Chapter 21
Thailand’s Troublesome Guests
By the mid-1960s, KMT refugee settlements in Thailand were increasingly prosperous. Thailand’s Ministry of Interior (MOI) established schools and provided villagers with economic and technical assistance. The settlements’ upland locations were ideal for cool weather crops that did not compete with lowland Thai agriculture and the government permitted residents to retain weapons for self-defense and hunting. The refugees were, however, troublesome. Villagers cultivated opium inside Thailand and supported armed KMT units by providing food, pack animals, and labor for caravans carrying supplies into Burma and opium on the return trip.1 Fifth Army commander Tuan Hsi-wen in 1967 bluntly justified his commercial activities: “We have to continue to fight the evil of Communism, and to fight you must have an army, and an army must have guns, and to buy guns you must have money. In these mountains the only money is opium.”2
KMT refugees resisted pressure to relocate away from their cross-border smuggling routes, but otherwise avoided conflict with Thailand’s authorities and citizens. Less exemplary was KMT behavior toward hill tribesmen recently arrived from Yunnan or Burma who were ineligible for Thai citizenship and had few advocates in the government or broader society.3 Nonetheless, resettled Nationalist Chinese and local highland groups interacted to create relative social and economic stability in North Thailand. To avoid alienating hill tribes dependent upon opium as a cash crop, Thai authorities generally turned a blind eye to those highlanders’ agricultural choices. As in Burma and Laos, the hill tribes grew the opium and sold it to middlemen (often ethnic Chinese) handling marketing and transport under an umbrella of KMT taxation and protection. Relatively prosperous KMT soldiers, opium merchants, and hill tribe growers in turn provided ready markets for lowland Thai building materials, food items, and consumer goods. Meanwhile, Thai officials accepted a share of the smuggling profits and justified the KMT’s border presence as a security buffer against the spread of communist insurgency from Burma and Laos. All benefited from the arrangement, if not equally.4
Although Li Wen-huan and Tuan Hsi-wen had become little more than drug warlords, they maintained their CNA military trappings and ties to Taiwan. Their headquarters had orderly buildings, parade grounds, and landing pads for visiting Thai police and military helicopters. Through its Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, Taipei provided modest financial and technical assistance to KMT refugee settlements that in 1965 housed more than 6,000 civilians and supported 4,000 troops on North Thailand’s border or inside Burma’s Shan State. Fresh arrivals from Yunnan or Burma openly boasted of training to “fight communists” and of their villages supporting troops along Thailand’s northern borders. Vocational training for young males was generally limited to military skills.
An October 1965 description of two Third Army refugee villages illustrates their prosperity. Ban Yang was the older and larger of the two, with about 250 families. Subsequent newcomers established Ban Nong Bua four miles south of Ban Yang.5 Resident technical advisors sent by Taiwan’s government assisted with agriculture, animal husbandry, food processing, medical care, and education. Villagers were self-sufficient in rice and sold their products to lowland Thai markets. The refugees were healthy, well clothed, and enjoyed as high or higher living standards than did ethnic Thai in similarly remote villages. As designated refugee villages filled up, newcomers from Yunnan or Burma established additional satellite settlements. Thai immigration officers controlled access to the villages and required, in theory, passes for travel outside the settlements. In practice, rules were laxly enforced and KMT soldiers came and went freely.6
Moving the KMT Off the Laos Border
In the aftermath of the March–April 1961 evacuation from Burma, the 14th division of Liu Shao-t’ang and its dependents settled in the mountain ranges along Chiang Rai’s border with Laos. They soon were in conflict with Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) organizers, primarily Hmong working among ethnic minorities in remote, thinly populated highlands. Communist propaganda portrayed the KMT as armed foreigners violating Thai sovereignty and oppressing local residents. Understanding that discontented hill tribesmen were increasingly susceptible to communist recruiting efforts, Thai officials in the highlands were becoming critical of the KMT’s often heavy-handed abuse of hill tribes.
