U.S. Army Special Forces Begins Operation HOTFOOT

July 1, 1959 - December 1, 1959

Project HOTFOOT. 107 SF Soldiers of the 77th SFG ordered to Laos. Led by LTC Arthur D. ‘Bull’ Simons

Overview

Operation HOTFOOT deploys U.S. Army Special Forces dressed in civilian clothes to clandestinely train the Laotian Army—as well as Hmong and other ethnic minorities in Laos—to fight Pathet Lao Communist forces. The United States later extends the operation to include combat operations against the North Vietnamese Army, and renames it Operation WHITE STAR in 1961. WHITE STAR formally ends in July 1962, when Laos officially becomes neutral.1

¹Timothy N. Castle, At War in the Shadow of Vietnam: U.S. Military Aid to the Royal Lao Government, 1955–1975 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 32; Tucker, ed., Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, 820; Shelby L. Stanton, Green Berets at War: U.S. Army Special Forces in Southeast Asia, 1956–1975, 17–25; Kenneth Conboy, Shadow War: The CIA’s Secret War in Laos, (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1995), 20–26; Dean S. Newman, “Operation White Star: A US Operation Against an Insurgency,” Special Warfare: The Professional Bulletin of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, 17 (April 2005), 30; William M. Leary, “CIA Air Operations in Laos, 1955–1974,” https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art7.html (link is external) (accessed 6/26/14). It is difficult to entirely verify some of the details of most clandestine operations from the Vietnam era. The date range reflects this uncertainty. HOTFOOT definitely began in mid-to-late 1959.