CIA's
involvement in Tibet during the cold war was well known to knowledgeable
readers in this group, although the inside stories were scarce. Since Dalai
Lama started so-called "non-violent" approach, he and his followers
don't want people to know their dirty laundry. However, those who were involved
started to talk, for various reasons. Following story tells us the deep
involvement of CIA and cooperation between Taiwan, India, and Tibetans. Now,
"non-violent" approach has got them to nowhere, except a Nobel Peace
Prize that fell on Dalai Lama's lap and two Hollywood box-office bombs, they
are longing once again for those good old violence. Well, could Hollywood +
violence achieve what CIA + violence couldn't achieve? The Dalai Lama, the
spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, doesn't want his secrets revealed. He has
given his blessing to a new Hollywood film, Kundun, enshrining the officially
sanctioned and sanitized history of his country's battle for independence
against Communist China. And in another Hollywood Tibetan epic, based on the
memoirs of German mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, actor Brad Pitt re-enacts a
spiritual odyssey with the Dalai Lama in Tibet's remote and mysterious mountain
kingdom. What neither film portrays are facts about the true adventures
-- and tragedy -- of Tibetan freedom fighters that have remained secret for
decades. But thanks to the willingness of a handful of former diplomats,
military special operations personnel, and intelligence officials, the real
story of America's secret war in Tibet can now be told. Officials at the
Central Intelligence Agency were unusually helpful in the research for this
article, although it reports events that are still classified today. Perhaps
they were motivated by the desire to prevent Hollywood's propagation of
revisionist histories about what really happened in Tibet. Or perhaps this is
one of those rare occasions when the Central Intelligence Agency decides to
take some well-deserved credit for one of its successes by revealing tidbits
from its secret history. But don't expect the Clinton administration to
declassify the Tibetan operation files anytime soon. The secret archives
include a shameful episode involving Clinton's favorite presidency, the Kennedy
administration, and Democratic icon John Kenneth Galbraith. One of the
best-kept secrets of the Tibetan War is Ambassador Galbraith's role in the
abandonment of an army of Tibetan guerrillas caught in a pitched battle. While
special operations Air Force planes stood by to parachute ammunition and
supplies to the Tibetan freedom fighters, Galbraith refused to give permission
for the CIA to resupply its covert Tibetan army. Cut
off and surrounded, between six and eight thousand Tibetans were annihilated by
the Chinese in a massacre that
has been shrouded in secrecy for more than thirty years. The parallels to the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco are eerie. In both cases the Eisenhower administration originally launched the covert programs to train freedom fighters to resist Communist domination. In both the guerrillas depended on U.S. support for arms and ammunition. In Tibet, as in Cuba, only air support and airdrops of supplies could help trapped men fight their way out of desperate situations. In both cases, when the freedom fighters were at their moment of greatest peril, the Kennedy administration chose to abandon them. This is the true story of how the Tibetan operation began in glory, and ended in shame. After Mao Tse-tung and the Peoples Liberation Army pushed the Nationalist Chinese off the mainland in the late 1940's, Peking turned its attention to consolidating its territory. In the summer of 1950, skirmishing at border posts broke out between China and Tibet. Using this fighting as a pretext, China invaded Tibet with more than 80,000 troops.
Tibet's army was tiny and poorly equipped. Efforts to resist the Chinese alone would have been futile. Tibet needed allies, it needed to buy time, and most of all it needed arms. It is hard to imagine today, in an age of satellites and the Internet, how remote Tibet was in the fifties. Communications had to be relayed by messenger over mountain passes. In desperation, Tibet sent emissaries abroad to negotiate on three separate tracks. Some delegations sought an accommodation with China, on terms that would maintain some autonomy for Tibet. Others explored the possibility of asylum and financial support for the Dalai Lama and his retinue. Still others sought diplomatic support for Tibet's independence, and military weapons for armed resistance. Today, with our emphasis on Tibet's human rights situation, it may surprise many to think of the Buddhist kingdom seeking arms to fight China. Owing largely to the Vietnam war era television images of self- immolating Buddhist monks, many Americans mistakenly believe that all Buddhists practice non-violence and passive resistance. But Tibetan Buddhism, as practiced by its monks and the people of Tibet, did not shy from violence. By early 1951, Tibet's emissaries had made contact with American diplomats in neighboring India. A delegation speaking in the name of the Dalai Lama asked for support for Tibet's independence, and inquired whether the U.S. would shoulder the costs of the Dalai Lama and several hundred followers in exile.