To remove the KMT irritant in eastern Chiang Rai province, RTARF Supreme Command Headquarters (SCHQ) in 1963 ordered Li Wen-huan’s 14th Division troops to rejoin the rest of their army on the Burmese border around Doi Ang Khan. The troops generally complied, although a sizeable number moved to remote parts of the Doi Pha Mon mountain range and remained on the Lao border.7 Over time, Doi Pha Mon proved poorly suited for dependents and a steady trickle of soldiers and families made their way independently to Doi Ang Khan.
Former KMT soldiers describe the transfer of Liu Shao-t’ang’s 14th Division from Doi Pha Mon as removing a check on communist organizing efforts. On the other hand, it also removed counterproductive KMT misbehavior that was driving local residents to support the communists. The September 1965 killing of a Hmong village headman by two 14th Division soldiers in Chiang Rai’s Thoeng district led Thai SCHQ again to order KMT removed from Lao border areas. Border Patrol Police (BPP) in spring 1966 forcibly moved 600 KMT soldiers and dependents in three groups to Chiang Mai’s Fang district. Only a few holdouts remained on the Lao border.8
In Burma, Ne Win’s post-1962 military government had little more success than its civilian predecessor in governing the Shan State. Outside major population centers, much of Kengtung and the smaller states were controlled by whichever armed group was present at a given time.9 Rangoon’s curtailment of local autonomy and revocation of saopha hereditary powers contributed to a widening insurgency, exacerbated by Shan dislike for the Burmans and their government in Rangoon. The drug trade, however, quickly corrupted whatever lofty political goals Shan insurgents might have espoused. As insurgents and drug trafficking gangs formed and re-formed in a kaleidoscope of chaos, Nationalist Chinese forces regularly played rival groups against one another.
As part of a 1963 plan to bring order to the Shan State without costly Tatmadaw suppression efforts, Rangoon introduced a system of government-sponsored militias known as Ka Kwe Ye (KKY). It eventually authorized about two dozen or so of those militias to fight communists and other anti-government elements in return for modest material assistance and other concessions—such as informally being allowed to support themselves through the opium trade and other illegal activities. Even after 1965 legislation made opium cultivation and trading illegal in Burma’s Trans-Salween region, authorities tolerated that commerce by KKY groups in good standing, including the Loimaw KKY of Chang Ch’i-fu (Khun Sa). The KKY militias generally refrained from fighting the Tatmadaw but, to Rangoon’s disappointment, they also preferred to avoid fighting the KMT and communist insurgents.10
Adding to Rangoon’s Shan State problem, Nationalist Chinese elements such as the IBMND formed alliances and commercial partnerships with several of the same KKY militias that the GUB counted as its allies. Selected militiamen, especially from Chang Ch’i-fu’s Loimaw KKY, received military and intelligence training on Taiwan under IBMND or Kuomintang 2nd Section auspices. Despite promises that they would curtail activities of anti-Rangoon groups, local Thai officials continued to allow them to use Thailand as a base for operations inside Burma.11
In 1967, the Thai government remained undecided over how to deal with Nationalist Chinese refugees on its northern borders. Ma Chün-kuo’s IBMND operations, the activities of 4,000 soldiers of the Third and Fifth Armies, and the presence of thousands of dependents presented Bangkok with a dilemma. Some RTG officials saw that presence as a barrier to communist infiltration. Others were less sanguine in light of KMT narcotics trafficking, smuggling, and banditry that created social disorder and damaged bi-lateral relations with Rangoon and, to a lesser extent, Vientiane.12 As RTG officials pondered their KMT problem, the summer of 1967 presented them with an embarrassing incident dubbed colloquially the “Second Opium War.”13
Chang Ch’i-fu was by 1967 challenging the KMT’s preeminence in the Golden Triangle drug trade, on which Nationalist Chinese dominance had imposed a certain order. Merchants and small trafficking organizations in Burma generally paid to have KMT-escorted caravans move their opium safely to the Thai or Lao borders. In 1967, the accepted fee for that service was Thai Baht 180 ($9) per kilogram of opium, evenly split to cover caravan protection fees and a KMT-imposed tax on the opium’s value. Those willing to move their opium without KMT protection paid only the required tax, enforced by KMT patrols and mobile checkpoints along caravan routes. In 1967, an ambitious Chang Ch’i-fu decided to cut the KMT entirely out of the picture by paying neither protection fees nor taxes for a large caravan that he was sending south to Laos. Because his Loimaw KKY had cooperated with Rangoon since 1963, Chang Ch’i-fu knew his caravan could bribe its way past Tatmadaw patrols and GUB checkpoints, which operated much like those of the KMT. He was also confident that his heavily guarded, fast moving caravan could fend off interference from commercial rivals, KMT or otherwise.14
In spring 1967, Chang Ch’i-fu gathered opium from the Kokang and Wa states into a then record-setting shipment of 16 tons destined for Lao military strongman Ouan Rathikoun. Ouan was a longtime customer for KMT opium, dating from his years as Military Region I commander in Northwest Laos.15 A good businessman, however, Ouan would buy from whoever offered the best terms. In 1967, that was Chang Ch’i-fu. In June, he sent a pack animal caravan escorted by a mix of 800 troops and armed muleteers from Ving Ngün in Burma’s Wa states carrying Ouan’s opium. More than a mile in length, the caravan moved south toward its intended rendezvous with Ouan’s agents at Ban Houei Sai, 200 miles distant.
