 This is the battlefield in Laos. These are government troops supported and financed by the United States, fighting and losing ground to communist troops, many of them from North Vietnam, fighting in remote mountains in an obscure corner of Asia. It looks and sounds familiar. Just when the United States is gradually pulling out of Vietnam, there is a rush of concern that Laos may become another Vietnam. Not so says the administration and says why. Well, the President won't let it happen, that's why. I mean, we have learned one lesson and that is that we're not going to fight any major wars in the mainland of Asia again. We're not going to send American troops there. And we certainly are going to do it unless we have the American public in the Congress behind us. But the assurances from the secretaries of state and defense now from the President himself have not silenced congressional concern. This whole problem gets down to the fact that for the last year or so, we've been heavily de-escalating the undeclared war in Vietnam. At the same time, we've been heavily escalating not only the undeclared, but the undisclosed war in Laos. And this is the type and character of development in a democracy that I think could be very, very dangerous indeed. The concern of the Congress, the dilemma of the administration, the situation in the never-never land of Laos. These are the subjects of our broadcast tonight. Laos. America's not-so-secret war in Asia. Reported by Charles Collingwood. What, when, where, why? Piece by piece, the story of the American involvement in that war in Laos is coming out. Friday, the President reported 67,000 North Vietnamese troops now there. Yesterday, the White House said that it will issue a regular, up-to-date account of U.S. casualties in Laos. Today, American jets from Thailand and from carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin continued to fly a heavy schedule of missions against the North Vietnamese and Pothet Laos, whose vanguard has now pushed to within 14 miles of the royal capital of Luang Prabang. In the administrative capital, Vien Shion, the Prime Minister, Suvana Fuma, is waiting for the delivery of the peace demands of his half-brother and antagonist, the Communist Prince Suvana Vong. After years of secrecy and silence, we are now learning a lot about Laos. Less than six months ago, when the President was first asked about Laos, he left more unsaid than he revealed. There are no American combat forces in Laos. We have been providing logistical support and some training for the neutralist government in order to avoid Laos falling under communist domination. As far as American manpower in Laos is concerned, there are none there at the present time on a combat basis. We do have aerial reconnaissance. We do have perhaps some other activities. I won't discuss those other activities at this time. That was in September. But last week, public pressure and what he called grossly inaccurate reports caused the President to discuss after all those matters in a lengthy statement. He still did not tell all. The President disclosed no precise figures on the dimensions of American air power being used in Laos, no accounting of the cost of our support estimated at several hundred million dollars a year, no definition of the degree of command as distinct from advisory functions exercised by Americans there. Inevitably, the Presidential Statement on Laos has raised many questions as many as it answered. The questions clearly derive from continued congressional and public uneasiness over the war in Vietnam. Laos is a theater of that war. It could hardly be otherwise. For a thousand miles, the borders of Laos march with those of North Vietnam. And for a further 300 miles, Laos borders on South Vietnam. That's the geographical explanation for the Ho Chi Minh Trail, along which President Nixon says, the great bulk of the men and supplies of the war in South Vietnam are infiltrated. In addition, Laos shares 264 miles of border in the north with Communist China, and another thousand miles to the west with threatened Thailand. To its south is Cambodia. These strategic implications are clear. Any change in the status of Laos must send tremors throughout the entire area. Moreover, Laos is terribly vulnerable. Here is a country larger than Great Britain with a population of less than three million people. Whenever it suits them, the more numerous and warlike North Vietnamese can move into Laos and it's been suiting them for the last 500 years, particularly during the recent years of the war in Vietnam. To control the border areas of Laos was absolutely essential to North Vietnam's strategy. Step back only nine years in history and you find it was Laos, even more than Vietnam itself. That was the most important foreign policy problem to a newly elected president. The security of all Southeast Asia will be endangered if Laos loses its neutral independence. Its own safety runs with the safety of us all. In real neutrality, observed by all. I want to make it clear to the American people and to all the world that all we want in Laos is peace, not war. A truly neutral government, not a Cold War pawn. A settlement concluded at the