America’s Secret War in Laos was a proxy conflict fought during the height of the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, and was orchestrated by the US Central Intelligence Agency. While the enormous devastation inflicted upon Laos during the war is now well-known, the details of the CIA’s role has, until now, been a tale left largely untold. In this Policy Forum Pod, Josh Kurlantzick discusses his new book ‘A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA’, which draws upon extensive interviews and newly declassified CIA records to tell the tale of the Secret War. Josh is a Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was previously a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has served as columnist and correspondent for numerous news organisations, including the Economist, the New Republic, and the American Prospect. He is also the winner of the Luce Scholarship for journalism in Asia. This Policy Forum Pod is produced in partnership with New Mandala - www.newmandala.org - the leading site for analysis on Southeast Asia politics and society. Photo by USAF on Wikipedia Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.