Tuan Hsi-wen and Li Wen-huan understood that allowing the audacious Chang Ch’i-fu to best them risked setting an example that could erode their dominance of the opium trade. They were determined to intercept the Loimaw caravan and either seize its opium or collect the requisite taxes. Out of mutual self-interest, Li Wen-huan and Tuan Hsi-wen cooperated in sending the more than 700 troops that pursued, but failed to intercept, the Loimaw caravan inside Burma.
At the Mekong River, Chang Ch’i-fu’s soldiers loaded their opium onto boats and set off with Third and Fifth Army troops in close pursuit. At Ban Kwan, the Loimaw soldiers landed and set up defensive positions with a steep bank to their back and an expanse of forest near the river that had been turned into a sea of mud by monsoon rains. There were plenty of logs to shelter behind as Chang Ch’i-fu’s troops dug in and warned local villagers that the KMT were coming. The local school principal alerted a nearby Lao army unit, which informed its headquarters at Ban Houei Sai and sent nearby villagers across the Mekong to safety in Thailand.16
The pursuing KMT, in rented boats, arrived at Ban Kwan several hours later on July 26, brushed aside pickets, and confronted Chang Ch’i-fu’s caravan. When the Loimaw group refused to pay customary KMT-imposed escort fees and taxes for their opium, a tense standoff ensued. Embarrassed by the squabble, Ouan Rathikoun ordered both sides to leave Laos immediately. They ignored his order, prompting Ouan, on July 30, to send two Royal Lao Air Force (RLAF) T-28 Trojans to bomb and strafe both sides at the sawmill. When the Trojans returned the following day, Chang Ch’i-fu’s troops had had enough. Leaving behind several dead soldiers and mules and all of their opium, they piled into their boats and returned to Burma. The KMT had suffered some 70 casualties to the T-28’s and they too were anxious to leave. Having carelessly neglected to keep their rented boats on the Lao bank, they set out on foot along the river carrying their captured opium north toward Burma.
The KMT had gone about six miles when Ouan Rathikoun’s Lao troops surrounded them and demanded the opium. During the prolonged standoff that followed, both Tuan Hsi-wen and Li Wen-huan went personally to strike a deal with Ouan. Two weeks of tense negotiations gave Ouan possession of the opium in return for paying the normal KMT escort fees and taxes that Chang Ch’i-fu had avoided in the first place. In effect, Ouan got his opium for free, paying only the freight and delivery costs that Chang Ch’i-fu would have charged him anyway.
In late August, the KMT soldiers finally crossed the Mekong River to Chiang Saen, Thailand. There, another standoff developed when they refused to give up their weapons for “safekeeping” by Thai authorities. Bangkok sent a National Security Council (NSC) representative to Chiang Saen to resolve the impasse and the KMT eventually agreed to hand over their weapons. Thai army trucks and buses then delivered the KMT to Mae Chan, from where they continued by foot to their headquarters at Tham Ngop and Mae Salong. They were back at their bases by the end of August and RTA vehicles returned their weapons soon thereafter.17
International notoriety from what the press called the “Second Opium War”—a reference to the mid-nineteenth century Anglo-Chinese wars—embarrassed Field Marshal Thanom Kittikachon’s Thai government by highlighting its failure to control Nationalist Chinese army remnants within its borders. Meeting in late August, his NSC ordered the RTA to crack down on KMT misbehavior and prevent its soldiers from entering Thailand.
