CIA ' LAOTIAN IRREGULARS USED WORLD MDICAL RELIEF SUPPLIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180114-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 19, 2010
• Sequence Number: 114
• Publication Date: November 24, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT ' Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
24 NOVEMBER 1982
CIA's Laotian irregulars used World Medical, Relief
Supplies from a charity, World Medical Relief Inc. of Detroit, helped
maintain the Central Intelligence Agency's secret army in Laos, The
Cleveland'Plain Dealer has charged in a copyright report.
H2r'ry C. Aderholt, a retired Air Force Brigadier general, and Daniel Arnol d
a retired CIA chief of station in Thailand and Laos, acknowledged they served!
as Southeast Asian conduits for millions of dollars of World Medical Relief
assistance while in government service, the newspaper said Wednesday.
It said it learned that World Medical Relief assistance was funneled to
Hmong, or Meo, tribesmen through a distribution chain that included Air Force
Commandos and Edgar " Mr. Pop " Buell, a U.S. official who helped organize and
train Hmong soldiers.
According to congressional reports, the CIA secretly equipped, trained and
helped supply its own private army of 30,000 Laotian irregulars, originally
consisting mostly of Hmong tribesmen. During the late 1960s, the private army
was used in covert military operations against the Communist Pathet Lao and
North Vietnamese invaders.
World Medical Relief, headquartered in an eight-story brick warehouse in
Detroit, is known to missionaries and doctors around the world as a lifeline of
medical supplies for the needy, The Plain Dealer said.
The newspaper said World Medical Relief, a federally tax-exempt organization,!
said it runs a " non-political, non-government medical relief program ...
dedicated to the service of God's sick poor.''
The charity's 86-year-old founder and president, Irene Auberlin, was quoted
as saying "We're strictly medical. We equip hospitals and clinics for
missionaries. We don't get involved with governments."
Tax laws under which corporations donate goods to World Medical Relief,
receiving write-offs, require that donations be used only for the needy.
The Plain Dealer said Aderholt, who headed the 1st Air Commandos, at first
hesitated to discuss the role World Medical Relief played in supplying the
Laotians. But it said he later acknowledged the support from the charity.
" I administered all the (World Medical Relief) programs ... in Laos-; through.
Doc (Charles) Weldon, who was a very famous doctor yip. there,. and Pop Buell .. .
He led the Meo," he was quoted as saying.
The newspaper said Arnold, who replaced Aderholt as the charity's prime
distributor in Thailand in 1976, also confirmed World Medical Relief's supply
line to the Hmong.
It said that during an interview in Washington, D.C., last July, Arnold was
asked if Hmong tribesmen received World Medical Relief supplies while fighting
Communist forces.
CO.NTIN{/ED
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. CA-
''That is correct, yes,'' it quoted him as responding. But it said he later
said the supplies only went to Hmong refugees inside Laos.
Aderholt was also quoted as saying World Medical Relief supplies were
distributed by the I.S. military in South America when he was with the 1st Air
Commandos.
''We flew stuff... to the Canal Zone and then distributed it down in South
America,'' he was quoted as saying, explaining that Air Force commando units
administered a lot of the medicines down there in the civic action programs. ''
Civil action programs were part of the U.S. government's foreign
counterinsurgency program, the newspaper said.
ILLEGIB
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/19: CIA-RDP90-00806R000201180114-3