News Analysis -Laos Former Laotian General Vang Pao and others charged in U.S., 10 June 2007

Laos: The United States Justice Department charged 77 year old General Vang Pao, a U.S. citizen and former general in the Royal Laos Army, along with eight other individuals this week with violating the federal Neutrality Act for plotting the violent overthrow of government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. The federal complaint alleges that General Vang Pao,  along with the others were raising money to purchase 9.8 million dollars of small arms and Stinger surface-to-air missiles, as well as to fund a military force.  The investigation was spearheaded by undercover agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Explosives, which alleges that General Vang Pao and his supporters, including retired U.S. Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Harrison Ulrich Jack, a 1968 U.S. Military Academy graduate and Vietnam War veteran, were to purchase weapons and move them into Thailand on two separate dates this month in preparation for transshipment into Laos. Part of the plan was also to train individuals at the California Highway Patrol’s Sacramento’s academy so as to prepare them for military operations in Laos. 

(Comment – It is no secret that it has been General Vang Pao’s intent for many years to overthrow the communist government of Laos using his links to the ethnic Hmong population in the U.S., Laos, and refugee camps in Thailand. Speaking as the leader of the United Lao National Liberation Front (ULNLF) at a Heritage Foundation event in 1987, General Vang Pao stated the objective of the ULNLF was, “To mobilize all Laotian people, inside as well as outside of Laos, to overthrow the puppet regime imposed on the Laotian people by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” This has long been a source of friction between governments of the United States, Thailand, and Laos. Besides General Vang Pao, the U.S. arrested the head of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, Chhun Yasith on 1 June 2005. Chhun Yasith was convicted in absentia in Cambodia in 2001 for a 24 November 2000 attack against the Ministry of Defense in the capital of Phnom Penh that resulted in several policemen being wounded and an unknown number of CFF supporters killed. Due to their staunch anti-communist positions, both General Vang Pao and Chhun Yasith had been close to certain U.S. Republican Party congressional members who seemed to provide them with a certain element of invulnerability for their anti-government activities in regards to Laos and Cambodia respectively.  The arrest of General Vang Pao will remove an embarrassing thorn in the side of U.S.-Laotian relations and may open the way for increased future bilateral cooperation, in addition to closing a chapter on the Cold War in Southeast Asia. [slr]

For the full text of Gen Vang Pao's remarks at the Heritage Foundation see: http://asiasecurity.org/file_download/44