Other Nationalist Chinese groups were caught up in the sudden demonstration of Thai firmness. The largest was a group of 300 IBMND military recruits from Lashio and T
ng-yan. Led by Col. Yao Chao, who had played a prominent role in the Operation Earth and SS Haitien misadventures, the recruits and their escorts set out that summer of 1967 for the Thai border. After a difficult two-month trek, during which some recruits died from disease aggravated by inadequate food, they reached the small IBMND station at Ban Kwan and bivouacked nearby. There, Yao Chao sat out the fighting between KMT troops and Chang Ch’i-fu, a decision which reflected the distance that had developed between the IBMND and the armies of Tuan Hsi-wen and Li Wen-huan.18
Yao Chao had anticipated no interference as he and his party delivered their load of opium to Ouan Rathikoun and crossed the Mekong into Thailand. The local Lao military commander and the ROC military attaché’s office in Bangkok had both agreed to Yao Chao’s transit of Laos. After the much-publicized KMT-Chang Ch’i-fu fight at Ban Kwan, however, Thai authorities were suddenly cautious in their dealings with all Nationalist Chinese. The Thai only reluctantly allowed Third and Fifth Army participants back into Thailand and refused entry altogether for Yao Chao’s IBMND column. As Yao Chao awaited Thai approval to cross into Thailand, Ouan Rathikoun took his opium and ordered the IBMND party to leave Laos. The ROC Embassy Bangkok finally intervened on behalf of the IBMND, proposing that Yao Chao’s column go back into Burma, move westward, and enter Thailand around Fang.19 Without waiting for an answer from the Thai, Yao Chao in early October took his group back into Burma to avoid an encounter with Lao T-28s. As he moved westward along the border, RTA units shadowed him from the Thai side but eventually allowed his recruits to slip into Thailand as agreed.20
A second group of non-combatants affected by the Ban Kwan fighting was the remnant force led by former YAVA Second Army commander Fu Ching-yun at Ban Huay Khrai. Thai soldiers detained 28 of his men and were preparing to act against another 140 when further inquiry revealed that they belonged to Fu Ching-yun’s group. That mix-up was embarrassing to the Thai21 because, since 1964, Fu Ching-yun had been providing them with 10-man intelligence teams for missions into Yunnan by way of the Shan State and Laos. Those teams brought back intelligence and defectors, especially as China’s Cultural Revolution blossomed. The Thai handed defectors and documents over to the CIA, which supported and helped plan those operations with Thailand’s police intelligence units.22
What to Do With the KMT in Thailand?
Spurred by the July–August “Opium War” and subsequent brouhaha over the Yao Chao and Fu Ching-yun groups, the Thai NSC reaffirmed its August decision to bar armed KMT from Thailand. Meeting on October 16, 1967, at Chiang Rai city, the RTA’s III Army23 commander, responsible for security in North Thailand, ordered Tuan Hsi-wen and his troops to depart by February 15, 1968. Most were already in Burma, leaving only 200 or so at Mae Salong’s Fifth Army headquarters. Tuan Hsi-wen said he would comply and then spent November and December conferring with ROC officials in Bangkok and Taipei.
