“Only the dead have seen the end of war” (from George Santayana, often wrongly attributed to Plato). This book tells the extraordinary story of the conflict in Asian Laos in the 1960s and 70s, later called the CIA's secret war. It was the largest covert operation of the CIA to this day. A guerrilla army of Hmong tribesmen fought against the Pathet Lao supported by the communist North Vietnamese. While the fighting in Vietnam was widely reported, this campaign remained hidden.