Back Fire [Hardcover]

Roger Warner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1995

This is the story of a hidden war between the US and the communist powers in the neutral country of Laos, which led to the Vietnamese War. This book offers a full account of this conflict, based on access to previously closed files and interviews with intelligence players, military officers and government officials. The narrative describes the key Americans who trained the Laotians peasants and tribal people and led them into battle. Hill tribesmen were taught how to fly planes and guerilla raids were planned by CIA officers from thatched huts in a war overseen by the US ambassador. The book also tells of the warring Laotian princes, the general who may have dabbled in the opium trade, and the CIA operative who raised an army of 30,000 hill tribesmen and beat back the communists until the US government bureaucracy took control of his war and tore the kingdom apart. This book aims to make the puzzle of the US war in Vietnam whole and reveals how an obscure people was set on the path of achieving national identity, only to be abandoned in the wake of America's escalating conflict in Vietnam.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Between 1960 and 1973, the U.S. waged war in Laos under the auspices of the CIA. Undeclared and unreported, it cost thousands of lives and contributed to the climate of deception that poisoned U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. Journalist Warner (Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey) relies heavily on interviews with former CIA operatives and other American participants to reconstruct an operation characterized by idealism on the ground and by cynicism and misunderstanding at higher levels. Significant early successes against the Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies were wasted, according to Warner, as the U.S. sacrificed its clients for the sake of the expanding war in Vietnam. Once that conflict ended, the Laotians were left to their fate?an abandonment in cold blood that Warner considers an indelible stain on this country's reputation.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Warner, coauthor with Haing Ngor of Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey (LJ 2/1/88) and a writer for Life, Smithsonian, and other magazines, has written an extraordinary account of the war in Laos from 1960 to 1973. He introduces a colorful cast of characters, including the CIA operative from Texas who married a Thai and became an officer in the Thai police and the Hmong officer who led his people in a long and costly struggle against the Communists only to find himself resettled in Montana after the war. Warner writes of a nation that became a pawn of the great powers, a piece that could be sacrificed to draw Communist pressure off South Vietnam and act as a shield for Thailand. Early American involvement in Laos, directed toward nation-building and military advice, was replaced by an effort to Americanize the war in a way unsuited to the circumstances and doomed to failure. Given that literature on Laos is so scant, and with Warner's excellent perspective, this work is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.
Robert Andrews, Duluth P.L., Minn.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (August 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684802929
• ISBN-13: 978-0684802923
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,028,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #68 in Books > History > Asia > Laos

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From Secret to Obscure ... A Book Before Its Time, December 10, 2000

By 

Charles F. Hawkins - See all my reviews

This review is from: BACK FIRE: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and It's Link to the War in Vietnam (Hardcover)

It is disappointing to learn that Roger Warner's excellent work is now out of print. He and the publisher Simon & Schuster did a national service in producing "Back Fire: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and Its Link to the War in Vietnam." One can only hope that a softcover edition will be forthcoming.

Good history doesn't spring readily into public consciousness, no matter how well researched or written. The Vietnam War and related events still carry too much baggage for the American public to embrace easily ... perhaps in another generation this will change.

When attitudes do change (and they surely will), Warner's efforts to unravel and explain the events that transpired across Vietnam's western border in the 1960s and 1970s will provide a springboard to understanding and future research.

I found that "Back Fire" answered many questions about my own involvement in the war during those troubled times. One instance in particular that Warner recounts was the secret operation of a radar facility on a mountain in northern Laos, from which fighter bombers were vectored to targets in North Vietnam. The installation was destroyed in a desperate fight after outnumbered and unsupported defenders were overwhelmed by North Vietnamese regular troops. Later, not many miles away, a similar radar system was reestablished on a peak in the northern part of South Vietnam near the A Shau Valley. It too came under attack by enemy regulars and its defenders withdrew after a 23-day siege. (See Keith Nolan's "Ripcord: Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970.")

There are many key individuals that make up this intriguing tale. One of the most interesting is the charismatic Vang Pao, a Humong (or Meo) tribesman who rose from obscurity to lead the only effective Laotian army to fight the communists. Tragically for the Humong, when the U.S. sent combat troops to South Vietnam the CIA lost control of the air war in Laos. Subsequent mismanagement of air assets began the downward spiral of defeat for the tribesmen.

In the end, "Back Fire" is about more than just secrecy. It is about the cruel side of war and about war's illusions. It chronicles the sacrifices of small countries and naive, primitive groups to the hubris of more powerful neighbors and larger countries.

