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A great place to have a war : America in Laos and the birth of a military CIA / Joshua Kurlantzick.
Van Pelt Library DS557.8.L3 K87 2017
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Kurlantzick, Joshua, 1976- author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- United States. Central Intelligence Agency--History--20th century.
- United States.
- United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
- Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Campaigns--Laos.
- Vietnam War, 1961-1975.
- Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Secret service--United States.
- History.
- Physical Description:
- 323 pages ; 24 cm
- Edition:
- First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
- Place of Publication:
- New York, NY : Simon & Schuster, 2017.
- Summary:
- January 1961: LAOS, a tiny nation few Americans have heard of, is at risk of falling to communism and triggering a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. This is what President Eisenhower believed when he approved the CIA's Operation Momentum, creating an army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces there. Largely hidden from the American public-and most of Congress-Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war lasted more than a decade, left the ground littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, and changed the nature of the CIA forever. Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, A Great Place to Have a War shows for the first time how the CIA's clandestine adventures in one small Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since-all the way to today's war on terrorism. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- Baci
- The CIA's first war
- Vang Pao, Bill Lair, Tony Poe, and Bill Sullivan
- Laos before the CIA, and the CIA before Laos
- The CIA meets Laos
- Operation Momentum begins
- Kennedy expands Momentum
- The not-so-secret secret: keeping a growing operation hidden
- Enter the bombers
- The wider war
- Going for broke
- The victory and the loss
- The secret war becomes public
- Defeat and retreat
- Skyline Ridge
- Final days
- Laos and the CIA: the legacy
- Aftermath.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-310) and index.
- Other Format:
- Online version: Kurlantzick, Joshua, 1976- Great place to have a war
- ISBN:
- 9781451667868
- 1451667868
- OCLC:
- 948748112
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