Word: laotians
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...coupled with W/1's November report, convinced some Pentagon intelligence experts that Americans might be at the camp. On Dec. 30, according to a CIA cable from Bangkok, a Thai signal unit called Team-213 alerted the Bangkok station that it had intercepted a radio message from a top Laotian military leader ordering American POWS to be flown from the southern province of Attopu to central Laos. In the same cable, the CIA dismissed the report as fabricated, on the grounds that Team-213 was poorly trained and had not made a tape of the intercept...
...January 1981, the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the super-secret Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees counterterrorist units like the Delta Force, to devise a rescue operation. Tuttle says the DIA built a tabletop-size model of the Laotian camp based on satellite photos and took it to Fort Bragg in North Carolina to help the JSOC with its planning. Members of the Delta Force say the commandos then planned to construct a full-scale mock- up in the Philippines to practice its raid; as cover, it would pretend to be a Hollywood company shooting a commando movie...
...Scholtes would risk the lives of his troops, he insisted that Delta conduct its own reconnaissance to confirm that American POW's were really at Nhommarath. According to former CIA officials, the agency argued that it should carry out any ground reconnaissance since Americans would stand out in the Laotian jungle, and Washington needed to retain plausible deniability. CIA officials demanded that Laotians on their payroll carry out the mission. National Security Adviser Allen sided with the CIA after the officials assured him there would be at least one American accompanying the team to view the target...
Allen now says he regrets that decision because the CIA's reconnaissance team performed poorly. No Americans were included. The team was led by a former Royal Laotian Air Force pilot with no commando experience; his main qualifications for the job seemed to be that the CIA trusted him and he was familiar with the Nhommarath area. The team's radios were antiquated. CIA and Delta Force officials say agency staff members who went to a Chicago mountaineering shop to outfit the team with climbing equipment purchased white rope; JSOC officers sent them olive-green rope that would...
...March 29, the 13-man CIA reconnaissance team crossed the Mekong River into Laos and almost immediately ran into trouble. According to CIA officials monitoring the team at the time, Laotian army patrols pinned it down for more than a week. One member accidentally shot himself. Another fell ill and had to be evacuated. Though Nhommarath was just 40 miles from the Thai border the team took more than a month to reach the suspect camp and finally returned safely to Thailand on May 13. A week later, say CIA documents, the agency reported to the Pentagon that the team...