevent Food.132

This chapter is focused on a very specific type of chemical warfare and its origin in British laboratories; how these weapons were deployed in Indochina by the US and allies, including Australia; and how their use produced intolerable long-term outcomes for the people of the region. Defoliants were used by the US in Laos, and large areas were covered, including agricultural areas, but, unlike Việt Nam, where much of the media and scientific attention was focused, little study was carried out regarding the effects.133 Where possible, Laos data was used, otherwise this author was obliged to use the more prolific Việt Nam data.

Defoliants were a novel weapon imposed by technologically superior nations on low- technology peasant societies that possessed no comparable weapons with which to retaliate. These agents had a secondary, incidental purpose as chemical weapons. The toxicity and teratogenic qualities of defoliants, especially the dioxin (TCDD) in full, (2,3,7,8- Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin) contaminant content, were known to manufacturers and scientists from the 1930s onwards, as this chapter documents. The long-term persistence of dioxin in the environment, in soils, water bodies, in the food-chain and in the human genetic structure needed to be appreciated. These instruments of warfare required a preparedness to use them on less-valued persons and a distancing of decision-makers from targeted ‘others’ and casual disregard for the personal health and safety of own-side combatants.

Collaboration in weapons development and production, primarily between Britain and the US, predated World War II, but grew during the wartime period. The arrangement was formalised under the North Atlantic Treaty signed in 1949.134 In fact, the collaboration on chemical weapons began in 1917, noted by Thorsten V. Kalijarvi and Francis O. Wilcox and

132 Wil. D. Verwey, Riot Control and Herbicides in War: Their Humanitarian, Toxicological, Ecological, Military, Polemological, and Legal Aspects (Amsterdam: A W Sijthoff, 1977), 104-05. 133 See map on pp. viii-viv map: Lao PDR maps showing extent of USAF bombing, includes B-52 and herbicide deployments. 134 Thorsten V. Kalijarvi and Francis O. Wilcox, Richard H. Heindel, "The North Atlantic Treaty in the United States Senate," American Journal of International Law 43, no. 4 (1949).

Richard H. Heindel, included Canada from 1947 and Australia after 1964.135 Simon Whitby described how, “... the development of plant pathogens as weapons... certain chemical anticrop plant growth regulators.... [became] an integral and important component of North Atlantic collaboration between the UK and US in the postwar period."136 It produced a cohort of special weapons developed in Britain and shared with US allies.

The Joint Communiqué by President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Right Honourable Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, following talks in Washington D.C. on December 7 and 8, 1964 was an important landmark for this relationship. It expressed the significance of this reality in public language. Much was to follow from this document (excerpted):

They also agreed … to resist subversion…the burden of defence should be shared more equitably among the countries of the free world…for fulfilling their heavy international responsibilities of closer cooperation between their two countries in defence research and development and in weapons production. (Italics added) 137

The emphasis on weapons research reflected work under way at a number of establishments, principally the Chemical and Biological Weapons Experimental Establishment at Porton Down in Wiltshire. This was substantially subsidised by government and resulted in large, lucrative contracts to supply the US government. These weapons included ‘improved’ Napalm, cluster munitions, CS and CR riot control gases, other chemical weapons and the range of defoliants. Most were extensively used in Indochina by US and allied forces. Britain actively sold the products of its ‘non-lethal’ gases to the US government for use in Indochina, as shown in British documents.138 US forces used CS gases throughout Indochina in confined spaces and in ways that were often lethal. Britain was selling both riot-control gases and defoliant chemicals to the US, whilst and obfuscating the categorisation of CS as well as defoliants. A twenty-four page booklet was published by British anti-war activists quoted

135 Simon Whitby, "Anti-Crop Biological Weapons Programmes " in Lajos Rózsa Mark Wheelis and Malcolm Dando, eds., Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 213. 136 Ibid. 137 Harold Wilson & Lyndon B. Johnson, "Text of Joint Communique by President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Right Honourable Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Following Talks in Washington D.C. On December 7 and 8, 1964," House of Lords Library, HL/PO/LB/6/2/183A. 138 "Export of Anti-Riot Gas Generators to United States", (London: 1968). NAUK, FCO 63/363, n.p.

Board of Trade data on chemicals and chemical weapons, showing the increasing British exports to the US in 1968.139

Special Weapons without Peer

In modern industrialised warfare, weapons that are particularly destructive or those that cause the greatest degree of needless suffering to adversarial combatants and civilian populations can be designated as egregious weapons. As Wil. D. Verwey explained, defoliants including Agent Orange were very high on this list; as they were both chemical and biological, yet fitted neither category in the 1925 Protocol. This gave rise to claims by the US military that: "Only We Can Prevent Forests" and "Only We Can Prevent Food".140 The naming of the Ranch Hand programme, the Lockheed C-123 as ‘Provider’ and using the call sign “cowboy” possessed an ironic edge too.141

Defoliants were an instrument of imperial power that was part of Colonialist discourse, punctuated with many references to child-like qualities, inferring that the subject peoples need a parent figure and that the colonial power has taken on this role reluctantly. This was a perfect rationale for colonisers. Judith Perera and Andy Thomas quoted British documents described how herbicides were “… useful for purposes of internal security within the Empire”, namely, “for the destruction of food supplies of dissident tribes”.142

The role of defoliants and how they were used in Indochina, including Laos needs to be examined in context. The foremost purpose of defoliants was the destruction of crops, which resulted in food deprivation for the occupied population – not simply the clearing of jungle to reveal the disposition of opposing forces. Defoliants could force populations to vacate their traditional ancestral homes, abandon farming, and flee as refugees to the over-crowded bourgeoning cities, or live in demoralising concentration camps, dependent on donated and rationed food. These camps were known as Strategic Hamlets, like those Sir Robert Thompson set up in the Mekong Delta. Defoliants were an instrument of coercion and part of the CW toolbox, not just an unrelated weapon.

139 Juliet Blackett Bill Ash, Lawrence Harris, Josephine Hestor, Jerry Palmer, Aubrey Raymond, Terry Raymond, Jim Ritter, John Schwartz, Dave Slaney, Alan Steinbach, Marilyn Steinbach, Meredith Tax, "Vietnam, United States & Britain. The Facts of Entanglement. The March Project," (London: The March Project, 1968), 8. 140 Verwey, Riot Control and Herbicides in War, 104-05. 141 Walter J. Boyne, "Ranch Hand," Airforce Magazine, August 2000, 88. 142 Judith Perera and Andy Thomas, "This Horrible Natural Experiment," New Scientist 18 April 1985, 34.

Defoliation in Laos and Cambodia

Herbicides were used in Laos and Cambodia as well as South Việt Nam. Ted Paterson and Erik Tollefsen published a report in which they focused on Laos:

In addition to bombs, the US also dropped massive quantities of defoliants and herbicides, including Agent Orange. Studies have confirmed that the use of these chemicals resulted in significant dioxin contamination in nearby western Vietnam (Hatfield Consultants, 2000). There have been unusually high rates of birth defects and ‘wasting’ diseases in these communities, and epidemiological studies are trying to confirm whether these are the result of dioxin. The researchers have also found high levels of dioxin in the food chain; particularly duck liver and fish raised by aquaculture.143

A major target for bombing and defoliation was the Hồ Chí Minh Trail. Andrew Wells-Dang commented that, “One mission report from 1969 described, “a highly successful attack on enemy rice crops in North Laos…almost four thousand acres destroyed just before harvest.” “One wonders if the “enemy rice crops” were able to fight back”.144 Wells-Dang also stated that, “Air Force records show that UC-123 planes, whose sole purpose had been listed as “defoliation,” conducted 860 sorties over Laos from January-June 1971…” This was during the phase-out period. Wells-Dang also referred to Grant Evans’ work as he described how defoliants were used in Laos, “…after the Lao government banned opium cultivation in 1971, herbicides were used to destroy hilltribe poppy crops as late as 1974.”145 Continued use was made of some of the existing stocks in Laos and in other locations, after the cessation of spraying in Việt Nam.

The use of defoliants in Laos necessitated, “…sorties flown from four Thai Air Bases by Ranch Hand aircraft against targets in Laos” included destruction of crops. Ubon RTAFB, Udorn, Nakhon Phanom and Takhli were included. In at least one example, CIA “…officers

143 Ted Paterson and Erik Tollefsen, "Lao PDR Country Mission Report: Evaluation of EC-Funded Mine Action Asia-Pacific Region," (Geneva: GICHD/CIDHG, 2008), 11. 144 Andrew Wells-Dang, "Agent Orange in Laos: Documentary Evidence," Fund for Reconciliation and Development, http://www.ffrd.org/Agent_Orange/laosao.htm (Date accessed: 12 January 2009). 145 Grant Evans, The Yellow Rainmakers Are Chemical Weapons Being Used in S.E. Asia?, (London: Verso, 1983), 152-4.

74 boarded an Air America transport plane… wearing …civilian clothing”. In 1969, “Twenty- eight sorties were flown from Thailand in a seven-day period, using Blue herbicide against the Laotian crop targets. During the mission, the five spray planes were hit 42 times by hostile fire.”146 Kurt Priessman also documented that defoliants were tested in Thailand from 1964-65, “approximately 125 miles SSW of Bangkok… [at the] Pranburi Military Reservation.”147 ARPA reported on these tests in 1966.148

Holly High described US herbicide use in Laos as follows:

…General William C. Westmoreland called for “the automated battlefield” fitted with “data links, computer assisted intelligence evaluation, and automated fire control”….“weather modification” (cloud-seeding) and “mudmaking” (the chelation of soil) [with petro-chemical detergents]…By September 1966, 49,490 hectares in Laos had been sprayed with the compound known as herbicide orange...149

Did Defoliants Clear Jungle?