If you can get a copy of "Back Fire," do so. It will be an acquisition the military historian and history buff will not regret.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Secret War of Laos, November 23, 2005

By 

Smallchief - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Back Fire (Hardcover)

While the Vietnam war was played out on your television screens a related war in neighboring Laos took place outside the line of vision of most Americans. It was a different kind of war. In Vietnam hundreds of thousands of American soldiers tried to hold ground and kill the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops. In Laos, a few American civilians working mostly for the CIA helped the Hmong hill people fight a guerilla war against the North Vietnamese. The ragtag forces of the Hmong kept three top-notch North Vietnamese divisions tied down in Laos for more than a decade.

This unconventional war attracted unconventional people. Chief among them was Vang Pao, the charismatic Hmong general, who ranks with Massoud in Afghanistan as a genius in conducting a war on the cheap against a larger and better-armed force. The Americans helping the Hmong were a colorful lot. First and foremost was Bill Lair, the quiet, competent agent who organized the Hmong forces. Then, "Pop" Buell a middle aged Indiana farmer who came to Laos as an agricultural advisor making $75 per month and became a key figure in the war. Jerry "Hog" Daniels, a swashbucking Montana smokejumper who was Vang Pao's trusted CIA case officer, is reputedly the model for Mel Gibson's "Air America" character. Many other characters of rare quality dot the pages of this book. Laos in the 1960s and 1970s was a war that appealed to those who didn't fit into the conventional military mold.

"Backfire" is the definitive account of the secret war in Laos which ended with the withdrawal of the US -- and some would say the abandonment of the Hmong --in 1975 and the flight of tens of thousands of them to Thailand, and subsequently to the United States. This is one of the essential books on the Indochinese conflict. "Backfire" has also been published under the title "Shooting at the Moon."

Smallchief

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most amazing war story that's never been told, December 10, 2005

By 

Kent Davis "Devata Org - Khmer Studies" (Anna Maria Island, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Back Fire (Hardcover)

NOTE: This book is still in print under the title "Shooting at the Moon". That edition also features additional photos and info from the author.

Warner's history of the Laotian conflict from 1960-1975 is an amazing story of a secret war run by secret agents working for a secret agency.

Hidden behind the Vietnam War, the author reveals facts about the "secret war" that was even more critical than Vietnam at top levels of government. This book will change your understanding of modern Southeast Asian history and the magnitude of the challenges the United States faced.

What makes this book engaging, and at times absolutely riveting, is that Warner gained full access to the hidden CIA operative, Mr. William Lair, who laid the foundation for this secret American paramilitary campaign.

December 7th, 1941 is the day Lair's life changed forever. He was a 17 year old student at Texas A&M University when America was attacked. He convinced his mother to allow her only son to join the army so he could defend the ideals he grew up with in America's heartland.

He landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy with the 3rd Armored Division and fought his way to the Elbe River. There, he came face to face with Stalin's troops. He and many of his partners in arms realized that the next war, with a more fearsome enemy, had already begun. Communism was about to become a rising tide that would cover nearly half the planet.

After the war, Lair returned to Texas A&M and completed his degree. A new government agency formed less than three years earlier was on campus interviewing. Lair and his friends had never heard of it. It was called the CIA. He signed up.

In March, 1951, the CIA sent Lair to Bangkok on a seemingly impossible mission reminiscent of the opening scene of Apocalypse Now.

Lair's first and only mission was to fight communist insurgency in Thailand and in surrounding countries. He would travel, alone, to a third world nation with few English speaking people. Once there, he must organize a cadre of local fighters by any means necessary and train them in guerilla warfare. The budget was slim. Some surplus WWII weapons were available.

Lair took the job and Warner takes us on his incredible adventure.

Warner paints a fair picture of the background, situations and players in the Laotian conflict. His
individual portraits ring true but the characters worthy of respect in the book are few and far between.

The "secret war" was filled with bungling bureaucrats, deceptive diplomats, corrupt businessmen, Asian warlords, greedy opportunists and loose cannons. Warner's history of the Laos conflict accurately reads like a train that's out of control. Some mistakes seem obvious but it's hard to see exactly which things could have been done differently to shift the outcomes.

Lair, a quiet, soft spoken man, rises to his challenge to become an American Lawrence of Arabia. He raises a 30,000 man secret army of Laotian and Thai fighters that actually stops the communist war machine. Until decisions at high levels of government in the Soviet Union, Vietnam, China and the United States changed the course of history and the outcome.

Despite the fact that this war ended 30 years ago, Lair's methodology for fighting foreign conflicts holds great potential for America, even in 2005.

This book is a front row seat to an epic conflict that was all but invisible to the American public. Lair is a hidden American hero whose actions will earn your respect.