conference table and not on the battlefield. Now what President Kennedy did about Laos was to get an international agreement to cool things off. When he met Khrushchev in 1961, the one thing they agreed on was not to let Laos become an active theater of war. The result was the Geneva Accords of 1962, signed by 14 countries including the United States, Russia, Communist China, and North Vietnam. These agreements provided for a neutral Laos governed by a coalition of three princes, representing the three main factions, Boon-Um, the conservative, Suvarnafong, the communist, and the neutralist Suvarnafuma, who became Premier. The agreements also called for the withdrawal of all foreign military personnel. The United States duly pulled out its 666 advisors, but the North Vietnamese only removed a token 40 of their 6,000 troops in Laos. Thereafter, Suvarnafong and the communists walked out of the coalition government, and with their patet Laos forces stiffened by increasing numbers of North Vietnamese regulars, they've been holding two-thirds of the country and a quarter of the Laotian population ever since. The purely Laotian forces on either side are generally considered mediocre and unaggressive. The best on the government side are the clandestine army commanded by General Phong Pao and fully paid, equipped, and advised by the United States. The patet Laos, although trained in North Vietnamese tactics and equipped with Russian and Chinese weapons, are not considered very formidable either. Left to themselves, the opposing Laotian forces would probably cancel each other out. The crucial factor in the equation is the 67,000 North Vietnamese regulars President Nixon says are in Laos now. In direct violation, the president says of the 1962 Geneva agreements. In spite of American equipment, advice, and above all air power, the North Vietnamese hold the military initiative in Laos today. The United States is said to be flying an average of 500 air sorties a day, sometimes as many as 20,000 a month against targets in Laos. Most of these strikes come from U.S. bases across the Mekong River in Thailand. The White House said we made our first B-52 strike last month. But U.S. air power has still not been enough to do more than slow down the North Vietnamese forces. In the past couple of weeks, they have moved deeper into government territory than they ever have. Bernard Kalb reports on the resulting situation and what it means. Laos has a way of vanishing for a few months each year. That's usually when the monsoon rains begin, about May. That's when the war dies down, when the world forgets that Laos even exists. But then, with the dry season, one side or the other starts up the war again, and Laos recurs, so to speak. And that's the situation right now. The North Vietnamese have just retaken the strategic plane of jars. These are Laos' newest refugees being evacuated just before the communists moved in. The most tragic victims of the seesaw not-so-secret war in Laos are the refugees. The official estimate is that about one out of every four Laos has been a refugee, more than 600,000 of them. Some have been refugees more than once. Laos has the most displaced national population in the world. Some of these Lao refugees were relieved to get away from the war, but there are reports that some were encouraged to go to deny the communists the manpower of these people. What goes through the minds of these refugees? While I've talked with hundreds of refugees from towns and villages all over northeast in Laos in the last six months, what they talk most about is American bombing, being told by the male soldiers of the Royal Laos government side to leave their villages, and having to do porterage that is carrying arms and food for Pathet Laos soldiers. The thing they're most concerned about is the bombing, and particularly American bombing. Until 1967, Lao bombing by T-28s outnumbered is greater than American bombing. But starting in 1968, and particularly in 1969 after President Johnson stopped the bombing in North Vietnam and diverted the jets into Laos, American bombing has been a constant day and night at fair for the refugees. They say that the planes came over all the time, shouted everything. People, cows, buffaloes, houses, rice fields, schools. They say that there were ordinary bombs, napalm, phosphorus, and anti-personnel bombs. They all say that they've lived for the last two years, mostly underground. What about American military fighter-bombers, planes operating out of Thailand, attacking North Vietnamese positions in northeast Laos? Can you comment on that? Oh, I have no comment on that at all. We are the armed reconnaissance, but that has nothing to do with bombing or anything like that. Any comment on the reports of an escalated American military commitment, reports of larger bombers, B-52s operating? Could you comment on any of that, sir? Well, I just might make a comment. We have no commitment in Laos. Our military assistance and materiel is being supplied pursuant to the request of the Royal Laos government, and in consonance with the Geneva agreement of 1962. But to any question that would request an itemization of American military involvement, what