Chapter 14
Liu Yuan-lin’s Yunnan Anticommunist Volunteer Army
Chiang Kai-shek had ordered the 1953–1954 evacuation of Li Mi’s army only reluctantly and under pressure from both Washington and the United Nations. The international community accepted that Taipei had made a good faith effort and did not hold it responsible for the 4,000–5,000 troops that remained. International attention turned elsewhere and Chief of Staff Chou Chih-jou retired on June 30, 1954. Chiang Kai-shek subsequently placed Taipei’s intelligence agencies, which had opposed the evacuation, under his son Chiang Ching-kuo. Thereafter, those agencies had a green light to rebuild their army in Burma.
Their willing helper would be Liu Yuan-lin, who returned to the Thai-Burma border in October 1954. There, he found a cold reception by Tuan Hsi-wen. Theretofore the senior CNA officer in the Thai-Burma border area, Tuan Hsi-wen had held YANSA’s remnants together from his headquarters at Nai Nawng, a small cluster of houses just inside Thailand on the sprawling Doi Lang massif’s southwestern slope. A December Liu Yuan-lin meeting with subordinate commanders and their senior deputies failed to create a unified organization in an atmosphere of thinly veiled hostility.1 Tuan Hsi-wen believed that Liu Yuan-lin had usurped his rightful position as YAVA’s commander. The usurper, however, held the purse that Taipei filled. In a heated discussion, Liu Yuan-lin explained financial realities to his subordinate. The airlift of military supplies that once went to Li Mi’s army had been discontinued but Taipei continued to send funds to Liu Yuan-lin through the Bank of China in Bangkok. Liu Yuan-lin also managed his army’s opium-based business dealings with Thailand’s police chief Phao Siyanon, who remained a critical link in YAVA’s logistics chain.2 Liu Yuan-lin’s hand was further strengthened in late January 1955 when Burma Army units attacked several minor KMT positions in eastern Kengtung state and drove the poorly coordinated defenders southward toward Doi Tung on the Thai-Burma border.3 That fighting demonstrated to disgruntled KMT commanders their need for Taipei’s support, to which Liu Yuan-lin held the key. They grudgingly began to cooperate.
From Taipei, the Ministry of National Defense reorganized YANSA’s remnants into a new Yunnan Anticommunist Volunteer Army (YAVA). During the short-lived Operation Heaven subterfuge, Liu Yuan-lin and Li Tse-fen had divided YANSA into armies numbered one through nine. The four even-numbered were created specifically to be withdrawn in the sham November–December 1953 evacuation. They were poorly armed and thinly manned. The better troops, scheduled to remain in Burma posing as Karen fighters, were placed in five odd-numbered armies—the First of Lü Kuo-chüan, the Third of Ch’ien Po-ying, the Fifth of Li Pin-pu (with Tuan Hsi-wen as his deputy), the Seventh of P’eng Ch’eng, and the Ninth of Li Kuo-hui. When Chiang Kai-shek abandoned Operation Heaven, the First, Third, and Ninth armies’ commanders evacuated to Taiwan along with most of their troops, as did most of those from P’eng Ch’eng’s Seventh Army. Most of the remaining troops were Yunnanese but their army commanders were not. To assuage their sensitivities, Liu Yuan-lin and Li Tse-fen concentrated the remaining Yunnanese troops into the Fifth Army. Li Pin-pu then stepped aside for Yunnanese Tuan Hsi-wen to command the Fifth, by far the largest of the new YAVA’s component armies.4
Molding YAVA’s components into a cohesive force would have been difficult for any commander. It was especially so for the unpopular Liu Yuan-lin, who would prove less a leader than a manipulator using his access to Chiang Kai-shek and control over money and supplies as leverage. His obedience in evacuating as many troops as possible during the 1953–54 withdrawals had won him few friends among YAVA’s commanders. The popular Tuan Hsi-wen was a proven battlefield commander. Liu Yuan-lin, in stark contrast, had reached general officer rank without commanding troops in battle. Moreover, the Yunnanese mistrusted Liu Yuan-lin as a native of distant Chekiang.5
In late August 1954, the Burmese told visiting Thai Lt. Col. Chatchai Chunhawan of their preparations for Operation Yangyiaung, a major offensive against KMT forces remaining in Burma’s Doi Lang area.6 In late January and early February 1955, Phao Siyanon led a delegation that met with Burma’s Northern Command officers to discuss cross-border cooperation for the planned operation. The Thai agreed to allow Tatmadaw liaison officers and combat units into Thailand, with prior consultation. They also undertook to prevent supplies from reaching the KMT and to disarm any of its troops entering Thailand. By March, there were 1,000 Thai paramilitary police in blocking positions to disarm KMT troops crossing along the Doi Lang portion of the border. SEA Supply–trained Thai Royal Guards, their American advisors, and 400 volunteer militiamen were in reserve at nearby Ban Fang. In contrast to most of Phao’s declared border closings, supplies to the KMT were largely blocked.7
In early March, Brigadier Kyaw Zaw’s battalions attacked KMT positions on the Burmese side of Doi Lang. Supported by aircraft and artillery, they easily drove Li Wen-huan’s division southward down the Khok River8 and into Thailand during an all day rain-soaked battle. Earlier pledges that his police would close the border to retreating KMT troops notwithstanding, Phao assured Liu Yuan-lin that his police would not interfere with discreet YAVA troop movements through Thailand.9 Tuan Hsi-wen’s divisions from Nai Nawng then transited Thai territory, joined Li Wen-huan, and counterattacked exposed Burmese flanks around Möng Yawn on March 16–17, leaving Doi Lang and environs again in YAVA hands.10 See Map 7.