Tibet's request was handled at the top levels of the U.S. government. Secretary of State Dean Acheson sent top-secret cables to embassies in Ceylon, Thailand, and India, instructing ambassadors to sound out the prospects for asylum for the Dalai Lama. America's support for Chiang Kai-Shek's Chinese Nationalists on Formosa complicated matters. Like Communist China, the Nationalists also viewed Tibet as a historic part of the Chinese empire. Stopping the Communist conquest of Tibet was attractive to
the U.S., but not if it would alienate Chiang Kai-shek, who opposed Tibetan independence. But one thing was clear from the beginning. The U.S. wanted the Dalai Lama to lead his country's resistance against the Chinese. A secret cable from 1951 reveals that Washington encouraged the Dalai Lama to "remain in (a) country near Tibet for purpose of mounting resistance to Chinese
Communists within Tibet." The more immediate problem was how to support Tibet's resistance war. In the early 1950's, there were no secure channels of communication between the U.S. and Tibet. American diplomats had little knowledge of the Dalai Lama's retinue. They didn't know who could be trusted to safely and accurately convey messages, and who might be a Chinese agent. Sending written notes the Chinese might intercept was risky. As a result, it took months to relay oral messages back and forth to the Dalai Lama over the mountainous reaches of Tibet. A top secret telegram from Secretary of State Acheson to the U. S. Embassy in India gives a sense of this difficulty: "Info Contel 91 July 31 and Embtel 440 (rptd Cal unnumbered) Aug 1 suggests unreliable intermediaries figured critically in failure effort persuade DL leave Yatung....Believe it unwise advise any Tibetan to receive this msg prior actual communication." The message Acheson referred to in his cable confirmed America's standing offer to the Dalai Lama: "our original position -- full aid and assistance to you when you come out." Acheson wanted U.S. aid conditioned on the Dalai Lama's agreement to leave Tibet. The Dalai Lama was told that while American planes couldn't fly into Lhasa to take him into exile, the U.S. would do all it could to aid him in fleeing Tibet. The Tibetan emissaries wanted arms. A secret cable from November 15, 1951, reports the U.S. reply: "...suggestions for overt US provision of planes, arms, supplies and leadership are practically impossible and politically undesirable at this time....US shld make at least one final effort by letter or oral messages to encourage DL to resist in ways best known to Tib Govt....Although it may not be feasible, DL might for example make pilgrimage to Buddhist shrines in Tib from one of which he might escape southward to Ind." Where others saw diplomatic quandaries, CIA deputy director Allen Dulles recognized opportunity. A veteran of "Wild Bill" Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, America's clandestine predecessor to the CIA, Dulles gained field experience during World War II as the OSS hustled to organize U.S. spying and sabotage operations. OSS specialized in behind-the-lines support to resistance movements across Nazi-occupied Europe, parachuting agents, supplies, and officers deep behind enemy lines. Some OSS officers were old China hands, and had fought alongside Mao Tse-tung's forces against the Japanese. OSS veterans like Dulles had the mindset and experience to run guerrilla operations behind Chinese lines. At the time of Tibet's invasion, Allen Dulles was CIA's Deputy Director of Plans, with responsibilities that included overseeing all CIA covert operations. While the State Department temporized about how much aid to give the Dalai Lama before he left Tibet, Dulles began to explore arming and training the Tibetan resistance. Weapons were a problem. Covert aid required arms that could not be traced to the United States. To cloak their origin, guns had to be compatible with Chinese military stocks. As a bonus, compatible guns meant Tibetan rebels could use captured Chinese ammunition. Thirty years later in Nicaragua, CIA planners faced the same challenge when they had to find Soviet weapons to supply the contras. When Israel invaded Lebanon and seized PLO warehouses full of Soviet-supplied weapons, the CIA rapidly transported the captured arms to Nicaragua's freedom fighters. But in the early 1950's, the weapons Dulles needed were German. During the decades of war-lordism that befell China in the twenties and thirties, German guns were widely used throughout the country. CIA cabled U.S. military attach s across Europe, asking them to report back on inventories of captured Nazi arms. But the CIA had little bureaucratic clout in the early days of its existence, and the Defense Department was unresponsive. Sam Cummings, now an internationally known arms dealer, was then a young weapons expert in CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. His office received a routine copy of the Defense Department report, and he knew immediately that it was wrong. Cummings had been in Europe shortly after World War II, and had seen stockpiles of Nazi arms himself. He sent his superiors a memo that claimed there were plenty of surplus guns stashed in Europe. A few weeks later, the young analyst was summoned to meet with Dulles. Richard Helms, who would later be CIA director when the Tibet war ground to an end, ushered the 24-year-old Cummings into Dulles's office. Cummings was persuasive, and soon found himself on a clandestine mission in Europe. Accompanied by a Hollywood cinematographer named Leo Lippe, and under the flimsy pretext of needing Nazi weapons for use as props in a series of war movies, he spent 1951 and 1952 moving around Europe purchasing old Nazi arms for the CIA. Cummings found plenty of surplus German Mausers and other weapons for Dulles's secret