Flight of the Bon Monks by Harvey Rice

Author:Harvey Rice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company

The weapons that Nagtshang Powo promised were to be delivered by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA was making arms drops as part of a covert operation to supply and train Tibetan rebels. The program would last until 1961 and remained secret until the late 1990s. The Cold War was at its height, and the administration of U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower viewed covert action as a means to challenge Communism while avoiding overt military action that could lead to war.

The secret CIA program had begun in 1956, after the intelligence agency decided it needed Tibetans on the ground who could assess the strength of the resistance movement against the Chinese Communists. Agent John Hoskins would be tasked with putting the plan into operation. Hoskins had arrived at the CIA Calcutta station in September, assigned to making contact with Chinese stationed in India. That changed in November 1956 with an urgent cable from CIA headquarters asking him to contact Gyalo Thondup, the second eldest of the Dalai Lama’s four brothers. Gyalo had come to the CIA’s attention that summer after he distributed a letter he translated into English describing Chinese abuses in Tibet. Gyalo’s connections and sophistication made him the perfect choice for helping the CIA find Tibetan recruits.

Foreign governments had long courted the tall, slim Gyalo as a conduit to the Tibetan government. Gyalo was fluent in Chinese, having traveled to China in November 1946 to study at the Central University of Politics in Nanjing. His travel and studies were paid for by General Chiang Kai-shek, whose U.S.-backed army battled Mao Tse Tung’s troops for control of China. There were no roads linking Tibet with China at the time, so Gyalo and his entourage traveled seventeen days by horseback to reach India, where he could catch a flight to Nanjing. In Calcutta, the eighteen-year-old Gyalo marveled at the paved roads, railroads, and movie theaters. Whenever he left his room and entered the lobby of the Grand Hotel, the other guests would stare at him. His long, straight black hair had never been cut and hung to his knees. He wore the traditional chuba, and a turquoise-and-gold earring dangled from his ear, Tibetan-style. He soon cut his hair, stopped wearing the earring, and exchanged his chuba for pants, shirt, and coat.5

Sporting his new look, Gyalo flew from Calcutta to Nanjing in a U.S.-built C-46 cargo plane sent by the Chinese Nationalist government, then still in power in China. After settling into a three-bedroom house equipped with servants, car, and driver, he became a frequent dinner guest of Chiang Kai-shek, who paid all his expenses and gave him a monthly allowance. His studies at the university revealed a world he barely knew existed. “I had known that Tibet was backward from the time I first set foot in India, and my studies in China only confirmed that judgment,” Gyalo would later write in his autobiography.6

Two years after his arrival in China, Gyalo married Zhu Dan, the daughter of a Chinese general.

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