The defoliant programme did partially defoliate trees. It was less successful, however, in clearing sufficient foliage cover to reveal the disposition of opposing forces. This brought into doubt the veracity of the claim that this was the described primary function of defoliants. As Verwey explained, drawing opinions from several sources, including Australian Colonel Ted Serong. Serong’s advice was also cited by Evelyn Frances Krache Morris, who explained that warnings of defoliation ineffectiveness began in early 1964.150 As Verwey quoted:

Roger Hilsman [stated]…as for removing the cover for ambushes…I…found that the results were not very impressive. The leaves were gone, but the branches and trunks remained… it was not the leaves and trunks that guerrillas used for cover, but the curves in the road and the hills and valleys …Serong, also pointed out that

146 Kurt Priessman, "Herbicide Use in Thailand - the Relationship to the Rules of Engagement (ROE) and Use in Vietnam and Laos." Masters Thesis, Texas Tech University, 1994, 11-12. 147 Ibid., 10-11. 148 George B. Truchelut Robert A. Darrow, Charles M. Bartlett, "Technical Report 79 Oconuis Defoliation Test Program" (Fort Detrick, FL: United States Army Biological Center, Advanced Research Projects Agency, Project Agile, ARPA Order 423, 1966), 3-7. 149 Holly High, "Violent Landscape: Global Explosions and Lao Life-Worlds," New Matilda, http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala (Date accessed: 16 November 2009). 150 Evelyn Frances Krache Morris, "Into the Wind: The Kennedy Administration and the Use of Herbicides in South Vietnam," PhD thesis, Georgetown University, 2012, 227, 49.

defoliation actually aided the ambushers - if the vegetation was close to the road those who were ambushed could take cover quickly: when it was removed the guerrillas had a better field of fire…151

Whose Food was Destroyed?

Much public disinformation about the denial of food to the opposing forces was fabricated, as were fallacious claims of success. Verwey undertook complex calculations which took into account the normal daily food ration of a peasant, the quantities of Agents Orange, White and Blue, the defoliants that were most effective on crops, as well as the acreages and quantities of food claimed to be destroyed.

…Highlands and Delta crops calculations for quantities of rice destroyed do not compute, nor do figures for number of diets.

Also the number of annual diets has been calculated … the diet of healthy adult men should be taken into consideration exclusively, since the crops of Viet Cong alone were destroyed. This assumption is incorrect...152

Verwey found that the estimated numbers and rations required by the opposing forces and the spray coverage rate did not compare. Nor did the types of defoliants used. In short, the data did not form a coherent model in order to believe that the only food destroyed was that grown by or intended for the Việt Cộng. The areas sprayed were extensive, but there were overlaps, spray drift, repeated applications and accidents. Furthermore, there were accounts by US and Australian junior officers that Việt Cộng fighters who they captured were fit young men (mostly) healthy and well-fed. However, other data showed that food destruction and denial caused the greatest suffering to the most vulnerable people in the countryside: the elderly, sickly, malnourished, pregnant women, infants and children of less than five years of age. Induced starvation drove these people who were coerced into abandoning their homes and farms. This situation provided the Việt Cộng with propaganda opportunities and recruits.

British Origins

The early beginnings of weaponised defoliants originated in British laboratories during World War II. They were intended for food denial in either Nazi Germany or in Imperial

151 Verwey, Riot Control and Herbicides in War: Their Humanitarian, Toxicological, Ecological, Military, Polemological, and Legal Aspects, 103. 152 Ibid., 107.

Japan. In both the European and Asian theatres of the war, other weapons and strategies like the fire-bombing of entire cities and the first-ever use of nuclear weapons, took the place of crop destruction. The destruction of crops in Germany and later in Japan were considered but not prioritised at the time, as Perera and Thomas noted.153

Between 1927 and 1935, Geoffrey Emett Blackman, and his botany section at Jealott’s Hill Research Station, made the early scientific breakthroughs for Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Development began during the 1930s, when it was discovered that, “chemical plant growth regulators, which mimic the effect of plant hormones” could be mass-produced and could potentially have military applications.154 In the course of World War II further work was done in Britain, with isopropyl phenyl carbamate (code-named 1313), which was identified as a possible weed killer.

Whitby detailed that, “From collaborative arrangements between the UK and the US in the early 1940s…grew the widespread use of these chemicals in CW in South East Asia during the 1960s, which, following successful earlier British tests in Malaya and US tests at Camp Drum, New York, in 1958”.155 Perera and Thomas detailed, “The formal channels of cooperation were the Inter-Service Chemical Warfare Committees in Washington and London” and research outcomes on [defoliants] 1313 and 1414 were shared across the Atlantic, “with flowsheets and designs for production plants drawn up by ICI”, with suggestions as to how it could be used on Japan’s rice crops. “The US began full-scale production of 2,4-D and would have used it against Japan in 1946 if the war had continued.”156 “Britain had passed on details of 300 other potential anti-crop agents, leaving the US to do most of the testing, development and production.” Much of the scientific work and product development was also carried out in Britain, in fact these authors affirmed that, “…without early British research and testing, there might have been no Agent Orange ready for use in Vietnam.” This research was shared with US colleagues under the Atlantic Treaty.157

In 1950 Blackman, then heading the Weed Research Organisation, Oxford University, arranged for scientific agricultural officers throughout the British colonies, notably in all tropical areas, to test a range of defoliation agents on a wide range of local plants and crops.

153 Thomas, "This Horrible Natural Experiment," 34. 154 Ibid. 155 Whitby, "Anti-Crop Biological Weapons Programmes," 221. 156 Thomas, "This Horrible Natural Experiment," 34. 157 Ibid.

One of the experiments that involved destruction of crops was discussed with military advisers, deciding that it would be useful in fighting an insurgency war in a tropical location. “Between 1950 and 1952, for example, trials were conducted in Tanganyika, at Kikore and Shinyanga, to test Arboricides and defoliants under tropical conditions…”158 Blackman, meanwhile, was commenting on the toxicity of these defoliants, making comparisons with Mustard Gas and Lewisite, which were found to be toxic to human beings but not crops. A key War Office document situated a whole-of-government policy to pursue research carried out by Blackman’s Weed Research Organisation with facilitation from the Colonial Office, Foreign Office, War Office and the Chemical and Biological Warfare Establishment at Porton Down. In the 1950 Informal Notes for a feasibility study on defoliation, A.W.H. Wardrop from the War Office wrote:

The U.S. are, in fact, spending two million dollars on defoliation, of which $30,000 goes to their “in house” programme ... This is just the sort of work at which British scientists excel, and would be a much better start for us than an ad hoc screening programme, trivial in its output as compared with the U.S. effort, and somewhat unimaginative in outlook.159

A memorandum presented to Cabinet with a long list of recommendations on the Malayan Emergency, dated 21 December 1951, was authored by Secretary of State for the Colonies, Oliver Lyttelton, who later became 1st Viscount Chandos of Aldershot in the County of Southampton. Appendix VII, Chemical Defoliation of Roadside Jungle detailed the development of the military use of defoliants and the various tasks that could most effectively be accomplished.160 Cost was a major consideration and defoliants were found to be significantly less expensive and longer-lasting than manual slashing of vegetation. Paragraph 2 described the chemicals as “recently discovered hormone weed killers (2,4-D and 2,4,5-T) with Sodium trichloracetate in various combinations.”161

This was effectively a forerunner of Agent Orange and its siblings. Paragraph 7 (c) referred to the “destruction of crops grown by, or for, the bandits in remote jungle areas.”162 The use of the qualifying term “remote jungle areas” was not defined, though the submission described

158 Ibid., 35. 159 "Attack on Crops and Livestock: General Staff Target for a Defoliant System (GST 3138)1950 Feb 01 - 1966 Feb 28," War Office (London: 1950), n.p. 160 Oliver Lyttelton, "Memorandum - Malaya," Cabinet (London: 1951), Appendix VII, (CAB/129/48) (Appendix VII) 1 161 Ibid. 162 Ibid., 2.

78 most of Malaya as dense jungle and therefore remote. More specific detail would not have concerned members of Cabinet. This was a politically palatable account of operations in the field. Reference was also made in this section to the use of Auster light aircraft, which would open many other possibilities for defoliant use. The spray rigs were at an early stage of development in coping both with the viscosity of the product, which tended to emulsify, and the tropical climate. The chemical supplier was ICI (Malaya) Ltd, with further testing and development being continued by ICI Ltd and Plant Protection Ltd in Britain. Delivery by air was planned to take place in February or March 1952.163

Although the scientists developing these substances were aware of the dioxin content and properties of dioxin, no mention was made of health risks for either British or Commonwealth troops, or New Zealand veteran, Victor Johnson, or Malayan troops, who would be handling the materials and applying the sprays, nor the targeted Malayan populations. Several accounts of the Malayan Emergency made no mention of defoliants, first used by British forces in Malaya from 1952 till 1954, where they were deemed a decisive weapon and became a model for the Indochina War. Food denial and induced hunger were used against compulsorily resettled ethnic Chinese villagers, of whom there were eventually around 500,000 detained in camps to ensure their cooperation with British authorities or to punish them for suspected supply of food to the Min Yuen (Communist) guerrillas. As Herbert A Friedman explained, British High Commissioner in Malaya, General Sir Gerald “…Templer immediately punished the nearest town. He imposed a 22-hour curfew, cut the rice ration in half and closed the schools.”164 This was achievable because his forces had effective control over food supplies, having created the situation in which these people could not grow any food and were entirely dependent on British supplies. Curiously, David Ucko did not mention defoliants in his writings on the Malayan Emergency, though he did mention food denial ordered by General Sir Harold Briggs “…implementing food denial programmes.”165 Gavin Bulloch did not mention defoliation either.166

163 Ibid., 2. 164 Herbert A. Friedman, "Psychological Warfare of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960,", http://www.psywar.org/malaya.php (Date accessed: 15 January 2009). 165 David Ucko, "Network Centric Operations (NCO) Case Study. The British Approach to Low-Intensity Operations: Part II - Case Study 1 – the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) the British Approach to Low- Intensity Operations: Part II," US Ministry of Defense, LIO Final Report (Washington: US government, 2007). http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA470504&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf (Date accessed: 30 June 2009), 17. 166 Gavin Bulloch, "Military Doctrine and Counterinsurgency: A British Perspective," Parameters, No. Summer 1996.

