Interviewer: During the sixties was there some hope for a neutral Laos?
Sisouk Na Champassak: Certainly, there was hope...
Interviewer: Could you repeat the question?
Sisouk Na Champassak: During the sixties there was hope for a neutral Laos because at the time – I don't know whether you remember or not – there was the Troika, Khrushchev’s Troika, which was proposed by Khrushchev at the United Nations and everywhere.
Sisouk Na Champassak: That gave an exact idea of the situation with regard to that direction.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And neutrality could work, could, at that time.
Sisouk Na Champassak: There was Nehru, too, who was still alive.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But there was a problem within Indochina itself, that was North Vietnam's pursuit of her own objectives.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So for us...
Sisouk Na Champassak: Already during the implementation of the Geneva Accord of 1962, there were only about ten Vietnamese who had officially left, their departure verified by the International Control Commission.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Meanwhile many more Americans, Thais, and Filipinos had left.
Sisouk Na Champassak: This gave a foretaste of the non-implementation of the Accord on the neutrality of Laos, this Accord which had been the object of arduous negotiations for over thirteen months.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Remember that, at the time, the Ho Chi Minh Trail had already been built.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So there was a kind of beginning already in the execution of North Vietnam's policy to unify the South first, by subversion, and then, by open warfare.
Interviewer: What was your relationship with Vang Pao and that of the United States with him?
Sisouk Na Champassak: You know, at that time, my relationship with Vang Pao was quite vague.
Sisouk Na Champassak: I was in charge of the Finances of the Royal government.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Then at one point, from 1970 on, I was put in charge both of the Finances and of National Defense because the minister was not able...
Sisouk Na Champassak: at the time he was already rather old, he was not able to take care of the national defense.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So I had known him a little formerly, but it was mainly during the critical period that I knew him.
Sisouk Na Champassak: When I took charge of the national defense, from June 1970 on, I had a very close relationship with him, full of trust.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But the most important moment in our relationship, between Vang Pao and myself, was at the fall of Long Tieng.
Sisouk Na Champassak: One day, in the morning, around 9 o'clock, 9:30, he came to my house and said, "This is the end, Long Tieng has fallen.
Sisouk Na Champassak: I have just seen the Prime Minister who has ordered me to withdraw from Long Tieng to Phu Khao Khuay." These are the mountains behind Vientiane.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The Prime Minister had already received the order from the mouth of the American ambassador to instruct Vang Pao to withdraw his troops.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So he came to me almost in tears, and asked me, "This is the end.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The Prime Minister has ordered me to withdraw my troops, in a complete rout.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So has the American ambassador.
Sisouk Na Champassak: What should I do?"
Sisouk Na Champassak: So I told him: "Listen.
Sisouk Na Champassak: I was not in charge of your business because it is the business of the CIA, etc.
Sisouk Na Champassak: It was between you, the Prime Minister, and the CIA.
Sisouk Na Champassak: I don't know anything about it.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But now, can you tell me the truth? How many men do you have left who are able to carry weapons and go on with the struggle? I am like a physician, if you don't tell me your illness, and the truth is your illness, I can't cure you.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So give me the exact number because you have inflated it elsewhere, I don't know, but people, rumors have it that you have inflated the number of your troops.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Now I want to know the truth if one wants to defend Long Tieng."
Sisouk Na Champassak: So he told me, "I have left about three thousand, or 3,400 able to do something, to carry arms, but the morale is very low." I said, "If that is the way it is, we must do something.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We must resist.
Sisouk Na Champassak: With 3,000 you can resist.
Sisouk Na Champassak: As for me, I am going, going to Bangkok to ask for reinforcement, two battalions of Thais, of Thai troops as reinforcement." With this he left quite satisfied to go directly to Long Tieng.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So, on that day, we did not follow the order of the Prime Minister.
Sisouk Na Champassak: I told him, "The two of us are taking the responsibility for this.
Sisouk Na Champassak: If there is a hitch, we run the risk of a court martial because we have refused to obey orders which have been given.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But we are going to do it." I went to Bangkok to ask for two battalions of the Thai Special Forces.
Sisouk Na Champassak: I met Marshal Thanom, Thavi, and Papat, etc.
Sisouk Na Champassak: I asked them...
Sisouk Na Champassak: I explained to them the situation.
Sisouk Na Champassak: I told them that it is absolutely necessary to defend Long Tieng, because if Long Tieng falls into the hands of the Viets, the North Vietnamese, then it is the end, it is the rout of Vientiane.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Vientiane will be under siege, surrounded by the North Vietnamese forces.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And after Vientiane, it will be the Thailand’s turn, your turn, to be in charge.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Fortunately, Thanom immediately gave the order to make ready one battalion, one battalion right away as reinforcement for Long Tieng.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And before leaving for Bangkok, I had given the order to the government to dispatch two GM from the Third Military Region, that is from Savannakhet, to defend Long Tieng.
