Vang Pao
ວ່າງປາວ
Royal Lao Army general who led the CIA-backed Hmong army
Sources differ on the endpoint in May 1975: one has 5 May, when he was ordered before Souvanna Phouma to cooperate with the Pathet Lao; another has 14 May, when he left Long Tieng by helicopter as the shelling began.
A Hmong soldier from Nonghet in Xiangkhouang Province, Laos, and the only ethnic Hmong to reach general officer rank in the Royal Lao Army. During the 1960s and 1970s he commanded the CIA-trained and -supported irregular 'Secret Army' based at Long Tieng, fighting the Pathet Lao and the People's Army of Vietnam. Evacuated to Thailand in May 1975 amid the communist takeover, he then emigrated to the United States, settling in California by way of Montana, and became a leader of the Hmong American community, helping halt the forced repatriation of Laotian and Hmong refugees from Thailand in the late 1980s and 1990s. In 1981 he was among the founders of the United Lao National Liberation Front (Neo Hom). Charged in the United States in 2007 with plotting to overthrow the Lao government, he saw all federal charges dropped in 2009.
Career timeline
- 1960년대~1975Major general, Royal Lao Army; commanded the CIA-backed 'Secret Army' based at Long Tieng
- 1975Evacuated to Thailand, then emigrated to the United States
- 1981Among the founders of the United Lao National Liberation Front (Neo Hom)
- 2007~2009Charged in the US under the Neutrality Act; all federal charges dropped