PARK NAMING PLAN HEADED FOR FILE DRAWER

Madison park commissioner Locha Thao is backing off a controversial
proposal to name a park for Gen. Vang Pao, commander of the CIA's secret
army in Laos during the Vietnam War.

"I don't want any controversy to mislead the community," Thao said Friday.
He has asked fellow park commissioners to place his proposal on file when
it comes up on their agenda Wednesday.

Thao's proposal had set off a war of words waged by Hmong veterans on
Alfred McCoy, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who linked Vang
Pao to drug trafficking in Laos in a book first published 30 years ago.

Thao said Friday the issue now is not what to name the park on Madison's
far east side, but setting the record on Vang Pao straight.

Hmong veterans from around the state and their supporters took to the
streets, picketing outside McCoy's office and demanding that he retract
allegations of Vang Pao's involvement in heroin production and that the
university fire him.

University officials have supported McCoy, releasing a statement citing the
university's tradition of academic freedom. "We see no reason to take any
action to influence Professor McCoy's views," said Chancellor John Wiley
and Phil Certain, dean of the College of Letters and Science.

A week ago Thao arranged a news conference that raised the volume of the
furor by adding to the mix the voices of a former pilot of Air America, the
CIA-owned airline that McCoy said was used to move opium, and Jane
Hamilton-Merritt, a journalist who also has authored a book about the
secret war in Laos.

They disputed McCoy's claims as Sen. Gary George, D-Milwaukee, who is a
candidate for governor, called on the university to investigate McCoy's work.

Vang Pao, through a spokesman, ridiculed McCoy's "Hollywood" imagination as
he denied McCoy's charges.

On Friday, Thao said it was neither rumblings from park commissioners or
questions from the community that led him to put the park-naming proposal
on a back burner.

"I want to listen to both sides and get the story straight," Thao said. He
said he will ask Wiley to meet with McCoy and representatives of Vang Pao.
"They can sit down and work together and come to a conclusion."

McCoy on Friday raised concerns about such a meeting.

"To participate in any review of the book would be a trampling of academic
freedom," he said. "The book has been subject to CIA review, it has been
subject to peer review. It's been in print 30 years."

First published in 1972 as "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia," his
research was incorporated into a 1991 book, "The Politics of Heroin: CIA
Complicity in the Global Drug Trade."

The CIA assisted in transporting Laotian opium to Southeast Asian heroin
factories to cement the power of Vang Pao, who supplied ethnic Hmong
villagers to protect the important Ho Chi Minh Trail from the North
Vietnamese, McCoy wrote.

The CIA tried to suppress publication of McCoy's book, the New York Times
reported in 1972. Government officials at that time denied abetting or
engaging in the drug trade in Southeast Asia. McCoy also defended his
assertions before a Senate committee in 1973.

Thao charges that McCoy was never in the region of Laos that was under Vang
Pao's control and that the wealthy leader had no need for drug money.
Besides, if Vang Pao had been involved in drugs, it would be well known
among the Hmong people.

"Ninety percent of Hmong people do not know that," said Thao. "That means
that it is not true."

But McCoy said it was from Hmong opium farmers in Laos that he learned of
Vang Pao's involvement. He said he went from home to home interviewing
opium farmers, who told him a consistent story.

"Air America helicopters would land on the local landing place, officers of
Vang Pao's army would buy the opium for cash and fly off, the villagers
said, to (the village of) Long Chieng," McCoy said. Long Chieng was the
site of a heroin lab, according to McCoy's sources.

McCoy said he left the area only after Vang Pao's troops ambushed him and
his guides as they traveled from one village to another in the district
controlled by Vang Pao. The latter denied last week that such an ambush
took place.

While detractors last week called on McCoy to apologize to the Hmong people
for defaming them, the professor speaks with deep admiration of the Hmong
and their aid to the United States during the Vietnam War.

"The Hmong as a people suffered incredibly. America's debt to them is
infinite," McCoy said Friday. "Vang Pao is not the Hmong. I argue he led
them badly."

McCoy also said that he has lectured widely in the state on the experience
of the Hmong people. "I've pleaded with the people of this state to
recognize what the Hmong have gone through."

McCoy said he urges the Park Commission to honor the Hmong community with a
park, perhaps called Hmong Freedom Park.

Individual Hmong heroes to be so honored might include Shong Lue Yang, a
messianic leader who developed the Hmong alphabet, or Touby Lyfong, the
political leader of the anti-communist Hmong during the secret war in Laos,
he said.