Colonel J.P. Cross, who served as a British officer in Malaya also used the term “crop spraying” to describe the use of herbicides during the Malayan Emergency.167 Whitby explained, "In a related food denial program, chemical agents were disseminated by helicopter. This tactic was considered by the commanding officer in Malaya to have been a decisive weapon in the campaign against Malayan insurgents..."168 Britain discontinued the use of defoliants after two years. Lessons were being learned by US military officers like Major Arthur D. Barondes:

Crop Spraying … forced the terrorists to cultivate gardens in the jungle. This, in turn, led the British to seek out and destroy the jungle gardens from the air. Air Headquarters assigned the task…to No.155 Squadron with its 14 Whirlwind helicopters and … fixed-wing Beavers and Pioneers...169

In 1955 US forces used defoliants on the Korean DMZ, then between 1961 and 1971, in huge volumes in Indochina.170

By 1955 development of these agents in Britain had become, “Experiments [that] were conducted allegedly to find a cure for the common cold ” … but they were also experimenting with mustard gas, Sarin nerve gas and VX gases, Soman and Tabun, with USAF planes and RAF personnel spraying the Wiltshire countryside.171 Some volunteer military subjects and scientists died prematurely, whilst others were later charged with criminal offences. These scientists knew that dioxin was one of the world’s most toxic substances and, as photographic evidence showed, they wore protective clothing and respirators, as indicated for the hazardous substances they handled.172 There were, however, other accidents.

Later in his career, Blackman worked in the US for the US National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council from 1971 till 1974, and led a study in South Việt Nam and Los Baños in the Philippines. Blackman, then a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), commented

167 J.P. Cross, Jungle Warfare Experiences and Encounters (London: Arms and Armour, 1989), 163. 168 Whitby, "Anti-Crop Biological Weapons Programmes," 216. 169 Arthur D. Barondes, "The Accomplishments of Airpower in the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) " (Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, 1963), 56-57, 62. 170 Song Sang-ho, "U.S. Army Sprayed Defoliant over DMZ in 1955: Ex-Soldier," The Korea Herald, 30 May 2011. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20110530000804 (Date accessed: 10 October 2011). 171 Chris Ayres and Michael Evans, "US Planes Sprayed Wiltshire with Sarin," The Times, 10 October 2002, 17. 172 Rajeev Syal, "Porton Down Scientists Face Charges over 1950s Experiments," Telegraph, 24 March 2002, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3292496/Porton-Down-scientists-face-charges-over- 1950s-experiments.html (Date Accessed: 4 June 2011).

80 on his own life’s work, but the findings were incomplete. Birth defects were not examined or mentioned. That question was beyond the ‘Scope of Work’ as lead author, he stated:

6. Claims that the herbicides as they were used during the war have rendered the soil "sterile." permanently or at least for prolonged periods, are without any foundation. It should be noted that these claims were contrary to all existing information for the herbicides in question.173

A Chronology of Discoveries and Industrial Accidents

Evidence of TCDD toxicity was found through interrogation of documents by the developers of defoliants and the chemical companies that contracted to manufacture them. They had decades of experience and safety procedures. The scientists and process workers took precautions when handling these materials; unlike the poorly-informed soldiers who stood shirtless and without breathing apparatus in tropical conditions, spraying as though putting out a fire with their arms, torsos, legs and faces splashed generously by each gust of wind. As shown in the video, the unfortunately false narrative of harmlessness was generally believed among field officers and non-commissioned ranks.174 One illustration of this false belief was this - U.S. Army Newsfilm, ‘Film of US Soldiers spraying Agent Orange defoliant onto a riverbank without protective equipment.’175

A study was made at Porton Down, following a low-level exposure accident that resulted in one or more workers being injured by the skin condition Chloracne. R.M. Oliver’s 1975 article demonstrated the toxicity of dioxin. Oliver detailed the severe effects of “trivial” incidental exposure of three British government scientists when the normal precautions turned out to be inadequate. Dating back to the earliest work with these ingredients, from 1935 onwards, precautions included:

173 John D. Fryer, Geoffrey E. Blackman, Anton Lang, Michael Newton, "The Effects of Herbicides in South Vietnam. Part B. Working Papers: Persistence and Disappearance of Herbicides in Tropical Soils," (Fort Belvoir, VA: DTIC Document, 1974), 56-58. 174 Verwey, Riot Control and Herbicides in War: Their Humanitarian, Toxicological, Ecological, Military, Polemological, and Legal Aspects, 76. 175 PH1 Palm and SP5, "Film of US Soldiers Spraying Agent Orange Defoliant onto a Riverbank without Protective Equipment - U.S. Army Newsfilm V-73-69: Weed Killer Knocks out VC's Riverbank Ambush Sites, South Vietnam [VC Weed Killer]," Michael Sheets Collection (Washington DC: Michael Sheets Collection of the Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech University, 1969), Item Number: 987VI0672.

…a chemical fume cupboard with an aircooled condenser tube passing from the top of the heated vessel through the extract vent of the cupboard… an overall and disposable plastic gloves, taking the utmost care to avoid skin contamination.”

The scientists who were subject of this short-term study began exhibiting symptoms of chloracne. Oliver cited a long list of other symptoms and of many pre-dating his study…” Other studies included one in 1957.176

Oliver warned that:

... even those working with laboratory quantities with normal precautions are at significant risk.... evidence ...suggests that those accidentally exposed to dioxin may be subject to long delayed toxic effects...177

In 1949, Monsanto, a US manufacturer of agricultural herbicide 2,4,5,T, suffered an accident which included an explosion and subsequent site contamination at its plant in Nitro, West Virginia. The accident caused sickness, mainly the skin disease, chloracne among Monsanto workers. It was a warning of future exposure problems. Quoting from the 1983 the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York Court Hearings:

During World War II, the military discovered the herbicidal properties of 2,4,5-T and conducted extensive testing of various possible herbicides. This research was conducted under the supervision of the Crops Division of the Army Chemical Corps. at Camp Detrick, Maryland.

Several years later, in 1949, Dr. Donald Birmingham of the Public Health Service visited Nitro, West Virginia, where there had been an explosion at Monsanto's 2,4,5-T plant. The report of Dr. Birmingham's colleague, Dr. Louis Schwartz, indicated a connection between chloracne and the chemicals produced in the plant.178

In 1957, the German company, C.H. Boehringer Sohn at Ingelheim am Rhein, also suffered an accident that injured a number of their workforce. The Germans wrote to all of their worldwide competitors, warning them of the toxicity problem and recommended a process

176 R.M. Oliver, "Toxic Effects of 2,3,7,8 Tetrachlorodibenzo 1,4 Dioxin in Laboratory Workers," British Journal ofIndustrial Medicine 32, no. 49-53 (1975): 50. 177 Ibid., 52. 178 United States District Court For The Eastern DIistrict Of New York, In Re "Agent Orange" Prod. Liab. Litig., Pretrial Order No. 51 20 May 1983 1983.

82 that they pioneered which was designed to reduce TCDD contamination. Letters produced in the US court showed communications from Boehringer referring to “…"our 1955 correspondence" …offered detailed instructions on how to minimise contamination … Dow replied with a letter of thanks. The letter noted that on 27 January, 1955, Dow wrote to Boehringer describing "the hazards due to toxicity and precautions for safe handling and use of 2,4,5-T..." Dow’s problem was the temperature at which they processed the chemicals, as Christopher Joyce revealed. Boehringer recommended they work at a lower temperature.179

These parties were discussing a difficulty that was essential to their business. Joyce described how, “In 1964 …an accident at Dow … [affected] some 60 workers [who] contracted chloracne. Contrarily, Dow then began to take the lead in what the veterans' lawyers called the "conspiracy of silence ".180 Joyce also confirmed that Dioxin was almost certainly carcinogenic.181 This replication of results was later verified by Moran in 1988, by Nieves in 1991 and by Sullivan in 1992.

By 1963, with the US experience, the British government formally adopted defoliants as weapons of war. In 1965 it was formulated into a General Staff Target (GST) 3138: defoliant system. The AWM in Canberra offered this document on an ‘open with exception’ basis. The dates 1963-66 situate Australia as a relatively early adopter, with standards from London, rather than Washington.182 By 1968 defoliant use became a formal “defoliant system” for all branches of the military, conducted by the Weed Research Organisation, Oxford, under Blackman and his colleagues.183

Browning and Foreman quoted Arthur H. Westing regarding the use of defoliants on crops:

The US food destruction program in South Viet Nam ... from 1961 ...[showed that] Agent Blue [was found to be] highly persistent ... 1962-1969 ... spraying is usually carried out near harvest time, destroying the standing crop and rendering the land useless until at least the next growing season.184

179 Christopher Joyce, "Lawyers Reveal Conspiracy of Silence on Dioxin," New Scientist, 4 August 1983, 327- 28. 180 Ibid. 181 "Dioxin Probably Carcinogenic - Official," New Scientist, 4 August 1983, 343. 182 Army Headquarters, "GST [General Staff Target] 3138 - Defoliant System," Army (Canberra: 1963-1966), 886/R1/14 183 "Naval, Ground and Air Staff Target (NGAST) 3138: Requirement for Defoliant; Study by the Weed Research Organisation, Oxford, 1968 Nov 01 - 1974 Jul 31," War Office (London: 1968), WO 188/2548, n.p. 184 eds. Frank Browning and Dorothy Forman, The Wasted Nations: Report of the International Commission of Enquiry into United States Crimes in Indochina, June 20-25, 1971 (New York: Harper Colophon Books. Harper & Row, 1972), 21-22.

Scott-Clark and Levy concurred with the fact that negative health outcomes were experienced by Indochinese peasants.185

Was Agent Orange Legal?

The question of legality was contested in several significant fora. Defoliants did not readily classify as “asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases” and “harassing agents”, an ambiguity in the 1925 Geneva Protocols.186 The original signatories had not envisioned the invention of chemicals designed to destroy plant life. US authorities cited the British usage of defoliants in the Malayan Emergency as a precedent demonstrating legality of these chemicals for use in Indochina.