Sisouk Na Champassak: To use these two GM, one had to ask the Americans, because one had to go through the Americans before using the Special Forces.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So I went to the American ambassador and told him that we must do something to defend Long Tieng.
Sisouk Na Champassak: He said, "But you are crazy? Long Tieng is gone." I told him, "No.
Sisouk Na Champassak: It is not the end yet.
Sisouk Na Champassak: There is Vang Pao who is defending it.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We are going to do something.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Do you realize the situation, to bring a population of 60,000, soldiers and every one from Long Tieng to Phu Khao Khuay.
Sisouk Na Champassak: It’s a story without end.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The retreat of these 60,000 men, this population, the children etcetera, it’s not possible.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We must defend them." He said, ”That’s your opinion?” And I said, “I would like to have the two mobile gendarmeries of Savannakeht.
Sisouk Na Champassak: After that, we discussed the situation and he gave his agreement.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So I telephoned to Vang Pao and Vang Pao was completely on board.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And at this point I left, and at the time I departed, the Americans had already bombarded their military base.
Sisouk Na Champassak: What they had found next to the house of Vang Pao were telephone installations, installations of their equipment, which were very obvious and that they did not want to leave in the hands of the Viets.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And for the Americans Long Tieng was finished, because the non-Vietnamese soldiers were already in the valley.
Sisouk Na Champassak: There was a battle in the valley and all the soldiers of Vang Pao had already gone, at least ten to twenty kilometers away.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So we readvanced with the troops who had just arrived, the third military from Savannakhet, the battalion of Thai Special Forces and we recovered Long Tieng after a battle.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So then, we asked the other base to intervene, we asked for the FCAT.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And with their aviation, we threw in all the foreign forces, the Thai forces included.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The total came up to about 4,200 men.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Fortunately, there was a very effective American bombing mission, I believe by B-52s.
Sisouk Na Champassak: They hit the headquarters of a Vietnamese regiment which was completely annihilated.
Sisouk Na Champassak: From that point, the Vang Pao troops, who were still resisting, went forward and we took back Long Tieng.
Sisouk Na Champassak: From that time on, our relationship became much closer, with much more trust.
Sisouk Na Champassak: After that battle, he greeted me with the introduction, "It is thanks to this man, this minister, that we, that Long Tieng was not totally lost, that we were able to take it back.
Sisouk Na Champassak: It is thanks to him that you are here now."
Interviewer: When did you first hear about Lam Son 719 and what did it mean for you?
Sisouk Na Champassak: I heard about Operation Lam Son 719 –an operation started by the South Vietnamese forces when I was in my airplane on my way back from Champasak where I had gone to celebrate Vat Phu.
Sisouk Na Champassak: It was the representative of the AFP who told me inside the plane.
Sisouk Na Champassak: He said that it was very serious and asked for my reactions, I answered, "What can we do? It is Tchepone.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We do not have any control over Tchepone." It was in Tchepone where Operation Lam Son was conducted.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We had lost control over it for many years.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And there was no inhabitant in that area.
Sisouk Na Champassak: When I arrived in Vientiane I went to see the Prime Minister to discuss the possibility of issuing a communiqué.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And that is what we did, issue a communiqué which was without any flavor, totally lukewarm.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The Prime Minister said to me, "I did not have any knowledge of this either.
Sisouk Na Champassak: It was the American ambassador who just told me about the operation." I answered, "This is quite serious." He replied, "Yes, quite serious.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Military operations are being conducted in our country.
Sisouk Na Champassak: It is very serious.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But what can we do? They have taken the decision.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The only thing we can do is to lodge a protest.
Sisouk Na Champassak: That is all." But the protest was just a verbal protest, without too much strength.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The reason was that the operations were being conducted in an area over which we did not have any control at all.
Sisouk Na Champassak: There were no inhabitant.
Sisouk Na Champassak: It was the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Sisouk Na Champassak: That is why...
Sisouk Na Champassak: We issued a communiqué which was made public.
Interviewer: What did you think of the American presence in Laos since that presence was so important? What problems did it create for you as a government?
Sisouk Na Champassak: Ah well, the American presence in Laos...
Sisouk Na Champassak: During the 1960s there was an increase, a constant increase in that presence.
Sisouk Na Champassak: For us especially, we thought that it was a good thing in order that...
Sisouk Na Champassak: Since the United States were signatory to the Geneva Accord on the neutrality of Laos, and since we did not have the means to do so, the United States must carry on the verification over the areas where we were not able to go, where we did not exercise control.
Sisouk Na Champassak: That is the reason why the Prime Minister asked that the United States bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail during that period.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But that presence weighed more and more heavily with the worsening of the war situation in Vietnam and after the engagement of Cambodia.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And it became...
Sisouk Na Champassak: If you remember McNamara even wanted to have American troops intervene in Lower Laos, on the 17th Parallel.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We said "No." And the American ambassador agreed with us at the time, that is the American ambassador in Laos.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We said no because if the Americans spread their war to Laos, that would have been the end for the neutrality of Laos.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And we especially wanted...
