> I might have met this man back in the late '90, somewhere in St.
> Paul? Have you guys met him?
> ---------------------------------------
> Cloak & Dagger
>
> Why did a Hmong-American hatch a plot to violently overthrow the
> government of Laos? And how did he get so close to so many Wisconsin
> politicians?
> by Jessica McBride
> Monday 10/29/2007
>
> Watch who you trust, warned Gary George.
>
> They sat in the upscale Grafton home of the once-formidable Milwaukee
> lawmaker, with its scenic view of Lake Michigan. They made an unusual
> pair. George was then on parole, still finishing out a federal
> sentence. Lo Cha Thao was a Hmong political operative who was
> allegedly plotting to violently overthrow the communist government of
> Laos.
>
> Thao wanted advice from his old mentor, who had employed him as a
> state-paid legislative aide back when George was a Democratic state
> senator. Throughout the spring of 2007, Thao had been meeting with an
> arms dealer who might provide weapons to a group interested in waging
> this surreal, overseas revolution.
>
> But could they trust the dealer? Would he tip off federal law
> enforcement agents? Or was the arms dealer himself a covert CIA
> operative, suggesting the CIA secretly approved of the Hmong action.
>
> George doubted the latter. He knew how government sting operations
> worked. He had, after all, been nabbed by one, convicted for a
> complicated kickback scheme involving state funding and accused of
> having his Senate staffers do work for a Virgin Islands TV station
> owned by his relatives. It would be wiser to exchange any money with
> the seller in international waters, George advised Thao.
>
> And if the arms dealer was a federal agent? They make you feel
> comfortable, George warned. Then, they get you.
>
> Undeterred, Thao rendezvoused again a few weeks later with the arms
> dealer in a Sacramento, Calif., bar-and-grill. The plan was to support
> remaining Hmong resistance fighters in Laos. They were on the run from
> Communists, the atrocities against them chronicled on YouTube - women
> raped and hanged from trees, children disemboweled.
>
> Two other Hmong and a 60-year-old Vietnam veteran named Harrison
> Ulrich Jack, a retired lieutenant colonel in the California National
> Guard and a Homeland Security contractor, joined them. Jack seemed an
> unlikely warrior, with his bland beige suits and wire-rimmed glasses.
> But he owed the Hmong from back in his fighting days in Vietnam.
>
> The dealer pulled out satellite images of Laos, downloaded from
> Google. Twenty-four mercenaries stood ready, he said. Thao displayed
> maps. They'd previously discussed the needs: AK-47s, light anti-tank
> weapons, Claymore mines. He wanted seven or eight buildings blown up,
> like "September 11th," Thao said.
>
> "Colonel Jack can be my prime minister," he joked.
>
> Although some of the plotters suspected the agent worked for the
> government, that gave them comfort. The Hmong, after all, had been
> secret allies of the U.S. in the Vietnam War days, and they expected
> sympathy for another covert anti-communist effort to bring democracy
> to Laos.
>
> But this was a different era, rife with hostility to anything
> suggestive of terrorism, and the men who had once been American
> freedom fighters, or whose fathers had been, were about to be arrested
> as terrorists.
>
> As George had suspected, Thao and his confederates had walked into a
> trap. It was a sting operation by the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
> Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the arms dealer was one of theirs.
> The meetings had been taped and the phones tapped. In an 88-page
> indictment, the government alleges that Thao, Jack and eight other
> Hmong-Americans - including Gen. Vang Pao, a revered former general in
> the Laotian army who'd led the secret CIA war in the 1960s and '70s -
> violated the U.S. Neutrality Act and conspired to kill, maim or injure
> persons in a foreign country. George was named (but not indicted) in a
> federal affidavit that details his alleged conversations with Thao.
>
> It was a "shocking" story, some news accounts suggested. There is talk
> of getting Clint Eastwood interested in a movie. And some are now
> calling Thao the "Hmong Jack Bauer," alluding to the heroic
> counterterrorism operative in the TV series "24."
>
> But why the connection to Wisconsin? It was perhaps inevitable, given
> this state has the nation's third-largest Hmong population. But it's
> surely one of the oddest political stories the state has ever found
> itself party to, a cloak-and-dagger intrigue worthy of a Robert Ludlum
> novel.
>
> For Lo Cha Thao was more than simply a protégé of Gary George. He had
> bipartisan allies, having worked for former Republican state Sen.
> Robert Welch as well as car dealer Russ Darrow when Darrow ran for
> U.S. Senate. His paramilitary youth group received funding from then-
> Attorney General Jim Doyle, now Wisconsin's Democratic governor, and
> Thao claims associations with former Republican congressman and
> current Ambassador Mark Green, which Green's spokesman denies.
