By Richard S Ehrlich
Asia Times (Hong Kong)
BANGKOK - After a US Justice Department undercover agent displayed a Stinger surface-to-air missile in a bugged Hilton hotel room in Sacramento, California, the motley crew of would-be revolutionaries began to suspect that they might be the victims of a "sting" operation. They were right.
A mysterious woman named Lisa - "last name unknown", as it appears on the indictment - was allegedly tasked to find out who the man with the Stinger really was and whether a gang of desperate Americans in California, and ethnic Hmong from Laos, were about to be busted.
The furtive Americans and Hmong allegedly boasted that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was "standing by and ready to roll" to ensure success for their clumsy coup attempt in Laos.
They didn't realize that their California restaurant meetings, anxious telephone conversations, and hurried chats in urban parking lots would appear this Monday in a 90-page affidavit by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The government takes a dim view of plotters using US soil to overthrow governments of nations "with which the US is at peace".
Weapons and ammunition, bought for US$100,000, were to be smuggled into Bangkok next Tuesday, June 12, followed by delivery of at least two Stinger missiles designed to shoot down aircraft, the ATF affidavit said.
To gain military-style training so they could overthrow the communist regime and rule the Southeast Asian nation, some of the men allegedly hoped to join the California Highway Patrol's Sacramento academy to learn "internal security, operations, and road control", because the campus has one of "the best law-enforcement training programs available".
After 10 men were arrested in California, where they were charged with a slew of felonies on Monday, attention focused on two of the jailed Americans who had undergone US military training, plus combat experience in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era.
The CIA had run a bloody "secret war" in Laos after turning much of the country into a vast graveyard, gouged by massive US aerial bombardments. The country fell to the communist Pathet Lao about the same time that the North Vietnamese conquered the South and the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia.
The Vietnamese ousted the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia in 1979, and a decade later it became a multi-party democracy under United Nations-supervised elections. Laos, however, has remained a communist country, and thus a tempting target for Americans and Hmong bent on reversing history.
According to the ATF, the most prominent suspect is a 1968 graduate of the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, and Vietnam War veteran, Harrison Ulrich Jack. He left the US Army in 1977, and eventually retired from the California National Guard as a lieutenant-colonel, settling in Woodland, near Sacramento, where he ran "a consulting business focusing on environmental issues".
The ATF's other main suspect is the CIA's infamous former Hmong mercenary leader, General Vang Pao. Vang Pao became a US citizen as a reward for killing communists and others in Laos during the Vietnam War, when Washington paid a pittance to thousands of impoverished minority ethnic Hmong to fight and die so Americans would not be killed.
"Jack said he works directly for General Vang Pao and had worked for the Hmong community for the past 10 years," the undercover ATF agent said in the affidavit.
The group's alleged clandestine strategy, financing, and choice of weaponry provide an eerie look at how a group of wanna-be warriors in California attempted illegally to invade and occupy a country on the other side of the world.
Thailand, a US military ally, was to be the unwitting launching pad for the "military expedition" by the Americans and Hmong to infiltrate Laos. The alleged target was Vientiane, the languid capital of Laos, just across the Mekong River from Thailand.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Thailand provided the US with airbases, Thai troops, "rest and recreation" facilities and other assistance to fight in Laos, but Bangkok now deals with Laos as a friendly commercial partner and trendy tourist destination.
Last month, the California plotters said they had "a man on the ground [in Vientiane], walking around like a tourist with his digital camera, trying to get whatever pictures he can" of government buildings to obliterate, the ATF said.
Jack is portrayed as the gang's blabbermouth, relentlessly pushing the plot along while mindlessly providing the latest details to an undercover agent.
Jack also allegedly told the agent that the CIA was in on the plot. "I understood his statement to mean that the CIA was preparing to assist the Hmong insurgency once the takeover of Laos had begun," the agent said.
The conspirators "were intent on securing Vientiane and Long Chien, which Jack told me was a former CIA base", the agent reportedly said. Long Chien was a base for hundreds of aircraft during the war, including the CIA-owned Air America's planes.
"Jack told me his Hmong contacts had raised a lot of money through Air America but had not taken any money from the CIA," the ATF agent said, without elaborating.
"Harrison Ulrich Jack came to ATF's attention in the fall of 2006 when he reached out to a defense contractor whom he knew and inquired about purchasing 500 AK-47s," the affidavit said, referring to Kalashnikov assault rifles. "The defense contractor was very concerned, and went to the Phoenix ATF office."
An ATF agent in San Francisco, code-named "Steve", was assigned to Jack's case. "On February 7, 2007, acting in an undercover capacity as an arms dealer, I met with Jack, General Vang Pao" and about a dozen of Vang Pao's "Neo Hom" supporters, he said.
