Losing Vietnam (51 page)

The day before I arrived in Bangkok, a student-led movement had suddenly and startlingly toppled the military government on “Bloody Sunday,” 14 October 1973. Seventy persons were killed, and more than eight hundred were wounded. The ruling clique, as the Thais addressed the military leadership, consisted of Premier Thanon Kittikachorn, his powerful son, Colonel Narong (who was the liaison officer from the Queen's Cobra Infantry Regiment in Vietnam to my division for a year), and Deputy Premier Praphat Charusathien—the trio they called “The Father, the Son, and the Wholly Gross.” Field Marshal Thanon was prime minister, minister of defense, and foreign minister, and Field Marshal Praphat was commander in chief of the army, deputy supreme commander, deputy prime minister, minister of the interior, and acting director general of the Thai National Police Department. The idealist students wanted to turn the country away from this dictatorship and
toward democracy. When I arrived, Bangkok was relatively calm, but not a policeman or military person could be seen; they had all taken cover. Uniformed Boy Scouts were directing the horrendous traffic for which Bangkok is famous.

An interim regime headed by Prime Minister Sanya Thammasak, took office; and a January 1974 national election resulted in the 269 seats in parliament being held by twenty-two different political parties, which made meaningful legislation impossible. Nevertheless, the Thais were working to lay the foundation for a parliamentary democracy. The Sanya government's major political contribution was the creation of a new constitution, the ninth in this century.
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In July 1974, youths rioted in the Chinese sector of Bangkok, and the civilian government forcefully suppressed the riot; this did much to improve the morale of the security services that had been sorely treated in the October 1973 uprising.
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In demonstrating its ability to maintain law and order, the Sanya government also improved its image and as a result could act with much greater confidence in relations with its critics. And there were many critics, for the new democracy encouraged the public to speak out strongly on a multitude of issues, foremost among which was the U.S. military presence in Thailand.

The U.S. military's relationship with our host country was extremely important. Our ambassador held periodic political-military conferences, at which we discussed such topics as the Indochina Assessment Update, trends in U.S.-Thai relations, special reports of activities, and U.S. base closure problems.
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U.S.-Thai relations were never smooth. In Bangkok, the well-organized Thai students repeatedly staged massive demonstrations against the presence of American forces in their country. In August 1974, the Democrat Party leader, Seni Pramot, said publically that it was not proper for Thailand to help the U.S. transport weapons to Cambodia and urged the abolition of any agreement that Thailand might have with the U.S. government on this matter. He further stated that Thai assistance in transporting weapons undermined Thailand's claim to neutrality in the Khmer conflict and that it might cause the communist side in Cambodia to seek revenge. Later, in January 1975, the government would not permit the United States to import its rice to Thailand for transshipment to Cambodia, so the airlift support had to be transferred to South Vietnam.

The Thai government was always very concerned about communist aggression in neighboring countries and its effect on Thailand. In July 1974, Thai foreign ministry officials made public their uncertainty about the future stability and security of Asia and showed a deep-seated resentment toward the United States.
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The U.S. military was conscious of these sentiments and always did all it could to ameliorate the situation. For example, in January 1975 Thailand had to contend with a major flood, described as the country's worst natural disaster in a hundred years, which caused great economic damage in southern Thailand, killing 239 persons and leaving fifteen thousand homeless. His Majesty, the King of Thailand, requested that the U.S. Air Force provide airlifts in support of flood relief operations. We immediately did so.

There was a serious communist insurgency problem in northeastern Thailand.
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In the last quarter of 1974, the Second Thai Army conducted sustained operations in the Thai communist heartland of the southern Na Kae District of Nakhon Phanom Province. It had fifteen rifle companies conducting its counterinsurgency operations, the largest contingent in six years. The fighting escalated to 1975, and in early April, in an unusually bloody battle, guerrillas killed thirty-three Thai soldiers about seven miles from the Laotian border. The Thai defense minister, Pramarn Adireksarn, said the North Vietnamese had backed the guerrillas who launched the attack.

Northeast Thailand had always been a hotbed of communist activities, and the Thais were sincerely concerned that the communists would try to annex the area to gain control of the Mekong River. So, they were particularly disturbed in late February and March 1975, when there was a large increase in unidentified air activities in northeastern Thailand.
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Many of these activities were in the vicinity of Nakhon Phanom. HUMINT reported six helicopter landings in Nam Dong. The wreckage of a small, black-painted aircraft with no identification markings was found 155 miles southwest of NKP. Between 24 February and 4 March, villages reported helicopters flying very low and slowly between 1900 and 2100 hours, just twenty miles northwest. In the same period, other HUMINT sources reported fifteen separate instances
of unidentified air activities. With all of these reported incidents, the situation was heating up, particularly as the communists were having successes in Cambodia and South Vietnam at the same time.

