December 22, 2006 by admin.

The night crawlers bite

Many interesting and exotic animals inhabit Southeast Asia (SEA). Geckos are one of these creatures. But saying that they are interesting is an understatement. Most Geckos in the rest of the World are afraid of human contact and are not know to attack.

Then there is the Tokay Gecko. Dark scales on the top side, beige belly, awesome suction cups on the feet, able to crawl on walls and ceilings, can grow to be 12″ to 18″ long, nocturnal hunter, a mouth full of sharp teeth that have tons of bacteria, a ratchet jaw like a Pit Bull dog, and the gumption to attack humans. During the mating season, the males would make a loud eerie call at night, sounding like “Ettt ohhhh”. They were probably named after the call, since it sounded a lot like Ge-Ko. Sometimes the males would wind up their voice like an opera singer, before making the actual call. It sounded like a car engine turning over and over and not starting. When they did the calls frequently at night, I would shake in my bed with fear, knowing they were out there, waiting for some unsuspecting prey.

My Dad learned first hand how vicious Tokay Geckos could be. One night at the second house in Laos, my Dad was walking around the house outside in the courtyard, and he just happen to be carrying the old trusty equalizer, a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. As he neared the side of the house, a large adult Gecko leaped off the roof and onto his shoulder, attempting to bite him. He violently knocked the Gecko to the ground and proceeded to pulverize it. When he was done, he told my brother and me about the attack, and led us outside with a flashlight. All we could see in the bushes was this tiny mound of red flesh that did not look like a Gecko; it looked more like something that went through a blender.

My Mom learned the hard way also. One day my brother and I came home from school (K6) and found a mid sized Gecko on the front door. My Mom came out the door with a broom, saw the Gecko, and freaked out. She hit the Gecko rapidly, which was most people’s reaction to Geckos. Their legend preceded them. Again the same result, which was a smashed Gecko.

Of course I had my lessons too. At the second house, a two-story water tower was next to the main house. A narrow walk way separated the water tower and the house. The water tower had been converted into small rooms, one on each floor. The room on the second floor had a cool view over the wall of the courtyard and into the neighbors, a Laotian General and his family. When the French inhabited SEA, they build many of the first Western traditional buildings that the Asians had ever seen. Since water pressure was a problem, the French built water towers next to the house and used gravity to feed the pipes. The windows to our water tower had big heavy wood shutters. I considered the water tower my “tree house”. I would climb the stairs and play in the second story room. The other window of that room looked down on the narrow walk way. It was an excellent lookout post for spying on my brother or the servants. One day I was peering out the window of the water tower on the house side, and suddenly I got his strange feeling like I was being watched. I leaned back and looked in-between the open shutter and the outside wall of the water tower. A large adult Gecko was staring me in the face, just inches away from my face. The next thing I remember was my foot hitting the bottom step of the stairs on the way down. I must have flown the rest of the way down. When my feet hit the ground, I was inside the house in a nanosecond. At least it seemed so. I then regaled my family of my brush with death. And I lost interest in the water tower after that incident. Imagine that.

The most traumatic Gecko contact that my family had was at the first house. The French colonial houses from the 1950’s had the kitchen, garage, and servant’s quarters separate from the main house. They were connected by a screened, covered, breezeway. The most direct route to the kitchen was through the breezeway and it had a lot of traffic. A very large adult Gecko decided to take up residence in our attic, near where the breezeway connected to the back of the house. At night he would make his calls and then crawl down a pane of glass, in that small gap between the house and the breezeway. He had a perfect hunting perch. He was directly overhead of anyone walking into the breezeway and going to the kitchen. But he had plans of eating one of us. His belly was so beige, pressed upon the glass, waiting for something to kill. Every night for about two weeks he was at his perch about our dinnertime. He had done his reconnaissance and knew when we traveled the most down the breezeway. Our family and the servants were freaking out. We were being systematically being hunted by this predator. And we were dinner. My Dad finally had enough of this running down the breezeway to avoid being attacked.  One night he came home from the office and announced to everyone that he had the ultimate solution for Mr. Gecko. That evening at dinnertime when the Gecko perched himself on the glass, my Dad retrieved an interesting weapon from his bag. It looked like at long sleek pellet gun, but it looked like no gun I had ever seen. He quietly snuck up on Mr. Gecko and fired one round into his head at point blank range, with the gun making very little sound. Mr. Gecko retreated and was never seen or heard from again. Years later when Senator Church was investigating the Agency for suspected abuses of their power, he discovered some interesting “toys” that the Agency had make. One of them was shown in the newspapers, with Mr. Church holding it up. When I saw the picture, I said bingo, that was the gun I saw my Father using on the Gecko. TSD used the dart gun to knock out guard dogs. But some people suspected that it was also used for shooting chemical pellets into someone. Some debate about this dual use continues to this day.

