CIA’s Secret War in Tibet

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Though he had his own followers, Bapa Yeshe was dismissed in 1968. Camp Hale Tibetans and CIA men say he proceeded to Kathmandu (where he remains today) and gave the Nepalese army minute details as to where the resistance camps were located and the names of their leaders.

There would be one more Mustang resistance leader. Gyato Wangdu, a steel-hard fighter and one of the original Saipan-trained Tibetans, would be the principal actor in the Chushi Gandrug’s tragic closing act.

It was President Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with China that rang the death knell for the Tibetan resistance. John Kenneth Knaus, now an associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University, wrote, ‘After their journey to Beijing Dr. [Henry] Kissinger told his chief [Nixon], ‘We are now in the extraordinary situation that, with the exception of the United Kingdom, the People’s Republic of China might well be closest to us in its global perceptions.” These global perceptions did not include the Tibetans.

When the order to close ST Circus came down, not a few CIA field officers were as angry and saddened as the Tibetans. While they still feel it was a great program and are proud of their part in it, they are regretful that they did not or could not do more. ‘It was more a case of not being straightforward with the Tibetans,’ McCarthy lamented, ‘and letting the State Department types have the trump cards, especially at critical junctures. Again, had we been able to go to Tibet’s aid in 1952, or even up to 1955, history would have been rewritten. By 1958 and 1959 we were again on the tail end of opportunity.’ Rather more bluntly than the other CIA officers involved in ST Circus, McCarthy concluded: ‘Generally speaking, I think the Agency looks at Tibet as having been one of the best operations that it has ever run. Well that’s fine, that’s very complimentary. But if you look at the final results, it’s a very sad commentary. If we look at what we did to Tibet as about the best that we could do, then I say that we failed miserably.’

The base in Mustang struggled on until 1974, when the Nepalese government, under tremendous Chinese pressure, sent troops to shut it down. The Mustang leaders refused to surrender. In an effort to prevent a Nepalese slaughter of his people, the Dalai Lama issued a taped message to be played in all the camps, ordering the Tibetans to lay down their arms. ‘The tape contained the Dalai Lama’s real voice,’ recalled Mustang soldier Ugyen Tashi. ‘So when we heard his message, I swear, some of the men even cried. Everyone heard the message with their own ears, so we had no choice but to give up. Then we turned in our weapons…all day and all night.’ Afterward, some Tibetans threw themselves into a river and were drowned. A CIA-trained senior Tibetan officer slit his own throat on the spot.

Yet one man did not comply — Gyato Wangdu, who with a few select warriors embarked on a hard-fighting run for India. But a month later they were ambushed by Nepalese forces at a place called Tinkers Pass. Seeing the end before him, Wangdu chose to ride straight into his attackers. And with that, it was over. The last fighter of the secret war at the top of the world went down in a deadly cross-fire, as much a casualty of politics half a world away as the guns of Tinkers Pass.

This article was written by Joe Bageant and originally published in the February 2004 issue of Military History. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today!

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts

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