Vang Pao - Military Career

Military Career

For more details on covert war in Laos, see Operation Barrel Roll.

The term "Mèo Maquis" was originally used by Free French and Allied intelligence officers to describe the Hmong resistance forces working against the Japanese forces occupying Indochina and China during World War II. After WWII, French GCMA authorities recruited Vang Pao as a lieutenant during the First Indochina War to combat the Viet Minh (archive video by Col. Jean Sassi). Although French forces lost the war in 1954, Vang remained in the army of the newly independent Kingdom of Laos in 1949. He was the only ethnic Hmong to attain the rank of General officer in the Royal Lao Army, and he was loyal to the King of Laos while remaining a champion of the Hmong people. During the 1960s and 1970s General Vang commanded the Secret Army, a highly-effective CIA-trained and supported force that fought against the Pathet Lao and People's Army of Vietnam. According to some former CIA Air America pilots, he made a small fortune as an opium warlord as they regularly flew his planeloads of opium to Saigon, he engaged in summary executions, and ran a Hmong Army with child soldiers as young as 14.(ref. The Ravens-Christopher Robbins 1987)