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December 21, 2006 by admin.

The Human Lawnmower

At our second house in Laos, we had a tiny patch of real grass that needed to be trimmed from time to time. There were no lawnmowers in the country, since no one had a “real lawn”. The patch was about 12 foot by 12 foot and was situated in the middle of the front yard. As was customary in the Kingdom, we hired several servants to assist my mother in housework, kitchen work, laundry, shopping in the Morning Market, boiling water, and yard work. The gardener that we hired wore only white clothes and a little white hat. I did not see him much, because he slept all the day, after partying every night. Since opium was cheap and very available, he smoked it to excess. The side effect was that he had no inclination to do any yard work. At one point during the hot season, the tiny patch of grass started to really grow. So my mother asked the gardener to cut the grass. The next day at noontime I looked out the window and saw a white object on the grass. I looked closer and it was the gardener lying on the grass, holding a pair of hand clippers. About every 30 seconds he would squeeze the handle of the clippers and the distinct sound of the blades coming together could be heard. I stared at him in amazement. He was higher than a woodpecker’s hole, lying on the grass, casually hand clipping the grass. It was about 120 degrees in the sun, 100% humidity, and he must have been baking like a potato. But since he was already baked, in the mind that is, he really did not care in the least about the sun. At the rate he was clipping, it would take him about four or five solid days of “work” to cut that grass. Life in Laos moved at a different pace and the Laotians to a different drummer.

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July 31, 2006 by admin.

NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol was injured in a plane crash in Colorado along with two others. His son and the pilot passed away and my prayers are with all the families. Ebersol’s wife is actress Susan Saint James and she was not onboard the plane.

Even if the Ebersol and wife traveled separately by accident, they reminded me about my parents pledge.

We lived in Vientiane Laos from 1968 to 1969 during the Vietnam War. We flew on Air America (AA) all over Laos and Thailand. Several times my parents traveled together and left me and my brother at home with a babysitter. Since flying slow and low over enemy territory is very hazardous, they suddenly came to a decision. That my parents would never travel together in the war zones, so that if they were shot down and killed, at least my brother and I would have one parent.

A very sensible pledge in the mad world of Laos.

I had a school friend in Laos lose his Dad and I still remember the feeling that I had for my friend to this day. The “Secret War” in Laos was crazy enough without having to worry about one of my parents getting killed or captured by the Pathet Lao (PL). The PL were not very nice to Americans that they captured and had a tendency to cut off ears of their prisoners. Making a statement, don’t you see. Article

The PL were the Viet Cong of Laos, a puppet for the Communist governments of Russia and China. The CIA mission in Laos was to harass the PL, be forward observers (FO) for bombing missions of the Ho Chi Minh Trail (HCMT), and assist the war effort any way they could. That included feeding the local tribes, arming them, training them, providing medicine and doctors.

Speaking of doctors, a good friend of mine’s father from Laos was a famous doctor there. His name was Dr. Charles Weldon, and he did God’s work over in that nasty place. Here is a link to his autobiography.

