by TOM WMUSTE7 THECIA'S WARRED CHINA:

AND OTASIAN Li

be)s/d

APPROVED FORFOR

RELEASED

DATE:

23-Sep-2009

THE OLD WORLD WAR TWO C-48 bounce.and yawed in the violent turbulence as.,

Its twin engines strained to maintain 180knots. Its American pilot gripped the

controls with every ounce of strength hecould muster, and his eyes ached from

the strain of searching the darknessto avoid the towering Himalayan

mountains on each side.They'd taken off from a secret base over

three hours ago and were threadingtheir way east of the Tibetan capital of

Lhasa, long occupied by the forcesof Red China. Their mission: drop

agents and supplies to a band of Tibetanguerrillas who were still fighting

the Communists.The copilot, sweating over the air chart

In his lap, tried to guide them to thedrop zone that a mysterious American

"civilian" at their base had earlierdescribed. "Hold your course," he

yelled. "Another two minutes shouldput us right on."

The pilot reached up, flicking on the"get-ready" light to alert the Tibetan

agents who'd be jumping, and theplane crew who would kick the supplies

out. "Gol" he yelled and switchedon the buzzer.

Just as the last chute opened, the oldplane was suddenly rocked by deadlyCommunist 37mm antiaircraft fire and

the pilot cursed to himself, "Goddam-ambush! Somebody talked ... the

bastards were waiting for us."But he managed to drop down and

contour fly the valley floors, below theRed radar, and just after dawn they

landed back at their base. They climbedfrom the plane, theiraray uniforms

soaked through with sweat, and the pilot

muttered for the thousandth time, "There's gottabe an easier way to make a buck.'L

The C-46 was ancient, but its skin had been polishedto shine like a mirror. Back toward the tail were

small blue letters that spelled out "Air America." Theonly other identifying marks were the fresh

37mm holes in the left wing panels.

Throughout Asia, people have come to recognizethese strange aircraft and their even stranger

American pilots. Especially the pilots. You learn tospot them wherever you are. They're the guys

in the gray Air Force-type uniforms, crushed caps,cowboy boots, with pistols hanging at their

sides. They can be found raising hell in the SuzyWong section of Hong Kong or racing motor

bikes along Tu Do Street in Saigon or Joking with thegirls at the Vleng Rattay Club in Vientiane.

They're the pilots of the cloak and dagger AirAmerica, one of the world's least known airlines.

Many are "old China hands" who firstbegan flying for the "outfit" back when mainland

China belonged to Chiang Kai-shek. They'rethe last of that breed known as soldiers of fortuns,

and these devil-may-care mercenaries willcontinued on next pose

Typical flights by these daredevil pilots of the CIA'sprivate airline read like a page out of Terry and the Pirates:

air drops of ammo, artillery spotting, parachuting inagents or saboteurs, flying a fresh group of concubinesto a lonely Asian warlord, transporting a secret prisoner

or plucking an important refugee from under Communist noses!

"It looks like any other plane, but that Air America marking spells one thing: CIA."

CIA'S WARcontinued

literally fly anything, anywhere, anytime—if the pnce is right. And they earn everypenny of their tax-free paychecks.

"Sometimes no one can tell if a site isclosed or open," one of them explains."You get there and circle the place, look-ing for any suspicious sign. If no oneshoots, you take your chance and landand keep the engines running until afriendly face shows up."

The planes are usually unidentified ex-cept for the discreet "Air America" mark-ings, but they've been around long enoughto earn the nickname "CIA Airlines" be-cause of the type of jobs they take.

Officially, Air America is a private air-line operating in Asia under charter to theU.S. evernment, but the bulk of itsoperations are, to say the least, closelyconnected with the CIA's spook opera-tions. Officials say only that the outfitdoes "government contract flying," andwhen one of their planes is shot down,the release typically reads, "Names arebeinf withhe/d by authorities until the nextof kin are duly notified. Spokesmen de-clined to disclose the plane's point oforigin or destination."