armies. For almost fifty years, the record of Dulles's clandestine operation has remained buried in the government's secret archives. After he became CIA director in 1953, Allen Dulles oversaw the creation of an audacious covert program involving tens of thousands of Tibetan freedom fighters who fought courageously against China's People's Liberation Army in a decade-long struggle for independence. The scale of Dulles's covert war dwarfed William Casey and President Reagan's aid to Nicaragua's contras, but both programs had their roots in the experience that former OSS officers Allen Dulles and Bill Casey shared running World War II's clandestine liberation wars behind enemy lines. Throughout the fifties Tibetan refugees trickled into neighboring Nepal, ripe for recruitment by the CIA. Under the Eisenhower administration, Dulles got permission to train the recruits in OSS-type sabotage techniques, demolition, and most importantly, code-and-cipher work for radio operators. Eager Tibetans were flown from the refugee camps in Dakota transport airplanes with blacked-out windows halfway across the world to Camp Hale, an army training base taken over by the CIA near Leadville, Colorado. There they were trained in the basic doctrines of guerrilla warfare, tactical small-arms use, explosives, and the tradecraft of underground resistance movements. The CIA trainees were then flown back to base camps in Nepal, and infiltrated back into Tibet.
Soon Tibetan resistance armies like the Chushi Gangdruk, a force of freedom fighters headed by Andruk Gonpo Tashi, were in the field. The name Chushi Gangdruk means "Four Rivers, Six Ranges," and describes the Tibetan homeland of Tashi's fighters. Although its numbers were small compared to the divisions of the People's Liberation Army, the CIA regarded them as an
effective fighting force. A memo from Dulles to the White House summarized the Agency's view of its guerrillas: The Tibetans, particularly the Khambas, Goloks, and other tribes of East Tibet, are a fierce, brave and warlike people. Battle in defense of their religion and the Dalai Lama is looked upon as a means of achieving merit toward their next reincarnation. By the late 1950's the CIA had plenty of assets inside Tibet. These included agents, paramilitary troops, and commanders. The number of Tibetan freedom fighters had risen to the tens of thousands. Tibet's mountains meant the only practical way to get supplies to the freedom fighters was by air. Colonel Harry "Heinie" Aderholt's air commandos, an elite Air Force unit tasked with supporting the CIA's special missions since the Korean War, was tapped for the job. The resupply line to Tibet started in Okinawa, the closest secure transshipment point the CIA could use in moving the clandestine arms purchases. From Okinawa, Aderholt's planes shipped the arms to a forward operating base at Takhli, Thailand. From Thailand, C-130 aircraft flew men and supplies over Indian airspace for parachute drops into Chinese-occupied Tibet. The mountain flying, unaided by radar and modern instrument navigational systems, was hazardous even in good conditions. Diplomatic considerations made it even more complicated. Because the route involved overflights of India, there was always a risk that a plane would go down in Indian territory. Prime Minister Nehru's relations with the neighboring Chinese were complex, but they were certain to be badly strained if China interpreted the overflights as tacit Indian support for the secret war. In the late fifties and early sixties, Nehru was becoming increasingly cooperative with the Soviet Union, and a breach with China might have furthered India's pro-Soviet tilt. In view of this delicate balancing act, the U.S. could not afford to create a diplomatic incident by losing a planeload of covert weapons in India. It was critical that the U.S. supply flights go off without any hitches. Air Force Major Larry Ropka, said to be "CIA's finest aerial infiltration planner," handled the operation. Ropka had a reputation as a detail-sweating perfectionist. Throughout the entire Tibetan airdrop operation, Ropka never lost a single airplane. But by far the most important CIA asset was an agent named Gyalo Thondup, elder brother to the Dalai Lama. Although he has remained in his brother's shadow, Thondup's role in Tibet's fight for freedom is unsurpassed. He was vital not only to CIA paramilitary operations in Tibet, but to the Dalai Lama's safe flight into exile. Thanks to Thondup's liaison with the CIA, the
Chinese were prevented from capturing the Dalai Lama. " Gyalo Thondup was a good agent," says the retired CIA officer who met clandestinely with the Dalai Lama's brother to plan the exodus from Tibet. " He was smart, articulate." Thondup's case officer spent a career in the CIA. When he discusses the Tibetan operation, he is still careful to shelter confidences. " I've sort of trained myself to forget about the operational detail," he explains. "You don't talk very much about specific operational details, or even specific operations, for anyone who's alive..." The beginning of the end came in March, 1959, when a general uprising known in intelligence annals as the "Tibetan Rebellion" broke out. Many factors fueled the uprising, including unthinkable Chinese barbarities, communal land policies, and the crowding of refugees into the capital city of Lhasa. But the sparks that ignited the tinder were rumors that China was about to kidnap the Dalai Lama. Some 30,000 Tibetans flocked to the gates of the Dalai Lama's palace to protect him. In response, the Chinese shelled the crowd with artillery. The crisis was a turning point for Tibetan diplomacy, which for eight years had sought an accommodation with China. With no accommodation possible, the Dalai Lama took up the standing American offer of help in getting out of Tibet.