The Thai held separate October 16–17 meetings with the ROC military attaché in Bangkok concerning IBMND personnel. Due to their intelligence cooperation with Taipei, however, the Thai allowed continued IBMND activities from bases in Thailand, although most of its personnel were inside Burma. At a November 9 meeting, the RTA III Army gave Li Wen-huan the same departure deadline it had given to Tuan Hsi-wen the previous month. Most of Li Wen-huan’s troops were also already in Burma; fewer than 400 remained inside Thailand. To soften its decision’s impact, the NSC offered to allow refugee villages to remain and KMT logistics staff to work from them under RTG supervision. Li Wen-huan was noncommittal.24
Almost immediately after Bangkok’s expulsion order, senior military, civilian, and police officials in North Thailand questioned its wisdom at a time of growing communist insurgency in their region. Officials in eastern Chiang Rai and Nan provinces along the Lao border, where security forces were increasingly clashing with armed CPT propaganda and organizing teams, were especially uneasy over Bangkok’s decision.25 Poorly coordinated and executed Thai-Lao communist suppression operations in late 1967 and early 1968 had seen government forces invariably on the losing side. In Thailand, forced relocation of villagers away from communist-infested highlands was sowing resentment against authorities. Disturbingly, there were reports of helicopters from Laos supplying the communists inside Thailand and of Vietnamese bodies on the battlefield as fighting spread.26
Had it been issued a year or two earlier, the KMT expulsion order might have seemed like a good idea to officials in North Thailand. That was not the case in late 1967. Chiang Mai’s governor, reflecting the views of military and civilian colleagues, bluntly told Bangkok that the approaching February 15 deadline should be extended. KMT troops in Thailand had, he argued, checked communist infiltration and helped control Hmong and the other restive highland minorities that provided most of the CPT’s fighters. Moreover, army and police officials were fully occupied combating communist insurgents and were reluctant to take on the additional job of ejecting thousands of armed, anticommunist KMT veterans. The governor suggested that the expulsion deadline be extended initially to May 15, 1968, and that Bangkok grant further extensions as necessary until its original order quietly died. In January 1968, Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachon’s cabinet accepted the indefinite extension proposal, avoiding embarrassment from canceling the expulsion edict outright.27
In an early March 1968 visit to Taipei, Lt. Gen. Praphat Charusatien, then concurrently deputy prime minister, RTA commander-in-chief, and minister of interior, proposed use of the Third and Fifth KMT armies against Thailand’s communist insurgents. Further talks in Bangkok, however, revealed deep differences over objectives.28 Bangkok wanted the KMT to fight Thailand’s domestic communists. Taipei wanted them to operate against Yunnan, something the Thai rejected as needlessly provoking Peking. Nor would the Thai accept Taipei’s other conditions: full control over KMT forces, the Thai or Americans paying the bills, and officers from Taiwan replacing Li Wen-huan and Tuan Hsi-wen.
Unable to bridge its differences with Bangkok, Taipei was moving unilaterally. By April 1968, it had “virtually approved” a plan to bring the Third and Fifth Armies under IBMND control and to secure an airstrip inside Burma for supplying that force.29 To sell its plan, Taipei sent CNA Maj. Gen. Lo Han-ch’ing to negotiate with the two KMT generals, whom he knew from his September 1960–March 1961 service at K
ng Lap. The two KMT commanders, however, rejected Taipei’s plan for them to turn over their forces to the IBMND and move permanently to Taiwan.30
Following May 1969 meetings between Chang Ch’ing-kuo and Prime Minister Thanom,31 Lo Han-ch’ing met further with the KMT generals. In principle, Li Wen-huan and Tuan Hsi-wen accepted reorganization of their armies under IBMND control but both wanted financial compensation for their weapons and lump sum retirement payments. Both also insisted upon being allowed to retire in Thailand. Those conditions were unacceptable to Taipei.