Meselson detailed the history of defoliant adoption:

The Rand Corporation… studied the use of herbicides… by the British in Malaya and issued two classified reports on the subject. By 1960 the United States Army Chemical Corps became interested… In 1961 President Kennedy was persuaded to sign two orders; one allowing the initiation of a crop destruction program and the other allowing the initiation of a defoliation program. Those two programs were born literally at the same moments."187

The use of defoliants commenced in South Việt Nam in December 1961 “under a Directive issued by President Kennedy”, as Whitby noted. Crop spraying began in 1962.188 This then led to the extensive use of defoliants in Indochina:

US Army Chemical Corps anticrop warfare activities were organized under the four constituent parts of the Crops Division: the Chemistry Branch, the Biology Branch, the Plant Physiology Branch, and the Operational Requirements Branch. The remit of the Chemistry Branch centered [Sic.] on the development of a universal anticrop chemical...effective in reducing the yields of both narrow- and broad-leafed crops.189

185 Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, "Specter Orange," International Journal of Health Services 34, No. 3 (2004): 557-66. 186 ICRC, "The 1925 Geneva Protocol Summary and Analysis," http://www.nti.org/media/pdfs/treaties_1.pdf?_=1316466791 (Date accessed: 12 March 2015). 187 Robert Baughman and Matthew Meselson, "An Analytical Method for Detecting TCDD (Dioxin): Levels of TCDD in Samples from Vietnam," Environmental Health Perspectives 5, no. 1973 Sep (1973): 27-35. 188 Morris, "Into the Wind: The Kennedy Administration and the Use of Herbicides in South Vietnam," iii. 189 Whitby, "Anti-Crop Biological Weapons Programmes," 216.

Whitby outlined a far more extensive programme of crop warfare than was encompassed by defoliant agents alone and delivery systems that included antipersonnel (E73 500 pound) cluster munitions and a “modified propaganda leaflet bomb” that released undetectable substances. This was an entire discourse that focussed on attrition through food denial, which would have affected not only the guerrilla fighters, but would have inflicted long-term civilian food deprivation due to significantly diminished crop yields with the likelihood of prolonged hardship, including the raising of stunted children, who in time become weak and sickly adults through repeat infestations of introduced plant pathogens, as Whitby noted:

...those agents... "… offered the greatest potential in the attack of [on] food crops" [included] "the causal agents of stem rust in wheat (Pucinia graminis), codenamed TX; … rice blast (Pircularia orizae), codenamed LX; and of …late blight of potatoes (Phytophthora infestans), codenamed LO. Two additional agents are known” ..., "with an infection rate of just 0.1 gram/acre or 1 pound for 10 square miles, with spores remaining viable in aerosol form for several days.” “... [agents] under review ... included the causal agent of Hoja Blanca of rice ... bacterial leaf blight of rice ...190

Johnson, mentioned above, made a detailed submission to the Agent Orange Enquiry New Zealand Parliamentary Committee.191 He stated that British forces used defoliants in the Malayan Emergency in 1953 and 1954.192 A 2006 USAF health study by USAF Major William A. Buckingham, Jr, cited in Johnson’s statement regarding the health effects he suffered following his service in Malaya supported his claims.193

On 27 January 1966, the British Labour MP for Barking, Tom Driberg, wrote to the then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Michael Stewart, seeking an explanation from the Minister for the actions of US forces in Việt Nam and Indochina, as he expressed it, “… [the] American are spraying the rice-fields – presumably with poison – in order to create

190 Whitby, "Anti-Crop Biological Weapons Programmes," 217. 191 Steve Chadwick, "Inquiry into the Exposure of New Zealand Defence Personnel to Agent Orange and Other Defoliant Chemicals During the Vietnam War and Any Health Effects of That Exposure, and Transcripts of Evidence Report of the Health Committee Forty-Seventh Parliament," (Wellington, New Zealand: Report of the Health Committee, House of Representatives, 2004). 192 Victor Johnson, "Agent Orange Enquiry New Zealand Parliament Health Select Committee - Submission of Victor Johnson, Vietnam War Veteran 25 November 2003," Victor Johnson, http://www.crimehurts.org/vvanz/v_johnson_25_NOV_2003/v_johnson_25_NOV_2003-04.html (Date accessed: 14 May 2009). 193 William A. Buckingham, "Operation Ranch Hand: Herbicides in Southeast Asia," Air University Review, http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1983/Jul-Aug/buckingham.html#buckingham (Date Accessed: 25 May 2011).

85 starvation”. The Minister tabled this letter and his own explanatory letter of reply in the Parliament on 28 February. Stewart’s ‘astute’ reply, stated, in part:

I understand that measures are taken to destroy rice crops or rice stores which are known to support the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. The aim is certainly not to create starvation amongst the people, but to cut off the supplies which sustain the Viet Cong guerrillas. I understand too that the spray is designed to kill the rice but is not poisonous: it is equivalent to burning or blowing up a store of rice once collected and held for Viet Cong supplies.194

By 1968-69 Britain was continuing its use of riot-control gases, not only in distant colonies, but within the British Isles, in the counties of Ulster, under the gaze of its own citizens and critical media. The Wilson government was not inclined to criticise US use of these allegedly ‘non-lethal’ weapons in Indochina that Britain also used on its own people. Nor did they raise for discussion the topic of defoliants. In US field operations in Indochina CS gases frequently co-mingled with herbicides and Napalm. Foreign Minister, Michael Stewart, who later became Baron Stewart of Fulham, obligingly redefined CS gas, as only a “smoke”, not a “gas”, thus effectively reversing the 1930s Protocol. Stewart, however, “privately wrote that while the US had ‘made errors of judgement’, over Việt Nam, we ‘must not lose sight of the great issue of human liberty’.195

On 16 December 1969, Harold Wilson tabled a document to his Cabinet entitled, The Geneva Protocol and the use of riot control agents in war Note by Prime Minister. This note was prompted by the anomaly of British use of riot-control agents in Ulster in a context in which the US government sought legal clarification regarding their use of these agents in Indochina. This clarification was necessitated in part by British development and sale of these gases to the US government for use in the war.196

Louise Doswald-Beck Jean-Marie Henckaerts, Carolin Alvermann documented the US refusal to ratify the 1925 Protocol Resolution 2603 A 9XXIV, 16 December 1969.197 The

194 Britain, House of Commons, Written Answers (Commons) VIETNAM, HC Deb 28 February 1966 vol 725 cc174-6W 174W28 February 1966, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1966/feb/28/vietnam (Date Accessed: 21 December 2015). 195 Rhiannon Vickers, "Harold Wilson, the Labour Party and the War in Vietnam," in British International Studies Association Annual Conference (Cork, Ireland: British International Studies Association 2006). 196 Harold Wilson, "The Geneva Protocol and the Use of Riot Control Agents in War Note by Prime Minister ", ed. Cabinet (London: British government, 1969), CAB 129/46, C(69) 68 pages 1-2 and legal advice 1-2. 197 Louise Doswald-Beck Jean-Marie Henckaerts, Carolin Alvermann, Customary International Humanitarian Law, vol. 1 (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1769.

86 majority of signatory nations regarded both defoliants and riot-control gases as prohibited by the Convention, except the US, General Salazar’s fascist Portugal and Australia, a user of these chemicals in Việt Nam and a manufacturer.198 Britain was also a manufacturer of defoliants with lucrative and growing contracts. Canada and New Zealand both manufactured military herbicides.199 Resolutions were introduced in the General Assembly of the United Nations as early as 1966 charging the United States with violations of the 1925 Geneva Protocol which limited the use of chemical and biological weapons. The United States was able to defeat most of these.

Notwithstanding strong American opposition and the abstention of many allies, the Resolution was adopted in December 1969. It clearly defined the United States' defoliation program as a violation of the Protocol, as Peter H. Schuck explained.200 UN Secretary General, U Thant tried to institute a Protocol under which defoliants would be banned, but his efforts were ignored by the US and other permanent members of the UN Security Council, Mario Rossi described U Thant’s efforts to have defoliant weapons banned.201 There were also stirrings in the Nixon administration for changes in policy, as Jonathan B. Tucker and Erin R. Mahan documented. “Finally, the U.S. Government faced international condemnation for its widespread use of nonlethal chemical agents …to augment conventional military operations during the Vietnam War”. 202

To conclude: defoliants were subject to contestation, marginally legal, but not with certainty. They were open to challenge. This did not take into account the known harm to humans. A significant body of US scientists including Nobel Laureates had been trying to bring the accumulating evidence of detriment to the attention of their government from 1966

198 International Committee of the Red Cross, "United States of America Practice Relating to Rule 76. Herbicides," Customary IHL (2013), http://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_cou_us_rule76 (Date accessed: 23 November 2013). 199 Ian Wishart and Simon Jones, ‘Agent Orange: "We've Buried It under New Plymouth"’ Investigate January/February 2001, 26-33. 200 Peter H. Schuck, Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in the Courts (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1988), 19. 201 Mario Rossi, "U Thant and Vietnam: The Untold Story," New York Review of Books 7, no. 8 (1966): 49. 202 Jonathan B. Tucker and Erin R. Mahan, "President Nixon’s Decision to Renounce the U.S. Offensive Biological Weapons Program," Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction National DefenseUniversity, No. Case Study 1 (2009): 2, 7. 8, 10.

87 onwards.203 The shortcomings of Nixon’s declaration were rectified in some measure by President Gerald Ford’s 1975 Executive Order 11850.204

By the late 1970s and early 1980s claims for compensation had reached the US legal system. Dean Kokkoris, New York lawyer for Vietnamese Agent Orange victims informed the court, as reported to Anne Maria Nicholson:

Since we are alleging violations of the laws of war and war crimes, it is not a defence to say that your government told you to do it. We know that from the Nuremberg trials.205

…the chemical companies profited from making the herbicides … should have been aware of the risks involved, of the harmful affects that these chemicals could have on human beings and the persistence of it….

… [and] their own employees were occupationally exposed … and suffered ill effects.206

The defensive statements by major manufacturers could be interpreted as an act of redefining responsibility and the most reliable guide of whether legality of defoliant use was in question:

Dow issued a statement to Nicholson:

We believe that it is the role of the U.S. Government and the Government of Vietnam to resolve any issues related to wartime activities. The U.S. Government compelled the production of Agent Orange under the [1950] Defense Production Act and controlled how it was produced and used.