has been shrouded in secrecy for more than thirty years. The parallels to the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco are eerie. In both cases the Eisenhower administration originally launched the covert programs to train freedom fighters to resist Communist domination. In both the guerrillas depended on U.S. support for arms and ammunition. In Tibet, as in Cuba, only air support and airdrops of supplies could help trapped men fight their way out of desperate situations. In both cases, when the freedom fighters were at their moment of greatest peril, the Kennedy administration chose to abandon them. This is the true story of how the Tibetan operation began in glory, and ended in shame. After Mao Tse-tung and the Peoples Liberation Army pushed the Nationalist Chinese off the mainland in the late 1940's, Peking turned its attention to consolidating its territory. In the summer of 1950, skirmishing at border posts broke out between China and Tibet. Using this fighting as a pretext, China invaded Tibet with more than 80,000 troops.
Tibet's army was tiny and poorly equipped. Efforts to resist the Chinese alone would have been futile. Tibet needed allies, it needed to buy time, and most of all it needed arms. It is hard to imagine today, in an age of satellites and the Internet, how remote Tibet was in the fifties. Communications had to be relayed by messenger over mountain passes. In desperation, Tibet sent emissaries abroad to negotiate on three separate tracks. Some delegations sought an accommodation with China, on terms that would maintain some autonomy for Tibet. Others explored the possibility of asylum and financial support for the Dalai Lama and his retinue. Still others sought diplomatic support for Tibet's independence, and military weapons for armed resistance. Today, with our emphasis on Tibet's human rights situation, it may surprise many to think of the Buddhist kingdom seeking arms to fight China. Owing largely to the Vietnam war era television images of self- immolating Buddhist monks, many Americans mistakenly believe that all Buddhists practice non-violence and passive resistance. But Tibetan Buddhism, as practiced by its monks and the people of Tibet, did not shy from violence. By early 1951, Tibet's emissaries had made contact with American diplomats in neighboring India. A delegation speaking in the name of the Dalai Lama asked for support for Tibet's independence, and inquired whether the U.S. would shoulder the costs of the Dalai Lama and several hundred followers in exile.
