Page 99 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 99 of 237

In the event the neutralist government was about to be completely overwhelmed, the official plan, as it was
outlined at a briefing of Pentagon officials by Dean Rusk, called for the movement of a modest American force
into Vientiane. This would be designed to provoke a diplomatic test of the Geneva Accords. Failing in that, the
United States was prepared to strike against North Vietnam as dramatic evidence that the Communist forces in
Laos could advance farther only at the risk of a major war.

So it was that by the start of 1964 after a decade of humiliating reverses and the expenditure of close to half a
billion dollars, United States policy had come full circle: during the 1950s Souvanna Phouma and his plan for a
neutral Laos had been opposed with all the power of the Invisible Government; now the United States was ready
to settle for even less than it could have had five years earlier at a fraction of the cost.

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* Later, Brown's only regret was that, restrained by a newcomer's caution, he did not make the recommendation
even more strong. A key diplomat agreed: "Now we'd gladly pay $100,000,000 for that government."

* Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi M. Pushkin told Harriman at the Laotian talks in Geneva in 1961 that the airlift
had been organized and executed on the highest priority of any peacetime operation since the Russian Revolution.

* Hazey was then stationed in Bangkok, where he could be called upon quickly in a crisis.