Behind all this official double-talk isthe most colorful, mysterious and roman-tic airline in the world, complete withenough shady deals, "dragon ladies," andinternational intrigue to keep their sheet-metal repairmen busy patching bulletholes. Try as they may to remain secret,more is becoming known about theseairborne soldiers of fortune. Air America'svery size makes it difficult to conceal. It isone of the world's largest airlines, rankingbetween National and Northeast in num-ber of planes and personnel. All told, itoperates some 200 aircraft, employs about600 pilots and, in an average year, thesedaredevils will haul 27,000 people and6,000 tons of cargo, as well as air dropmillions of dollars worth of supplies toanti-Communist troops behind enemylines all over Asia.

"We air drop so much rice in Laos,"says one of the pilots, "there's a wholegeneration of Meos who are going to besurprised when someone tells them ricedoesn't grow in the sky."

Another Air America pilot told thisauthor in a Danang bar one night, "Hell,we were doing the dirty work over herebefore Uncle Sam would even admit therewas a Vietnam. Back in the early Sixties,we used to fly search and rescue missionsinto North Vietnam with old Sikorskysand nothing but an MI6 for protection.

Now that the Air Force is doing it, theythink they need all kinds of armor plateand fighter cover. Of course, they were allbonus flights for us. We were paid prettywell."

The pilots average $25,000 a year, taxfree, for their hair-raising work and claim,"So long as we get paid, we don't carewhat the customer puts in the back orwhere we have to haul it."

A list of "typical" Air America jobsreads like a page out of Terry and thePirates—airdrops of ammo, artillery spot-ting, insertion of saboteurs and agents,flying a fresh group of concubines to alonely Asian warlord, transporting super-secret prisoners, refugee hauling (oftenplucking them from under Communistnoses) and, recently, lifting Thai troopsinto Laos to reinforce the ?vie° General,Vang Pao.

If it all sound like an unusual role for a"civilian" airline, remember, that AirAmerica's father was the famous Civil AirTransport founded by Flying TigerGeneral Claire Chennault.

Chennault originally went to China toforge an air force for Chiang Kai-shek andformed the Flying Tigers to fight theJapanese before the United States gotinvolved in World War Two. The deal wassimple—join up as a mercenary, get $600a month and $500 for every Jap plane youshot down. After America entered the war,most of the Tigers joined "Chennaules14th Air Force, swapping their Chineseinsignia for Uncle Sam's and ran up a killratio of about 16 to 1.

After the war, Chennault retired fromthe service and returned to China as acivilian. There, the real war was justbeginning as Chiang and Mao began theirmassive battle for control of the country.Chennault saw that the Nationalists need-ed dependable air transportation morethan anything else, and he quickly steppedin to fill the gap. With Chiang's blessings,he gathered a small group of his ex-FlyingTigers in his office at Shanghai's BroadwayMansions Hotel, and Civil Air Transportwas born.

Quickly dubbed CAT, his planes becamea familiar sight throughout China, andeven today the stories of his pilots arelegendary. To keep beleaguered National-ist troop supplied, most of the CAT routeswere flown over Communist-held terri-tory, and all the CAT men were on theCommunists' list of wanted war criminals,with a price on their heads (Bob Buol wascaptured by ChiCom troops and heldprisoner for five years. Six months after hisrelease, he died a broken man).

By 1948, CAT was hauling more cargothan any other company, but under con-

ditions that would shock any ordinal-)airline. For instance, every time CATplanes flew in the vicinity of Port Arthur,they were buzzed and fired on by Russianplanes. Ironically, they were American-made Bell P-63s given to the Russiansduring World War Two under Lend Lease.In return, the CAT boys would take ona load of 500-pound bombs and "justhappen to lose" them over enemy land.

There was no such thing as standardprocedure, and the pilots learned to sur-vive any way they could—like the timeCaptain Bob Rousselot lost an engineon his C-46 over the mountains of centralChina. He ordered his crew to kick thecargo out to lighten the plane enough togain altitude on his sivle good engine.Out went over 40 bales of Chinese cur-rency, worth $4,000,000.

