Word: nhommarath
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...capital of Vientiane. Only a handful of senior officials in Washington were privy to her information. According to CIA documents, on Nov. 14, 1980, W/1 gave her CIA handlers a startling report: about 30 U.S. pilots were working on a road gang near the central Laotian town of Nhommarath. Those same summaries reported that a spy-satellite photo confirmed that a prison camp had recently been built near the town...
...ended in 1975, reports kept trickling into the CIA's Bangkok station that Americans had been seen among the prisoners working on Laotian road and irrigation projects. In 1979 a Laotian informant for the DIA named Phimmachack claimed that 18 Americans had been moved to a cave north of Nhommarath. He identified one of them as Lieut. Colonel Paul W. Mercland, but no Mercland was listed as missing. There was, however, a Lieut. Colonel Paul W. Bannon who had been shot down over Laos in 1969. Pentagon intelligence analysts suspected Mercland was a garbled version of the word American, erroneously...
...ordered to provide the necessary intelligence. Spy satellites watched the camp 24 hours a day. At one point, according to a CIA source, the agency considered kidnapping a Nhommarath guard to sweat him for information but rejected the idea as too dangerous...
...before the JSOC's Brigadier General Dick 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...
...different story with the estimated 10,000 North Vietnamese combat troops and technicians who have been fighting with the Communist Pathet Lao. At the exit point set up at Nhommarath, in central Laos, the Pathet Lao has cooped up the I.C.C. inspectors in a fenced-in compound to keep them from checking on the withdrawal. With a straight face, the Pathet Lao commander said to the I.C.C.: "We've put up the fence to prevent wild buffalo from attacking...