My Experiences up Close with the People Who Bombed a 700-Year-Old Civilization into Dust

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It was only some months later I learned the true significance of our trip. The "auxiliary landing strip" we had landed at was actually part of the giant Long Cheng airbase, the center of CIA military operations for northern Laos. The U.S. executive branch had been waging a full-scale war on the ground as well as from the air, including building this giant military base, while keeping it secret even from a congressman who had landed there.

Four years later I visited Congressman Wolff at his office in Washington, D.C. as I was lobbying members to try to stop the ongoing bombing. After a few minutes, Wolff interrupted me, and to my amazement, sat down beside me and began whispering in my ear that I had to understand there was a real danger of a military coup and that there was nothing Congress could or should do about the bombing. I had no idea what to make of this, including whether he was sane. But of one thing I was sure: there was genuine fear in his voice, just as there was that night in Vang Vieng four years earlier.

The Executive and the Media: Careerism

I also learned firsthand of the overall collusion between the executive and mass media when working as a translator and fixer for top journalists visiting Laos for a week or so. I worked closely with journalists from CBS, ABC, NBC, the  New York Times, Time magazine, the Jack Anderson column and others.

My most revealing experiences were with ABC's Ted Koppel and CBS' Bernie Kalb. I took both out to the refugee camps, and was even interviewed about the bombing by Kalb on camera for a CBS documentary. I particularly liked Koppel, a decent, caring guy who choked up when hearing from the refugees what they had suffered from Henry Kissinger's bombing. Both men saw closeup the crimes against humanity that Kissinger had committed against these innocent people.

Some years later I had lunch with Ted Koppel at the State Department, where he was the ABC correspondent covering Mr. Kissinger. A fawning biography of Kissinger had just been published by Bernie Kalb and his brother Marvin that did not even mention the bombing of Laos. Everyone I knew was disgusted by them. As Ted and I had lunch, I said something like "Can you believe that garbage by the Kalb brothers?" To my surprise, Ted immediately stiffened, and said "I'll have you know that Marvin Kalb is a close personal friend of mine. And so is Dr. Kissinger, for that matter!"

Shocked, I tried to remind him of Kissinger's war crimes he had personally witnessed just a few years earlier. He refused to discuss it.

On October 22, 2004, the  New York Times published an article titled, "In Calls To Kissinger, Reporters Show That Even They Fell Under Super-K's Spell," about 3,200 transcripts of phone conversations between journalists and Kissinger. Ted Koppel was one of those expressing what the  Times called his "chumminess" with Mr. Kissinger. "It has been an extraordinary three years for me, and I have enjoyed it immensely. You are an intriguing man, and if I had a teacher like you earlier I might not have been so cynical," Koppel said. "You have been a good friend," Kissinger replied. Koppel ended by saying, "We are lucky to have had you."

When interviewed for the story, Koppel told it like it was. "Am I shocked by the notion that people were sucking up to a very powerful official they relied on for information? Frankly, no." David Binder, a reporter for 43 years with the  New York Times, was even more to the point: "The negative is that if you become too close to a guy you're covering, you become his spokesman."