Felix Smith used to fly out of Shanghai'sHungjao airport, hauling medicine toKumming in the interior. He regularlyreturned with .50 caliber machinegun holesin his wings and fuselage, a tribute to theskill of Mao's gunners.

Stuart Dew was piloting his C-47 toLanchow in northwest China when itbecame so cold that his engines simplyfroze solid on him.

But the favorite story among CATpilots concerns Sterling Bemis of Mel-rose, Mass. Running into a blinding sandstorm over an unexplored area of theGobi Desert, he was blown off courseand ran out of gas. Forced down, hefigured he'd bought the farm until hestumbled across a hut and inside foundan Army field phone! "Man, that was thehairy part," he remembers. "I stared at thatdamned phone for 10 minutes, wonderingif it was connected to anything, before Igot the nerve to pick it up."

Bemis was lucky and found himselftalking to an operator who connected himwith CAT in Lanchow. His convenient"phone booth" turned out to be a remnantof Chennault's wartime early-warning netthat had never been disconnected.

In spite of the hazards, the pilotswouldn't have worked for anybody exceptCAT. In many ways, they were misfits,men who couldn't stand military disciplineor the spit and polish demanded by state-side airlines. Others were on the run fromnagging wives or pregnant girlfriends.Many had served with Chennault duringthe war and were still drawn by his per-sonal magnetism and the glory and adven-ture of it all. Whatever the reason, all ofthem were more than happy when paydayrolled around. They earned a base pay of$800 a month for 60 hours in the air and$10 for each additional hour. In CATlingo, a city was "$20 away."

Certain runs were dangerous even forCAT and became bonus flights. One ofthese was CAT's famous Taiyuan airliftin which they kept that north Chinaindustrial city completely supplied fornine months as the Reds drew a siege linetighter and tighter around it. Old MarshallYen kept building airfields for the CATplanes and the Communists kept capturingthem. By the end, they had run through15 landing strips, each one closer to theheart of the city, and were making 30flights a day into the place, all dangerousenough to warrant $100 bonuses (the oper-ation later served as the model for theBerlin airlift).

28

Film still depicts downed U.S. pilot captured by VC, a fate met by many CIA airmen.

"EARTHQUAKE"flaming end

, To add to the hazards, CAT men werecalled on to set down inside walled citiesor to make last-minute evacuations. BillSevert recalls his last days as CATs stationmanager in Mukden, Manchuria. "I wason the last plane out, and the lead Chi-Corn troops were already in sight on theairport road. Men offered fantastic sumsin American money to get their familiesout." The plane crew had to blind thecrowd with a spotlight to get their C-46'shatch shut. Then "they tried to drive atruck in front of us to block our takeoff.We gunned our engines down the runway,leapfrogging Chinese who knelt in ourpath, still wringing their hands and plead-ing to be saved."

Anyone who spends time in Asia willhear tales of CAT pilots auctioning off"tickets" on the last plane out of any cityand making hundresds of thousands ofdollars on a single refugee flight, but thesestories have never been proved.

The Communists steadily pushed ahead,and in 1949 the "world's most shot atairline" began evacuating Chiang's forcesto Formosa. In Shanghai, pilot FelixSmith salvaged an old Navy LST fromthe bottom of the Whangpoo River, load-ed her with CATs machine shops, and setsail for Formosa where she still sits today.

The last officialCAT flight fromthe Chinese main-land was on Janu-ary 15, 1950, whenthey flew the finalload of tin fromthe Mengtze minesin Yunnan to Hai-phong. Since thattime, CAT and AirAmerica have fre-quently returnedto Yunnan but ina very unofficialmanner.

At that point, it looked as though CATwas doomed to go broke. Formosa wasprimitive, with only five motor vehicles onthe whole island, and CAT was an airlinewithout routes or passengers. Then warbroke out in Korea and CAT was back inbusiness hauling military cargo for the UNforces. They eventually flew nearly 30%of all the Korean airlift and were back ontheir feet.