July 1969 saw another round of negotiations. Thai Supreme Command Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Kriangsak Chomanan and senior ROC officers met for several days with Li Wen-huan and Tuan Hsi-wen. Kriangsak and the ROC delegation proposed that the two generals hand their armies over to officers designated by Taipei. The ROC would then replace arms and equipment and provide logistics support under supervision of a joint RTG-ROC committee. Soldiers unfit or unwilling to fight communists would be sent with their families to Taiwan or settled into refugee villages in Thailand. Both Tuan Hsi-wen and Li Wen-huan would have to go to Taiwan to show their sincerity. Again, the two generals refused. They wanted to remain in Thailand and reiterated demands for compensation for debts incurred during years without Taipei’s support. A cautious Li Wen-huan even asked for written guarantees of immunity from both Taipei and Bangkok for any past illegal actions. Taipei’s representatives rejected those conditions and returned home.32
In January 1970, Deputy Minister of Defense Thawi Chulasap worked with Chiang Mai’s governor in a final effort to reach a deal with Chiang Ching-kuo in Taipei. By then, however, the ROC had cooled to possible re-involvement with its troublesome generals in the Golden Triangle. Aside from the older CNA officers still in place, those armies bore little resemblance to their predecessors and had only scant loyalty to the government in Taipei. Allowing Li Wen-huan and Tuan Hsi-wen to retire in Thailand would undermine Taipei’s efforts to control their armies. Nor would the ROC agree to the cash compensation payments demanded by the KMT generals. Chiang Ching-kuo rejected as impractical Thawi’s proposal that Taipei and Bangkok jointly assume control of the KMT groups regardless of the wishes of their commanders. Those talks proved the final Thai effort to persuade Taipei to take responsibility for its two former armies. By that point, the ROC had decided to walk away from those armies and concentrate its efforts on IBMND units and their allies in the tri-border region.33
1. Bangkok to DOS, Air. (Airgram) A-637, 2/19/1965 and Chiang Mai to DOS, Air. A-36, 3/26/1965, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Classified Files 1965, Box 325, US National Archives. Kanchana Prakatwuthisan, The 93rd Division: Nationalist Chinese Refugee Soldiers on Pha Tang Mountain, pp. 50–52.
2. Weekend Telegraph, London, March 1967.
3. Bangkok to DOS, Air. A-62, 1/21/1966, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, 1965–66, Box 312, US National Archives.
4. Bangkok to DOS, Air. A-637, 2/19/1965, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Classified Files, 1965, Box 325, US National Archives.
5. In the 1980s, ROC assistance built a hospital in Ban Nong Bua to care for CIF soldiers injured fighting alongside Thai security forces.
6. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 4, 8/18/1965; Chiang Mai to DOS, Air. A-12, 12/5/1965; and Chiang Mai to DOS, Air. A-20, 12/15/1965, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Classified Files, 1965, Box 325, US National Archives.
7. Royal Thai Army, Task Force 327, Former Chinese Nationalist Military Refugees [in Thai] (Bangkok: Royal Thai Army, 1986), pp. 33–34.
8. Chiang Mai to DOS, Air. A-23, 6/6/1966, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Classified, Box 213, US National Archives.
9. Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 03, 7/1/1964, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, 1962–64, Box 277, US National Archives.
10. Rangoon to DOS, Air. A-26, 2/8/1969, RG 84, Burma, Rangoon, 1969–69, Box 143; Chiang Mai to DOS, Air. A-35, 2/11/1964; and Rangoon to DOS, Air. A-32, 2/3/1964, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, 1962–1964, Box 277, US National Archives.
11. Chiang Mai to DOS, Air. A-35, 2/11/1964 and Rangoon to DOS, Air. A-32, 2/3/1964, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, 1962–64, Box 277, US National Archives. Chiang Mai, Memo., 8/19/1964, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, 1962–64, Box 43, US National Archives.
12. DOS, Briefing book, “Visit of Vice President Yen Chia-kan of the Republic of China, 5/9–10,/1967,” National Security File, Country File, China; “Visit of C. K. Yen, 5/9-10/67 Briefing Book,” Box 238, National Security Archives, George Washington University, Washington, DC. Taipei to DOS, Tel. 322, 8/8/1967, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified and Unclassified Central Subject Files 1948–67, Box 53, US National Archives.
13. The “first opium war” was actually a pair of Anglo-Chinese conflicts in 1839–42, the proximate cause of which was a dispute over opium imports into China.
14. Sangkhid Jantanapot, Military Leader of Dragon Mountain [in Thai] (Bangkok: Saradi Publishers, 2002), pp. 32–33.
15. Roger Warner, Back Fire: The CIA’s Secret War in Laos and Its Link to the War in Vietnam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), pp. 254–258. In October 1966, Ouan took control of Thao Ma’s C-47s after he refused to ferry Ouan’s opium. Thao Ma retaliated by bombing and strafing Kouprasith’s headquarters. Martin Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 157 and 225.
16. Sangkhid Jantanapot, Military Leader of Dragon Mountain, p. 37. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 1443, 8/8/1967, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified and Unclassified Central Subject Files 1948–67, Box 53, US National Archives.