On April 8, a reinforced Kyaw Zaw renewed his attack. Three weeks of fighting later, his troops captured Nai Nawng at an acknowledged cost of 44 dead and 112 wounded. Nationalist Chinese defenders retreated into Thailand, where authorities allowed them to march eastward along the Thai side of the border to Doi Tung, familiar territory southwest of Tachilek.11 On the western edge of Doi Tung, Liu Yuan-lin and Tuan Hsi-wen established a new headquarters at Ban Lao Lo, just inside Burma 15 miles southwest of Tachilek. Monsoon rains soon washed out Burmese pursuit. Operation Yangyiaung was over.12
The Tatmadaw had reclaimed Burma’s side of the border around Doi Lang and driven the KMT away from a major opium trafficking route into Thailand. Thanks to Thai support, however, Liu Yuan-lin’s army survived largely intact in its new Doi Tung stronghold astride another lucrative opium trade route. Thai authorities would thereafter continue to give the KMT ready access to Thailand for housing dependents, purchasing food and weapons, receiving medical care, and, importantly, selling their opium.13 The fighting around Doi Lang had shown Liu Yuan-lin’s subordinates that, however distasteful, cooperating with him was essential to their survival. Cooperation improved, except from Tuan Hsi-wen, but Liu Yuan-lin remained unable to mold his commanders into a team free of internal fissures. He would never enjoy the respect that had been accorded to Li Mi.
Liu Yuan-lin and Taiwan’s Intelligence Services
As YANSA’s commander, Li Mi had reported directly to armed forces Chief of Staff Chou Chih-jou. At least initially, that relationship minimized interference from Kuomintang party and military intelligence organs. Following his unsuccessful 1951 incursion into Yunnan, however, Li Mi’s independence steadily eroded as Taipei’s intelligence agencies—initially the Kuomintang 2nd Section and later MND military intelligence—increasingly asserted their authority over his army.
Kuomintang party ideologues argued that Li Mi’s invasion had failed because Yunnan’s populace had not been prepared for liberation. In July 1952, the party appointed Li Mi as Special Commissioner for its Yunnan Province Office and named Party 2nd Section14 intelligence officer Li Hsien-keng as that office’s secretary general. Li Hsien-keng’s mission was to prepare Yunnan’s populace for a Nationalist return through propaganda, fomenting defections, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare. Three weeks after he reached Möng Hsat on February 1, 1953, the first of his staff arrived from Taiwan on the same February 22 Fuhsing PBY that carried Li Mi back to Taipei for what turned out to be a permanent stay.15
With Li Mi gone, Li Hsien-keng assumed full responsibility for KMT Party activities in the tri-border area. His was a rocky tenure. He quickly crossed swords with Liu Yuan-lin by attempting to persuade troops to disobey evacuation orders during the 1953–1954 withdrawal. Li Yuan-lin wanted to try Li Hsien-keng before a military court for obstructing the evacuation but could not because civilian Kuomintang officials were not subject to military discipline. Li Hsien-keng subsequently relocated to Chiang Mai—safely distant from Liu Yuan-lin’s headquarters. Setting a pattern that would continue with his successors, Li Hsien-keng achieved little as chief of the Yunnan Province Office. Kuomintang inspectors were unable to confirm his claims of active agents in Yunnan and Burma and concluded, in early 1955, that Li Hsien-keng’s operation had “achieved almost nothing.”16
Early in February 1954, on the eve of YANSA’s Phase II evacuation, military intelligence chief Cheng Kai-min began a determined effort to carve out a larger role for his organizations in the tri-border region. He bypassed Liu Yuan-lin and asked then Ninth Army commander Li Kuo-hui to cooperate with Li Hsien-keng in carrying out intelligence missions into Yunnan. Liu Yuan-lin learned of the plan and blocked it on grounds he had received no such instructions from Chief of Staff Chou Chih-jou.17
