The United States Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency’s secret war in the historical country; the Kingdom of Laos and the gentlemen’s agreement with the King of Thailand to fully support the said secret war.
I read “Project 404: The USAF and CIA’s Secret War in Laos” (https://greydynamics.com/project-404-the-usaf-and-the-cias-secret-war-in-laos/) and had the following comments.
For me, this life-changing experience began when I received military reassignment orders, while stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, MT, in 1966, for a special Department of Defense assignment to the 631st Combat Support Group, located at Don Muang Royal Thai Air Force Base, Bangkok International Airport, The Kingdom of Thailand. There were no US military installations in Thailand; the United States was constructing different US service bases/post/installations in Thailand and South Vietnam. Dong Muang was the hub for all military action. The only designated US military organization was the Joint Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) headquartered in Bangkok.
Note: The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was also headquartered in Bangkok.
Upon arrival in Bangkok, via contracted US air carriers, we deplaned, processed through Thai immigration and customs, and loaded onto old, smelly, diesel-powered Mercedes buses for transport to a government-leased old Thai hotel (Trocadera) located in old Bangkok, near a major Thai river and famous international hotels from past decades. The cited buses would be our US government transportation to and from our quarters at Don Muang for the next thirteen months.
A Thai Air Force officer’s family, for pay, provided our laundry service at the end of the duty day. Meals and alcoholic drinks were, for pay, available if you chose to eat and drink at your residence.
For whatever reason, I was assigned to reside in an apartment owned by a high Thai Army general. My quarters were a two-bedroom apartment which was shared by a legal office non-commissioned officer. The apartment facility provided all the benefits of the old hotel, including laundry service, meals, alcohol, etc.; however, the benefit to me was that I didn’t have to ride the contracted US government-contracted Thai bus service. The Thai government had a bus service, bus number 29, that I could board at the apartment and be dropped off in front of the Bangkok International Airport terminal and air traffic control tower. From the bus drop-off, I would walk into the terminal and take the elevator to my second-floor duty section – the US Air Force Base Operations Aircraft Dispatch Section.
A couple of floors above base operations was the duty station for Thai and USAF air controllers that controlled the landing of air sorties authorized through their filing of a flight plan with the Thai air traffic control center. To this end, over several months in the tower facility, I became acquainted with both the Thai and USAF air traffic controllers to the point that we became friends, and this friendship afforded the Thai controllers the opportunity to teach me the Thai number system and enough Thai language to conduct conversations about the local economy—a capability I still possess to this day.
Digressing back to the apartment and its owner, who was a high-ranking Thai Army general—and, respectfully, the general and I became, I suppose, friends—we addressed various subjects, not only about my residence and the US presence in Thailand but also overall domestic and international topics. For example, I was becoming disillusioned by our Southeast Asia war and, with a reenlistment forthcoming, I entertained applying for a flight dispatcher position with a new international airline, Air Siam. The general advised against the idea as he told me the Thai government was going to terminate Air Siam, as they were too great a competition to the national international air carrier—Thai International. I took the general’s advice and re-enlisted for another four years, to which the 1968 Project 404 assignment afforded the opportunity to learn that we do not have a constitutional republic but a theocracy in the making, controlled by foreign investors from 1776.
And, of interest to me, while working in the Thai control tower facility, I had the opportunity to be engaged in the arrival of former President Lyndon B. Johnson and Mrs. Johnson to Bangkok to visit his and her Royal Highness—and, I suppose, the Thai government’s war support for the war in Laos.
After some months in the Thai control tower assignment, the Air Force opened a base operations office on the military side of Don Muang Airport. It was at the military side base operations that I learned of the vastly different air missions of the US air services (Army, Air Force, Navy), Air America, and other US civilian air carriers, assigned and transiting Don Muang. For example, an airborne emergency by an assigned KC-135 air refueling aircraft that flew anchor sorties over northern Laos declared an inflight emergency. During an emergency landing, a KC-135 crew member, while sliding down an emergency rope device, suffered severe hand burns. The KC-135 emergency brought to my attention Don Muang’s primary importance, beginning in 1960, to the Kingdom of Thailand’s military and forward air guides, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and the United States’ State Department’s war in Laos and, of course, the Republic of South Vietnam, which would not have developed without the resident resources at Don Muang Royal Thai Air Base, Bangkok International Airport, and Thailand’s port authority. Without the Thai government, there would not have been the Vietnam era designed by the different presidential administrations of the United States.
As a United States citizen, I’m so sorry for the two million indigenous people murdered, wounded, and displaced, and the seventy thousand-plus US military killed, and the millions mentally and physically wounded by the Presidents of the United States’ title of Commander in Chief of US armed forces. President George Washington asked the Senate to remove the title of Commander in Chief, but was ignored. Today, February 21, 2025, the United States’ head of state is a traitor – Donald John Trump.
Billy Ray Wilson
Master Sergeant, USAF – Retired Air Operations Superintendent
Defender of the US Constitution