During this period, CAT also wentdeeper into the spook business for bothUncle Sam and Chiang Kai-shek. It issaid that Richard Fecteau, recently re-leased by Red China, was on a CAT planeshot down while attempting to depositCIA and Nationalist agents on the main-land.

When the Nationalists had evacuatedto Formosa, their 93rd Division had beencut off in southwest China and they fledsouth into Burma. There, they remainedintact as a fighting unit, due to Chiang'sdirection from Formosa and, they say,CATs clandestine supply flights into aban-doned World War Two airstrips. By 1951-CAT had resupplied them to the point thatthey were able to launch a 12,000-manraid back into China's Yunnan Province.

Chennault continually worried aboutthe Communist advances throughout Asiaand, in 1954, tried to form an InternationalVolunteer Group similar to his old FlyingTigers, to wage an air wag against the Redson a strictly cash basis. When he failed to

raise the necessary financial and diplo-matic support, he took CAT to Indo-China to fly cargo for the French in theirwar against Ho Chi Minh. The ForeignLegion was bottled up inside of DienBien Phu and the French desperatelyneeded CATs cargo-carrying talents tosupply them. Twenty-four CAT pilotslanded at Haiphong's Cat Si Airport todo the "dirty work" for $3,000 a monthplus bonus. Their planes were C-I 19 Fly-ing Boxcars whose U. S. Air Forceinsignias still showed throtigh the hastilybrushed on gray paint.

It was here that CATs most famouspilot, James B. McGovern, ran the show.A huge, 300-pound mountain of a man,he was called "Earthquake McG oon" (afterthe Lil Abner character) by one and all.A booming extrovert openly contemptu-ous of anyone timid, McGoon was nostranger to the Orient. As a fighter pilotfor Chennault, he had been one of thewar's last prop aces. Instead of goinghome to Elizabeth, New Jersey, he wentto work for CAT when it was first formedand rented a house in Tsingtao, next doorto Admiral Badger, CO of the US 7thFleet. As reported in the Saturday EveningPost, he first stole barrels of the admiral'sdrinking water to fill the swimming poolhe built. Then he won a troupe of White

Russian dancing girls in a poker game andfinally tapped the admiral's electricity tolight his all-night parties.

The official CAT hangout was PopGingle's bar in Hong Kong. Pop had takenhis Navy retirement there years ago, gotinto a poker game, and woke up with thedeed to the joint. Anybody who ever methim said that he looked like Sidney Green-street—fat, heavy jowls and squinty eyes,Panama hat and cane. He always hadsteaks, beer, baseball scores and countrymusic for his CAT boys, and Chennault'spicture hung in the back room. But Mc-Goon was his favorite; some claimed thatPop was the only man in all of south Chinawho could beat Mac in a belly-bumpingcontest. McGoon usually parked his enor-mous bulk in an easy chair in Pop's backroom, drinking gallons of beer andthreatening, "Someday I'm gonna quitcoming here and ruin your business."

Mac almost made good on his threatwhen he ran out of gas over Communistlines in December, 1949. His feet were al-ways bothering him, as if complainingabout the load they were forced to carry,and he would tell Bill Welk that he'd"never bail out because I'd only have towalk." True to his word, he rode his C-46down onto a dry riverbed and was immedi-ately captured (Continued on page 52)

MAN'S MAGAZINE

". . Anything but fried chicken!"

CIA's War

(Continued from page 29)

As soon as Pop heard about it, he raised$100,000 and gave it to Chennault withinstructions to "Use it all if you have to,but get my boy back."

No one knows if it was Pop's ransommoney that did the trick or not, but sixmonths later, Mac walked into Gingle'sscreaming for a beer. He didn't rememberuntil 24 hours later to notify CAT that hewas all right and that "the goddam Com-mies couldn't afford to feed me." As thenews flashed through the Orient, beerglasses were raised from Tokyo to Singa-pore.

The first to volunteer for Indo-China,Mac and Eric Shilling flew into Haiphongtogether and calmly wheeled an iceboxout of their C-46. "After all," they said,"you got to have cold beer if you're goingto fight a war."

