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Last Updated March 26, 2005

This article first appeared in the Lafayette Advertiser on May 8, 1999

The Secret War Air America Pilots tell of their time in Southeast Asia

By Judy Stanford
Staff Writer

They transported food and medicine, military advisers and refugees through hostile territory in Southeast Asia. They flew medivac missions and rescued downed American pilots. They often did it under fire, even though they were civilians. They have passed almost into legend to be romanticized and glorified and, many say, vilified in the media and in the movies. They were the pilots of Air America. And many of them want to set the record straight. 

“Our work was humanitarian,”  said former Air America pilot Allen Cates, who now owns a local oilfield service company. The airline operated in Vietnam and Laos throughout the Vietnam War.

 “We supported the military with supplies, we fed a lot of people, we rescued a lot of people. The war would have happened whether we had been there or not,” he said. Cates flew for Air America from 1966 to 1974 and is now president of the Air America Association. He added that the airline also did parachute drops of emergency food supplies, like rice, and was used as a courier service by the military.

 The cloud of controversy surrounding the airline revolves around the fact that it was owned by the Central Intelligence Agency. The airline operated in such hot spots as Vietnam and Laos during the 1960s and early ’70s. Most of its pilots were combat veterans from the Korean War and the ongoing war in Vietnam.  

“Air America’s presence in Vietnam was greater than history allows or tells about,” said Cates, who had earlier served as a Marine Corps helicopter pilot in Vietnam.  Cates and his longtime friend, L.J. Broussard, another former Air America pilot, have coordinated a reunion of the Air America Association, currently being held at the Holidome. Broussard now flies for UPS during the winter and dusts crops locally during the summer. 

Cates began his career with Air America flying as copilot on a C-47 transport plane in Vietnam, then moved to a Palatus Porter, a turbo-prop aircraft.  Cates and other Air America pilots dislike the hot-dog image they have acquired through the media and movies like “Air America,” which starred Mel Gibson as a slightly psychotic pilot. “Air America pilots were highly trained,” Cates said.  Cates downplays the action in Vietnam. “People were occasionally hit by groundfire,” he said, “but for the most part, it was almost like a corporate aircraft operation.” But not exactly. 

Broussard, a veteran of the Korean War, remembers why he initially signed up. “Actually, I went for the excitement,” he said. “The money was good, but I think people would work for half as much, just to be there. ” Broussard said the flying could be perilous, especially over Laos. “Sometimes, I felt like a duck on the opening day of duck season,” he said.  Two hundred forty-three pilots lost their lives on the job.

 “It was the hairiest flying in the world,” said actor/producer Monte Markham.  “It was the best flying.” Markham, whose late brother, Jess Markham, was an Air America pilot, is attending the reunion, working on a documentary on the airline and its pilots for the History Channel. Markham’s production company, Perpetual Motion, has produced a number of documentaries, including A&E’s Biography series and various documentaries for the History Channel, most of which he narrates himself. “They’d fly up and land on 100-yard landing strips surrounded by tree trunks,” he said. “They all say it was the best flying they had done. All of  them were superb — otherwise, they couldn’t have survived.” Cates and his fellow pilots take exception to the myth that they were couriers for the Asian drug trade.  “There was a mandate,” Markham explained, “that if you’re hauling drugs, you’re out of here.”  Cates pointed out that the airline was the first to use drug-sniffing dogs. But that didn’t necessarily mean that they couldn’t have occasionally carried contraband cargo. “They would load and land and they’d deliver,” Markham said. “But they never did it knowingly.” 

In Laos, Air America engaged in para-military operations in what some call the Secret War, in the attempt to keep the country from falling into Communist hands.  Although the war itself may not have been a popular one, the pilots say they would like to be remembered for the good they did in Southeast Asia — like evacuating entire villages to safer areas.  “I think everybody got self-satisfaction when we evacuated people when we knew they’d get killed if we didn’t,” Broussard said. “We’d move them from one mountain to another.”

