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A great place to have a war : America in Laos and the birth of a military CIA Cover Image Book

A great place to have a war : America in Laos and the birth of a military CIA

Kurlantzick, Joshua 1976- (author.).

Summary: The untold story of how America’s secret war in Laos in the 1960s and 1970s transformed the CIA from a loose collection of spies into a military operation and a key player in American foreign policy. In 1960, President Eisenhower was focused on Laos, a tiny Southeast Asian nation few Americans had ever heard of. Washington feared the country would fall to communism, triggering a domino effect in the rest of Southeast Asia. So in January 1961, Eisenhower approved the CIA’s Operation Momentum, a plan to create a proxy army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces in Laos. While remaining largely hidden from the American public and most of Congress, Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war, which continued under Presidents Kennedy and Nixon, lasted nearly two decades, killed one-tenth of Laos’s total population, left thousands of unexploded bombs in the ground, and changed the nature of the CIA forever. Joshua Kurlantzick gives us the definitive account of the Laos war and its central characters, including the four key people who led the operation—the CIA operative who came up with the idea, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew. Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, Kurlantzick shows for the first time how the DIA's clandestine adventures in one small, Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since--allthe way to today's war on terrorism.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9781451667868
  • ISBN: 1451667868
  • ISBN: 9781451667882
  • ISBN: 1451667884
  • Physical Description: print
    323 pages ; 24 cm
  • Edition: First Simon & Schuster edition
  • Publisher: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Content descriptions

General Note:
"A Council on Foreign Relations book."
Bibliography, etc. Note:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-310) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:
Chapter 1 Baci 1 -- Chapter 2 CIA's First War 16 -- Chapter 3 Vang Pao, Bill Lair, Tony Poe, and Bill Sullivan 21 -- Chapter 4 Laos Before the CIA, and the CIA Before Laos 46 -- Chapter 5 CIA Meets Laos 69 -- Chapter 6 Operation Momentum Begins 78 -- Chapter 7 Kennedy Expands Momentum 83 -- Chapter 8 Not-So-Secret Secret: Keeping a Growing Operation Hidden 101 -- Chapter 9 Enter the Bombers 107 -- Chapter 10 Wider War 123 -- Chapter 11 Massacre 134 -- Chapter 12 Going for Broke 147 -- Chapter 13 Victory and the Loss 157 -- Chapter 14 Secret War Becomes Public 173 -- Chapter 15 Defeat and Retreat 189 -- Chapter 16 Skyline Ridge 211 -- Chapter 17 Final Days 228 -- Chapter 18 Laos and the CIA: The Legacy 245 -- Chapter 19 Aftermath 256.

Search for related items by subject

Subject:
United States. Central Intelligence Agency History 20th century
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Campaigns Laos
Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Secret service United States

Available copies

  • 6 of 6 copies available at NC Cardinal. (Show)
  • 1 of 1 copy available at Onslow County Public Library.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 6 total copies.
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Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Status Due Date
Jacksonville Main Library 959.7043 KUR (Text) 36015000696050 Adult Nonfiction Available -
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