Hmong vets march in support of Vang Pao

Want retraction of UW prof's allegations

By Pat Schneider

April 19, 2002

Angry Hmong veterans are taking to the streets to demand that a UW-Madison professor retract allegations that a nationally prominent Hmong leader was involved in drug trafficking during the Vietnam War.

Some 50 Hmong veterans and their supporters marched outside the Humanities Building on the UW-Madison campus Thursday, carrying signs demanding that Alfred McCoy stop accusing Lao Gen. Vang Pao of involvement in the heroin production machine that fed the habits of U.S. soldiers during the war.

"Fire McCoy" read one sign. "We need your proof " read another. "General Vang Pao is great" said a third. Some protesters carried photos of soldiers at gunpoint whom they say Hmong soldiers saved from execution moments later.

Their furor was stirred by an article in Wednesday's editions of The Capital Times that recounted McCoy's accusations, first made 30 years ago. In his 1972 book "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia," McCoy wrote that the CIA assisted in transporting Laotian opium to Southeast Asian heroin factories to shore up the power of Vang Pao, commander of the Hmong clansmen who made up a secret army that fought against North Vietnam.

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