Perilous Missions: Civil Air Transport and CIA Covert Operations in Asia

by William M. Leary

Civil Air Transport (CAT), founded in China after World War II by Claire Chennault and Whiting Willauer, was initially a commercial carrier specializing in air freight. Its role quickly changed as CAT became first a paramilitary adjunct of the Nationalist Chinese Air Force, then the CIA's secret "air force" in Korea, then "the most shot-at airline in the world" in French Indochina, and eventually becoming reorganized as Air America at the height of the Vietnam War. William M. Leary's detailed operational history of CAT sets the story in the perspective of Asian and Cold War geopolitics and shows how CAT allowed the CIA to operate with a level of flexibility and secrecy that it would not have attained through normal military or commercial air transportation.

Genres: History

294 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an interesting, even occasionally fun, book about CIA proprietary Civil Air Transport, the predecessor to Air America. It offered some illuminating side-lights on post-war history in the region, and the difficulties the US faced in its struggle vs. communism once Mao was victorious etc. The twists and turns of the corporate story of the organization were somewhat arcane and dull but the stories of the missions were often exciting. CAT pilots flew missions throughout China when the Nationalists still were in power & fighting the Communists in the (post WW2) civil war, also flew into North Korea, throughout Vietnam (including to assist the French @ Dienbienphu), Laos, Burma, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand on various missions. The tension between operating an actual business and a "cover" at the same time, are explored - as well as the stress of being on-call with unexpected surges of business followed by quiet periods.

The advantage of having an airline available to carry out various "exploits" meant that the US gov did not have to admit they were helping anti-communist insurgents in various countries etc. It gave the US plausible deniability. Sometimes their planes would be repainted with the marking of other countries (such as France - when they assisted the French in Indochina). All in all, the book would be interesting for anyone who wants to find out more about our efforts with respect to Asian foreign affairs in the second half of the 20th C.

Here are some quotes:

"Russian policy, [CAT co-founder Whiting] Willauer wrote to Henry R. Luce [in 1946], influential publisher of Time and Life and Willauer's longtime friend, was aimed at "communizing the world, sometime, somehow." Moscow's technique was to "proceed simultaneously on al l fronts which might somehow, somewhere, become advantageous. One thing she has in great abundance is a stable of thoroughly trained political organizers of almost all races and creeds, and the product of decades of training in her superlative political schools. Therefore unless she fears, or can be brought to fear, a serious world reaction against political infiltration, she is bound to continue to use these men throughout the world, for a variety of purposes ranging from mere observers to fomenters of open strife.""

"[CAT president Major General Claire] Chennault ... during an appearance before the Senate's Armed Services Committee on May 3, 1949 .... began by by developing at length his "domino theory" of events in Asia. Mao's victory, he argued, could result in massive Communist support for Ho Chi Minh in Indochina. After the Vietminh defeated the French, as they surely would with Chinese material assistance, an encircled Thailand would fall next. In turn, Burma and an already troubled Malaya would collapse. These losses would mark only the beginning: Chennault spoke about pressure on India and a Soviet move toward the Middle East. Japan and the Philippine Islands would be endangered. A new East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, "from the Bering Sea to Bali," would grow up under the direction of the Soviet Union. With the Pacific a Russian lake, a threatened United States would have to strike back with nuclear weapons."

"The United States, [Chennault] ... said, should send a military mission to China... American advisers would train and plan, serving in Chinese units down to the company level."

"American capability for covert activities had ended with the disbandment of OSS [Office of Strategic Services] at the end of World War II. By fall 1947, however, mounting problems with the Soviet Union made the need for a clandestine option painfully clear. The responsibility for covert psychological warfare was initially assigned to the Sate Department..."

"...William Colby recalled, "By hard word and brilliance, and by reaching widely for similarly activist OSS alumni, [Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) head Frank G. Wisner] ... [in mid-1948] started it operating in the atmosphere of an order of Knights Templar, to save Western freedom from Communist darkness -and from war.""

"One day in early July [1949], Willauer stood by the open window of an apartment on Victoria Peak in Hong Kong and watched the fog begin to roll in. He became homesick for Nantucket and his family. Reflecting on what had happened since April [with the Haiphong tin deal -- airlifting tin mined in Yunnan to Haiphong for shipment by sea to the US], he wrote to his wife: I...generally feel fine and quite relaxed now that I have been able to see the airline through two months of drastically reduced operations without losing any real money, and maybe with making modest sums. I do not personally care too much about the money end, except insofar as it will be used by others as an index of my running of things."

"...Chiang Kai-shek had issued secreted orders to..the Air Force not to assist Ma Pu-fang [in the Northwest] and was glad to see the Mohammedan armies destroyed."