Following Chou Chih-jou’s retirement, however, Cheng Kai-min expanded his influence over Liu Yuan-lin’s army by using his position as head of Taipei’s National Security Bureau (NSB). The NSB oversaw intelligence operations of both the armed forces and the civilian Kuomintang 2nd Section. Chiang Ching-kuo, who was increasingly taking control of ROC intelligence and guerrilla operations on the continent, backed Cheng Kai-min’s maneuvering. Lacking Li Mi’s prestige, Liu Yuan-lin was unable to prevent the decline of his operational independence.18
Cheng Kai-min’s NSB unified guerrilla operations by dissolving the Mainland Operations Department that had supported guerrilla armies logistically and transferring its functions to the Secrets Preservation Bureau (SPB), or Pao-mi-chü, which controlled Mainland guerrilla groups operationally. Soon thereafter, he combined the SPB and the secret service of Chiang Kai-shek’s presidential office to form the Ch’ing-pao-chü, or Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense (IBMND) under Yeh Hsiang-chih’s command. The Ministry of Defense provided the IBMND with budget and administrative support but Cheng Kai-min’s NSB independently controlled its operations. To further consolidate intelligence activities, the NSB gave IBMND chief Yeh Hsiang-chih oversight of KMT Party 2nd Section operations in the tri-border region. In April 1955, Chiang Kai-shek formally placed Liu Yuan-lin under direct authority of Yeh Hsiang-chih’s IBMND.19
Liu Yuan-lin Organizes His Army
From his new Ban Lao Lo headquarters on Doi Tung, Liu Yuan-lin used a monsoon rain–induced suspension of fighting to hold a June 10–13 conference with his senior commanders. Complying with IBMND directives, Liu Yuan-lin announced the reorganization of his Yunnan Anticommunist Volunteer Army (YAVA) into guerrilla units of columns and detachments in place of regular army divisions and regiments.20
A fly in that reorganizational ointment was Lü Kuo-chüan’s cousin, Lü Wei-ying (aka Lü Jen-hao). A former division commander in the Twenty-sixth Army, Lü Wei-ying was among the CNA’s least competent and more corrupt commanders. In mid-1954, he was recalled from civilian life in Hong Kong to lead a Secrets Preservation Bureau intelligence unit in northern Burma during the evacuations. He and his small unit operated with considerable autonomy and were successful smugglers of opium and weapons. Eventually, he was placed operationally under YAVA’s control. Liu Yuan-lin disliked Lü Wei-yin, but to avoid trouble with Taipei he gave the newcomer an additional 150 soldiers from LüKuo-chüan’s former headquarters unit that had remained in Burma after their commander and most of his troops evacuated. The ambitious Lü Wei-yin then unilaterally declared himself commander of a new, albeit small, First Army—a more prestigious regular army, as opposed to guerrilla column, designation.21
Liu Yuan-lin acceded to Lü Wei-yin’s action both to avoid trouble with Taipei and because it provided an opportunity to weaken his rival Tuan Hsi-wen by transferring one of his divisions to the new First Army. Subsequent, and larger, raids on Tuan Hsi-wen’s manpower came at another Ban Lao Lo conference on October 27–28, 1955, called to satisfy other officers clamoring for regular army, rather than guerrilla, appellations. Liu Yuan-lin mollified his senior commanders by persuading the IBMND to approve reinstatement of YAVA’s regular army organization. That business out of the way, he then took away more of Tuan Hsi-wen’s troops and used them to create new Second and Third Armies, commanded by Li Pin-pu and Li Wen-huan, respectively.