would be the official American reply here, sir? Oh, it would certainly be no comment. Thank you very much, Mr. Messing. The official American establishment in Laos is very much on the defensive on these sensitive matters. But one American reporter, based in Vientiane, recently managed to slip into Long Chang, the top-secret CIA-supported base for guerrilla operations against the communists. Basically, Long Chang is a logistics base. They fly things in there in big planes and fly them out to the front small planes. This includes soldiers. We saw half a dozen transport planes there, DC-3s, caribous. The strip can take bigger ones. We saw about a dozen T-28 unmarked single-engine propeller bombers. These are flown by Laos and male pilots, but the Americans do all the maintenance, and these planes are part of a pool that runs out of Thailand, so an American pilot will shuttle them back and forth. The real thing they want to keep secret there, most of all, is that the U.S. Air Force runs Jolly Green Giant Rescue helicopters out of there. This is an admission that the U.S. bombs Laos, I mean, you can hear the American jets roaring overhead, and they lose about 10 or 12 Americans a month here. Are there more Long Changs in Laos? Nothing as big as Long Chang, but there are these little CIA hideaways tucked in the hills. There are a lot over a couple, half a dozen or so, over on the Bolivans Plateau. These are used for trail-walking, maybe sending in some people to cause mischief once in a while. There are others up by the Chinese border. There are literally nearly, well, there are hundreds of little dirt runways in Laos, and these are used for military purposes by the United States. By controlling the arms and the money, the U.S. in effect controls the war. Buildings like these house the requirements office, which is said to be a kind of camouflaged military assistance group. There is a variety of unarmed air support provided by Air America and Continental Air Services, which are usually referred to as CIA airlines. They admit to operating more than 100 planes and helicopters, but they are not as forthcoming as to the exact nature of all their assignments. They ferry cargo and military supplies around the country. They also transport military personnel. The people of the Antion and Laos have been described as the least urgent souls on Earth. Too hurried to be desperate or frantic the way a Westerner might be in the face of crisis is looked upon with national embarrassment as a confession of human bankruptcy. The Antion is a city that can live side by side with its worst enemies. On one of the most locally expensive pieces of real estate in town, you find the official residence of the Communist Party at Laos, and its objective is nothing less than taking over the country. And not far away, another anomaly, you find the Party at Laos accomplices, the Embassy of North Vietnam. Even the North Vietnamese may be a bit perplexed to find themselves sharing a capital with the Embassy of South Vietnam just a few dusty streets away. That is Laos. What else is Laos is that you can find the Embassy of Communist China in the midst of all this. And everyone knows that P. King helped supply the guns to the Pautet Laos and to the North Vietnamese in their effort to make Laos a communist state. The great of the Antion panorama is filled with odd political economic contrasts. There are Laos who will quickly agree, but they know too that the Laos are powerless. They are very scared. They know that there is war in this country and most of them are affected. But they feel that they are not capable to influence the cause of the events. A funeral in the Antion for a cabinet minister's pilot son. It's reported by Americans here that the Laos in recent months have been losing an average of more than 10 men a day, killed in action fighting the enemy. In a country of less than 3 million people, that's a lot of war death. For the United States, one major priority in Laos has been to try to interdict the heavy flow of Hanoi's men and material down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Spilling North Vietnamese blood on the trail would save American blood in South Vietnam. But the question now is whether Hanoi will follow up its latest successful offensive in Laos. There isn't an American in the country who doesn't believe that Hanoi, if it should make that critical decision, could cut through the Royal Laos forces and the U.S. bombing and reach the Mekong River. What would the U.S. do then? Escalate in Laos? Get out? What? That is the agonizing question that North Vietnam can fling at the White House. Bernard Kalb, CBS News, The Antion. At the time of the Geneva agreements in 1962, the United States accepted Prince Suvarnathuma as Prime Minister with some reluctance. He was a neutralist, but he seemed to be more neutral on the side of the communists. Indeed, he was their candidate. Since then, he has emerged as a pro-Western nationalist. If his position is now threatened by the growing North Vietnamese strength in Laos, Suvarnathuma did not admit it to CBS News correspondent Bill McLaughlin. Despite everything, we should not give too much importance to this offensive. Of