So fat that he couldn't pull the yokeall the way back, Mac was known for histail-high landings, but twice a day hesqueezed himself into a C-I 19 to deliver.seven-ton loads of ammo to Genera/ De-Castries. It was a 90-minute flight follow-ed by a couple of minutes of sheer terroras they went into "the slot," a gauntlet ofCommunist anti-aircraft fire, and droppedtheir loads from only 1500 feet to insuregetting them into the ever-shrinkingFrench lines.

At night, the CAT crews hung out atHaiphong's La Marseillaise bar, unwind-ing from the day's runs and trying not tothink about their mounting casualties.

Although they were supposed to stickto flying cargo, they began to feel for theFrench troops on the ground and on April2, 1954, they loaded one of their C-1 19'swith napalm and used the lumbering cargoplane for a dive bomber to drop theirdeadly load on the Communist lines dur-ing a particularly crucial battle.

One day toward the end of April, Maclooked over Wallace Buford's flak-riddledplane at Haiphong and joked, "Somebodymust have been carrying a magnet." Aweek later, enemy machine-gun firesevered McGoon's elevator controls ashe flew through the slot, and he called over

his radio, "I seem to be having a littletrouble flying this thing." After see-sawingall over the sky on his trim tabs, he madeit back to Haiphong to tell his groundcrew, "Now I know what it's like to ride akangaroo."

Buford met him with a grin and asked,"You borrow my magnet?"

The afternoon of May 6, one day beforeDien Bien Phu fell, Mac took off in Bird2 of a six-plane flight. His copilot was Bu-ford and Mac couldn't resist telling him,"Now maybe we'll find out which one of uscarries the magnet."

Steve Kusak, called "the Polock" byMcGoon, was first through the slot. Justas he looked back to check on Earthquake,Mac called out, "I've got a direct hit. Wherethe hell are the fighters?'

His port engine was out and the leadingedge of his wing was torn up. A secondshell exploded against his right tail boomand he called to Kusak, "Steve, tell mewhich way the mountains are lowest."

"Turn right. Can you make it? Bail out.""No sweat," Mac answered. "We'll ride

her."He headed for a valley along the Nam

Dinh river, fighting for control of his shot-up plane. Then, slowly and horribly, hisC-119 skidded toward the hills, and Kusakheard Mac say, "Looks like this is it, son,"His left wingtip dug into the hillside and theplane turned a perfect cartwheel beforebursting into a ball of flame. Less than aneighth of a mile ahead was a clearing wherehe could have safely put dokvn.

When Pop's phone rang just after mid-night, he answered and said, "You don'thave to tell me. It's Mac, isn't it?"

After Dien Bien Phu fell, most of theplanes were shifted to flying anti-Com-munist refugees south to Saigon, but ayoung CAT pilot named Richard Popewas packing to leave. War correspondentRichard Tregaskis had ridden the slotseveral times with Pope and asked himwhere he was going now.

"I don't know. I guess I'll do a littletiger hunting," he answered. A few monthslater, it became apparent what kind of"tigers" Pope and a handful of other CATpilots were hunting. They turned up in ananti-Communist rebellion in Indonesia,flying B-26 bombers for the rebels. Pope

was shot down and spent long months asa "guest" of Sukarno.

Most people speculate that it was aboutthis time that the CIA stepped into thepicture. Among other things, CAT wasreorganized to give birth to the offshootcalled Air America. The old CAT stayedlegitimate for the most part, flying com-mercial passenger traffic throughout thePacific, and Air American took over theundercover part of the operation. Thewhole operation is such a tangle of phonycorporations that it's hard to tell just whocontrols what, but it appears that both theNationalists and the CIA were involvedfor a while and one rumor even has itthat Madame Chiang has a personalinterest in the deal.