>
> Thao was also close to former state Sen. Dave Zien, the madcap Eau
> Claire Republican known for his motorcycle riding and underground home
> shooting range. Zien insists he's the one who first suggested Thao
> should bring weapons into his overseas effort during a meeting the two
> had at a McDonald's parking lot in Eau Claire.
>
> The 34-year-old Thao, it seems, well understood a fundamental
> principle of American politics: Association to power often matters as
> much as power itself. Indeed, as he sits under house arrest, released
> on more than $2 million bail posted by fellow Hmong who pooled their
> houses as collateral, Wisconsin observers are asking about this
> political Zelig: Who didn't Lo Cha Thao know? And just how much did
> these officials know about him? It may well be the political question
> of the year. It's certainly the strangest.
>
> It was back in the mid-1970s,immediately after the U.S. withdrawal
> from Vietnam, that Hmong began immigrating in large numbers to this
> country. The connection between the Hmong and the United States goes
> back more than four decades.
>
> In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy and the U.S. military,
> then officially serving only as advisers to South Vietnam, were
> looking for ways to covertly disrupt the supply lines of communist
> North Vietnam. The U.S. was also concerned about North Vietnamese
> encroachment on Laos, the land-locked country next door to Vietnam,
> which was then ruled by a non-communist government.
>
> The regular army of Laos had proved ineffective against the North
> Vietnamese. So the CIA turned to the Hmong in Laos. The word Hmong
> literally means "free." In Laos, the Hmong, who had migrated from
> China, had no written language, prayed to shamans and used horses as
> primary transportation.
>
> Though America had signed an international accord promising to stay
> out of Laos, the CIA's Bill Lair secretly recruited Vang Pao to lead
> the irregular army of about 30,000 - including child fighters -
> trained and funded by America.
>
> Hugh Tovar, the CIA station chief in Laos from 1970 to 1973, offered a
> slightly different chronology in a rare e-mail interview: "The prime
> minister of Laos asked President Kennedy to provide clandestine
> assistance to Vang Pao's irregulars. Kennedy assigned the task to
> CIA."
>
> Pao's army would go on to fight for almost 15 years, helping to rescue
> downed American pilots, block North Vietnamese supply lines down the
> Ho Chi Minh trail and protect American radar sites.
>
> "As the undisputed leader of the Hmong population in Laos, General Pao
> was uniquely effective, both militarily and politically," Tovar notes.
> "They were expert guerrilla fighters, organized chiefly in small
> units, specializing in ambush, night maneuvers, hit-and-run strikes,
> and intelligence collection."
>
> Among those whose lives they saved was that of Harrison Jack, an Army
> ranger who would later be asked to return the favor by joining the
> conspiracy with Thao to overthrow present-day Laos.
>
> Thao's father served as a military lieutenant for Pao in Laos. "My dad
> got shot. He's 76 years old now. He still has scars on his face and
> his legs," says Thao.
>
> A mythology grew up around Pao among the Hmong: Pao was shot by an
> assassin; Pao survived a plane crash; Pao didn't fear death; Pao was
> the savior of the Hmong people. "He was many times shot," says Hmong
> scholar Yang Dao. Over time, he became known as "the George Washington
> of the Hmong."
>
> The Hmong sacrifice for America was enormous. Half of its army died,
> says Dao.
>
> Bill Fortier, a retired military man and friend of Jack, recently
> attended a dinner party where Pao's brother recalled the Hmong losses
> in that war: "He was in tears when he told us he lost 99 of his men
> and was a sole survivor when his unit was fighting to save one
> American downed pilot. He was so emotional that everyone was in tears.
> He said the Hmong people loved America and were willing to sacrifice
> whatever it took to save the Americans."
>
> In 1975, when the Americans retreated from Southeast Asia, the
> Communists finally took over Laos, and slaughtered thousands of Hmong.
> "His (Pao's) personal commitment to the United States resulted in the
> tragedy of his own exile and the total disruption of the Hmong
> community," Tovar notes.
>
> Thousands of Hmong fled to Thai refugee camps. Thao's brother carried
> him, at age 3, through the mountains. The American government
> airlifted Pao out. Others were left behind. Ultimately, some 200,000
> Hmong fled Laos.
>
> The U.S. Catholic Conference and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee
> Services helped to sponsor Hmong immigration to the U.S. beginning in
> 1975. Heavily Catholic and Lutheran, Wisconsin became a prime
> recruiter, after only Minnesota and California. Today, the largest
> Hmong communities in the state are in La Crosse, Sheboygan, Green Bay,
> Wausau and Milwaukee.
>
> For some, there was a dark side to the almost legendary tale of the
> Hmong warriors. UW-Madison history professor Alfred McCoy published a
> 1972 book making the controversial claim that Pao was a warlord and
> heroin trafficker. McCoy says he ...
>
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