course, we have lost men. Of course, we've lost some ground. But so far, it has not exceeded the range of normal offenses. I don't think that the way North Vietnam is acting gives any indication that the North Vietnamese wish to commit the U.S. more deeply in the war in Indochina. Would you know what the extent of the U.S. military involvement in Laos is? Do you know what the United States is doing here? Yes. When me derises, we ask for material aid. We ask also for the intervention of U.S. Air Forces for surveillance against infiltration and, if necessary, to bomb the invaders. What do you think would happen to Laos if there was no U.S. air support? If we were left to ourselves, the whole country would come communist. The whole country would be invaded by North Vietnam. However, it's the duty of the United States to protect us. Are you afraid that Laos could become another Vietnam? No. What I've always sought is to prevent Laos from becoming another Vietnam. That's why I've always rejected the introduction of foreign troops into Laos. Your Highness, are you concerned about the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency in Laos? I cannot say anything about this matter. Prime Minister Suvannafouma says it is the duty of the United States to protect us. The validity of that interpretation is precisely what the current controversy over Laos is about. CBS News correspondent Marvin Kalb discussed it with some concerned senators. Senator, do you believe that the United States should be in the business of protecting Laosian independence? I do not. I don't see why 10,000 miles away we have to babysit the world and jaundom the world at the cost of many billions of dollars a month in these countries when at the same time we know how desperately we need this money for the growing domestic problems at home. But I and I think most of my colleagues wish is a disengagement of both in both Vietnam and Laos. These recent activities in Laos make us apprehensive that we're getting deeper involved there, deeper involvement. We are undoubtedly doing more to end the whole involvement than has ever been done before by the Kennedy or Johnson administrations who were building it up. Naturally, with the President's great success in de-escalating a Vietnamese war, it's essential for critics to talk about something else. Hence, they've grabbed at Laos in the hope of creating an issue there. I think this ploy is going to fail. I think it's too transparent. It's ridiculous. And in relation to our commitments in Vietnam, which are heavy and unfortunate, our commitments in Laos are of a different nature. They are air commitments to protect our troops in Vietnam. I don't know why we've fallen into an attitude in some parts of this country where we think it's all right to use 500 bombers a day against a country and then say it's a very limited operation that we're going to be careful not to put in ground forces. I might say that that's how we got started in Vietnam. We had helicopters over there and reconnaissance flights and advisers and we were given assurances that we weren't going into a land war in Asia, but we've got 500,000 men in on the ground now. The President, and I say I support him, I know that he has great problems and his choices are very limited. But I think the risk involved in taking our small number of troops out of there is so much less than the risk involved in perhaps the North Vietnamese making a larger war. I think the risk to take is to get out. Whatever may be the ultimate intentions of North Vietnam in Laos, it is clear that they have already succeeded in disturbing the mantle of calm with which President Nixon has wrapped the Vietnam debate in this country. The administration's dilemma arises from the fact that in spite of all that the United States has been able to do for Laos short of ground combat, Hanoi still holds the country at its mercy. North Vietnam can take Laos. It has been able to do so for years. It had been willing to pay the price. However, Hanoi may not be aiming at a military conquest with all its legal and moral implications and with the risk of military overextension. North Vietnam may instead be trying to create the conditions for a political rather than a physical takeover. That's what Pottet Laos, Prince Suvannath Long's invitation to discuss a new coalition government sounds like. Such a solution, if it is a solution, would present the administration with problems only slightly less painful than whether to introduce ground troops to stem the tide in Laos. A communist-dominated government in Laos would cause consternation in Bangkok and Saigon, two places where the American commitment still runs. The North Vietnamese are experts at discovering and exploiting contradictions in American policy. That's what they're doing now in Laos. They see the war there as an extension of their war in Vietnam and they're forcing us to see it that way, too. As long as the war in Vietnam continues, Hanoi can cause us much distress in Laos. It is an opportunity they are not likely to forego. This is Charles Collingwood. Good night. Laos, America's not-so-secret war in Asia. Reported by Charles Collingwood. Who, what, when, where, why?