062601 California: Memos put twist on missing Fresnan case (Fresno Bee)

They suggest Vang fought the Lao government. 

By Michael Doyle 
Bee Washington Bureau

(Published June 25, 2001) 

WASHINGTON -- Fresno resident Michael Vang sparked an international incident when he
disappeared in Laos two years ago. 

Members of Congress called him an innocent victim and harshly denounced the socialist
Lao government. 

The Laotians' fervent hopes for better trade relations with the United States withered
in the aftermath. 
 
The State Department confronted repeated charges that it did not sufficiently care for
a man who was, after all, a simple American citizen. 

"This potentially tragic situation is an example of other problems facing the Hmong
and Laotian people," Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, said at the time, "and I
think it is time we do something about it." 

But declassified intelligence documents obtained by the Bee now suggest Vang might
have been a more complicated man than his political supporters say. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency documents suggest -- though do not prove -- that Vang
might have belonged to a resistance group actively fighting the Lao government. 

The DIA memos, obtained by the Bee under the Freedom of Information Act, refer to Vang
and Wisconsin resident Houa Ly as "amcits" -- for American citizens. Rather than being
"abducted," as Radanovich initially claimed, the memos suggest the men might have
been captured in a military encounter between government troops and those fighting the
government. 

"Sources relayed that these two amcits had been working with ethnic Lao resistance
forces, further stating that their disappearance was the result of being captured in
Laos by Lao security forces," one DIA memo from July 1999 stated. 

Vang's family said at the time that he was simply vacationing in Thailand. His wife
said on one visit to Capitol Hill that her husband was not politically active.
Thirty-six years old at the time of his disappearance, Vang worked for the Forest
Service in California. A father of four children, he had been traveling in Asia for
about four months at the time of his disappearance. 

Houa Ly's daughter further advised lawmakers that Vang and her father apparently were
kidnapped by Lao officials, either while in Thailand or after being lured across a
river into Laos. 

"My father and Vang were traveling back to Thailand to see the country they love, and
once lived in," Ly's daughter, Yer Ly, told lawmakers. "The main purpose of my
father's trip was to travel and go sightseeing, and that is all the information we
know and have." 

The Vang family could not be reached to discuss the case. 

A State Department spokesman said Friday that U.S. officials had not been able to
definitively determine Vang's fate. 

The U.S. Embassy in Laos has run an ad campaign in the country seeking information, to
no avail, and the Lao government's cooperation has not always been swift. 

"It's still receiving the department's fullest attention," a spokesperson for the
department's Bureau of Consular Affairs said Friday. "Our priority is to find out what
happened to them." 

The DIA memos note that Michael Vang is the son of Vang Pao, a legendary Hmong
military leader during the Vietnam War. 

Vang's mother, one memo further suggests, "may be" the daughter of Vang Pao's former
chief of staff. 

That suggestion is disputed by Phil Smith, a Washington representative for the Lao
Veterans of America. 

"There were a lot of accusations that Vang was doing this, doing that, but not all Lao
in Thailand are members of the resistance," Smith said Thursday. 

The DIA's sources, though, alleged that Vang and Ly had been "based ... with
approximately 40 other resistance fighters" interested in infiltrating the Lao border.
If their "infiltration had been successful," a July 1999 memo stated, Vang Pao's
former chief of staff "had intended to enter Laos as well." 

The July 1999 memo asserted that "a second group of resistance fighters" had also
moved into the Ban Huay Xay region of Laos on April 19, but that they were "ambushed
by Lao security forces" and chased back into Thailand. 

"Members of an ethnic Lao resistance group affiliated with the Hmong leader Vang Pao
have been working in the Chieng Khong area of Thailand since 1997, in order to gain
access into Laos in the Ban Huay Xay region," the DIA's July 1999 memo stated. 

The intelligence memo further noted that Vang Pao's group "is known in resistance
circles as being well funded, and for achieving success in establishing relationships,
probably through monetary inducements, with three Lao army battalions." 

The House of Representatives essentially endorsed a different version of the story. In
late 1999, the House passed a resolution that repeated the claim that Ly and Vang
"were traveling along the border between Laos and Thailand" when they disappeared
April 19 of that year. Enhanced by other accounts of alleged Lao government abuses,
the House resolution formally chastised Laos and helped squash the country's hopes for
better relations. 

Some lawmakers questioned whether there was more to the story. 

However, the socialist government of Laos has few active allies on Capitol Hill,
whereas the Hmong refugee community with large concentrated populations in areas like
the San Joaquin Valley and Minnesota enjoy influence with area congressmen. 

A June 1999 DIA memo elaborated that Vang and Ly, after being arrested "for conducting
revolutionary activity," had apparently been moved by helicopter to the capital city
of Vientiane. As of that June, the two men were said by the DIA's sources to still be
alive; but by July, sources admitted that "whether or not the two amcits are still
alive or not is unknown." 

The DIA originally stamped its memos as "classified," with warnings that they not be
distributed to foreigners. The memos further warn that the information contained is
"not finally evaluated intelligence," but rather assertions passed along by informed
sources. The identities of those sources are blacked out in the memos. 

"We continue to press the Lao government at the highest level for information," the
Bureau of Consular Affairs spokeswoman said. 

The reporter can be reached at mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com or (202) 383-0006. 

Copyright ©2000, The Fresno Bee  
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