Chennault died of cancer and controlpassed to a group of ex-Pan Am pilotsheaded by George Doole in Washingtonand Hugh Grundy in Taipei. Air Americagot deeper and deeper into the secret warsbeing fought in Southeast Asia and, in1958, North Vietnam began complainingabout civilian planes invading their air-space. It is claimed that these were AirAmerica C-47s on CIA missions. At thesame time, China complained of U.S.-supplied Nationalist Chinese special forcescamps in Yunnan Province. Again, AirAmerica is mentioned as their source ofmen and munitions.

In 1959, retired Admiral Felix Stumptook over as board chairman of AirAmerica and moved the operation intoLaos, where a new war was starting tobrew. As far as is known, the first Laoscasualty for the company occurred in1960 when one of their planes was shotdown over the Plain of Jars. The copilotturned out to be the son of C. HolfingtonTong, Nationalist China's ambassadorto Washington.

Air America quickly became the un-official air force of the Laotian govern-ment fora few reasons. The Laotians didn'thave a prayer of forming an air force oftheir own, and Americans can't serve inthe armed forces of a foreign governmentwithout losing their citizenship. Also, ifan American military plane is shot downover a hostile country, the enemy has amarvelous "incident" to publicize. If a"civilian" plane goes down, the enemycan't complain to anyone but the com-pany. The easiest solution to the wholemess was to hire the Air America gal&who'd do anything as long as the pricewas right.

Things really got spooky in Laos and thecompany had a hard time maintainingtheir civilian cover. They flew a large fleetof choppers and one of their pilotsclaims, Most of my missions were givento me directly by CIA agents in Vientiane."As the scale of operations grew, the origin-al group of former CAT pilots had morebusiness than they could handle and thecompany began recruiting pilots. Or, assome say, shanghaiing pilots.

"I was a Marine chopper pilot based onOkinawa," explains a blond, 30-year-oldAir America man. "CAT came throughlooking for flyers. I thought I was going tobecome an airline pilot when they hired me.I resigned my commission, went to Taipeifull of dreams about being a civilian jetjockey, and a couple of weeks later, foundmyself hedge-hopping a Sikorsky throughground fire north of Vientiane. Sure, Icould have quit on my three-year contract,but I came out of the service broke. So

52

•

Age

■lierS I stay, flying the missions asordered."

Laos is a strange place, populated bydifferent tribes who all believe they cameout of a pumpkin thousands of years ago.The country's major exports are gold andopium, and palace revolts are so common,the pilots often don't know who will bepaying them.

One of the old CAT men tells, "Half thetime when we heard shooting, it meantcombat. The other half was for localfestivals. I woke up one morning in Vien-tiane with all hell breaking loose. I grab-bed my .45 thinking the Pathet Lao (PL)had finally taken the city, but it was onlythe start of the three day Boun Banxfestival. Naturally, both sides completelystopped the war to celebrate it. And theArmy fired thousands of rounds of starshells to illuminate the festivities. It al-most would have been safer flying againstPL flak."

The really strange thing is that, at onepoint, the Russians were also flying trans-ports into the Plain of Jars to supply thePL side, and they'd often pass Air Americaplanes along the way. On one occasion, anAir America pilot was searching for a holein the monsoon cloud cover to make hisdrop when he spotted a Russian doing thesame thing The American spoke a littleRussian and asked them for an altimetersetting. They willingly gave him a readingand both went on to make their drops sothe troops below could kill each other foranother day.

Wattay Airport outside of Vientianebegan to look like Air America head-quarters until part of the operation wasshifted to the Long Chieng base of Generalyang Pao. An Air Force officer who flewin there once told this author that some ofthe planes he saw on the strip had sets ofinsignia and the crews swapped them likelicense plates on a car so that the planecould claim any of several identities.

The Air America crews have done theirbest to make themselves at home in thisout-of-the-way spot. The Vieng Rattay

ibar has good booze and the city is full oflithe, young prostitutes. "Even if you hada mission in the morning, you drank be-cause you knew that at least the boozewas pure," says one veteran of the scene."The local drinking water from the muddyMekong was so lousy, we paid a dollar aquart for imported, tinned drinking water.Everything in town closed up by 10 PMexcept bars and opium dens."