While they all munched lunch in the "Amarin Thai Restaurant in Sacramento", the wired agent recorded their conversations.
"After the meal, I offered to display the weapons I had available for sale. I walked Jack, Vang Pao, and the other Neo Hom members to a recreational vehicle that I had arranged to be parked close to the Thai restaurant.
"Audio and video recording devices were used while the targets were in the RV. Jack, Vang Pao, and approximately 12 Neo Hom members looked at and/or handled" machine-guns, grenade launchers, an anti-tank rocket, a Claymore mine, and C-4 plastic explosives "that they believed were for sale".
On May 9, confident that guns and ammo would soon be illegally delivered in Thailand, "Jack asked me if I had a preferred currency, and I told him I preferred US dollars as opposed to Thai baht.
"Jack and I discussed a finder's fee for Jack's role in brokering this, and possible future deals for weapons. I suggested a flat $7,500 fee for the initial transaction and a 3% fee for the next, presumably larger order," the agent said.
He said he later upped Jack's commission for a weapons deal worth $9.8 million, offering Jack 5%.
One of Jack's main comrades was would-be "president of Laos" Lo Cha Thao, who allegedly met with Jack and the ATF agent during much of the planning stage, while claiming to have 5,000 fighters inside Laos, waiting for the weapons.
Lo Cha Thao allegedly claimed he wanted to destroy several official buildings in Vientiane - "like September 11" - so people in Laos could see that the communist regime had lost its power to command and control.
"I showed the group several satellite images downloaded from Google of the area around the Vientiane Vattay [Wattay] International Airport and the Laos Royal Palace in Vientiane, Laos," the agent said.
Lo Cha Thao "asked me if the Stingers were capable of shooting down a MiG [warplane]. I told Lo that the Stinger was made to shoot down jet aircraft."
The ATF said Jack, Vang Pao, and four others wanted to buy two Stinger missiles after a Stinger was displayed to others in the group in the Hilton.
"Conspiracy to receive and possess missile systems designed to destroy aircraft" is one of several charges against Jack, Vang Pao and the others.
The CIA generously handed out Stingers to its Afghan "holy warrior" mujahideen during the 1980s to help the US-financed Islamist guerrillas win a 10-year-long war against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. After that war, numerous Stingers appeared on the black market. Washington belatedly offered rewards for their return amid fears that the shoulder-fired, heat-seeking rockets would be aimed at US commercial aircraft by anti-American rebels.
Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco. He has reported news from Asia since 1978 and is co-author of the non-fiction book of investigative journalism, Hello My Big Big Honey! Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. He received Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism's Foreign Correspondents Award.
A mysterious woman named Lisa - "last name unknown", as it appears on the indictment - was allegedly tasked to find out who the man with the Stinger really was and whether a gang of desperate Americans in California, and ethnic Hmong from Laos, were about to be busted.
The furtive Americans and Hmong allegedly boasted that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was "standing by and ready to roll" to ensure success for their clumsy coup attempt in Laos.
They didn't realize that their California restaurant meetings, anxious telephone conversations, and hurried chats in urban parking lots would appear this Monday in a 90-page affidavit by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The government takes a dim view of plotters using US soil to overthrow governments of nations "with which the US is at peace".
Weapons and ammunition, bought for US$100,000, were to be smuggled into Bangkok next Tuesday, June 12, followed by delivery of at least two Stinger missiles designed to shoot down aircraft, the ATF affidavit said.
To gain military-style training so they could overthrow the communist regime and rule the Southeast Asian nation, some of the men allegedly hoped to join the California Highway Patrol's Sacramento academy to learn "internal security, operations, and road control", because the campus has one of "the best law-enforcement training programs available".
After 10 men were arrested in California, where they were charged with a slew of felonies on Monday, attention focused on two of the jailed Americans who had undergone US military training, plus combat experience in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era.
The CIA had run a bloody "secret war" in Laos after turning much of the country into a vast graveyard, gouged by massive US aerial bombardments. The country fell to the communist Pathet Lao about the same time that the North Vietnamese conquered the South and the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia.
The Vietnamese ousted the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia in 1979, and a decade later it became a multi-party democracy under United Nations-supervised elections. Laos, however, has remained a communist country, and thus a tempting target for Americans and Hmong bent on reversing history.
According to the ATF, the most prominent suspect is a 1968 graduate of the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, and Vietnam War veteran, Harrison Ulrich Jack. He left the US Army in 1977, and eventually retired from the California National Guard as a lieutenant-colonel, settling in Woodland, near Sacramento, where he ran "a consulting business focusing on environmental issues".
The ATF's other main suspect is the CIA's infamous former Hmong mercenary leader, General Vang Pao. Vang Pao became a US citizen as a reward for killing communists and others in Laos during the Vietnam War, when Washington paid a pittance to thousands of impoverished minority ethnic Hmong to fight and die so Americans would not be killed.
