Spymaster: My Life in the CIA by Finney Richard A. & Shackley Ted

Author:Finney, Richard A. & Shackley, Ted [Finney, Richard A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 2006-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

13

R AIDS , A MBUSHES, AND B ATTLES

In pursuit of our second mission of inflicting damage on enemy forces operating in, from, or through Laos, we employed raids, ambushes, and mines to harass North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao units. The cutting edge of this program was the reconnaissance team, generally a twelve-man unit. The team’s mission was to go out on patrol, use available intelligence to find the enemy, ambush a small enemy force, engage the enemy in a firefight, kill them or take prisoners, and search for documents that could be of intelligence value. By December 1, 1967, we had sixty-seven action or reconnaissance teams on our rolls. All told they ran about one hundred long-range patrols a month, thirty or so raids a month on small supply depots, truck parks, and bivouac areas, and some fifty ambush operations against enemy patrols operating throughout Laos. The favorite ambush was to mine a trail area, wait for an enemy unit to walk into the mines and suffer the resulting shock and casualties, and then complete the ambush with heavy automatic-weapons fire before fading away.

On one occasion during a visit to Savannakhet, I concentrated on reviewing the unit’s road and ambush operations. This included a discussion with the Thai officer who headed the Headquarters 333 unit in the area. Toward the end of our meeting, the Thai said, “Our training doctrine teaches the teams to run these operations at night whenever possible. You have to remember this effort is like a good love affair. The best actions are carried out at night.”

The efforts of all of the reconnaissance teams, combined with the fighting carried out by the SGU battalions throughout Laos, resulted by December 1967 in our inflicting an average of 541 casualties per month in killed and wounded enemy forces. The ratio here was about three killed for every one enemy soldier wounded. This effort, while impressive, was achieved at a cost. There were also casualties on our side. The guerrilla forces suffered an average of seventy-seven men killed or wounded per month. In statistical terms this is a 7:1 ratio in favor of the guerrilla forces. That is an effective combat-loss ratio in terms of the type of analysis that is conducted by those engaged in war games at military staff colleges or academic think tanks. Unfortunately, in the context of Laos it was a tragedy, for the Hmong suffered a disproportionate share of the friendly losses.

This sad reality of Hmong combat losses also carried over into our third operational program. In that effort we used SGU units to serve as a counterreconnaissance screen designed to help the Vientiane government hold those areas that were under the RLG flag. Additionally, we used the SGUs, operating as independent battalions but utilizing guerrilla tactics, to take terrain from the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese. The SGUs were also tasked to inflict damage on enemy forces by engaging them in firefights whenever a company of SGUs could mount a guerrilla attack in force.

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