Tibet's request was handled at the top levels of the U.S. government. Secretary of State Dean Acheson sent top-secret cables to embassies in Ceylon, Thailand, and India, instructing ambassadors to sound out the prospects for asylum for the Dalai Lama. America's support for Chiang Kai-Shek's Chinese Nationalists on Formosa complicated matters. Like Communist China, the Nationalists also viewed Tibet as a historic part of the Chinese empire. Stopping the Communist conquest of Tibet was attractive to
the U.S., but not if it would alienate Chiang Kai-shek, who opposed Tibetan independence. But one thing was clear from the beginning. The U.S. wanted the Dalai Lama to lead his country's resistance against the Chinese. A secret cable from 1951 reveals that Washington encouraged the Dalai Lama to "remain in (a) country near Tibet for purpose of mounting resistance to Chinese
Communists within Tibet." The more immediate problem was how to support Tibet's resistance war. In the early 1950's, there were no secure channels of communication between the U.S. and Tibet. American diplomats had little knowledge of the Dalai Lama's retinue. They didn't know who could be trusted to safely and accurately convey messages, and who might be a Chinese agent. Sending written notes the Chinese might intercept was risky. As a result, it took months to relay oral messages back and forth to the Dalai Lama over the mountainous reaches of Tibet. A top secret telegram from Secretary of State Acheson to the U. S. Embassy in India gives a sense of this difficulty: "Info Contel 91 July 31 and Embtel 440 (rptd Cal unnumbered) Aug 1 suggests unreliable intermediaries figured critically in failure effort persuade DL leave Yatung....Believe it unwise advise any Tibetan to receive this msg prior actual communication." The message Acheson referred to in his cable confirmed America's standing offer to the Dalai Lama: "our original position -- full aid and assistance to you when you come out." Acheson wanted U.S. aid conditioned on the Dalai Lama's agreement to leave Tibet. The Dalai Lama was told that while American planes couldn't fly into Lhasa to take him into exile, the U.S. would do all it could to aid him in fleeing Tibet. The Tibetan emissaries wanted arms. A secret cable from November 15, 1951, reports the U.S. reply: "...suggestions for overt US provision of planes, arms, supplies and leadership are practically impossible and politically undesirable at this time....US shld make at least one final effort by letter or oral messages to encourage DL to resist in ways best known to Tib Govt....Although it may not be feasible, DL might for example make pilgrimage to Buddhist shrines in Tib from one of which he might escape southward to Ind." Where others saw diplomatic quandaries, CIA deputy director Allen Dulles recognized opportunity. A veteran of "Wild Bill" Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, America's clandestine predecessor to the CIA, Dulles gained field experience during World War II as the OSS hustled to organize U.S. spying and sabotage operations. OSS specialized in behind-the-lines support to resistance movements across Nazi-occupied Europe, parachuting agents, supplies, and officers deep behind enemy lines. Some OSS officers were old China hands, and had fought alongside Mao Tse-tung's forces against the Japanese. OSS veterans like Dulles had the mindset and experience to run guerrilla operations behind Chinese lines. At the time of Tibet's invasion, Allen Dulles was CIA's Deputy Director of Plans, with responsibilities that included overseeing all CIA covert operations. While the State Department temporized about how much aid to give the Dalai Lama before he left Tibet, Dulles began to explore arming and training the Tibetan resistance. Weapons were a problem. Covert aid required arms that could not be traced to the United States. To cloak their origin, guns had to be compatible with Chinese military stocks. As a bonus, compatible guns meant Tibetan rebels could use captured Chinese ammunition. Thirty years later in Nicaragua, CIA planners faced the same challenge when they had to find Soviet weapons to supply the contras. When Israel invaded Lebanon and seized PLO warehouses full of Soviet-supplied weapons, the CIA rapidly transported the captured arms to Nicaragua's freedom fighters. But in the early 1950's, the weapons Dulles needed were German. During the decades of war-lordism that befell China in the twenties and thirties, German guns were widely used throughout the country. CIA cabled U.S. military attach s across Europe, asking them to report back on inventories of captured Nazi arms. But the CIA had little bureaucratic clout in the early days of its existence, and the Defense Department was unresponsive. Sam Cummings, now an internationally known arms dealer, was then a young weapons expert in CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. His office received a routine copy of the Defense Department report, and he knew immediately that it was wrong. Cummings had been in Europe shortly after World War II, and had seen stockpiles of Nazi arms himself. He sent his superiors a memo that claimed there were plenty of surplus guns stashed in Europe. A few weeks later, the young analyst was summoned to meet with Dulles. Richard Helms, who would later be CIA director when the Tibet war ground to an end, ushered the 24-year-old Cummings into Dulles's office. Cummings was persuasive, and soon found himself on a clandestine mission in Europe. Accompanied by a Hollywood cinematographer named Leo Lippe, and under the flimsy pretext of needing Nazi weapons for use as props in a series of war movies, he spent 1951 and 1952 moving around Europe purchasing old Nazi arms for the CIA. Cummings found plenty of surplus German Mausers and other weapons for Dulles's secret armies. For almost fifty years, the record of Dulles's clandestine operation has remained buried in the government's secret archives. After he became CIA director in 1953, Allen Dulles oversaw the creation of an audacious covert program involving tens of thousands of Tibetan freedom fighters who fought courageously against China's People's Liberation Army in a decade-long struggle for independence. The scale of Dulles's covert war dwarfed William Casey and President Reagan's aid to Nicaragua's contras, but both programs had their roots in the experience that former OSS officers Allen Dulles and Bill Casey shared running World War II's clandestine liberation wars behind enemy lines. Throughout the fifties Tibetan refugees trickled into neighboring Nepal, ripe for recruitment by the CIA. Under the Eisenhower administration, Dulles got permission to train the recruits in OSS-type sabotage techniques, demolition, and most importantly, code-and-cipher work for radio operators. Eager Tibetans were flown from the refugee camps in Dakota transport airplanes with blacked-out windows halfway across the world to Camp Hale, an army training base taken over by the CIA near Leadville, Colorado. There they were trained in the basic doctrines of guerrilla warfare, tactical small-arms use, explosives, and the tradecraft of underground resistance movements. The CIA trainees were then flown back to base camps in Nepal, and infiltrated back into Tibet.