"Jack said he works directly for General Vang Pao and had worked for the Hmong community for the past 10 years," the undercover ATF agent said in the affidavit.
The group's alleged clandestine strategy, financing, and choice of weaponry provide an eerie look at how a group of wanna-be warriors in California attempted illegally to invade and occupy a country on the other side of the world.
Thailand, a US military ally, was to be the unwitting launching pad for the "military expedition" by the Americans and Hmong to infiltrate Laos. The alleged target was Vientiane, the languid capital of Laos, just across the Mekong River from Thailand.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Thailand provided the US with airbases, Thai troops, "rest and recreation" facilities and other assistance to fight in Laos, but Bangkok now deals with Laos as a friendly commercial partner and trendy tourist destination.
Last month, the California plotters said they had "a man on the ground [in Vientiane], walking around like a tourist with his digital camera, trying to get whatever pictures he can" of government buildings to obliterate, the ATF said.
Jack is portrayed as the gang's blabbermouth, relentlessly pushing the plot along while mindlessly providing the latest details to an undercover agent.
Jack also allegedly told the agent that the CIA was in on the plot. "I understood his statement to mean that the CIA was preparing to assist the Hmong insurgency once the takeover of Laos had begun," the agent said.
The conspirators "were intent on securing Vientiane and Long Chien, which Jack told me was a former CIA base", the agent reportedly said. Long Chien was a base for hundreds of aircraft during the war, including the CIA-owned Air America's planes.
"Jack told me his Hmong contacts had raised a lot of money through Air America but had not taken any money from the CIA," the ATF agent said, without elaborating.
"Harrison Ulrich Jack came to ATF's attention in the fall of 2006 when he reached out to a defense contractor whom he knew and inquired about purchasing 500 AK-47s," the affidavit said, referring to Kalashnikov assault rifles. "The defense contractor was very concerned, and went to the Phoenix ATF office."
An ATF agent in San Francisco, code-named "Steve", was assigned to Jack's case. "On February 7, 2007, acting in an undercover capacity as an arms dealer, I met with Jack, General Vang Pao" and about a dozen of Vang Pao's "Neo Hom" supporters, he said.
While they all munched lunch in the "Amarin Thai Restaurant in Sacramento", the wired agent recorded their conversations.
"After the meal, I offered to display the weapons I had available for sale. I walked Jack, Vang Pao, and the other Neo Hom members to a recreational vehicle that I had arranged to be parked close to the Thai restaurant.
"Audio and video recording devices were used while the targets were in the RV. Jack, Vang Pao, and approximately 12 Neo Hom members looked at and/or handled" machine-guns, grenade launchers, an anti-tank rocket, a Claymore mine, and C-4 plastic explosives "that they believed were for sale".
On May 9, confident that guns and ammo would soon be illegally delivered in Thailand, "Jack asked me if I had a preferred currency, and I told him I preferred US dollars as opposed to Thai baht.
"Jack and I discussed a finder's fee for Jack's role in brokering this, and possible future deals for weapons. I suggested a flat $7,500 fee for the initial transaction and a 3% fee for the next, presumably larger order," the agent said.
He said he later upped Jack's commission for a weapons deal worth $9.8 million, offering Jack 5%.
One of Jack's main comrades was would-be "president of Laos" Lo Cha Thao, who allegedly met with Jack and the ATF agent during much of the planning stage, while claiming to have 5,000 fighters inside Laos, waiting for the weapons.
Lo Cha Thao allegedly claimed he wanted to destroy several official buildings in Vientiane - "like September 11" - so people in Laos could see that the communist regime had lost its power to command and control.
"I showed the group several satellite images downloaded from Google of the area around the Vientiane Vattay [Wattay] International Airport and the Laos Royal Palace in Vientiane, Laos," the agent said.
Lo Cha Thao "asked me if the Stingers were capable of shooting down a MiG [warplane]. I told Lo that the Stinger was made to shoot down jet aircraft."
The ATF said Jack, Vang Pao, and four others wanted to buy two Stinger missiles after a Stinger was displayed to others in the group in the Hilton.
"Conspiracy to receive and possess missile systems designed to destroy aircraft" is one of several charges against Jack, Vang Pao and the others.
The CIA generously handed out Stingers to its Afghan "holy warrior" mujahideen during the 1980s to help the US-financed Islamist guerrillas win a 10-year-long war against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. After that war, numerous Stingers appeared on the black market. Washington belatedly offered rewards for their return amid fears that the shoulder-fired, heat-seeking rockets would be aimed at US commercial aircraft by anti-American rebels.
Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco. He has reported news from Asia since 1978 and is co-author of the non-fiction book of investigative journalism, Hello My Big Big Honey! Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. He received Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism's Foreign Correspondents Award.
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