---
tags:
  - Country
  - Laos
  - CIA
  - GoldenTriangle
  - DrugTrafficking
category: "Country"
summary: "Laos is a Southeast Asian country that served as the theater for a secret CIA war and intelligence-connected drug trafficking operations in the Golden Triangle, where vault subjects Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, Michael Hand, and Bo Gritz all operated."
---
[[Laos]] is a country in Southeast [[Asia]]. It is mentioned in connection with the clandestine [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] war and drug trafficking activities in the [[Golden Triangle]].[^1]

[[Michael Hand]], co-founder of [[Nugan Hand Bank]] and a highly decorated [[United States Army Special Forces|Special Forces Green Beret]] soldier, moved to the clandestine [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] war in [[Laos]] after his first stint in [[Vietnam]], according to [[Ted Shackley]], a former station chief in Indo-China.[^1]

[[Bo Gritz]] staged several expeditions to [[Laos]] in search of missing POWs. During these expeditions, he reportedly stumbled upon a "massive drug network in Southeast [[Asia]]" that was intertwined with American POWs.[^1]

[[Danny Casolaro]] was investigating [[Bo Gritz]]'s expose of [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] drug trafficking in the [[Golden Triangle]] and had requested to meet with a former police officer who had information on Laotian warlord [[Kuhn Sa]]'s Golden Triangle drug trade proposal to the [[United States]].[^1]

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### Footnotes

[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.