When Li Kuo-hui left for Taiwan, Li Pin-pu had taken over the weak Ninth Army created during Operation Heaven. Liu Yuan-lin subsequently re-designated that unit as the Second Army, with Maj. Gen. Fu Ching-yun’s division as its only significant subordinate combat force. Fu Ching-yun, who had been Li Kuo-hui’s deputy, was miffed at Li Pin-pu’s promotion over him but would soon have his revenge. While Li Pin-pu was in Bangkok on business soon after the October Ban Lao Lo meeting, Fu Ching-yun wrangled Liu Yuan-lin’s blessings to take over the Second Army. His soldiers then met and turned away Li Pin-pu at Mae Sai as he tried to return from Bangkok. Liu Yuan-lin then named Fu Ching-yun as the Second Army’s new commander—another check on Tuan Hsi-wen’s power.22
Liu Yuan-lin further capitalized on strained relations between Tuan Hsi-wen and his division commanders by creating a Third Army under Li Wen-huan. In 1954, Tuan Hsi-wen had brought two former subordinates from Yunnan into his Fifth Army as special regimental commanders. To staff their new regiments, Tuan Hsi-wen gave them parts of divisions commanded by Li Wen-huan and Liu Shao-t’ang. Liu Yuan-lin, in creating Li Wen-huan’s Third Army at the October Ban Lao Lo conference, let him keep what remained of his own division as well as that of Liu Shao-t’ang, who became his deputy. Liu Yuan-lin then salved Tuan Hsi-wen’s resentment at the loss of his two divisions by appointing him head of a new Western Command, composed of his Fifth Army and Li Wen-huan’s Third Army. That may have helped Tuan Hsi-wen’s pride, but he and Li Wen-huan disliked one another and rarely cooperated in practice. In January 1955, Tuan Hsi-wen’s Fifth had been the only YAVA army of any size. In the 10 months that followed, Liu Yuan-lin created three new armies using soldiers taken from that army. Although Tuan Hsi-wen’s Fifth remained the strongest single YAVA army, Liu Yuan-lin had three others with which to check his rival’s power.23
An uneasy truce prevailed over Burma’s Shan state during 1955. Liu Yuan-lin needed time to regroup and consolidate his command and the Burmese wanted to concentrate on suppressing domestic insurgents. Besides, with YAVA spread out along the Mekong River and the Thai border, any campaign against it was unlikely to succeed. If attacked, YAVA units would simply retreat across a border and wait until the Tatmadaw moved elsewhere to fight ethnic insurgents. Facing those tactical realities, practical minded Socialist Party leaders like Defense Minister Ba Swe and Tatmadaw commander Ne Win sought an arrangement with the KMT intruders.24
As monsoon rains eased in November 1955, the Burmese and Liu Yuan-lin’s army began an intermittent, seven-month effort to agree upon a modus vivendi. At Ba Swe’s behest, T. P. Aung, a Rangoon Sino-Burmese community leader, and Tachilek opium merchant Ma Ting-ch’en served as GUB negotiators. Using private citizens kept the talks informal and offered deniability to both sides. With Taipei’s approval, Liu Yuan-lin sent his Chief of Staff Ma Chün-kuo to meet Rangoon’s representatives in mid-December on the Thai slopes of Doi Tung. For Liu Yuan-lin, negotiations promised to avert renewed Tatmadaw attacks in the upcoming dry season. The Burmese, concerned about security for scheduled April 1956 national elections, saw a truce as freeing them for an offensive against domestic insurgents.25
Following January 1956 negotiations outside Tachilek, Liu Yuan-lin told Taipei that the Burmese were offering generous terms. A small number of his troops were to participate in a public surrender ceremony and turn over a modest number of weapons. Thereafter, YAVA’s troops and dependents would be free to settle into civilian pursuits to the northeast of Tachilek along the Lao border formed by the Mekong River. According to Nationalist Chinese accounts, Rangoon offered to allow the KMT to keep their arms for self-defense and to conduct anticommunist education and propaganda activities among local residents in their settlement area.26 In a significantly different account of the talks, the Burmese claimed to have offered KMT soldiers and dependents the opportunity to remain in Burma as political refugees if they gave up their weapons and accepted a minimum of three months internment. Thereafter, they could settle in areas of Burma to be designated.27
Four carefully staged Nationalist Chinese “surrenders” following the Tachilek talks totaled 46 adult males, a few dependents, 22 unserviceable weapons, and some rounds of ammunition. T. P. Aung, after the fact, observed that those surrendering were actually civilian refugees from Yunnan, not KMT soldiers. He predicted there would be no significant organized surrenders because KMT leaders would not forego personal gain from opium, gold, and other commerce.28
Further negotiations led to a Kengtung city agreement on April 13, 1956. According to ROC official accounts, YAVA lead negotiator Col. Lei Yu-t’ien29 agreed to stay out of Burmese internal affairs, to eschew cooperation with the country’s ethnic insurgents, and to assist in suppressing banditry in areas where his army settled. In return, the Burmese reportedly agreed not to interfere with KMT food purchases or internal movements through agreed base areas along the Mekong River and around Doi Tung.30 According to ROC documents, Burmese officers subsequently told Nationalist Chinese officers that Rangoon had approved the agreement.31
While there were undoubtedly real negotiations underway, it is unclear what, if any, agreement actually resulted. In May, T. P. Aung told American diplomats that his efforts to negotiate a truce had ended in failure.32 He may not have been telling the whole story because the GUB, with an eye to its PRC neighbor, would not have wanted to acknowledge efforts to compromise with the Nationalists. Lei Yu-t’ien and other former KMT officers interviewed by the authors insist that the two sides did reach an agreement similar to one purportedly reached during the 1950 Tachilek fighting—the parties would leave each other alone on condition that the KMT remain out of sight and refrain from troublemaking. That deal, Lei Yu-t’ien claimed, accounted for the relative peace between the Tatmadaw and YAVA that prevailed for the next four years.33 Rangoon did not want to acknowledge a deal with Taipei’s army and the KMT wanted to claim that its presence had been legitimized. Contradictory objectives left little room for formal agreement and any understanding would have been sufficiently vague to allow each side its own interpretation.