On duty, even the country itself is anenemy. Mountains are often a thousandfeet higher than the charts show and sud-den monsoon storms spring up out ofnowhere. Pilots regularly have to copewith shot-out engines, emergency evacua-tions, and making takeoffs while 2,000pounds overweight with an escaping Laogeneral, his staff and concubines and PLmortars hammering the strip.

One pilot trying to get out of Ban NamBoc was homfied to find a PL artillerybarrage open up just as he began to taxi.The Lao ground troops panicked and rush-ed the plane trying to get aboard. "We hadto taxi right through them to get out," he

salie chopper pilots earn their pay thehard way, often flying behind enemy linesto rescue people. In the early days, theyused old Sikorsky H-34s that the Marineshad already worn out before they got them.The book says that the H-34 can go to

5,000 feet with 18 men aboard, but AirAmerica pilots have never been known topay much attention to the book.

"I've had my bird up as high as 14,000feet," says a nervous, chain-smoking pilot,"and as many as 20 guys in the cabin.Sometimes, the only way I could getairborne was by bouncing the ship up, likea kid getting higher and higher off atrampoline. I constantly flew with engineRPMs way past the red line.

"It's no wonder we lost so many shipsin Laos. Our navigational checkpointsused to be 'this crashed copter here' or'that one over there.'

"When we hauled troops in, they'd pileout with rifles, machine guns, sacks ofrice, cooking pots, loaves of bread—whilethe PL fired away at us. It was a helluvajob, let me tell you."

Even refueling is ticklish in this part ofthe world. They use C47s to spot 55-gallonfuel drums at all the isolated strips. If youmust put down at one, you have to handpump the gas into your bird while localtnbesmen watch ... and you wonder, arethey friendly or enemy? Are they civilizedor are they some of the head hunters thatstill roam the region?

Casualties have mounted as the Com-munists teach the PL to sit on mountain-tops with 20-and 40-mm AA guns andfire down at low flying Air America planes.Their instructions are "to kill the metalbirds."

Of the many Air America crews listedamong the missing, only one is known tohave survived capture to return. In 1961,Ed Shore's plane developed engine troubleand went down near Ban Vieng San. Theywere quickly captured by the PL and ledoff to a jungle prison where they were kepttied to posts and displayed to the nativesfor 15 months.

"We were treated like wild animals, lock-ed in stocks, and held while Meos firedtheir guns at our cell for amusement," re-calls one of Shore's passengers.

Finally released at Wattay Airport dur-ing a truce, the Air America men werequickly hustled aboard a plane for theStates and have never talked about theirordeal.

Although Air America is highly visiblewherever you go in Asia, its pilots' most

'daring exploits are cloaked in officialsecrecy. Yet, if you hang around that arealong enough, you begin to put the piecestogether. An Air Force officer speculates,

Thailand is dotted with airstripsthat are beautifully maintained. I wouldn'tbe surprised if they were flying right intoChina from some of them."

Although some 23 years have passed,the shadowy Chinese Nationalist GeneralLi Mi still commands several thousandtroop's from his old mainland 93rdDivision. They operate in the triangulararea formed by the junction of Burma,Thailand and Laos and are regularlyaccused of crossing over into China'sYunnan Province (remember, they areofficially still at war with Mao) and raidingChiCom camps—with Air Americasupport.

Experienced observers go even furtherin their listing of Air America activity,crediting them with flying agents in andout of North Vietnam, putting U. S.Special Forces teams behind the lines inLaos, parachuting . infiltrators into Cam-bodia, and supplying a myriad of secretbase camps along the North Vietnam—

MEN' WOMEN ! help thosewho can ' t he/ti themselves'

Tram Al Home InSpare Time to he a

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'Address City State---Pe

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• China border that are jumping off pointsfor commando raids into enemy territory.• Joe Maggio, a fiercely aggressive ex-CIA spook and Congo mercenary, claimsto have been part of a team that was trans-ported into North Vietnam by Air Americain the early Sixties. "We were taken in byone of their choppers, and after we'd com-pleted our mission, they picked us up andtook, us back out," he says. "Those guyswere flying all over North Vietnam inunarmed choppers and old C-46s." • '

