Word: nhommarath
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...According to CIA documents that TIME has obtained, two agency officers went to Alexandria, Virginia, in May 1981 and asked a psychic to locate a group of POWs on a map of Laos. She closed her eyes, meditated, then placed her hand on the map near a village called Nhommarath and announced that the men were scattered there in small groups. "They've been brainwashed to forget they are Americans," she said. The CIA men smiled and paid her $80. A reconnaissance team was already headed to Nhommarath, where satellite photos had shown there might be a prison camp...
Last February Laos finally let a Pentagon team into the country to inspect the Nhommarath prison. Americans in the party say nervous Laotian officials rushed them through their tour of the camp and gave them little time to read the prisoner logs. No photographs were allowed. Investigators were permitted to interview only two elderly villagers from Nhommarath who claimed they never saw POWS. The team had to report back that there was "no evidence" Americans had been held there...
...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 not be spotted in the jungle...
...Desert One fiasco when senior Pentagon officials kept too many key officers in the dark. Tuttle says he was ordered by the Chiefs to expand the circle of officers informed about this operation. On March 18, members of the congressional POW task force were briefed on the Nhommarath sightings. The result was a flood of leaks to the press. Colonel Ronald Duchin, then head of the Pentagon's news division, says he had to persuade half a dozen news organizations to hold their stories until the operation was over...
...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 had spent two days...