The main hill tribe in Laos was the Hmong. A fierce and loyal group of tribes that lived in the mountains, using stone age technologies to survive. Many western people called them “Meo” but that turned out to be an ethnic slur that the lowlands Lao came up with to insult the mountain people. Despite the Hmong being “backwards” they bonded with the CIA CAS (Covert Action Staff) officers and mercenary trainers. The Hmong became more reliable than the conventional army that we trained in the lowlands. The Hmong were also awesome warriors and they seemed to have no fear in battle. They traditionally used cross bows and knives as weapons. We gave them light rifles like the M-1 carbine and they became even more deadly.

Up until 1975, the Hmong kept the PL at bay and won many of the engagements that they conducted. But the White House (WH) and CIA in 1975 betrayed that trust and left them for the wolves. We withdrew our troops, CIA agents, mercenaries, and equipment. The poor Hmong were then subjected to death, long prison terms, and “re-education camps”. More than half of their population was destroyed. Some made it to Thailand but then got stuck in interment camps. Those camps make it on TV once in a while and they are slums, to put it nicely.

Other Hmong tried to escape by sea and they were raped, robbed, and killed by sea pirates near the Gulf of Siam.

It is a disgrace that a great ally like the Hmong were basically given the death sentence. And many Vietnamese that were friendly to us suffered the same fate.

You can read a great book on the subject, “Decent Interval” by Frank Snepp.

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December 27, 2005 by admin.

Million Dollar Baby

Do your mercenaries accept cash?

After his retirement from the Agency, my Dad lived in a variety of apartments in North Dallas. One day I took my paycheck to the bank and got all cash, in small denominations. It was not much money back then but it was still cool to have that much cash in my pocket. I happen to visit my dad at his apartment and wanted to show off. So I revealed my small pile of cash. He got this sudden gleam in his eye and helpfully and carefully counted the bills one by one, until the stack was all counted. Then he did the count again. The gleam in his eye was unnatural. I asked him “what was up”?

He finally admitted that it reminded him of the pile of money he saw in Laos. The COS (Chief of Station) Vientiane Laos had one million dollars in his safe of twenty dollar bills. Mind you this was 1968, so one million dollars would go a long way. I could see some Agency man with the temptation to grab the money and disappear and live like a King. He would use his Agency training to escape detection. I am sure that temptation occurred to more than a few. But since the Agency did a good job of screening their candidates, most Agency men would never even consider turning against the Agency or their country. Then my Dad said that when he went on an Agency covert operation, they were given a large sum of cash to operate with, usually a large stack of twenty dollar bills. So his explained why my Dad repeatedly counted of my small stack of bills. It brought back memories of covert operations gone by.

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December 27, 2005 by admin.

Vientiane Laos

Land of Elephants

Laos is a land locked, poor country that was a springboard for CIA operations during the Vietnam War. The Agency built the largest private airline in the world to support the “Secret War”. That airline was called Air America (AA). It predecessor was Civil Air Transport (CAT) Airlines. The Agency also hired and supplied a mercenary army of about 30,000 troops and used them to attack and harass the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail (HCMT) and the Communist troops that used Laos and Cambodia as a sanctuary. The Communists recruited indigenous people of Laos and they were called Pathet Lao (PL). The country of Laos is approximated the size of Utah and is mostly mountains and plateaus. The climate is tropical, with a rainy season from May to November and the dry season from December to April. It floods about 6 feet every seven years, so the local villagers build their huts on 9-10 foot stilts.

We were stationed in Vientiane, the capital, for two long years, from 1968-1969. This time period was the height of the battles, B-52 bombings, and misery in Southeast Asia (SEA).

For an excellent article about Air America (AA) in Laos, please click on this link Supporting the “Secret War”: CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955-1974. This article on the CIA web site by William M. Leary, in the Studies in Intelligence section, gives an informative history of Air America (AA) and its predecessor Civil Air Transport (CAT).

Map of Laos pre 1974

Two other interesting web sites are Secret War in Laos and Air America Homepage

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