"Mao Tse-tung's [1949] victory in China increasingly seemed apart of a worldwide Communist conspiracy, especially after Peking and Moscow signed a treaty of alliance on February 14 [1950]. Recognition by both Communist powers of Ho Chi Minh's revolutionaries in Indochina and the movement of arms across the border from China confirmed the worst fears of the growing number of officials in Washington who took the domino theory as gospel."

"While hoping for the eventual split between the two Communist giants, some officials in the State Department, in the wake of the Sino-Soviet pact, began to register more concern with short-term prospects than with the distant future. The JCS [Joint Che ifs of Staff], pointing out that American objectives in Asia could be archived only by ultimate success in the "vital strategic area" of China, noted evidence of "renewed vitality and apparent increased effectiveness of the Chinese Nationalist forces [on Taiwan]." Intelligence analysts at the CIA also saw glimmers of hope."

"With the air alive with talk of covert action in the Far East, OPC obviously needed a secure, deniable source of trans portion to move personnel, airdrop supplies to guerrillas on the mainland, and engage in various clandestine activities. Financial misgivings notwithstanding, CAT seemed ideal for the purpose."

"The domino theory had been accepted as fact. Military assistance programs were under way for Indochina, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Burma, and plans were afoot to send military personnel to these various countries to supervise implementation of the programs."

"Determined to counter the possible effects of the domino theory of events, the Truman administration adopted a wide-ranging course of action that included overt operations."

"The CIA, as it turned out, had acquired not only a small airline in the Far East but also the cornerstone for a vast aerial empire that would stretch around the world. The process of growth began with the Korean War."

"The Korean War should have provided full employment for CAT's idle fleet, especially when the Far East Air Force (FEAF) was struggling to meet airlift requirements, but political problems caused initial complications. The aniline's equipment continued to bear the flag of Nationalist China despite the change of ownership, and Washington's attitude toward the regime on Taiwan remained ambiguous."

"The war changed dramatically in late November [1950]. As early as November 10, intelligence sources had detected large Chinese formations north of Hamhung [in N. Korea], confirming earlier indications that a new enemy had crossed the Yalu and lay concealed in the snowy mountains of north-central Korea."

"On November 28 the Chinese struck. To the blare of bugles and the shrill sound of whistles, masses of Communist troops surged down the icy mountains, overwhelming forward units of the UN advance and throwing MacArthur's campaign into reverse."

"The surging Chinese flowed around and cut off two regimens of the First Marine Division, trapping the Americans in rugged country hard by the icebound Chosin reservoir. Thus was the stage set for the most dramatic episode of the war, with air support playing a crucial role. The beleaguered marines withstood a series of Chinese frontal assaults. Then, supplied by airdrops, they fought their way in subzero temperatures along a winding mountain road toward divisional headquarters in Hagaru. Exhausted, the two regimens reached the small village, just south of the reservoir, on December 3. Here the trapped men carved a crude airstrip out of the frozen ground that allowed Combat Cargo Command C-47s to establish a twenty-minute air shuttle between Hagaru and Yonpo, the major airfield of the Hungnam-Hamhung perimeter."

"The Chinese advance ground to a halt in early January, following the capture of Seoul. The Eighth Army regrouped south of the Han River, then resumed offensive operations in mid-February under the command of General Ridgway. After hard fighting, UN troops entered Seoul on March 15."

"Initial operations in fall 1950 emphasized the rescue of American pilots who had been shot down behind enemy lines."

"An OSS veteran with a distinguished wartime record in paramilitary operations, [Hans V.] Tofte was recruited by Wisner at the outbreak of the Korean War to take charge of OPC in Japan."

"By the end of 1950 the escape-and-evasion network was in place, the Atsugi-Chigasaki complex had been completed, and OPC had more than a thousand men in Japan."

"Tofte sent forty-four guerrilla teams and attached intelligence units into North Korea between April and December 1951. Most went by sea; some were parachuted in by CAT. Operating south of the Yalu River from Antung in the west to Rashin and Yuki in the northeast, the guerrillas sabotaged trains and ambushed truck convoys, disrupting the flew of supplies from Manchuria and eastern Siberia."

"CAT flew more than fifteen thousand BOOKLIFT missions during the Korean War, carrying twenty-seven thousand tons of supplies and mail and thousands of wounded."

"...CAT's participation in the Korean conflict became even more important following Chinese intervention. When the CIA undertook a secret war against Peking, CAT stood at the center of the action."

"OPC mushroomed as the Cold War grew hot. From 302 personnel and a budget of $4.7 million in 1949, the government's covert action arm increased to 2,812 employees and a budget of $82 million in 1952. As former CIA director Colby explained, "Under the impetus of the Korean War, at a time of fierce anti-Communist and anti-Soviet sentiment and rhetoric, covert paramilitary and political action was the name of the intelligence game.""

"As discipline and morale collapsed [after their retreat from Yunnan in July 1951], the dispirited Nationalist troops [under General Li Mi] found it less dangerous and more profitable to plunder peaceful Burmese border villages than to fight Communists."

