Hog's Exit: Jerry Daniels, the Hmong, and the CIA (2014)

Morrison, Gayle L. Hog's Exit: Jerry Daniels, the Hmong, and the CIA. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2013. 431 pages.Hmong Studies Journal, 15(1): 1-5.Hog's Exit: Jerry Daniels, the Hmong, and the CIA, by Gayle L. Morrison. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2013. 431 pages. Review by Nengher N. Vang.It was late 1960 when CIA operative William James Lair first made contact with anticommunist Hmong leader General Vang Pao, then a lieutenant colonel of the Royal Lao Army (RLA), in the mountains near the Plain of Jars in Xieng Khoung Province, northern Laos. From 1961 to 1973, the United States, through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Air America, provided training, money and logistical support to tens of thousands of Hmong and other ethnic minority groups in a covert operation against the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army in what has become known as the Secret War in Laos. During that period, the Hmong served in both the regular RLA and the Special Guerilla Units (SGU) paramilitary units authorized by the RLA but directly supported by the CIA. At the height of the war in 1969, forty thousand Hmong were in the SGU. Some Hmong became pilots and flew on air strike missions. Others were spies and radio operators gathering critical intelligence on the movement of Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops. As America's foot soldiers, many Hmong and other minority groups risked their lives to rescue American pilots shot down by Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese gunners, often paying a heavy cost in lives. Yet, after the United States signed the peace treaty with the communists to end its involvement in the war in 1973, it withdrew all funding to the Royal Lao Government and the RLA, of which the SGU had been a subset, and left the region, leaving its allies-both Hmong and those from other ethnic groups- entirely on their own to defend themselves. The United States made its final evacuation of American military personnel from Laos on 14 May 1975, one day before the communists took over the country.Gayle L. Morrison documented the tumultuous evacuation of 2,500 Hmong from Long Cheng, the secret city where the military headquarters of the CIA and General Vang Pao was based during the war, and abandonment of tens of thousands of other Hmong who flooded Long Cheng airbase on 14 May hoping to be airlifted with American military personnel to safety in her first work, Sky Is Falling: An Oral History of the CIA's Evacuation of the Hmong from Laos, published by McFarland & Company in 1999. Hog's Exit: Jerry Daniels, the Hmong, and the CIA is Morrison's second work on the CIA and the Hmong. Like Sky Is Falling, Hog's Exit is an oral history told through the oral testimonies of individuals who knew or worked with Jerry Daniels, including his family members, Hmong and non-Hmong friends, former CIA agents, U.S. State Department officials, as well as newspaper reports, letters, and declassified government cables. Unlike Sky Is Falling, however, Hog's Exit centers on just one character rather than a whole population. Hog's Exit is, in short, an oral history of Jerry Daniel's life and death, his connection to the CIA and the Hmong, and his role in the Secret War in Laos in the 1960s and early 1970s.There are four parts to the book. There are three chapters each in the first two parts. The third part is the longest with twenty-one chapters while the fourth part is the shortest with only two chapters. In twenty-nine chapters, Morrison deals with a wide range of issues: Daniels' childhood, passion for outdoor adventure, and early career as a smokejumper in Montana; his arrival and employment as a cargo kicker with Air America and the CIA in Laos in 1961; his assignment as an air operations officer working directly with the Hmong at Lima Site 36, Na Khang, in Military Region 2 from 1965 to 1968; his transfer to Long Cheng to work directly with Vang Pao as his case officer/advisor and the CIA's chief of operations from 1970 to 1973; his vital role in the evacuation of the Hmong from Long Cheng to Thailand on 14 May 1975; his decision to stay in Thailand to work as a refugee coordinator for the U. …