ahead with the equipping of two thousand more “Meos.” That brought to eleven thousand the number of mountain men of Laos recruited into the CIA’s covert army.[109] From Kennedy’s standpoint, he was supporting an indigenous group of people who were profoundly opposed to their land’s occupation by the Pathet Lao army. He was also trying to hold on to enough ground, through some effective resistance to the Pathet Lao’s advance, to leave something for Averell Harriman to negotiate with in Geneva toward a neutralist government. But he was working within Cold War assumptions and playing into the
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