CIA activities in Vietnam the next 14 years, the focus of their paramilitary operations changed over time. Until 1964, the Hmong fighters in Laos focused on trying to fight back North Vietnamese fighters and on preventing further encroachment. They were highly important, because the US hadn't begun putting troops on the ground in any great numbers, yet. After that, in 1965, the report describes the Hmong activities in Laos as "flitt[ing] over mountain trails or mov[ing] by air to occupy key high ground and to harass Hanoi's tanks and artillery," meaning that US troops took on a frontline role and asked the paramilitary forces
CIA activities in Vietnam A series of accusations in the early 1970s that the CIA was complicit in drug trafficking in Laos was a contributing factor in the public's opposition to US activities in Southeast Asia. Neither the CIA nor any of its officers were accused of direct activity in the narcotics operations, and it is likely that the agency did not focus much energy on the trafficking by indigenous allies until a heroin epidemic broke out among US troops in South Vietnam. There was nothing preventing the hill tribes in northern Laos from producing and selling opium until 1971, as the trade was