As it turned out, relations along the Thai-Burma border during the latter part of the 1950s reflected a general air of co-existence and business as usual between KMT, Burmese, and Thai officials. William B. Hussey, then the US consul in Chiang Mai, later recalled when the chief of Thai customs in Mae Sai built a tennis court. In a tournament at the court’s opening, Hussey, an avid tennis player, found himself on the court with the Burma Army commander from Tachilek as well as a senior KMT officer in the area. Both were friends of the Thai customs chief, who almost certainly had business dealings with KMT smugglers. After the tournament, all concerned enjoyed a banquet and tennis movies courtesy of Hussey.34
In January 1956, amidst ongoing negotiations with the Burmese, Liu Yuan-lin moved his troops eastward from Doi Tung to the small Burmese village of Tang-or on the Mekong River. Tuan Hsi-wen’s Fifth Army remained at Doi Tung but the bulk of YAVA forces settled along a 50-mile stretch of Burma from Chieng Kok, in Laos, downstream to where the Ruak River enters the Mekong. Satellite posts were on the Lao side of the river.35 Tang-or was on a wooded hillside 15 miles upstream from the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers, the geographic center of what is commonly known as the “Golden Triangle.” A nearby training camp had some 1,500 soldiers, including local conscripts and volunteers from among refugees and Overseas Chinese. Some of the latter were recruited from as far away as South Thailand, where communist guerrillas from neighboring Malaya often taxed and conscripted ethnic Chinese.36
As Map 8 shows, Tang-or was about 20 miles north of Möng Pong, where Li Kuo-hui had camped in early 1950. Six years later, that area offered the same advantage of convenient escape routes across the river in case of serious Tatmadaw attacks. Across the river in Laos, Col. Ouan Rathikoun, commander of Military Region I, welcomed YAVA’s presence on the Mekong as an anticommunist buffer. His Armée Nationale Laotienne (ANL), or Lao National Army,37 helped YAVA personnel and dependents settle on the Lao bank of the river. Not to neglect business, Ouan proved a good customer for KMT opium, which Liu Yuan-lin’s associates began refining into its more profitable derivative: morphine. They also set up a printing press and began counterfeiting Burmese currency.38
Thai access to Liu Yuan-lin’s bases inside Burma was by way of a ten-mile oxcart track from Mae Sai along the Thai bank of the Ruak River. At that river’s mouth, Thai policemen watched lazily as a 25´ ferry and several smaller boats moved vehicles and people across the water. On the Burmese bank, YAVA soldiers manned a checkpoint that issued passes for travel by road five miles further to Möng Pong, over which flew the ROC national flag.
Under YAVA occupation, Möng Pong became a commercial center for opium and morphine trading. Sino-Thai merchants carried the narcotics by boat to Chiang Saen on the Thai bank of the Mekong and points further south en route to Bangkok, Hong Kong, or Singapore.39 Aside from narcotics, Thai traders also bought illegally cut timber from the KMT and floated it in rafts down the Mekong to Thai-owned sawmills like the one at Ban Kwan, on the Lao bank.40
Official ROC aerial re-supply to Liu Yuan-lin appears not to have resumed until early 1958, but privately arranged aircraft played a role in his army’s narcotics commerce. French and Thai traffickers with light aircraft used primitive landing strips to fly out drugs and deliver payments in gold and weapons.41 Those flights could be dangerous undertakings, as exemplified by a small Thai Airways plane that crashed on takeoff from a makeshift Lao airstrip in May 1955. Lao authorities killed the Thai pilot as he resisted arrest, jailed eight others involved, and seized narcotics valued at $150,000—the equivalent of at least $1.3 million in 2010.42
Changes in Bangkok Affect the KMT
During William Donovan’s tenure as ambassador to Bangkok, the Americans had cooperated closely with Phao and supplied his well-armed police force. Donovan’s successor, Ambassador John E. Peurifoy, arrived in Bangkok in September 1954, fresh from engineering the overthrow of Guatemala’s government. Although it was not in Peurifoy’s brief, his previous posting may well have suggested to a nervous Prime Minister Phibun the sobering prospect of a coup d’état by Phao with American blessings. During June and July 1955, just before Peurifoy died in an automobile accident, Phao did indeed seek American backing for a coup. Some in Washington were tempted to oust Phibun, but Peurifoy’s opposition blocked such a step. To Phibun, however, Phao seemed too powerful; he had to be reined in before the approaching February 1957 elections.
