Speaking of exile operations in old Indochina, the Reagan administration's Project Democracy
experimented with an early variation on the concept. It involved using the US Action Agency, the ostensible mothership of what was left of the Peace Corps, to infiltrate weapons and exiles-turned-operatives into Cambodia to battle and monitor Vietnamese communist forces there and possibly to penetrate Vietnam itself. There is evidence that some recruits came from Little Saigon in Orange County, California and refugee camps in Thailand. Ultimately controlled by the Pentagon, this off the books endeavor served as a protoype for Oliver North's later machinations south of the border. I mentioned this to Viet Thanh Nguyen on meeting him after reading The Sympathizer. He hadn't heard of this little piece of chicanery and seemed to have derived that part of his novel from reading press accounts of seemingly independent dead enders based in Orange County who were supposedly running allegedly private spoiler games in Vietnam. Having done extensive reporting on the Project Democracy op, I have always suspected the privateers from Orange County received a bit of encouragement and possible direction from Reagan's creative spymasters.
Speaking of exile operations in old Indochina, the Reagan administration's Project Democracy
experimented with an early variation on the concept. It involved using the US Action Agency, the ostensible mothership of what was left of the Peace Corps, to infiltrate weapons and exiles-turned-operatives into Cambodia to battle and monitor Vietnamese communist forces there and possibly to penetrate Vietnam itself. There is evidence that some recruits came from Little Saigon in Orange County, California and refugee camps in Thailand. Ultimately controlled by the Pentagon, this off the books endeavor served as a protoype for Oliver North's later machinations south of the border. I mentioned this to Viet Thanh Nguyen on meeting him after reading The Sympathizer. He hadn't heard of this little piece of chicanery and seemed to have derived that part of his novel from reading press accounts of seemingly independent dead enders based in Orange County who were supposedly running allegedly private spoiler games in Vietnam. Having done extensive reporting on the Project Democracy op, I have always suspected the privateers from Orange County received a bit of encouragement and possible direction from Reagan's creative spymasters.
Jeff, that's a phot for the ages!
I’m in
Jeff, you should compile and publish a book of these little known yet significant spy and counter-espionage stories from around the world.