Soon Tibetan resistance armies like the Chushi Gangdruk, a force of freedom fighters headed by Andruk Gonpo Tashi, were in the field. The name Chushi Gangdruk means "Four Rivers, Six Ranges," and describes the Tibetan homeland of Tashi's fighters. Although its numbers were small compared to the divisions of the People's Liberation Army, the CIA regarded them as an
effective fighting force. A memo from Dulles to the White House summarized the Agency's view of its guerrillas: The Tibetans, particularly the Khambas, Goloks, and other tribes of East Tibet, are a fierce, brave and warlike people. Battle in defense of their religion and the Dalai Lama is looked upon as a means of achieving merit toward their next reincarnation. By the late 1950's the CIA had plenty of assets inside Tibet. These included agents, paramilitary troops, and commanders. The number of Tibetan freedom fighters had risen to the tens of thousands. Tibet's mountains meant the only practical way to get supplies to the freedom fighters was by air. Colonel Harry "Heinie" Aderholt's air commandos, an elite Air Force unit tasked with supporting the CIA's special missions since the Korean War, was tapped for the job. The resupply line to Tibet started in Okinawa, the closest secure transshipment point the CIA could use in moving the clandestine arms purchases. From Okinawa, Aderholt's planes shipped the arms to a forward operating base at Takhli, Thailand. From Thailand, C-130 aircraft flew men and supplies over Indian airspace for parachute drops into Chinese-occupied Tibet. The mountain flying, unaided by radar and modern instrument navigational systems, was hazardous even in good conditions. Diplomatic considerations made it even more complicated. Because the route involved overflights of India, there was always a risk that a plane would go down in Indian territory. Prime Minister Nehru's relations with the neighboring Chinese were complex, but they were certain to be badly strained if China interpreted the overflights as tacit Indian support for the secret war. In the late fifties and early sixties, Nehru was becoming increasingly cooperative with the Soviet Union, and a breach with China might have furthered India's pro-Soviet tilt. In view of this delicate balancing act, the U.S. could not afford to create a diplomatic incident by losing a planeload of covert weapons in India. It was critical that the U.S. supply flights go off without any hitches. Air Force Major Larry Ropka, said to be "CIA's finest aerial infiltration planner," handled the operation. Ropka had a reputation as a detail-sweating perfectionist. Throughout the entire Tibetan airdrop operation, Ropka never lost a single airplane. But by far the most important CIA asset was an agent named Gyalo Thondup, elder brother to the Dalai Lama. Although he has remained in his brother's shadow, Thondup's role in Tibet's fight for freedom is unsurpassed. He was vital not only to CIA paramilitary operations in Tibet, but to the Dalai Lama's safe flight into exile. Thanks to Thondup's liaison with the CIA, the
Chinese were prevented from capturing the Dalai Lama. " Gyalo Thondup was a good agent," says the retired CIA officer who met clandestinely with the Dalai Lama's brother to plan the exodus from Tibet. " He was smart, articulate." Thondup's case officer spent a career in the CIA. When he discusses the Tibetan operation, he is still careful to shelter confidences. " I've sort of trained myself to forget about the operational detail," he explains. "You don't talk very much about specific operational details, or even specific operations, for anyone who's alive..." The beginning of the end came in March, 1959, when a general uprising known in intelligence annals as the "Tibetan Rebellion" broke out. Many factors fueled the uprising, including unthinkable Chinese barbarities, communal land policies, and the crowding of refugees into the capital city of Lhasa. But the sparks that ignited the tinder were rumors that China was about to kidnap the Dalai Lama. Some 30,000 Tibetans flocked to the gates of the Dalai Lama's palace to protect him. In response, the Chinese shelled the crowd with artillery. The crisis was a turning point for Tibetan diplomacy, which for eight years had sought an accommodation with China. With no accommodation possible, the Dalai Lama took up the standing American offer of help in getting out of Tibet.
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