…and so did Monsanto:

U.S. Government contractors are protected from liability under U.S. law and civil claims were addressed in 1984. The Government of Vietnam resolved its claims as part of the treaties that ended the war.207

203 Meselson, "An Analytical Method for Detecting TCDD (Dioxin): Levels of TCDD in Samples from Vietnam," 27-32. 204 Gerald Ford, "Executive Order 11850--Renunciation of Certain Uses in War of Chemical Herbicides and Riot Control Agents," National Archives, http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive- order/11850.html (Date Accessed: 10 December 2015). 205 ABC, "Vietnam - Agent Orange," in Foreign Correspondent (Australia: ABC TV, 2004), http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2004/s1125114.htm (Date accessed: 7 December 2015). 206 Ibid. 207 Ibid.

Phillip L Schneider, Dow Chemical Company, Manager of Corporate Media Relations used an identical talking point in 1982, when interviewed by Martin Gottlieb, who explained that,

… Dow argues, even if Agent Orange is found to have caused serious illness, responsibility lies with the government, not the manufacturer, which simply followed government guidelines in preparing the defoliant.208

So, the 1945-1949 Nürnberg defence of ‘just following orders’ had morphed into contracting corporations just ‘doing what the government forced us to do’, a defence that was not accepted by Chief Justice Rehnquist of the US Supreme Court in the 1996 case of Hercules Inc. v. The United States when the company tried to sue the US government for their losses.209 There has been no political or military leadership prepared to accept responsibility for their decisions, as Nicole Barrett explained in her incisive article.210

Roy Gutman, David Rieff and Anthony Dworkin argued that whether or not civilians were specifically targeted, the use of chemicals known to be toxic against opposing forces constituted the intentional use of chemical warfare agents against combatants, which was beyond the original stated purpose of defoliants and would have contravened Geneva Conventions and long-standing conventions against the use of chemical weapons.211 The use of starvation as a weapon of war is forbidden by the two Additional Protocols of the Geneva Conventions dated 1977. These measures were too late for the people of Indochina, but the US and Agent Orange were singled out for special mention.212

Australian and New Zealand use of Defoliants in Việt Nam

Australian military planners followed their US counterparts in conducting the war. The Australian military played a subordinate role to US commanders and broadly obeyed US Rules of Engagement. The use of defoliants was a logical inevitability. In spite of incorrect claims that Phước Tuy Province was never sprayed; the Province was a test site for the US Operation Ranch Hand. Biên Hòa air field was the first base occupied by the 1st Australian

208 Martin Gottlieb, "The Vietnam War That’s Still Being Fought," New York Magazine 25 October 1982, 16. 209 Hercules Inc. V. United States, ___ U.S. ___ (1996) Hercules Incorporated, Et Al., Petitioners V. United States Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, No. 94-818, FindLaw (1996). 210 Nicole Barrett, "Holding Individual Leaders Responsible for Violations of Customary International Law: The U.S. Bombardment of Cambodia and Laos," Columbia Human Rights Law Review 32, no. Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 429 (2001). 211 Roy Gutman, David Rieff, Anthony Dworkin (Eds), Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know, Revised and Expanded Edition (New York, London: W.W. Norton, 2007), 344-6. 212 ICRC, "Practice Relating to Rule 53. Starvation as a Method of Warfare," ICRC, https://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule53 (Date accessed: 6 December 2015).

Task Force (1 ATF) in 1965, before they were posted to Núi Đất. At the end of the war, the air field was designated as one of the most contaminated sites in Việt Nam. Furthermore, Vũng Tàu was the nearest town for rest and recreation leave for Australian troops and was a disembarkation point for defoliants. Noel Benefield cited the Greek-registered ship Idannis K, which ran aground on rocks in 1967 and subsequently burned inexplicably, could have been one of these vessels.213

The Australian War Memorial (AWM) holds several images, including, “A 1968 image taken from inside an Australian Iroquois helicopter in flight. A spray boom for defoliant extends from the helicopter beneath the machine gunner… Defoliant was loaded onto helicopters in 30-gallon tanks.”214 A series of colour photos included Negative no. P01733.002 and AWM P01733.006 shows they were flying close to the ground, over crops and in the vicinity of a waterway. All of these indicative of crop destruction and environmentally reckless usage. Any civilians below would have been drenched.

As the Australian Defence Department detailed: “In flight view of a spray boom… on a UH- 1B helicopter of No. 9 Squadron RAAF. Crop destruction and defoliation operations were conducted around the Nui Dat and the Thuia Tic areas. Missions used 4 man crews, 30 gallon tanks and spray booms.”215

Ham quoted former Australian soldier, Fred Beal:

We sprayed the bloody place with Agent Orange ... I was mixing the bloody stuff, 44 gallon drums. It wasn’t just the bloody jungles; it was used on bloody paddy fields. It killed everything, not only the vegetation; it killed animals ... Defoliation was simply a routine part of the war.216

US academic, Alvin Lee Young was certain that Australian soldiers sprayed defoliants, and likely to have suffered exposure, yet he acted as a witness for the corporations at the 1985 Evatt Inquiry.

The Australian Forces saw the defoliation program as “an important measure in helping to deprive the enemy of the advantages that he enjoyed through the use of

213 Noel Benefield, "Shipwreck at Vung Tau, Circa 1969," (2014), http://www.vietnamwar.govt.nz/photo/shipwreck-vung-tau (Date accessed: 15 March 2015). 214 Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs, "Aftermath Agent Orange," Australian government, http://vietnam-war.commemoration.gov.au/aftermath/agent-orange.php (Date accessed: 1 August 2011). 215 Ibid. 216 Paul Ham, Vietnam: The Australian War (Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 620.

natural vegetation for cover in Vietnam’s tropical environment…” When the 1 ATF was in place in the Phouc Tuy Sector, requests for defoliation by RANCH HAND aircraft involved more than 62 targets. Most of the early sorties were with Agent Orange, but after October 1967, Agent White became the predominant herbicide used in Phouc Tuy...217

Similarly, Vietnamese scientists, Phan Nguyen Hong, Hoang Thi San, regarded Australian participation in spraying as indisputable:

…mangroves were sprayed with agent purple …along highway 15 from Bien Hoa to Phouc Tuy in January and again in March 1962. Some areas along the coast of the Mekong delta were sprayed in 1964 and 1965. Two areas heavily sprayed with herbicides from 1966 to 1970 …for the years 1965 to 1970 …a total of 299 missions were flown into Rung Sat area when 2,529 kilograms of Agent Orange, 1,300 kilograms of agent white and 186 kilograms of agent blue were sprayed... In 1966 the mangroves in all provinces along the coast of the Mekong delta were sprayed.218

Maps of spray use included the one from Buckingham’s major study of Operation Ranch Hand.219 By using interactive maps the Drs Stellman, enabled a greater appreciation of the extent and volume of defoliant spraying and documented all sprayed areas in Việt Nam using GIS and measured contamination with ratings from cold to hot.220 These authors also dealt with the issues generated by aborted missions, dumped loads, planes that were subject to technical difficulties and those shot down by ground fire, as well as the issue of discarded drums.221 Boyne also documented these incidents.222

Yet, as Ham described: on 27 March 1980, former Australian Defence Minister, the late Right Honourable James Killen, in the House of Representatives, Canberra, avoided a question in Parliament, and quipped:

217 Alvin Lee Young, The History, Use, Disposition and Environmental Fate of Agent Orange, First ed. (New York: Springer Science & Business Media, 2009), 103-04 218 Hoang Thi San Phan Nguyen Hong, Mangroves of Vietnam (Bangkok: IUCN, 1993), 97. 219 Buckingham, "Operation Ranch Hand: Herbicides in Southeast Asia". http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1983/Jul-Aug/buckingham.html#buckingham (Date accessed: 8 December 2015). 220 Steven D. Stellman Jeanne Mager Stellman, Richard Christian, Tracy Weber & Carrie Tomasallo, "The Extent and Patterns of Usage of Agent Orange and Other Herbicides in Vietnam," Nature 422 (2003): 681-87. 221 Ibid., 685. 222 Boyne, "Ranch Hand," 87.

… [in discussing Reglone, Grammoxone, Tordone and Hyva] ... they could be four horses running at Rosehill on Saturday….223

Brian Martin pointed out that, “A judgement in favour of the veterans would provide support to the Vietnamese government in pursuing claims against the United States government for the effects of chemical warfare. The chemical industry has most to lose from a decision in favour of the veterans.”224 In Ham’s account of the 1985 Australian Inquiry into the toxicity of Agent Orange under Justice Phillip Evatt, he states that this Inquiry was an unmitigated fraud. “The suggestion that chemical defoliants had caused birth defects was ‘fanciful’. The government had no case to answer”. Yet, “The commission had simply lifted large chunks of its conclusions. Evatt adopted 70% of his materials [in the section on cancer] from Monsanto’s submission”.225 Sir Richard Doll played a consultant role for the manufacturers, as he was, as Sarah Boseley reported, “… receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from Monsanto, then a major chemical company and now better known for its GM crops business.226 Thair Shaikh reported that Doll was, “An eminent British cancer specialist stated that there was no evidence that the notorious defoliant, Agent Orange, was a carcinogen.”227

In spite of its shortcomings and this blatant conflict of interest, the outcome of the 1985 Australian Inquiry was still defended by AWM historians twenty-five years later. David Ellery reported in 2011 the tension between academics who were unwilling to review the official historical record and veterans, led by Graham Walker.

