After I had served In Laos and Thailand and Vietnam I happened upon a book by Barbara Tuchman. “Stillwell, US involvement in china 1910-1945”. Learning how much Stillwell distrusted the trio I started to have a much different idea of what problem we had been sent to Indo China to solve. My thoughts follow:

It is my contention that we would not have gotten involved in Vietnam if it had not been for CIA being spoon fed “intelligence” from Clair Chanualt, Chang Ki Check and Madam Chang. The trio stood to profit
handsomely from fomenting unrest in that part of the world. Vinegar Joe Stillwell did not trust any of them because he suspected that as they were getting arms from the US and then letting the enemy steal them, for under the table payments to their Swiss Bank accounts. By the time Stillwell died just after WWII the trio were all multi millionaires. Of course Clair went to Taiwan with the Changs, he had found a gravy train and some belive a lover. The trio kept feeding the line that China’s objective was to overrun the all of Indochina thereby getting the rice bowl they needed to feed their starving masses.

By selling that “intelligence” to various contacts within the US government and Chang selling the idea that he still had an organization of agents all over mainland China, CIA was lazy they did not or could not verify Chang’s “intelligence” because it came free. Mean while CIA funded CAT the Taiwan airline and equipped it with C-46’s, C-47’s and later some DC6’s of course Claire Chanualt was at the head. Later they spun off Air America and a bunch of other fronts like Bangkok Contract Services Inc. all funded by CIA and they were paid well. They had been paid to recover the B-26’s from Dien Bien foo and store and maintain them for years they also built an aircraft factory that converted the C-46’s
with more modern engines, Hamilton Standard props replacing the unreliable Curtiss Electrics and flex hydraulic lines where there had been hard lines with flex joints that had always been a problem, they ended up with a very reliable airplane. That month that I flew almost 300 hrs in them we only had a few write ups and they were minor. Yes the trio had built an empire at our expense via the CIA.

Eventually the myth that China was about to launch a major attack to over run Indochina became US policy and we realizing that we could not protect Laos with out involving one or more of the countries we would have to over fly to do so, we convinced Thailand to cooperate by having some bases there. There were a pair of U-2 pogos in the corner of the hanger when I got to Takhli I pointed at them and asked what are those they just shrugged. Chinese pilots from Taiwan were flying one way missions across China. I think we built several airbases in Thailand during the cold war that could be used as B-47 recovery bases on one way missions. In any case we bought the line that China was about to attack at any time. I
think it was a lie because Russia was the major supporter of North Vietnam not China.

So like so many in congress and the trio have profited from pushing a myth the Vietnam war started to save Indochina from being over run by China. As you know it never happened, even after we left Vietnam in shame, China can still buy rice cheaper than waging a war to confiscate it. In my mind The Vietnam war was one grand mistake largely brought on by the cheap “intelligence” from the trio… Bob