Phibun, as popular as Phao was disliked, took steps beginning in 1955 to broaden his political appeal. A popular move with leftists and moderates was his easing of hard line positions towards Peking, holdovers from the Korean War years no longer in Thailand’s interest. Phao too saw the wisdom of better relations with the PRC and there ensued a series of moves by both men to mend fences with Peking. Improved relations with Peking and Phibun’s determination to clip his police chief’s wings eroded Liu Yuan-lin’s position as his patron Phao became carefully circumspect in dealings with his KMT business partners.43
In October 1956, Phibun ordered military, police, and civilian officials on the border to cease contacts with “Chinese Nationalist troops” because they had disobeyed Taipei’s evacuation orders, engaged in illegal activities, and were mistreating Thai villagers while wrongly fighting the Burmese.44 He instructed all RTG agencies to assist Ministry of Interior efforts to suppress illegal KMT activities.45 In Thailand, however, an order was one thing, compliance another. Both Phibun and Phao personally briefed Chiang Rai provincial officials on the new orders. As one Thai official put it, Phibun appeared to mean what he said while “Phao’s voice said no but his face said yes.” Mutually beneficial contacts between the KMT and Thai officials on the border continued.46
Army commander Sarit Thanarat eventually ended the Phibun-Phao rivalry through a September 16, 1957, coup d’état that ousted both men. As army troops seized key locations throughout Bangkok, they joined an angry crowd besieging SEA Supply’s offices at the Grand Hotel because of its ties to the unpopular Phao. An army tank led the mob to the hotel’s entrance as SEA Supply personnel at the gate stalled and colleagues on the roof burned documents. Thai troops and the civilian mob backed down after an American officer confronted them and refused to give way.47 Phibun was forced to flee to exile in Japan. Phao surrendered and was allowed to go into Swiss exile. SEA Supply closed its doors as Sarit dismantled police heavy weapons elements and brought the paramilitary Border Patrol Police under RTA operational control. Sarit’s rise to unchallenged power spelled trouble for Liu Yuan-lin. With his benefactor Phao Siyanon out of the picture, the future of YAVA’s easy access to logistics support from Thailand was uncertain.48
1. Chou Chien-hua, “Evaluation of Headquarters Army-building, June 1959,” Yunnan Office Archives (kept in the MND), Taipei, ROC. Tseng I, History of Guerrilla War on the Yunnan and Burma Border, p. 92.
2. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 525, 2/6/1957, RG 59, US National Archives.
3. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Savingsgram 302/55/32, 3/3/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 508, 5/13/1955, RG 59, Box 3849, US National Archives.
4. P’eng Meng-chi to Chiang Kai-shek, Memo. June 1951–October 1954; Liu Yuan-lin to Chiang Kai-shek via P’eng Meng-chi, “Blueprint of Readjustment of Yunnan People’s Anticommunist Volunteer Army,” September 1954, in “Cases of Battles and vacuation to Taiwan of Guerrilla Forces in the Border Area of Yunnan and Burma, June, 1951–May 1954” MND Archives, Taipei, ROC. Liu Yuan-lin, Eventful Records in Yunnan and Burma Border Area—Recollections of Liu Yuan-lin’s Past 80 Years, p. 95.
5. In Hong Kong, he reunited with his father, who had once been a member of the ROC’s Control Yuan, and his uncle, at the time in the Legislative Yuan.
6. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 629, 9/22/1954 Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 248, 9/27/1954, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
7. Rangoon to FO, Des. 1031/9, 3/3/1955, FO 371/11734, UK National Archives. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Savingsgram 302/55/32, 3/3/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives.
8. The Khok River is a small tributary of the Ruak River, which in turn flows into the Mekong.
9. Liu Yuan-lin, Eventful Records in Yunnan and Burma Border Area—Recollections of Liu Yuan-lin’s Past 80 Years, pp. 98–100. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Savingsgram 302/55/32, 3/3/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives.
