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The Americans justify their involvement in Laos on the ground that the North Vietnamese were there first. It is largely clandestine because, like the North Vietnamese presence, it violates the 1962 Geneva accords, which supposedly neutralized Laos. The military-aid program, for example, is not run by the military-assistance group (MAG) but by USAID through a euphemistically titled "requirements office."
Towns Flattened. The U.S. officially admits only to flying "armed reconnaissance" missions over Laos (i.e., firing only when fired upon). But in fact, besides bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail, Thai-based American planes provide considerable tactical air support for the Royal Laotian Army, flattening whole towns in the Communist Pathet Lao zone. In the last eleven months the bombing of Laos has increased fivefold. "We've creamed that place," allowed a U.S. Air Force pilot recently, "some places even worse than Viet Nam." Said one woman who escaped from Muong Phine, a town recently captured by government forces: "We were afraid of the airplanes that came all the time. We learned to stand still in the fields when the planes came because if we ran the planes would shoot."
The U.S. has obvious reasons for not admitting the extent to which American air power plays a role in Laos. "If we did," said an American official in Vientiane, "every dove in the U.S. would hit us over the head with it like they did with Johnson and the bombing of North Viet Nam. The North Vietnamese don't admit the presence of their 47,000 troops. Why should we give them the advantage of admitting the bombing?"