American and Thai instructors train Hmong recruits at Pha Khao, Xieng Khouang Province, c. 1961-63. Lloyd "Pat" Landry Papers, History of Aviation Collection, McDermott Library, University of Texas - Dallas. Landry was among the first CIA case officers sent into northern Laos in 1961.

French control of Indochina collapsed in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. The Vietnamese celebrated the liberation of their country as the end of "colonialism." Americans labelled it "communist aggression." Anti-communism had become the litmus test for American politicians. Successive U.S. Presidents pursued the policy of "containment," arguing that communism had to be fought on every front, or one by one, like dominos, nations around the world would fall. U.S. interests in Asia appeared vulnerable. American prestige had been stung by the "loss" of China and an unsatisfactory stalemate in Korea. Southeast Asia became a symbolic but bloody battleground, swept up in the ideological clash between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union.

President Eisenhower refused to deploy troops, but committed advisors and materiel to strengthen anti-communist leaders in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In Laos, American dollars financed public works projects, funded a 25,000 man Royal Laotian Army, and helped fix elections for pro-western candidates. However, by prohibiting the communist Pathet Lao and its political wing, the Neo Lao Hak Sat (NLHS - Lao Patriotic Front), from legitimate participation in the country's governance, the Americans unwittingly pushed them toward armed resistance. The Pathet Lao allied itself with the North Vietnamese, and found its own powerful patrons in the Soviet Union and China.

In 1961 President Kennedy chose to make a stand in Vietnam rather than Laos. Vietnam's extensive coastline presented strategic advantages for the direct application of U.S. air and sea power. Laos, however, lined Vietnam's western border, and so could not be overlooked. Along a network of trails known collectively as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North Vietnamese and their Laotian allies funneled supplies through Laos to South Vietnam. To cut off those supplies, Kennedy ordered operatives from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to recruit a secret army of Laotian and Vietnamese highlanders.

Hmong loyalties were split. Lo Faydang Bliayao and his Hmong Resistance League joined the Pathet Lao. Touby Lyfoung and emerging military leader Vang Pao negotiated an alliance with the Americans. Others simply tried to steer clear of the fighting. By 1964 General Vang Pao commanded nearly 30,000 men. Hmong soldiers ambushed co~nmunist supply lines, guarded radar installations which guided U.S. bombers over North Vietnam, and acted as the front-line defense of Laos. Supplied entirely by the United States, the army remained secret to avoid the appearance of violating the 1962 Geneva Accords which prohibited foreign intervention in Laos. Later, with American soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam, U.S. leaders feared the public's reaction to a widening war in faraway Southeast Asia.