Most of these HUMINT sightings reported the unidentified aircraft as flying at treetop level.
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Because of an occurrence earlier that year when I had several visitors, I was concerned whether the NKP radar could pick up the tracks. I had provided my guests with an escort so they could visit the town of Nakhon Phanom. When they returned, they asked why the black-painted aircraft were landing at Thakhek, just across the Mekong River. I responded that they must be mistaken, since our command section had received no reports of air activities at Thakhek. They insisted it was so. I checked with our radar station, which had seen no air activities. Consequently, I had an inquiry made, and sure enough, Laotian planes did land at Thakhek with troops, to quell a student demonstration. These planes had flown low along the Mekong, below the NKP radar screens.

However, in the case of the unidentified air activity without lights being reported by ground observers, the NKP radar did pick up the tracks. In fact, three different radars registered the activity (INVERT, radar approach control, and the weather radar scopes), increasing the validity of the reports.
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We asked our radar technicians to take photographs of the observed activities on their scopes, which they accomplished several nights later. The situation was puzzling.

On 27 April, the INVERT radar carried three good tracks and confirmed eight to ten RAPIAN radar close-in tracks. With such good verification, an AC-130 and a Jolly Green chopper were launched to monitor the situation. No results. On 30 April an aircrew reported a hundred-yard square with fire around its perimeter and a round, beaten-down area in the grass, about twenty-five yards in diameter, at its center. Was it a man-made fire marker for helicopter landings? On another occasion, a Jolly Green was consistently in the middle of three or four tracks. On two occasions its pilot observed the lights of a flight of two helicopters, each of which went into a dive and turned out its lights when they saw his running lights.
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I kept a makeshift log of all these occurrences, and in three and a half months our radar picked up hundreds of unidentified tracks near NKP. We could make no determination of identity or mission. The
tracks peaked during a seven- to eight-day period commencing two days before the full moon (for visibility?) and proceeded at 60 to 120 knots at elevations from treetop to twelve hundred feet.

These occurrences had not been seen previously. Given the HUMINT reports, there could have been some validity to the occurrences. The situation kept the Thais in the northeast edgy, and it provided the airbase a diversion after the all-encompassing activities accompanying the evacuations from Phnom Penh and Saigon.

On 9 May, a bomb exploded at a NKP bus station, killing three Thais.
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This was one of the first terrorist activities of this type. Given this sort of terrorist act, along with the increased insurgency and unidentified flights, the Thai government was very concerned about the northeast provinces. With the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam, the balance of power in Southeast Asia had been dramatically altered in favor of the communists and their powerful backer, China. The continued presence of U.S. troops in Thailand therefore was a very touchy subject.

The subject was brought to a head with the
Mayaguez
incident. Prime Minister Khukrit Pramot presented a Royal Thai government aide-mémoire on the U.S. military use of Thailand to our embassy at 1600 hours on 14 May, and the Thai ministry of public affairs released it to the public two hours later:

When Ambassador Charles Whitehouse arrived at Don Muong Airport about 1800 hours the same day, he was met with fifty to sixty demonstrators, most from Thammasat University. Many of the demonstrators displayed crudely drawn posters: “Bastered [
sic
] Ford, Get Your Troops Out,” “U.S. Get Back,” “Go Home.”
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On the next day, the English editorial in the
Bangkok World
also protested the situation:

Thailand was attempting a very difficult balancing act, trying to avoid a rift with the United States while acknowledging a dramatic expansion of communist influence in Southeast Asia and at the same time facing serious labor strikes, insurgency, and a declining economy.
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The United States did withdraw its forces from Thailand. By the end of June, the F-111 fighter-bombers and F-4 phantom jets were leaving Thailand as the major air force units were rapidly being transferred and U.S. logistics support bases were downsizing. Headquarters USSAG was to be deactivated on 30 June 1975. The U.S. military's major presence in Southeast Asia was a thing of the past.

On 21 February 1973, not a month after the 28 January signing of the Vietnamese cease-fire agreement, the Royal Laotian government (RLG) and the communist-inspired Lao Patriotic Front (LPF) signed an agreement on the restoration of peace and reconciliation in Laos. The agreement ushered in a period of major political and military changes in Laos.

The most dramatic consequence was the rapid diminution of both the frequency and intensity of military hostilities.
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Conflicts, which had totaled 225 in the first week following the agreement, were reduced to only five per week by August. Casualties of the RLG armed forces were reduced from sixty killed in the first week to two per week by April. T-26 aircraft sorties lowered from 610 in March to only 6 in December. However, in the LPF zone the North Vietnamese maintained an estimated fifty thousand troops, who had full control over the upgrade and maintenance of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. North Vietnam was the major supporter of the LPF troops.

Politically, the agreement prescribed a framework for settlement. It stipulated that a new provisional government of national unity (PGNU) and a joint national political council would be formed. Working deliberately and steadily the RLG and LPF improved prospects for the general acceptance of a new coalition government.

Ultimately, Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma, a neutralist, moved to form a coalition government; he formed a PGNU cabinet on 5 April 1974, and there appeared to be an even balance of forces. The Vientiane side (RLG) blocked several communist initiatives, such as the recognition of Sihanouk's GRUNK and the Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government. One aspect of the agreement was to authorize the LPF to station twenty-five hundred Pathet Lao troops in both Vientiane
and Luang Probang, to neutralize the situation there. The LPF took advantage of its lawful presence in the capital to cultivate students and labor organizations and to foster and exploit dissatisfaction.