… the official history, written by Professor F.B. Smith and published in 1994, stated falsely that no veterans' diseases could be linked to the controversial herbicide and that the focus on the Agent Orange debate had undermined support

223 Australia, House of Representatives, Question Vietnam: Use of Defoliants, Defence Minister James Killen, 27 March 1980, "Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)", House of Representatives 1980, Vol. H of R 117, pp.1311- 12.http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22hansard80%2Fhansardr80 %2F1980-03-27%2F0040%22 (Date Accessed: 21 December 2015). 224 Brian Martin, "Agent Orange: The New Controversy," Australian Society 5, no. 11 (1986): 25-26. 225 Ham, Vietnam: The Australian War, 622-27. 226 Sarah Boseley, "Renowned Cancer Scientist Was Paid by Chemical Firm for 20 Years," The Guardian, 8 December 2006. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/dec/08/smoking.frontpagenews (Date Accessed: 1 February 2016). 227 Thair Shaikh, "Scientist Who Gave Agent Orange the Nod Worked for Its Maker," The Times, 8 December 2006. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article664562.ece (Date Accessed: 15 November 2008).

for Vietnam veterans on other fronts and those seeking compensation had been motivated by opportunism and greed.228

Walker expressed indignation in his 2009 conference paper on Agent Orange.229 Lachlan Irvine was another veteran who took up doctorate studies and who wrote on this matter.230 Irvine’s research on the New Zealand government’s 2001 report by Dr Deborah McLeod on veteran exposure to defoliants demonstrated that it too was based on omissions, unsubstantiated assertions, seriously flawed research and deliberate fabrications.231 The inquiry carried out by Sir Paul Reeves in 1999 and the McLeod Report were both overturned and discredited by the 2004 inquiry in Wellington chaired by Steve Chadwick.232

Australian veteran, Ambrose Crowe described his experience of dealing with government and made very similar conclusions.233 Jean Williams, a Nambour mother, whose son died in Việt Nam, studied and campaigned on the defoliant issue and wrote several books. She was awarded the Order of Australia for her work in 2008.234 Alison Broinowski stated in July 2015 that work was eventually under-way and the AWM official narrative was being reviewed and rewritten to correct the factual inaccuracies made by Smith et al.235

British, Australian and New Zealand Manufacture of Defoliants

ICI led the way in British defoliant manufacture during the Malayan Emergency. Later, however, Agent Orange was being manufactured and tested by Monsanto near Brofiscin quarry on the edge of the village of Groesfaen, near Cardiff, Wales. An “unseen government report”, quoted in 2007, revealed a severely contaminated site: “Agent Orange derivatives,

228 David Ellery, "Vietnam Veterans at War with Historians," The Canberra Times, 27 April 2011, 1-2. 229 Graham Walker, "The Official History’s Agent Orange Account: The Veterans’ Perspective," in War Wounds-Medicine and the Trauma of Conflict (Australian War Memorial: Australian War Memorial, 2009), 1- 17, noting 8. 230 Lachlan Irvine, "Lies, Damned Lies and History: A Response to F. B. Smith's "Agent Orange: The Australian Aftermath", Part IV of Brendan Okeefe, Medicine at War: Medical Aspects of Australia's Involvement in Southeast Asia 1950-1972,"n.d., http://lachlanirvine.tripod.com/history/id6.html (Date Accessed: 13 May 2011). 231 "Inquiry into the Exposure of New Zealand Defence Personnel to Agent Orange and Other Defoliant Chemicals During the Vietnam War and Any Health Effects of That Exposure, and Transcripts of Evidence Report of the Health Committee Forty-Seventh Parliament," Victor Johnson evidence: 117-35. Chadwick, 232 Ibid. 233 Ambrose Crowe, The Battle after the War: The Story of Australia's Vietnam Veterans (Allen & Unwin, 1999), 103-16. 234 Matthew Benns and Frank Walker, "Agent Orange Town," The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 2008. 4-5. 235 Alison Broinowski, "Toxic Warfare: Revisiting Agent Orange," Honest History, http://honesthistory.net.au/wp/toxic-warfare-revisiting-agent-orange/ (Date accessed: 15 November 2015).

93 dioxins and PCBs which could have been made only by Monsanto, are leaking from one unlined porous quarry that was not authorised to take chemical wastes”.236

On the shores of Sydney Harbour, at Homebush Bay, in the suburb of Rhodes, was close to the Concord site for the 2001 Sydney Olympics. This had been the location of Union Carbide’s Agent Orange manufacturing site in Australia, which was demolished in 1986. Contamination of this site was subject of New South Wales government Health Department studies.237 Expensive remediation was required in order to meet the Greenpeace standards for a green Olympics. There were also warnings issued to prevent the eating of fish caught in that sector of Sydney Harbour, reported by Anne Davies.238 Michael Staff and colleagues carried out the scientific studies on the fish in 2008, declaring it unsafe to eat.239

Queensland's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discovered a smaller dioxin- contaminated site at Pinkenba, near the mouth of the Brisbane River. This had been another site of manufacture and storage, as reported by Jessica Marszalek.240 In May 2008 ABC News reported that a rainforest site near Gregory Falls, Innisfail, North Queensland, had been used to conduct trials of Agent Orange in 1966.241 It had been discovered by researcher, Jean Williams through an interview with a veteran who lived in the area, reported by Hamish Chitts.242

In 2004 a discovery was made that a particular batch of 2,4,5.T imported from Singapore in 1971 had been partially burnt, raising the proportion of dioxin contaminant. Chemical Industries (Kwinana) Pty Ltd and CIK Australia, Perth were investigated. These damaged and highly contaminated chemicals were put to use in the Kimberley and at a site in Victoria. The ABC’s Kerry O’Brien conducted an interview regarding “…the WA Government [decision] to fast track workers' compensation for men affected by herbicides in the 70s and 80s…”

236 John Vidal, "Inquiry after Chemicals Found at Site 30 Years after Their Disposal," The Guardian 12 February 2007. http://www.theguardian.com/guardian/2007/feb/12/frontpagenews.uknews (Date Accessed: 11 August 2009). 237 Tom Morton, "Bay of Secrets," in Background Briefing (Australia: ABC Radio National, 1997). 238 Anne Davies, "New Colossus at Rhodes," Sydney Morning Herald, 4 June 2002, 9. 239 Michael Staff Sian Rudge, Adam Capon, Olaf Paepke, "Serum Dioxin Levels in Sydney Harbour Commercial Fishers and Family Members," Chemosphere 73, No. 10 (2008). 240 Jessica Marszalek, "Contaminant Found in Soil in Brisbane," Sydney Morning Herald, 12 December 2008, http://www.smh.com.au/national/contaminant-found-in-soil-in-brisbane-20081212-6xkg.html (DateAccessed: 2 August 2011). 241 News Editor, "Agent Orange Testing Fuels Cancer Fears in N Qld Town," in ABC News, ed. News Editor (Australia: ABC, 2008). 242 Hamish Chitts, "Australia's Role in Agent Orange Crime," Direct Action, August 2011.

10.1 During the course of its inquiry, the Committee became fully informed of the controversy and unresolved inconsistencies relating to information surrounding the importation in 1971 and subsequent disposal of a batch of fire-damaged chemicals, possibly KTCP, by CIK, when the late Mr Robert Cecil Telford was Director.243

There was no compensation, as this follow-up story illustrated.244

Information was less accessible for details of New Zealand’s defoliant plant, but it is known that the manufacturing plant was situated on the West coast of the North Island at Paritutu, near New Plymouth, Ngāmotu (in Māori). The plant was owned by Ivon Watkins Dow (IWD), an agricultural chemical company that manufactured the herbicide 2,4,5-T as a component of Agent Orange. The plant operated from 1962-1987. The site was believed to be contaminated by Dow AgroSciences (NZ) Limited.245 Claims were made that New Zealand never produced Agent Orange, just 2,4,5-T and it was exported to Mexico for trans-shipment to Việt Nam, as Edwin Martini reported.246 Benefield refuted this as he explained that a production spike at IWD coincided with a much-increased spraying intensity in Indochina:

On 3 April 1967, The US military Business and Defence Services Administration (BDSA), who could exercise the 1950 Defence Production Act and compel production of war material, sent a directive to the Dow Chemical Co. (Dow). The BDSA noted that Dow’s “capacity for the production of Orange” was 93,000 gallons per month, and ordered it to deliver that entire capacity to the military.247

Agent Orange was also manufactured and tested at Gagetown, New Brunswick, Canada. There is a list of all defoliant manufacturers and their cross-ownership structures compiled by Arnold Appleby of Oregon University, though IWD is not listed.248

243 ABC, "Farmers Want Compensation," (Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2004). 244 Kerry O'Brien, "Agent Orange Herbicide Compensation Decision," in 7.30 Report (Australia: ABC, 2004). 245 Noel Benefield, "At a Price: Manufacturing Agent Orange in NZ?," (2014), VietnamWar.govt.nz Memories of New Zealand and the Vietnam War http://www.vietnamwar.govt.nz/memory/price-manufacturing-agentorange-nz (Date accessed: 15 March 2015) 246 Edwin Martini, "Agent Orange as Global History", in American Studies Association Annual Meeting (Hilton Baltimore, Baltimore, MD American Studies Association 2014). 247 Benefield, "At a Price: Manufacturing Agent Orange in NZ?". 248 Arnold Appleby, "Herbicide Company “Genealogy”, (2008), http://cropandsoil.oregonstate.edu/system/files/u1473/tree.pdf (Date accessed: 23 November 2015).

The Phase Out

Reports of harm associated with these chemical agents were also well-known to then United States National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, who urged his colleagues to phase-out defoliant use.249 It is unlikely that Defense Secretary, Melvin Laird or the US forces he directed, would have considered discontinuing the use of a weapon that was apparently so effective, had there been only minimal risks involved in its use. Pressure was building within the US administration for an end to Ranch Hand. Some of this pressure came through the Soviets, the ICC and the UN, and some resulted from the 1969 leak by Meselson, and notoriety that the US government experienced at the United Nations, both mentioned by Schuck.250 US President, Richard Nixon announced the signing of a new CBW agreement in the UN Security Council on 25 November 1969, though this agreement omitted tear gases and defoliants, allowing the continuation of the use of these weapons for the time being.251

On 22 December 1970, Laird wrote to inform Nixon:

I want to report to you on the continuing actions we are taking, at your direction, to reduce the use of herbicides in Vietnam and to advise you that new steps will be taken so that there will be strict conformance in Vietnam with policies governing the use of herbicides in the United States.

The present ban on the use of the herbicide known as "ORANGE" remains in effect.

