Скачать или смотреть Long Tieng – The CIA's Hidden Airfield That Ran the Largest Covert Operation of the Vietnam War

Using Google Earth to explore Long Tieng, Laos, you see a narrow valley high on the Xiangkhouang plateau, surrounded by limestone cliffs and ridges.

Air America operated here in what became the largest covert air operation in the world during the Vietnam War.

Hundreds of pilots and aircraft moved troops, weapons, supplies, and refugees, with Long Tieng often seeing dozens of flights a day despite its short, dangerous strip.

From the early 1960s to 1975, this place, known as Lima Site 20A, was the CIA’s main base in Laos and headquarters for Hmong General Vang Pao’s Secret Army.

At its peak, it held up to 40,000 people, making it the second-largest city in Laos, yet it did not appear on any map.

The valley’s geography made it both defensible and hazardous.

A single runway stretched along the valley floor, with defensive high ground like Skyline Ridge overlooking it.

Just to the north lay the Plain of Jars, a landscape still marked by bomb craters and unexploded ordnance.

In early 1975, North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces closed in. The CIA abruptly evacuated, flying out Vang Pao, personnel, and thousands of Hmong in a series of frantic missions.

Afterward, the base was abandoned, and the valley was bombed and shelled. Today, Long Tieng remains a closed Lao military zone.

Academics and historians debate the extent to which the following occurred at Long Tieng

• Air America aircraft being used for heroin smuggling from the Golden Triangle into South Vietnam and beyond

• Underground bunkers housing CIA interrogation centers and black sites for captured enemy agents

• A hidden gold cache from CIA funds or secret war profits left buried in the surrounding mountains during the evacuation

• Evidence of covert U.S. military incursions into China and North Vietnam being staged from the base

• The intentional destruction of records and facilities by firebombing to erase evidence of war crimes and illegal operations