While military personnel spent only year-long tours of duty in Vietnam, the commercial pilots lived and worked in that part of the world for years at a time. Cates’ wife, Lucette, and Broussard’s wife, Brenda, and their children lived there with them. It was home.  That kind of stability was often an advantage in doing their jobs. Although the United States was not at war in Laos, planes flying over the country were often shot down. “You got to know the country well,” Broussard said. “Air America pulled a lot of American pilots out of there. We knew the country and when they got shot down, we could get in and out without getting shot down.” 

But sometimes, their civilian status could be a disadvantage.  Cates remembers responding to a report of an American plane going down over Laos.  “If we had waited for the military, we knew he would be captured,” Cates said. “We landed, but he wouldn’t get on the helicopter, because the helicopter was unmarked and we were in civilian clothes. He thought he was being captured by the enemy.” At the time, there was a Soviet presence in Laos.  “We took a lot of ground fire getting out,” Cates recalled. When they finally landed safely, Cates asked the pilot his name. “He gave his name, rank and serial number. He was scared to death.” 

Air America continued to work behind the scenes in Southeast Asia and was a major force in evacuating Americans from Vietnam during the fall of Saigon in 1975. “They were flying offshore,” Markham said, “and landing on carriers, then pushing the helicopters off the carriers.” Cates added, “They kept going back (for evacuees) until they ran out of fuel.” 

Former Air America pilots find it irksome that their part in that lifesaving mission is almost invariably ignored.  The scene that has become the symbol of those last days was actually an Air America operation. The helicopter hovering over what most believe is the American embassy in Saigon (“It was the Pittman Apartments,” Markham explained) was an Air America helicopter.  “We were part of the history of that era,” Cates said, “and we just want it to be written correctly to show what we did do.  “It was a humanitarian effort and many of our pilots paid a terrible price for it.” 

Sidebar:

1950 - In August 1950, the Central Intelligence Agency secretly purchased theassets of Civil Air Transport, an airline that had been started in China after World War II by Monroe native Gen. Claire Lee Chennault and Whiting Willauer. CAT would continue to fly commercial routes throughout Asia as a privately owned commercial airline. At the same time, under the corporate guise of CAT Inc., it provided airplanes and crews for secret intelligence operations. 

1953 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized CAT pilots to assist the French against Communist insurgents in Vietnam. Flying Air Force C-119s, CAT made 682 airdrop missions to French forces between March and May 1954. It continued to support French troops and evacuated 19,808 refugees out of North Vietnam. 

1955 - CAT became involved in the United States Operations Missions, an effort to render economic assistance to Laos, considered a key to containing Communism in Asia, under the domino theory. For its first mission, CAT delivered 1,000 tons of food to Laotians during a rice crop failure. This was the beginning of the airline’s permanent presence in Laos.  

1959 - The name of the airline was changed from CAT to Air America. The same year, a United States Special Forces Group took up duties in Laos.  The CIA also added helicopters to the fleet in Laos, primarily to carry CIA case officers to meetings in outlying areas and to distribute leaflets during elections. 

1960 - Civil war broke out between right-wing and Communist factions in Laos. While U.S. Special Forces advisers trained right-wing troops to fight against the Communist Pathet Lao, Air America stepped up its efforts to transport supplies to the country from Bangkok. It later transported weapons and provided support to the United States-trained Hmong tribespeople. 

1963 - Air America began to engage in search-and-rescue missions for downed American pilots in Laos, which, according to the 1962 Geneva conference, was officially considered neutral territory, even though the North Vietnamese Army had invaded the country. By 1965, United States involvement in “Secret War” in Laos had stepped up considerably. 

1972 - The CIA was ordered to divest itself of the airline at the end of the war in Southeast Asia.   

1973 - The Paris agreement, providing for the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, was signed. Of the 243 Air America employees who died during its existence, 100 of them lost their lives during the last three years of the war.  

1974 - Air America ended its operations in Laos. 

1975 — Air America assisted in the evacuation during the fall of Saigon. 

1976 - Air America shut down all its operations permanently.

Source: William Leary, professor of history at Georgia State University, from the Air America Association Web site. 

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