TerryWolkerstorfer, an ex-Special Forcescaptain with two tours in Vietnam's delta,talks of the CIA-run Special OperationsGroups, bands-of spooks made up of both

• U.S. and foreign agents. "They carriedSwedish K submachine-guns with silen-cers and were hauled around behind thelines by Air America. The whole outfit isweird. They say that one of their agentscracked and went over the hill a whileback. He completely disappeared. But afew months later, an Air America guy wasdoing a job in the Congo and spotted thisdeserter working there as a mercenary. Heknew too much to be running around

• loose; so they quietly, :kidnaped him and• shipped him back to the States.

When Air America began recruitingpilots from the military, they added newskills to the "company" that were put towork in the Laotian fighting as far back as1964. At that time, the U.S. still wasn'toffitially involved, and some of the AirAmerica pilots abandoned their cargoplanes to fly T-28 fighter-bombers in coin-,bat for the Laotian government.

Perhaps the most interesting "work"that Air America has undertaken, how-ever, was their involvement in the rebellion

in Tibet. Bob Miller, an old hand in Asia,told this author, "As recently as 1966 theCAT-Air America boys were regularlyrunning to Tibet in C-46s to resupplyrebels there that Chiang had stirred up.'

The recently published Pentagon Papersconfirm this story. General Ed Lansdale,an experienced Asian CIA man, said,"CAT has ...-more than 200 overflights ofmainland China and Tibet. It appearsthat the Nationalists grand scheme was to, coordinate and lead twin rebellions inTibet and Yunnan. •

The deeper you look, the more yourealize that the Air America organizationis into almost every aspect of Asian airoperations. They provide plane.crewl forAir Vietnam, and columnist Jack Ander-son claims that the planes of anotherAsian outfit, Southern Air Transport,are actually Air America craft with a newpaint job.- Most Air America planes are old C-464and -C-47s built during World War Two,but they're beautifully maintained andprized for their durability. Others arespecially built jobs that can land on grassstrips only 250 feet long, C-123 cargoplanes of the type used by the Air Force,.a fleet of Huey helicopters and a recentlyspotted four-engine Constellation . with"strange humps" in the fuselage that looksvery much like the electronic spy planethe Navy uses.' Unusual aircraft for acivilian airline.

Doole has just been replaced as head ofAir America, but before he left, he hedgedhis answers when questioned about hiscompany's business. "I don't know all ofour customers' private business and re-lations," he said. "We carry people andthings—whatever the customer has for us."

Others in the company are less cigy 4about what they do. Saigon station chiefE. J. Theisen says, "I guess we carry abouteverything except bombs under ourwings." Even that is doubted by some,but Theisen does admit that the super-secret SOG groups use Air America fortheir in-country transportation. These, arethe guys you see getting out of a plane onsome God-forsaken strip, dressed in -uni-forms without insignia, and carrying gunbags that take a form suspiciously like that

I of the Swedish K.Vietniane station manager Jim Cun-

ningham will only say, "We operate on ayou-call, - we haul basis. We ,don't go intodetails."

Strangely, one of the members of AirAmerica's board of directors is a veryprominent Boston lawyer. An ex-AirForce officer, he says that he "got to knowsome of the CAT operating personnel andwas invited to join the board. Air Americahandles mostly CIA charter work. It's avery well run airline." Evidently, it's adamned well run airline. They supposedlyshow a $10,000,000 profit every year.

So America's flying foreign legion flieson. In fact, as the official U.S.'presence inAsia shrinks, Air America is stepping in tofill the void in its "unofficial" manner, andthey're busier than ever before.

Wherever they go, whatever they do, •they earn their keep by doing what nobodyelse would touch with a ten-foot pole. InTaipei, a statue of the "old man," ClaireChennault, looks out over New Park andhe has a satisfied look on his face. as thoughhe knows that the outfit he left behind willalways live up to its motto: "Anything,anytime, anywhere—professionally." •