17. Sangkhid Jantanapot, Military Leader of Dragon Mountain, pp. 38–40. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 1443, 8/8/1967, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified and Unclassified Central Subject Files 1948–67, Box 53, US National Archives. Chiang Mai to DOS, Air. A-01, 6/28/1974, obtained through FOIA.
18. Taipei to DOS, Tel. 545, 8/29/1967; Taipei to DOS, Tel. 794, 9/21/1967; DOS to Bangkok, Tel. 45337, 9/28/1967; and Vientiane to DOS, Tel. 1797, 9/29/1967, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified and Unclassified Central Subject Files 1948–67, Box 53, US National Archives.
19. Wang Ken-sheng int. by Wen H. Chen and Chin Yee Huei, 4/3/2009, Taoyuan, Taiwan. P’eng Ch’eng, “Story of Kuangwu Force,” Special Collection of Essays Concerning Ho-nan, pp. 12–14. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 3863, 9/28/1967 and Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 4075, 10/4/1967, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate; Political-Military Files 1964–69, Box 53, US National Archives. Taipei to DOS, Tel. 545, 8/29/1967; Taipei to DOS, Tel. 794, 9/21/1967; DOS to Bangkok, Tel. 45337, 9/28/1967; Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 3863, 9/28/1967; Vientiane to DOS, Tel. 1797, 9/29/1967; Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 4245, 10/7/1967; and Vientiane to DOS, Tel. 2001, 10/10/1967, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified and Unclassified Central Subject Files 1948–67, Box 53, US National Archives.
20. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 4075, 10/4/1967; Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 4744, 10/19/1967; Vientiane to DOS, Tel. 1797, 9/29/1967; and Vientiane to DOS, Tel. 2001, 10/10/1967, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified and Unclassified Central Subject Files, 1948–1967, Box 53, US National Archives.
21. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 4246, 10/6/1967 and Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 4457, 10/12/1967, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified and Unclassified Central Subject Files 1948–67, Box 53, US National Archives.
22. Thailand has a centralized government bureaucracy that governs the country through four administrative regions, numbered I through IV, each with an army of the same number.
23. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 135, 11/7/1967; Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 136, 11/8/1967; Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 139, 11/14/1967; Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 142, November 17; Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 1294, 11/20/1967; and Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 4744, 10/19/1967, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified and Unclassified Central Subject Files Box 53, US National Archives.
24. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 9969, 2/7/1968, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Secret Files 1968–68, Box 83 and Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 5055, 4/25/1969, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Box 216, US National Archives.
25. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 8842, 1/17/1968 and Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 208, 1/30/1968, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Box 207 and Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 10220, 2/14/1968, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Secret Files 1968–68, Box 83, US National Archives.
26. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 6851, 12/2/1967, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Box 53, US National Archives. Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Tel. 178, 1/10/1968, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Box 202, US National Archives.
27. Taipei to DOS, Tel. 2481, 3/18/1968, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Box 202, US National Archives. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 13092, 4/11/1968, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, 1964–1969, Box 69, US National Archives.
28. Taipei to DOS, Tel. 4374, 9/5/1968, RG 84, Taipei, Taiwan, Embassy, 1957–72, Box 204, US National Archives.
29. Royal Thai Army, Task Force 327, Former Chinese Nationalist Military Refugees, p. 19. Lieutenant General (ret.) Lo Han-ch’ing interviews by the authors, 9/29/and 10/13/2004, New York.
30. Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 6560, 5/21/1969 and DOS, INR Intelligence Note, 9/19/1969, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Box 212, US National Archives.
31. Royal Thai Army, Task Force 327, Former Chinese Nationalist Military Refugees, p. 19. Lieutenant General (ret.) Lo Han-ch’ing int. by the authors, 9/29/and 10/13/2004, New York, NY. DOS, INR “Intelligence Note,” 2/29/1968, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Box 202, US National Archives. Kanchana Prakatwuthisan, The 93rd Division: Nationalist Chinese Refugee Soldiers on Pha Tang Mountain, pp. 53–54.
32. Royal Thai Army, Task Force 327, Former Chinese Nationalist Military Refugees, p. 22.