In short, any herbicides used henceforth will be used under conditions which could apply in the United States.252

On 26 December 1970, however, the White House issued a statement that, “…the government has begun an "orderly, yet rapid phase-out" of all herbicide operations in Viet Nam…” This was reported by the Chicago Tribune the following day.253 Under this

249 Henry A. Kissinger, "Policy Regarding the Use of Herbicides in Vietnam ", The White House (Washington DC: 1970), 1. 250 Schuck, Agent Orange on Trial: Mass Toxic Disasters in the Courts. 251 Richard M. Nixon, "462 - Remarks Announcing Decisions on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs," The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2344 (Date accesssed: 23 November 2015) 252 Melvyn Laird, "Memorandum for the President, Policy Regarding the Use of Herbicides in Vietnam," US government, http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/readingroom/17/116.pdf (Date Accessed: 15 December 2015). 253 Editor, "U.S. To End Herbicides Use in Viet," Chicago Tribune, 27 December 1970, 10.

96 restricted-use regime, notwithstanding military grades of defoliant being far stronger than domestic/agricultural ones, it was disingenuously stipulated:

On 16 January 1971… the use of chemical herbicides for crop destruction be terminated. Consequently, Vietnam and its people are not being subjected to any greater risks than our own country and population through the use of herbicides.254

On 22 January 1971, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, Ronald I. Spiers, listed several exchanges of Memoranda, regarding the government’s Geneva Protocol Testimony and the phase-out of herbicide use by May 1971, conveniently, “the approximate date when existing stocks (agents "blue" and "white") … will be exhausted…”... and confirmed President Nixon’s instructions that, “the crop destruction program should be terminated immediately.” Spiers noted that, “the Department of Defense and particularly the Joint Chiefs of Staff will continue to oppose an earlier phase-out. They will argue that the question of military utility is significant...”255

On 19 February 1971, Laird responded to the call for "…an immediate cessation of the use of chemical herbicides…" whilst pointing out, "…that we reaffirm our position that riot control agents and chemical herbicides are not covered by the prohibitions of the Geneva Protocol".256

Laird favoured a narrow interpretation of the Protocol, also writing to Secretary of State, William Rogers on the same day that, in his view, "The Protocol, operating as a "no-first-use" agreement is little more than an attempt to prevent any belligerent from resorting to the use of prohibited weapons in warfare".257

Laird continued to argue on the same date, 19 February 1971:

Both the Midwest Research Institute and the Department of Agriculture conducted studies on the ecological effects of herbicides. They concluded that; (1) the destruction of vegetation is the greatest direct ecological consequence of

254 US Secretary of Defense Melvyn Laird, "Memorandum for the President: The Geneva Protocol ", Department of Defense (Washington: 1971). 255 Ronald I. Spiers, "Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, Volume E-2, Documents on Arms Control, 1969-1972," US government, http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/e2/83652.htm (Date accessed: 9 December 2015) 256 Melvyn Laird, "Memorandum for the President: The Geneva Protocol". 257 "Untitled "Dear Bill"," Department of Defense (Washington: 1971). http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/readingroom/17/116.pdf (Date Accessed: 16 December 2015)

using herbicides, (2) retar [unreadable] ed re-growth of forests may result from repeated application of defoliants, and (3) the possibility of lethal toxicity to humans, domestic animals or wildlife is highly unlikely.

Despite the fact that crop destruction programs are carried out in relatively sparsely populated areas, much of the burden still falls on civilians ... As a result, the VC are active in exploiting the negative implications of crop destruction; a situation which could at least partially be alleviated by a more active psychological and indemnification program.258

Food earmarked for feeding Việt Cộng fighters would have been indistinguishable from any other food for US and allied pilots. Laird expressed no regret for the undernourished undefended civilians when he recommended “a more active psychological and indemnification program", to prevent widespread civilian suffering. Note also that the word “lethal” used in these findings could be construed as a qualifier that diminished any harm that was still serious, but short of lethal, if only just.

Decision makers had constructed a legal case that endorsed their investment in the development of these weapons, their decision to train US military forces in the use of chemicals and to supply these agents to US and allied forces in Indochina. Yet they were unsure of the legality of these agents and not unanimous about their use; but they were aware of the health risks and anxious to put substitute measures into practise, as shown in this statement: "Furthermore, there are no restraints under international law nor under the Geneva Protocol, should the United States become a party to that agreement, regarding their use in Vietnam".259

On 19 February 1971 Laird wrote to President Nixon that, notwithstanding “the combined effect of a strong Communist propaganda campaign against the use of herbicides for crop destruction and widespread concern in political circles with pollution and ecological problems” and “…the physical, political, and psychological effect on civilians":

The military value of defoliation operations is well established. The crop destruction operations have proven to be an effective adjunct to the total military

258 "Memorandum for the President: The Geneva Protocol ". 259 Melvyn Laird, "Memorandum for the President: Policy Regarding the Use of Herbicides in Vietnam (U)," Department of Defense (Washington: 1971). http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/readingroom/17/116.pdf (Date Accessed: 10 December 2015).

effort in Southeast Asia by (1) denying food to enemy troops, (diverting enemy manpower to crop production and (3) weakening enemy strength in selected target areas…260

On 3 November 1971, Laird, wrote to President Nixon to discuss the phase-out of herbicide use in Indochina for the clearance of vegetation around the perimeters of US fire-bases. Mines, barbed wire and booby traps made alternative clearance methods problematic, necessitating the continued use of Agents White and Blue. He was seeking permission to extend the use of these agents beyond 1 December.261 This proposal had already been promulgated on 13 May, and by Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger in a letter dated 18 August, seeking viable alternatives by 1 December. The documents indicated that there was some urgency in removing the risk of exposure to herbicides from US forces, whilst continuing to use these agents elsewhere.

Conclusion The outcome of the Indochina War in 1975 exposed a military catastrophe for the US and allies. The insurgents had prevailed against overwhelming odds, but at a dreadful price – huge numbers of dead, massive contamination, loss of forests, food stocks, agricultural land, economic wealth and added to all this was ongoing care of children whose lives and future had been destroyed. Generations of children to come would be born with gross birth defects. Agent Orange and other hideous products had inflicted on the peoples of Indochina a wholly avoidable intergenerational punishment. Defoliant chemicals were weapons without peer, used in South Việt Nam, Cambodia and Laos. The records for areas beyond Việt Nam were sketchy but sufficient to prove that Ranch Hand reached them too. These weapons situated the users beyond the reach of adversary retaliation. Much of the narrative from government sources was calculated indifference and disinformation. In spite of the main claims made for their utility, weaponised defoliants did not prevent the Indochinese guerrillas from taking cover; nor did they prevent ambushes; nor were they efficient in stripping the forest canopy.

Defoliants destroyed food that overwhelmingly kept the population alive. Little of what was destroyed was for feeding the guerrillas. In fact, defoliants played a large part in forcing

260 US Secretary of Defense Melvyn Laird, "Letter," ed. US Department of State (Washington: US government, 1971). 261 Melvyn Laird, “Use of Herbicides”, Defense (Washington: 1971), http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/readingroom/17/116.pdf (Date Accessed: 23 December 2015).

99 peasants out of their villages, into over-crowded cities or into concentration camps. This was the aim of CW and the absence of population created ‘free-fire zones’ for artillery and aerial bombing. As food deprivation led to starvation, it involved harm to vulnerable undefended civilians, making this act a war crime. Some of these refugees were driven into the ranks of the Việt Cộng, though this should not surprise anyone.

The origins of these chemicals in the laboratories of Porton Down and the leadership of Professor Blackman were reiterated. So too was the chronology of industrial accidents and remedies, proving that from a very early stage, the toxicity of dioxin and its danger to health was well-known. There were efforts to both reduce this risk and conceal it. The legality of the use of defoliants as weapons of warfare was found to be conflicted. Britain’s Harold Wilson provided a legal fig-leaf and Australia voted with the US in the UN, adopting an indefensible minority position. The inadequacy of law and the circumvention of law which permitted Agent Orange a decade of human and environmental experimentation. Significantly, the US relied upon British precedent of use in Malaya to legitimate the use of defoliants. Finally, it was Henry Kissinger who shut down the experiment, as he realised the peril that US decision- makers like himself faced if arraigned before war crimes tribunals.

The ‘harmless weed-killer’ myth was an invention constructed on baseless assertions by the US military leadership. This irresponsible disinformation prevented the adoption of prudent protective procedures that could have saved many US and allied veterans’ lives. It was necessary to demonstrate that Australian and New Zealand military personnel were also exposed to defoliants and their dioxin contaminants.

Both Australia and New Zealand used defoliants in Việt Nam, disproving narratives to the contrary, and their veterans have suffered in similar ways experienced by US veterans. The false narrative was dismissed through the exploration of evidence at the Australian War Memorial. Additionally, Anglosphere governments, Australia, New Zealand and Britain manufactured defoliants and supplied these chemicals for the war. Canada and Australia also hosted product testing. All suffered contamination of these industrial sites and government concealment of these facts.

As legal cases had failed in US Courts, lawyers looked for other ways to bring about compensation of victims. In May 2009, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, IADL, established Hearings in Paris. These in absentia Hearings, before Sr. Advocate,

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Jitendra Sharma, President of the Tribunal, resulted in findings of guilt against the US government and thirty two manufacturing corporations for War Crimes, “chemical warfare waged from 1961 to 1971”, in respect of the use of Agent Orange in Việt Nam.262

The companies that supplied defoliants, thirty-seven in all, benefitted from US government manufacturing contracts and invented an extraordinary legal fiction to avoid paying compensation to their victims. The Nürnberg Tribunals ran special cases covering egregious chemicals like those manufactured by IG Farben in Germany; yet attempts to mount compensation cases in the USA for victims of chemical warfare in the Indochina War have failed. The work of Vietnamese artist, Dinh Q Lê, best illustrates the long-term intergenerational effects of these products, and there are many images on the internet.263

262 International Association of Democratic Lawyers IADL, "International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange," IADL, http://www.iadllaw.org/en/node/353 (Date accessed: 2 June 2009) 263 Dinh Q Lê, The Farmers and the Helicopters 2006. APT5.

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Conclusion

The various elements of collaboration by British, Australian and New Zealand governments provided substantial evidence of their involvement in the Indochina War and the CIA’s Secret War in Laos. Activities documented in this thesis and actions undertaken by the British government noted elsewhere by other authors like Fleming and Prenderghast, and by Commonwealth allies, demonstrated that the war involved much government time and effort. The collaboration was systemic, not only military. There was indeed a gap in the historical literature. There was much more to discover than was initially expected and much that remains for future study.