10. Bangkok to FO, Des. 24, 3/25/1955, FO 371/11734; Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Savingsgram 07, 3/28/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives. Liu Yuan-lin, Eventful Records in Yunnan and Burma Border Area—Recollections of Liu Yuan-lin’s Past 80 Years, pp. 98–100.
11. Liu Yuan-lin, Eventful Records in Yunnan and Burma Border Area—Recollections of Liu Yuan-lin’s Past 80 Years, pp. 98–100. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 540, 6/6/1955; RG 59, US National Archives. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Des. 26, 4/26/1955, FO 371/117038; Rangoon to FO, Letter 1091/33, 5/14/1955; FO 371/117038; Rangoon to FO, Des. 1041/37, 5/30/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives.
12. Vientiane to FO, Letter 1011/246/55, 5/23/1955, FO 371/117038; Bangkok to FO, Savingsgram 19, 5/16/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 585, 6/27/1955, RG 59, US National Archives. Liu Yuan-lin, Eventful Records in Yunnan and Burma Border Area—Recollections of Liu Yuan-lin’s Past 80 Years, pp. 98–100.
13. Rangoon to FO, Letter 1091/33, 5/14/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives.
14. The Kuomintang Party had four sections, roughly paralleling those of the Nationalist Chinese military: personnel and staffing (1st Section), intelligence (2nd Section), operations and training (3rd Section), and logistics and management (4th Section).
15. Li Hsien-keng, “Outline of Work Program for 1953 of Yunnan Office, 10/4/1953;” Li Hsien-keng to Cheng-chung, Letter, 1/27/1953, in “Portfolio of Li Hsien-keng”; Li Hsien-keng to KMT Party 2nd Section, “Report of Review Meeting of Work of Yunnan Office,” 4/17/1953, KMT Party 2nd Section Archives, Taipei, ROC.
16. Kao T’ien-su to Li Hsien-keng, Letter (Instruction 21/438), 12/5/1952; “Portfolio of Li Hsien-keng”; Li Hsien-keng, “Outline of Work Program for 1953 of Yunnan Office,” 10/4/1953; “Portfolio of Li Hsien-keng; Yeh Hsiang-chih, “Conclusions of Review Work of Yunnan Office, May 1955,” “Review Conference of the Work of Yunnan Office,” KMT Party 2nd Section Archives, Taipei, ROC. Li Hsien-keng, “Recollections of Guerrilla Life in Yunnan-Burma” Border Area, p. 38.
17. Li Kuo-hui, “Recollections of the Lost Army Fighting Heroically in the Border Area Between Yunnan and Burma,” Part 23, Chün-chiu, May 1972, Vol. 15, No. 5, p. 49. Kui Yung-ch’ing to Chiang Kai-shek, Memo. (transmitting Liu Yuan-lin’s report of April 25), 5/14/1954, “Cases of Battles and Evacuation to Taiwan of Guerrilla Forces in the Border Area of Yunnan and Burma, June, 1951–May 1954,” MND Archives, Taipei, ROC.
18. Liu Yuan-lin, Eventful Records in Yunnan and Burma Border Area—Recollections of Liu Yuan-lin’s Past 80 Years, p. 104.
19. Liu Yuan-lin, Eventful Records in Yunnan and Burma Border Area—Recollections of Liu Yuan-lin’s Past 80 Years, p. 260. Original Documents of Yunnan Guerrilla Force Archives, Records of 4th Military Conference of 5235th Force, June 11–16, 1957, Yunnan Office Archives (kept in MND), Taipei, ROC.
20. During his initial months in command, Liu Yuan-lin had five deputy YAVA commanders: P’eng Ch’eng, Tuan Hsi-wen, Wang Shao-ts’ai, Ta’ao Cheng-yuan, and Hsia Ch’ao.
21. Lü Wei-ying subsequently defected to the PRC. He is credited with writing an article about his experiences with the KMT in Liu Kai-cheng and Chu Tang-kui, China’s Most Secret War, p. 273.
22. “Records of Second YAVA Military Meeting, June 10–13, 1955,” in “Temporary Military Conferences,” Yunnan Original Document Archives, Taipei, ROC. Dr. Chin Yee Huei (int.) interview by Richard M. Gibson, 9/26/2006, Bangkok.
23. Dr. Chin Yee Huei int. by Richard M. Gibson, 9/26/2006, Bangkok.
24. Bangkok to DOS, Des. 390, 1/23/1956, RG 59, US National Archives.
25. Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 818, 1/17/1956, RG 84, Taipei, Taiwan, Embassy, Classified General Records 1953–64, Box 7, US National Archives. Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 931, 2/17/1956; Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 1261, 5/11/1956, RG 59, US National Archives.
