MixedThe Wall Street JournalMr. Kurlantzick’s sections on America’s partnership with the Hmong are generally accurate and informative. He draws the proper contrast between the two central American figures in the drama, Bill Lair and William Sullivan. Lair, a CIA officer, had forged the U.S.-Hmong alliance by virtue of his love for the Hmong people and his friendship with Hmong leader Vang Pao ... When it comes to the international context of the Laotian conflict, the book goes astray...Mr. Kurlantzick neglects to mention that the United States initially complied with the Geneva Accords ... Mr. Kurlantzick endeavors to depict the Laotian project as the wellspring of a burgeoning CIA paramilitary branch. To make his case he must, among other things, ignore the gutting of the CIA paramilitary staff after 1975 and conflate the intelligence work behind recent drone targeting with paramilitary duties. He neglects a more momentous legacy of the Laotian debacle: the damage to American credibility.