Space has not permitted mention of mercenary units and Paul Daniels, sales of military hardware and CS gases, as further confirmation that the British government was determined to render assistance and to keep this from public knowledge.1 Prenderghast detailed the sales, aspirational and actual of Rolls Royce Spey engines for USAF Phantoms and USN Corsairs, both used in the bombing of Laos as well as North Việt Nam, and sales of the small utility STOL aircraft, the Short Bros. Skyvan, which was especially useful for distributing small loads to highly mobile Hmong fighters, and a favourite of the CIA operating in Laos.2 These sales contravened declared British government policies, yet they were irresistibly lucrative and nurtured the ‘special relationship’. The conclusions reached by these authors confirm and complement the findings in this thesis. Other authors are already adding to the scant knowledge that historians previously possessed regarding participation in a war that is still relevant. Regrettably, the cohort of veterans is aging and dying. Their memories will be lost.

The themes for each of the three chapters were selected from a broad range of possibilities. Chapter 1 illustrated the big, conventional war and explained the plans to invade, occupy and partition Laos and British readiness to introduce nuclear weapons into the war. The massive international SEATO exercises to rehearse the invasion demonstrated long-term commitment. In Chapter 2, the small, covert counterinsurgency war and covert operations was examined, with specialists from Britain and Australia. ‘Hearts and Minds’ with its veneer of economic development concealed a dark final solution through the Phoenix Program’s mass

1 Gerald Prenderghast, Britain and the Wars in Vietnam: The Supply of Troops, Arms and Intelligence, 1945- 1975 (Jefferson NC: McFarland & Co Inc, 2015), 151, 61-213, 02. 2 Ibid., 181-84 and 89-90.

102 assassinations. In Chapter 3, the chemical defoliant war was described with its origins in British laboratories, the real purpose of these chemicals, coerced de-population through starvation and their devastating effects in deformed and unviable babies. Each of these aspects carried common threads of intent, that of eliminating a contagion. Several narratives accompanied the setting out of data. The three Commonwealth allies of the US, as members of SEATO, each had their own misgivings and reluctance. Britain was trying to disengage military commitments East of Suez and planned to scale-down forces in Singapore and Malaysia. British dismay and unwillingness to do more than the minimum for the invasion was contradicted by Britain’s key role as major force provider and willingness to include nuclear weapons.

Australia was keen to keep the US engaged in Asia and eager to be included as a reliable ally; yet tardy in following up with support to the extent expected by the US. Michael Sexton described how Australia invited itself to Việt Nam and then provided fewer troops at a later time than the US had requested. Sexton called it a ‘War for the Asking’ and proceeded to question the logic of ‘forward defence’ in his chapter ‘a Distant Domino’. Australia’s strongest argument favouring military intervention so far from its borders was then called Forward Defence, which was quietly abandoned soon after the end of the war.3

New Zealand was keen to express its membership of the alliance, yet wanted to limit their contribution to a ‘token’ involvement. Certainly, this was also the case in Việt Nam. Significantly, New Zealand forces were not supposed to cross the Mekong from Thailand into Laos, yet there will need to be further research to ascertain whether New Zealand documents seen thus far can be relied upon. There was a question of special fuel for RNZAF planes for the invasion and with the involvement of the NZSAS.

Modern industrialised warfare is complex. So, Britain’s refusal to send identifiable troop formations, described as ‘boots on the ground’, was transformed into the SEATO planning process and the contribution of specialist CW advisers, who each played key roles in shaping the war. Here we must also situate an Australian, Col. Ted Serong. It is also uncertain whether any of the Ghurkhas disbanded in Singapore in 1970-71 fought in Laos. These too, were questions that could not be answered here.

Counterinsurgency warfare, as a form of resistance to decolonisation offered Asians

3 Michael Sexton, War for the Asking: How Australia Invited Itself to Vietnam (Sydney: New Holland, 2002), 42-64.

103 throughout the region little prospect of genuine democracy, only authoritarian governance, secret police, and Cold War rhetoric that constrained lives and stifled dissent. Citizens of the colonising and settler societies, the Anglosphere, also experienced greater secrecy and fear of speaking out, which limited this author’s access to political leaders and veterans, as well as some documents available in archives. New Zealand archivists exhibited an extraordinary sensitivity regarding closed and restricted documents. Yet, Andrew Wiest called New Zealand, "the most dovish of hawks", the most reluctant participant in the US-led wars.4 Much of the secrecy has little relevance to military necessity, or to the preservation of international relations. Political embarrassment would appear to mark current secrecy. Governments are not willing to be held accountable. Secrecy is corrosive to democratic institutions and makes a mockery of much-proclaimed democratic values.

This secrecy applied to the sensitive business of weapons development, manufacture and supply. Considerable profits were made from the sales of arms to the US and other customers, with little regard for consequences. One group of products that illustrated this point: defoliants, which were developed in Britain, tested, manufactured and profitably sold to the US, specifically for the war by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Curiously, each of these manufacturing plants ceased operations quietly, when no longer required for supplying the war. Each had caused devastating environmental contamination about which the respective governments remained secretive and obdurate. Only the actions of concerned citizens have brought their previous existence and ongoing threat to health into the realm of public attention.

The Domino Theory Exposed

Very few of the exaggerated Cold War fears expressed by the US and its allies materialised in 1975 or later. The anticipated Communist contagion of other South East Asian nations beyond Indochina did not eventuate. In fact, the three devastated nations of Indochina, were already crippled and impoverished and were experiencing famine due to decades of bombardment and defoliation. Much of their populations were displaced. Many of the educated professionals and entrepreneurs fled with their skills and capital. The three nations were denied assistance and humanitarian relief, and the promised compensation to Việt Nam was reneged upon by the US. Ironically, a 1963 British Cabinet meeting had discussed what

4 Andrew Wiest, Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land: The Vietnam War Revisited (Osprey Publishing, 2006). Blurb

104 actions should be taken, “…In the event of a threatened invasion from Laos ….”5 In 1975 there was no suggestion that the newly-installed Lao PDR would have any appetite for further fighting or ambitions to seize Thailand. Thailand, for its part, requested, in 1975, that the US remove its air force and troops in 1976. This was done.

Thailand did also host groups of Hmong and CIA paramilitaries who attacked Laos. Cross referred to these as “the ‘Black Horse’ programme.”6 But Thailand also launched invasions of Laos’ Xayaboury Province in 1986 and 1987, as recorded in the Kaysone Phomvihane Museum, Vientiane. Thailand also mounted invasions of Laos by former South Vietnamese dissidents, who had hoped to cross Laos’ southern provinces from Thailand to attack Việt Nam. The PRC has also mounted several border wars against their former military aid recipients, Việt Nam.

When the Socialist Republic of Việt Nam invaded Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea) in 1977, it was to end the genocide, restore stability and to protect the ethnic Vietnamese. When they withdrew in 1991, Vietnamese soldiers were demobilised and abandoned, they were unemployed and unable to earn a living. This too, was further proof that none of these nations had even a realistic capacity to conquer the rest of South East Asia. Perhaps Greg Lockhart most accurately described the nature of the war when he wrote that, "This is a story of strategic self-destruction," and, furthermore, "Australian policy was infected with race fears and other colonial insecurities..."7

Agent Orange

In relation to Agent Orange, change is on its way. Articles and presentations on this topic by this author may have contributed. The Australian War Memorial’s history of the health effects of defoliant exposure is being rewritten and will be published in 2019. This should be very good news for the surviving veterans who were previously denied compensation. If a thorough job is done there should be compensation and practical assistance for the Indochinese victims. So far, only the Vietnamese victims have been addressed, but far less was known about the plight of those in Laos. Little has been done since 2009, when judgement was handed down by the informal International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience

5 “Proposed Airfield at Mukdahan in Thailand. Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,” 17 October 1963, NAUK, CAB 148/15/6, pp. 26, 27. 6 J.P. Cross, First in Last out an Unconventional British Officer in Indo-China (1945-46 and 1972-76) (London: Brassey's 1992), 204. 7 Greg Lockhart, The Minefield: An Australian Tragedy in Vietnam (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2007), Blurb, 5.

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Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange: “…the worst part of the exposure to Agent Orange is around the 17th Parallel, near the border with Laos. Those were tropical forests and now have become desert. ... One of the most devastated places is called “Hamburger Hill.”8

Summary

The question postulated in this thesis was whether there was collaboration by Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the Second Indochina War, with particular focus on Laos, 1952-1975, and whether this collaboration was substantial. It was only possible to detail three of the many areas of collaboration in this study, but the thesis is substantially proven. Firstly, there was the construction of infrastructure in North East Thailand, membership of the SEATO alliance, agreement to contribute to the invasion, occupation and partition of Laos, and the inclusion of nuclear weapons this implied. Secondly, there was the provision of counterinsurgency advisers to work alongside their US counterparts, which led from Strategic Hamlets to Hearts and Minds and inexorably to the Phoenix Program. Thirdly, the invention of novel weapons indicated deep involvement in the development of numerous weapons, of which this thesis only examined one, defoliants. Agent Orange was only the most notorious of these chemicals. The history of this weapon and the perceived need to protect the decision- makers and commanders rather than vulnerable civilians and exposed own-side combatants has caused much injustice and for the history of the war itself to be distorted. The gap in the history has been diminished and further studies will cumulatively correct the misinformation that has persisted till the time of writing.

8 International Association of Democratic Lawyers IADL, "International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange," IADL, http://www.vn- agentorange.org/edmaterials/paris_2009_tribunal_decision_2.15.10.pdf (Date Accessed: 2 June 2009).

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Appendices

Post Crown works: road building projects by British, Australian and New Zealand Sappers – part of the Thai government’s counterinsurgency strategy. (This road linked several major USAF bases in Thailand) Royal Engineers Journal, Operation Post Crown (road construction in Thailand) Royal Engineers Museum, Chatham.

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U.S. Army 29 Signal Group STRATCOM Loeng Nok Tha Communications Site COC 442nd Signal Bn (LL) 1st Signal Bde http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army/442sig.htm

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