Film pictures the establishment of a large and secret airbase, Long Chen, by the American CIA in LAos, near the Plane of JArs, in the period 1960 -1975. Officially, there were no American soldiers in Laos, but American pilots dropped staggering loads of bombs in the North-EAstern part of Laos, along the so called Ho Chi Min trail, used by the Norht Vietnamese, into South Vietnam and Cambodia. The CIA also set up an army of local hill people, the Hmong, led by their general Vang PAo. These hill tribes were the real victims in this secret war. Pictures on the scene in LAos, are cut with interviews of pilots and journalists who where present at the time, or tried to find out what was really happening there, since the US-government has always denied its involvement, until very recently. The area of Xiengkhong in NE Laos is up to the present day, considered unsafe because of pirating/fighting descendants of the local army of the past. The documentary was shown on German TV (ARTE) last week, unfortunately voiced over by a German translation of the interviews in English. I lived in Vientiane, LAos, in 1970/1971. Film seems an accurate account of what I saw and heard myself at the time.
