Posted on 03/27/2002 11:37:16 PM PST by JohnHuang2
TINGRI, Tibet – Outside a small home that rests not far from the Rongphu Monastery, "Kenny" Lama shoveled snow and collected firewood before sitting down for tea with WorldNetDaily in a meeting set up to recount a little-known story about his people's involvement in the CIA's Special Forces – how the Kampas were armed by the U.S. government to carry out an heroic and heartbreaking struggle against the powers of Beijing.
In the end, as Lama tells it, the hearty Kampas were betrayed, as were other former allies of the U.S. like the Karen, Hmong, Montagnards, Afrikaners, Rhodesians, Kurds and others.
"I never wanted to be a soldier," Lama told WND. "I was a monk when I was a teen-ager. I just wanted to pray and be left alone. But then the communists took over Tibet; there was no other choice but to fight."
Well into his 50s, Lama, like his Sherpa and Gurkha counterparts just to the south in Nepal, are rugged mountain people. As such, they have served the West well as soldiers for several centuries.
Lama lives in the extreme southern part of the "TAR" or Tibetan Autonomous Region.
He spoke about how he prayed to the "Tara" or Tibetan female deity for strength over the years and how he endured the Chinese "thamzing," or torture, used to get revolutionaries to change their anti-communist vews.
"I don't suppose you know about Nyentri Tsenpo?" Lama asked.
Lama was speaking about the legend of Tibet's first-ever king.
"We Kampas are the heirs to the Qiang, proto-Tibetan tribes who fought against the unjust Chinese rulers in ancient times. In my lifetime, our people were forced to hide from the gonganju – the Chinese public security bureau," he explained.
Lama described how he and other Kampas were recruited to fight against the Chinese colonization of Tibet, which began in 1951.
"If the Chinese caught us … well, they gave us the 'sky burial' – only before we were actually dead," Lama told WorldNetDaily. "They were evil men."
The sky burial is a Tibetan custom of chopping a dead person's body and leaving it for the birds to eat. It is believed that such a burial leads to the "pure lands," or an eternal paradise.
"Conquering Tibet was important for the Chinese," Lama's cousin Ping said.
"The Maoists wanted to wipe out all remnants of our religion, which, as you know, is quite peaceful. They also had the foresight to think of setting up nuclear rockets in Tibet, which were to be aimed at India."
When China first entered Tibet, monasteries were looted and bulldozed to the ground. Monks were ordered to have sexual relations. In recent years, Lama said, "the Chinese government brought in scores of prostitutes in an effort to lure the monks into immorality."
"Monks who tried to hold onto their spiritual values were sent to prison, tortured and left to die," Lama added.
A rebellion against Chinese rule was put down in 1959 and led to further repression. The Dalai Lama fled to India after this rebellion.
Ironically, the Dalai Lama told Time magazine that he believed "if true communism had come to Tibet, it would have been of great benefit to the people."
Under the 17-Point Agreement of 1951, Tibet was supposed to be granted autonomy on a scale equal to Hong Kong. However, that has failed to materialize. According to the Tibetan Information Network, based in London, over a million Tibetans have died because of communist rule.
The Dixie Mission
Lama traced the betrayal of the Kampas and the failure of the Tibetan CIA Special Forces to "treason in the U.S. Sate Department."
"My father was actually a communist, and he served under Mao during the days of World War II," he told WorldNetDaily.
"My father attended meetings with the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, who came to China to meet with Mao during that war."
In 1942, the OSS extended its operations into China. America had just entered World War II. In the Asia theater, Japan had been on the march for more than a decade and was busy raping Nanking, Korea, Indochina, Indonesia, Malaysia and even bombing northern Australia.
At the head of the OSS plan for driving the Japanese out of China was the infamous "Dixie Mission."
Said Lama, "The Dixie Mission entailed American diplomats and other high-level officials kissing up to Mao, the same Mao who would go on to murder 50 million of his own people."
The Dixie Mission's officers eventually were caught red-handed and brought back to the U.S. in disgrace for their interaction with the Chinese communists. In fact, some Dixie Mission military officers had worn Chinese military uniforms.
In the 1950s, the Dixie Mission offered meaty details for McCarthy-era battles over who in the U.S. government "lost" China to the communists.
According to David E. Reuther, a retired foreign service officer with more than 20 years experience in East Asia, the Dixie Mission was "the product of rival American intelligence factions and objectives. Competition among American intelligence factions led to murky understanding of the history of this period. Neither the Army, the OSS nor the CIA has ever written an official history of operations in China."
Reuther writes, "From the beginning, OSS Chief William 'Wild Bill' Donovan and the Nationalist Chinese led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who had solicited OSS assistance, had difficulty finding common ground. Donovan regarded China, the bulk of which had been taken over by the Japanese, as occupied enemy territory and thus fair game for his unrestricted operations. Chiang thought that he and his intelligence chief, Tai Li, should be regarded as equal partners in all operations. The Americans' goal was defeat of Japan. Chinese factions – the Nationalists under Chiang and the Communists under Mao Tse-tung – had one eye on Japan and one on each other.
"But Donovan and Chiang were not the only participants in this dance. Some 20 American government agencies and more than a dozen American intelligence organizations also had separate agendas. American military intelligence set up operations in China first and was reluctant to share them with the OSS. China's isolation at the end of supply lines also fueled competition among American intelligence agencies."
John Wayne in the Rockies
"I knew that we couldn't trust the American State Department, which is often at odds with the American military and intelligence establishment," Lama told WorldNetDaily.
"After Mao murdered my father, I became a devoted counter-revolutionary. I joined up with the Kampa CIA Special Forces."
Lama explained how joining the Special Forces led him into a life he'd never imagined.
"We were sent to Colorado to a secret base to receive training. At night we would watch John Wayne movies. I was living out a fantasy," he said.
Lama said that the Kampas carried out numerous special operations against China's colonizing forces.
"We were successful, but when President Nixon went to China, he promised Mao he would betray us," Lama said. "I wasn't surprised. My father had told me about the Dixie Mission many years ago. Nixon was true to his word, and so the Chinese mopped us up. I have been left here, only to gather my firewood and shovel snow."
Lamas was referring to Nixon's famed trip to China during which he promised Beijing that the U.S. would stop funding the Kampas in Tibet. When the money dried up, so did the warriors' effectiveness.
In his retirement, Lama sits by his roaring campfire, trying to keep warm by recounting stories of his heady and romantic days of fighting Mao's ideals.
"If you look at the record of the Chinese communists, you know we Kampas did the right thing by fighting against them," he said stoically.
"I just wish America and the world would acknowledge our struggle on their behalf."
......................although (as I recall), THAT article seemed to place more blame on the Kennedy/Johnson administrations than Nixon.
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