Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

For nearly fifteen years, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) fought a secret war in Laos that remains one of the most significant and least understood aspects of the Vietnam War. Even now, nearly three decades later, the nature of this covert warfare and Laos's role in the wider Vietnam conflict are little understood. Since few beyond those Washington policy makers with access to classified studies are privy to its secrets, the legacy of American intervention in Laos remains obscure.Nonetheless, the war in Laos is, through the presence of Hmong refugees, gradually slipping into American consciousness, albeit from a partisan perspective. To cite one example, the November 8 1993 edition of my local newspaper, The Wisconsin State Journal, carried two obituaries of American war veterans – one telling the story of a war that we all know, and the other revealing a history that, for most Americans, never happened. In the back pages of the paper's third section, we read of Joseph J. “Jim” Daggett of Monona, Wisconsin, who died at 73. Born here in Madison, Wisconsin and educated in our local schools, Jim served as a sergeant in the US Army in World War II, fighting in the major battles of the European campaign – Normandy, the Bulge, the Rhineland crossing, and Central Europe. Returning home to Madison after the war, Jim married “the former Grace Ostrowski” on October 19 1946 and worked ... log in or subscribe to read full text