26. Liu Yuan-lin to SPB Chief Mao Jen-feng, Tel. 2, 12/14/1955, “Important Telegrams During Peace Negotiations 1956,” Original Documents of the Yunnan Guerrilla Force Archives, Taipei, ROC. Tseng I, History of Guerrilla War on the Yunnan and Burma Border, p. 91. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 2067, 1/19/1956, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
27. Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 818, 1/17/1956, RG 84, Taipei, Taiwan, Embassy, Classified General Records 1953–64, Box 7; Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 870, 1/31/1956, RG 84; Rangoon to DOS, Des. 525, 2/6/1957; Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 11, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1959–61, Box 3, US National Archives. Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 1261, 5/11/1956, RG 59, US National Archives.
28. Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 908, 2/9/1956; Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 1261, 5/11/1956, RG 59, US National Archives. ARMA Rangoon to Department of the Army, Tel. 060600 FEB 1956, February 1956, RG 84, Laos, Vientiane Embassy; Classified General Records 1955–63, Box 3, US National Archives.
29. Lei Yu-t’ien would in 1980 replace Tuan Hsi-wen as Fifth Army commander upon the latter’s death from heart failure in a Bangkok hospital.
30. Liu Yuan-lin to Mao Jen-feng, Tel., 12/14/1955, “Important Telegrams During Peace Negotiations 56,” and Chou Chien-hua, “Evaluation of Headquarters Army-building, June 1959,” Yunnan Office Archives, Taipei, ROC. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 124, 3/31/1956, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1959–61, Box 3, US National Archives.
31. Liu Yuan-lin to MND, Tel., Undated, “Proposal Regarding Moving Military Bases Westward Inside Burma, 1960”; Chou Chien-hua, “Evaluation of Headquarters Army-building, June 1959,” Yunnan Office Archives, Taipei, ROC. Tseng I, History of Guerrilla War on the Yunnan and Burma Border, pp. 91–92.
32. Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 1261, 5/11/1956, RG 59, US National Archives.
33. Lei Yu-t’ien int. by Richard M. Gibson, 2/3/1998, Mae Salong, Thailand.
34. William B. Hussey, int. by Richard M. Gibson, 11/8/1997, Laguna Hills, CA.
35. Rangoon to FO, Letter 1091/8, 3/11/1955, FO 371/117038; Rangoon to FO, Tel. 117, 3/12/1955; FO 371/117038; Commonwealth Relations Office to New Delhi, Tel. 539, 3/18/1955, FO 371/117038; Vientiane to FO, Tel. 89, 3/15/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 140, 5/5/1956 Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 27, 8/3/1956, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, General Classified Records 1953–58, Box 9, US National Archives. Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 1261, 5/11/1956, RG 59, US National Archives. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 394, 12/18/1956: and Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Memo., 12/24/1956, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
36. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 394, 12/18/1956 and Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 110, 12/11/1956, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
37. In September 1960, the ANL was renamed Force Armée Royale (FAR).
38. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Des. 3454/55/82, 11/14/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives. Conboy and Morrison, Shadow War, pp. 4, 6, 12, and 15.
39. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 161, 2/11/1957, RG 84, Burma, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 4, US National Archives.
40. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Des. 37, 3/14/1957, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 4, US National Archives.
41. Rangoon to FO, Letter 1091/33, 5/14/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 127, 4/5/1956, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, General Classified Records, 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
42. Vientiane to FO, Letter 1011/246/55, 5/23/1955, FO 371/117038, UK National Archives.
43. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Des. 04, 8/6/1956, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 10, US National Archives.
44. Thai police in August had arrested the KMT purchasing agent in Chiang Mai for operating an illegal radio transmitter.
45. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Des. 17, 11/14/1956, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Files 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Des. 20, 11/20/1956, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Files 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
46. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 110, 12/11/1956, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Files 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
47. Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison, Shadow War: The CIA’s Secret War in Laos (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1995), pp. 57–59 and 68. Thomas Lobe, United States National Security Policy and Aid to the Thailand Police, pp. 23–24. John E. Shirley int. by Richard M. Gibson, 2/18/1998, Bangkok, Thailand.
48. The CIA worked with the Thai Police Special Branch into the 1960s, as the US International Cooperation Agency (later renamed US Agency for International Development) Office of Public Safety (OPS) advised Thailand’s Provincial Police. Lobe, pp. 27–28. Fineman, p. 242. John E. Shirley int. by Richard M. Gibson, 2/18/1998, Bangkok, Thailand.