"Anxious to confine the war to Korea, Truman had few weapons to use against the Chinese heartland. As one intelligence officer explained, "Li Mi might not have been much, but he was all we had.""

"Support of pro-Nationalist guerrillas transformed Taiwan into a beehive of CIA activities. Joseph Burkholder Smith, who joined OPC's Far Eastern Division in 1951, found the range of activities on the island "rather spectacular." The division, he recalled, "had more than six hundred persons on Taiwan, providing guerrilla training, logistical support, overflight capabilities, facilities for propaganda coverage of the mainland by radio and leaflet balloon, and doing other tasks.""

"CAT was an essential component of this paramilitary capability. As the air arm of the CIA in East Asia during the 1950s, the airline provided safe, secure, deniable transportation for a variety of covert projects."

"[In May 1951, the CIA hired Clarence Schildhauer to manage CAT. Schildhauer] ...came from Pan American, known throughout the industry for its arrogant and intolerant attitude toward lesser airlines."

"On he twenty-sixth [of April 1954 at Dienbienphu] the French lost two B-26s, brought down from ten thousand feet by radar-controlled weapons, and a C-47. In all, enemy guns destroyed eight aircraft in April and inflicted major damage on forty-seven others. As French positions shrank, creating a smaller drop zone, the situation could only worsen."

"CAT pilots flew some 682 airdrop missions [during Dienbienphu]... Day after day, they had risked their lives on combat operations. "Every C-119 Flying Boxcar that we have in Indo-China," Fairchild Aircraft's technical representative reported, "is marked with battle damage, some not as bad as others, but they show that they have gone through hell.""

"Despite rumors to the contrary, the pilots were not well paid for the hazardous work; basic pay ranged from $800 to $1,000 for sixty flying hours a month with a combat bonus of $10 an hour. The CIA might have owned the airline, but the pilots were not considered government employees and therefore were not eligible for the benefits that went with federal service. They flew though the flak-filled skies over Dienbienphu out of patriotism, personal pride, and because the espirt de corps that Chennault earlier had nurtured in the American volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) had passed over to CAT. At times strained, the "CAT spirit" never broke."

"The Geneva Agreement, signed on July 21, 1954, divided Vietnam roughly along the seventeenth parallel. As the French left, the Vietminh would assume control of the northern half, leaving Ngo Dinh Diem to establish a non-Communist government in the south."

"Headed by Edward G. Lansdale, the SMM [the CIA's Saigon Military Mission] had entered Indochina after Dienbienphu to organize resistance to the Vietminh. While one team established bases in the south, another set up stay-behind paramilitary networks in the north."

""The northern SMM left with the last French troops," Lansdale observed, "disturbed by what they had seen of the grim efficiency of the Vietminh in their takeover.""

"In August [1952] two thousand troops [of Nationalist General Li Mi] made a foray from Mongyang [Burma] into Yunnan [China]. They were beaten back into Burma within a week. Li Mi returned permanently to Taiwan in October 1952, turning over command to General Liu Kuo-chuan."

"CAT began Operation REPAT from a short, grass airstrip at Lampang in northern Thailand as soon as the morning ground fog cleared on November 9 [1953]. Appropriately, Chief Pilot Rousselot, who had delivered the initial load of arms and ammunition to Li Mi in February 1951, was at the controls of the first evaluation flight."

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-researched and sympathetic history of Civil Air Transport, part of a planned trilogy on American aviation proprietaries in Asia (disappointingly, Leary’s planned volume on Air America has yet to be published). Leary details the origins of CAT, its founding by Chennault and Willauer, its involvement in the Chinese Civil War, and its rescue from bankruptcy by the CIA, who were interested in using the aircraft for their own operations but had little idea how to really manage it.

Leary details CAT’s involvement in CIA operations in Korea, China, and Indochina, but he does not cover operations in Tibet in much detail (however, Kenneth Conboy gives this the right amount of treatment in his excellent CIA's Secret War in Tibet. Nor was there much information available at the time of the book’s publication on CIA activities in Indonesia; see Conboy’s Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958).

Still, it would have been nice if Leary looked at the political background and how government funds were spent on the airline, an issue he hints was detrimental but never really explores. He does however, detail the airline’s attempts to escape financial disaster, and how much of a boon the Agency’s acquisition of the airline was (while at the same time an administrative headache for the rest of the US government). The conflict between operational advantages and administrative complications was never entirely resolved. Leary’s history may seem too uncritical, but you’ll have to see Leary’s endnotes for that.

Still, a well-researched, well-written history of CAT.

[Ken Hamner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This subject is interesting but the book wasn't as good as I thought it would be.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, thoroughgoing coverage of a little-known slice of history.

[Patrick Kerr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting history of CAT.