Sisouk Na Champassak: Since we had just signed, just obtained a neutral status for our country, we wanted to go on living with that status.
Sisouk Na Champassak: That is the reason why we clinged on to that...
Sisouk Na Champassak: even that fiction of neutrality.
Sisouk Na Champassak: For us, that was the only means of survival for our country.
Sisouk Na Champassak: So, as you see, as the years went by, there was an increase in the military aid, the economic and military aid.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But that military aid was not similar to the aid for Vietnam.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Military aid to Laos consisted of guns, airplanes, spare parts...
Sisouk Na Champassak: even money.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But we...
Sisouk Na Champassak: But, unlike Vietnam, there was no American soldier, no American fighting forces in Laos.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We did not want them because that would be contrary to our neutrality.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The Americans themselves were conscious of that fact.
Sisouk Na Champassak: They did not want either...
Sisouk Na Champassak: They wanted to maintain the framework, even a loose one, of this neutrality, instead of cutting up that framework, or violating that neutrality in a flagrant manner.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Since this is what they were saying since the Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese were not respecting the Accord we could do the same thing, too.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But we don't want to because we do not want to drag Laos into the Indochinese War, drag her in completely.
Sisouk Na Champassak: That is the reason why there was the creation of the Special Forces in Laos.
Sisouk Na Champassak: That is the reason why there were interventions...The only thing the Americans wanted was to be able to cross the air space over Laos to bomb Hanoi, to rescue their men whose planes had been shot down by the North Vietnamese anti-aircraft defense.
Sisouk Na Champassak: It was for these reasons that they took hold of Vang Pao.
Sisouk Na Champassak: General Vang Pao was in the hands of the CIA for these reasons.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Seasoned troops, Hmong troops were needed to carry out missions to rescue American pilots.
Interviewer: Why did your government sign the Accord of Vientiane since it was not so much to your advantage?
Sisouk Na Champassak: We signed the Accord of Vientiane of February 21, 1971, no - 1973 - because there was no other recourse for us.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We had to swim with the tide.
Sisouk Na Champassak: There was also a pretty strong pressure from the Americans.
Sisouk Na Champassak: They often told us, "We have signed the Vietnam Agreement in Paris, the Paris Accord on Vietnam.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Now, it is your turn to do something.
Sisouk Na Champassak: You have to sign your Accord.
Sisouk Na Champassak: You have to do something because, as you know, we have disengaged ourselves from Indochina, we are following a policy of disengagement.
Sisouk Na Champassak: If you take too much time, you risk to find yourselves all alone, and the United States will not be in a position to help you." So we did not have any other choice.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Furthermore, we thought that we could get along with the Pathet Lao because we thought that among the Pathet Lao there were other nationalists like us, who would think the way we did, and we could...
Sisouk Na Champassak: Many people thought the way we did.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We might be able to discuss with the Pathet Lao, to come to an agreement with them even, in order to keep our country neutral, to achieve a Laotian reconciliation, the third reconciliation.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But there were the Vietnamese behind.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The Vietnamese completely demolished the Geneva Accord.
Sisouk Na Champassak: They violated the Geneva Accord of 1962 and ruined the Vientiane Accord.
Sisouk Na Champassak: And that is why we were defeated in 1975.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We only signed that Accord because we did not have any other choice.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We had to do it.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We had to sign.
Interviewer: Why did the government fall in 1975?
Sisouk Na Champassak: The coalition government fell because behind the Pathet Lao there were the firm hands of the North Vietnamese who controlled the situation.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The North Vietnamese troops were already in Laos.
Sisouk Na Champassak: They never did withdraw despite the Accord we had just signed.
Sisouk Na Champassak: These Vietnamese forces which were estimated to be 70,000 strong at that time, surrounded all the larger cities of Laos.
Sisouk Na Champassak: That was an indirect pressure on everything that occurred in Laos.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Force was being used.
Sisouk Na Champassak: That is the reason why I said that, I explained that, in Laos, force was being used, just like in Cambodia.
Sisouk Na Champassak: But the difference was that, in Laos, the aggressor was already inside the house.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Indeed, the Vietnamese never did withdraw their forces.
Sisouk Na Champassak: They went on using the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Sisouk Na Champassak: They continued to exert pressure on the Pathet Lao, pushing them to conquer...
Sisouk Na Champassak: to very rapidly seize power because they wanted total power.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The measures in the Vientiane Accord were favorable to the Pathet Lao.
Sisouk Na Champassak: We shared responsibilities fifty fifty.
Sisouk Na Champassak: I was minister for national defense.
Sisouk Na Champassak: Below me there was a Pathet Lao general who was secretary of state in charge of national defense, and vice versa.
Sisouk Na Champassak: The government fell first because of demonstrations in the streets power resided in the streets and was manipulated by the North Vietnamese and second, because of dissension within the government itself, but most of all because of the fall of Phnom Penh and that of Saigon.